You hear a growl echoing through the facility. You panic. The best weapon you’ve got – a pistol, oh crap, it looks like you’re out of ammo. You’ll have to settle with your fists, you quickly put your pistol away, and move further away from the long hallway; you’re stuck here, you can’t get out, the door locked as you entered, and you can’t get back through.  The growl gets louder, and the demon is quickly approaching you; you cower in the corner fearing for your life, as the demon gets nearer and nearer.  Christ, what’s that over in the corner!? A berserker pack! Yes, yes! You quickly run towards it and you pick it up, your muscle mass increases tenfold, and you feel capable of anything. The demon comes round the corner of the metallic hallway, but that’s okay, you’re ready for it.

Doom was produced for DOS in 1993 by the masterminds behind ‘Wolfenstein’, Id Software. It was one of the earliest popular First Person Shooter (FPS for short) games.
It boasted the fact that it had a trait recognized as “2.5 D” which mimics the effects of real 3D.
Doom was also was one of a few games who offered simple means to create custom maps, unlike previous Id Games such as Wolfenstein.
 In 1995 “Doom 95” a windows port of Doom was created; which is still available in certain gaming shops today.

You play as an unidentified marine (nicknamed “Doomguy” by fans), one of the toughest marines on Earth; who was deported to Mars for refusing a command to engage civilians. He is forced to work for the UAC, a military-industrial conglomerate who have research facilities on Mars, Phobos, and Deimos.
During a routine teleportation procedure between Phobos and Deimos, something goes terribly wrong; “monsters” burst through on either side, and proceed to overrun the facilities. Shrieks can be heard on the radio, as well as the crunching of broken bones, and the sounds of tearing flesh.
A few hours later, Deimos disappears fully from the sky.
You, a marine from Mars, is sent as a part of a team to Phobos to investigate what has happened. The player was instructed to wait outside while the rest of your squad enter the facility and investigate.
 Not long after your squad enters the building, you can hear screams and the sounds flesh being torn, and bones being crunched. All goes silent. Your comrades are dead; and you’re the only one left. Your mission is to fight your way through 32 levels of complete chaos, and find your way safely home.

For such an old game, it’s still a lot of fun to play; the combination of atmospheric solitary walks, through hellish environments (complete with still-wiggling bodies staked to the ground, of course), and fast-paced shoot-em-up action, keeps you interested in the game at all times.

It’s always great fun to be shooting at a horde of quickly approaching “imps”, with your trusty boomstick. The noise of the blast and the sound of the dying creatures really help getting the adrenaline pumping.

Doom uses a (now) popular method of introducing fight scenes, called “monster-closets”, EG:  you activate a button, or pick up a key; then the wall opens behind you, and a horde of demon pour out and attack, this was repeated in the remake of Doom, Doom 3. It is now a classic FPS technique.

The sound effects are somewhat good quality, nothing sounds better than the blast of the Boomstick as you shoot down the many Zombie Soldiers. The major drawback is that a few of the sounds (doors opening, closing, et cetera) are taken from a free library, meaning that they are freely available to anyone who wishes to use them; so they’re quite common sounds, and are used a lot in TV programmes. I’m sure this wasn’t the case in 1993, however. Some of the monster sounds will go down as classics, such as the noise the imps make, or the groan of the zombie soldiers. After playing the game for a while, you’ll notice these sounds in other places, such as cheap B-Movies, or low-budget television programmes. It’s almost like a nod towards the Classic Dooms, each time you hear it.

The music is the finest element when it comes to the sound effects in Doom. Each track is influenced by 80’s metal bands, such as Metallica or Slayer. Tom Hall, the sound engineer, was previously a lawyer so he knew just how much had to be changed in order for it to be ‘influenced’ by metal bands, instead of a complete rip-off.  The songs that are the most famous from Doom, are E1M1 – influenced by Metallica’s “No Remorse”  - and E1M8.

The graphics in Doom were first-class for their time, but have a somewhat dated feeling now; despite mimicking a 3d environment, the creatures are designed with 4-sided sprites, and are somewhat pixelated. This is easily forgiven, though, as you’re normally blasting through too many of them at once to really sit back and appreciate/criticize the graphics. The graphics were based on clay models that were scanned onto the computer as a base image, and the creature design is unique, each monster is easily recognizable as from the video game, and whenever you seen them in artwork, you immediately recognise them.

The level design in the original Doom is fairly good, despite having a rather linear path to get to your next location. Another drawback is that each map is more of the same: “Find Key, Open Door, Kill Enemies, Find Next Key, Open Door, Kill Enemies”, however, you do get the occasional “diamond level”, which has a rather rare unique feeling to it, such as some of the few ‘Hell’ levels, such as E1M8, the boss battle to the end of Episode 1, and the finale to the Shareware Doom.

All in all, I think Doom is a rather good game, but somewhat dated to today’s standards. It’s still a must play for any real FPS fan, to get the feel of what FPS games were like when they first started.

I’m going to rate it according to its time, as it’s a fairly old game, and it’d be unfair for me to give it a poor rating because it’s not up to today’s standards.

Sound – 7/10 – Great audio tracks, despite being in Midi format, and good sound effects, however, it gets somewhat repetitive after a while.

Graphics -7/10 – Amazing for their time, but somewhat dated now; it is however, still playable, and doesn’t give you motion sickness like other games of the 90’s.

Level Design -6/10- Some levels are more or less the same, but as things move onto Deimos and Hell, the levels become more and more unique. There are a few areas with ‘slime pits’ that you cannot escape for, causing you to be too careful. This is somewhat frustrating.

Overall - 9/10 – Doom is a game that will go down in history for being one of the first – it’s still fun to play nowadays, and has a rather large online community to help you with any questions you may have. Modding is still a huge factor in Doom, and it always has been.  The levels are fun to play, the sound effects are satisfactory, and the graphics were good for their time.