DOOM Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I'm not going to bore you with a summary of the game, suffice to say that as the first real premier FPS, this baby sports a very simplified control scheme with no ability to jump or even peer mindlessly at the ceilings or floors or at the fireball-spouting imp standing above you. And if you're still okay with that concept, then do read-on.

I've played just about every incarnation of Doom that's been on a console, from the compacted Genesis 32x version, to the 3DO, the atrocious Atari Jaguar, and the slightly ramped-up Playstation One version. This Xbox 360 downloadable version lands somewhere in the middle for me.

This version feels almost as if someone slapped it together on a whim... and in a day. The multiplayer is the only place where this version shines, LIVE does an awesome job of connecting you to your friends, with lag that is almost entirely non-existant. Everything else however...

As far as graphics go, they stick to their roots verbatim and for a game that's 15 years old, you don't expect anything great since they're blocky sprites and not the 3d models of today's games. They reworked the sound to seem close to being surround, but even then you'll get some weird and unexpected anomalies (especially when monster screams from repeated chaingun bullets run over top of each other and sound like an unintentional octave, out of nowhere). And as far as the controls... well, the controls are just barely workable in my opinion.

You can't configure them at all. You're not even given the option of *slightly* changing the layout--which is understandable with today's games where every button is completely necessary, but even the oldest ports had SOME kind of choice as to which buttons do what since there's only really 9 button and a directional pad needed. The d-pad and the symbol buttons are mapped to the same functions: open doors/flip switches, go back and forth through the weapons in your inventory (which is atrociously slow, and on top of that, has no memory of your presses to makeup for it--pressing left multiple times in a hurry to get from Weapon 5 to Weapon 2 does absolutely nothing but change only one weapon... again, S-L-O-W-L-Y, which becomes a major hassle in the middle of an unexpected close-combat firefight and you've got your rocket launcher up), and with the last button function you can open the map, and the map is probably one of the most noticeably dumbed-down functions of the port.

In the real game (and every one of the more modern console versions), while viewing the top-down, fullscreen "automap", you usually can: zoom-in or out of your current position, or roam around the screen in a free mode, where the center of the map moves without changing your position on it. For whatever reason they decided not include the free roaming view, and that's fine... in smaller maps. Once you get into maps that may take longer than 3 mins to completely traverse, checking for incomplete red map lines to indicate where you haven't been/seen yet becomes a terrible project and your only option is either to zoom all the way out to Google Map proportions, or to wander around blindly with the fullscreen map up, moving your arrow avatar around and trying not to bump into walls, fall into sludge pits, or worse. Go ahead and picture the in-game reality of that if you will: a confused space marine, all alone with a shotgun under his arm, stranded on a giant, darkly-lit army base with rifle-toting zombies, ghouls, and deadly radioactive waste around every corner... with his face buried in his map because he took a wrong turn somewhere, and now he's reduced to wandering around aimlessly... trying not to bump into walls. It's just silly, and arduous. Luckily if and when you do lose your way, you can generally just keep running up and down every hallway, following every wall until you've reached a door, a switch, or an area you haven't gone through yet though, if that's your style of play.

The final slap in the face is the trusty "Screen Size" option. As a PC user, I tend to get excited just by the mention of this. This isn't the "pick your resolution" kind of option of modern games, this is the "brick-by-brick" incremental style, where there's normally your HUD bar taking up residence at the entire bottom of the screen, and a window in the middle of the screen where all the action is and literally, you can make the inside-window smaller or bigger to help the program run smoother, but incrementally. The biggest inside-window setting would do away with the status bar entirely and even reveal extra "action" that was just-out-frame (which was very cool at the time, even revealing more of your weapons than you could normally see). Most console ports just have a set size that they decided was the biggest the window could be to display the most action while still having a decent framerate. On the 360 however, adjusting your screensize literally does just that, magnifies or de-magnifies the entire game screen--HUD, action window, and all--it all grows or shrinks. Why they thought this was useful to anyone, I'm not entirely sure, aside from a few users with flatscreens that overscan, otherwise I don't get it. It can get pretty tiny, and the biggest it gets is to magnify the center of the screen until you almost can't see the space at the bottom where the HUD is, but then this also cuts off the same-size of space at the top of the screen (the size of HUD at the bottom); Also to note that there's no "re-envisioning" for widescreen tv's at all, which although would've been amazing, it's completely understandable (especially compared to everything else this port dropped-the-ball with).

In the end, this is still a fun and classic game, and if you meet any of the below criteria, I still have to vote a big YES to downloading it:
- if you want a fun and modern way to link-up with friends (or strangers) for co-op or deathmatch Doom,
- if you've never played Doom but love classic FPS, or finally
- if you can't find your PC copy and need to get your fix.

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Product Description:
Single Player, Xbox Live Multiplayer 1-4, 5.1 Surround Sound, HD (High Definition). You're a Marine stationed on Mars when a military experiment goes wrong. Your mission - blast your way to freedom through the classic world of DOOM. Face off against Hell's army including stampeding demons and undead Marines, and lay waste to rooms of monsters with the infamous BFG 9000 and an arsenal of classic weapons. Then, take the deathmatch online via Live and battle your friends for dominance of the leaderboards, or team-up with a friend in co-op. There are no refunds for this item. For more information, see www.xbox.com/live/accounts.

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