Doom

Doom is a video game in the action genre developed by id Software, Inc. and published by id Software, Inc. originally released in 1993. It is currently playable on DOS.

Union Aerospace Corporation has been experimenting with teleportation technology on the Mars moons Phobos and Deimos. After early successes, something is going wrong. It seems the scientists have opened a portal straight to hell. The Phobos base is overrun by demonic creatures, and all of Deimos simply disappears. A squad of marines is sent to Phobos, but all but one are quickly slaughtered. It's up to the surviving Marine to grab some weapons and strike back at the demons.

id Software's follow-up to their genre-defining Wolfenstein 3D, Doom is another 3D first-person shooter: all-out action seen from the perspective of space marines. Like Wolfenstein, the game consists of different episodes, which can be played in any order. The first episode, Knee-Deep in the Dead, takes place on the Phobos base and is available for free as shareware. The full game continues on Deimos in The Shores of Hell and culminates in Inferno, the final episode that takes place in Hell itself (the Sega 32x version lacks this episode).

The basic objective in each level is simply to reach the exit. Since dozens of enemies stand in the way, the only way to get there is to kill them. You have to press switches and buttons to advance at certain points, and often color-coded locked doors block the way: you have to find matching skull cards or keys to get through.

The game engine technology is more advanced than that of Wolfenstein, so the levels are more varied and complex. The engine simulates different heights (stairs and elevators appear frequently) and different lighting conditions (some rooms are pitch black, others are barely lit). There are open-air areas, pools of radioactive waste that hurt the player, ceilings that fall and crush the player, and unlike Wolfenstein's orthogonally aligned corridors, the walls in Doom can be at any angle to each other. An automatic map helps navigate the levels.

Stylistically, the levels start with a futuristic theme at the Phobos military base and gradually change to a hellish environment, with satanic symbols (pentagrams, inverted crosses and portraits of horned demons), mutilated corpses and distorted faces of the damned.

Doom has a large arsenal of weapons, most of which have advantages and disadvantages. The initial weapons are fists and a simple pistol. He also has a shotgun (high damage, slow reloading, not good at distances), a machine gun (high rate of fire, but slightly inaccurate in longer bursts) and a plasma rifle (combining high rate of fire and high damage). The rocket launcher also deals a lot of damage, but the burst deals damage in bursts and must be used with care in confined areas or it can prove deadly to both player and enemies. Two other weapons in the game are the chainsaw, for melee carnage, and the BFG9000 energy pistol, which, while requiring some practice to fire properly, can destroy most enemies in a single burst. The various weapons use four different types of ammunition (bullets, projectiles, rockets, and energy cells), so it is important to pick up the right type for a given weapon.

The game abandons some of the arcade-inspired aspects of Wolfenstein, so there are no extra lives or treasure to collect for points, but there are still plenty of other power-ups available. First aid kits heal damage, while armor protects from taking damage in the first place. Backpacks allow you to carry more ammo, a computer map reveals the entire level layout on the auto map (including secret areas), light-amplifying visors illuminate dark areas, and radiation suits allow you to travel over debris without taking damage. There are also berserk packs (which radically increase the damage inflicted by fists), as well as short-lived invisibility and invulnerability power-ups.

Enemies to destroy include ancient humans corrupted during the invasion, plus demons of all shapes and sizes: fireball-throwing imps, floating skulls, pink-skinned demons with powerful bite attacks, and large one-eyed flying monstrosities called Cacodemons. Each episode ends with a battle against one or two particularly powerful creatures.

Doom is available at a reduced price on the following websites and is no longer abandonware.