Review: Doom 64

My father was a big fan of Doom when it arrived to the Playstation. He used to keep a library of index cards with his own statistics on them, kill percentages, items found, secrets discovered, the works. I liked to shoot things and make it to the next level. So with a bit of nostalgia, I loaded up Doom 64, and I found I missed out on a horrible game.

This is what a waste of money looks like.

Doom 64 is Doom, which would be a big "duh," I suppose, except there definitely isn't any "64" anywhere in the game. It runs exactly like the computer classic of old, save the textures are smoother. That is literally the only advantage to this 64 version. Otherwise, it is essentially Doom 1 or 2, with a crappy new weapon, torturous level design, and a complete lack of imagination. And the cacodemons have arms now.

Hi! Am I scary?

The original Doom pulled off atmosphere perfectly. The first 9 levels were harrowing, but then you step into the ring with two Princes of Hell and are terrified out of your mind. In fact, Doom did a great job of providing a memorable first encounter for each enemy type; Either putting them far away to shoot at you in a new and expected way (first imp), have you hear their snarls for a while before you see them (pinkys) or walk into their temples (Baron of Hell).

The original.

Doom 64 ignores this concept and just throws crap at you in large numbers. The first time you meet a pinky is when you open a door and it's sort of standing in the middle of the next room waiting for you to shoot it in the face with a shotgun. The first Hell Prince walks down a long hallway at you. Towards your rocket launcher. And after the initial encounter, it's like the games designers were RTS fans: Drag-select tons of guys, tell them to attack. Done. Yes, the player wades through the legions of Hell, but it's BORING.

At first, slaughtering demons is unwieldy because of the N64 joystick controller. Doom 64 only requires Left and Right, so the other 8 or so direction the joystick has are superfluous. You'll find yourself over-turning, over-correcting, and trying to aim up at enemies above you when it is impossible to do so. However, these issues fade away after the first few levels as you become used to the controls.

Well- don't have to worry about missing here.

And onward to slaughter you go. In over 50 levels of convoluted mazes, you will encounter endless swarms of monster. None of them are outright dangerous or challenging, as running around while shooting is the dominant tactic. In fact, the only dangerous enemy are flying skulls, as they are hard to aim at, and they fly from halfway across the level to bite your face. Being caught in narrow corridors with big nasties is probably the biggest challenge you will face...

...Outside the levels themselves. Many of the stages in Doom 64 are designed by some variety of basket-case. They are convoluted, have rooms of similar appearance, and provide no hint as to how to solve certain puzzles. In the middle of the game, I became so frustrated running through empty levels trying to figure out what I missed that I just downloaded the Gamefaqs.com guide so I could actually beat the damn things. Except that the guide is text-based, and finally I was unable to even use the FAQ to figure out where the hell I was, so I stopped playing at around level 42 with the Hell King yet unchallenged. The level design made the game so unbearable I will never play it again for the rest of my life.

The most common scene in the game: a place you have already been.

If you like Doom, don't play Doom 64. It sucks. Just play the old ones, or jump right on to Doom 3.