You know what DOOM is, I know what DOOM is, my great grandfather's second brother from another mother knows what DOOM is, let's skip the intro.
Some of you probably know of the fact that DOOM has a lot of ports, from the Super Nintendo to the 3DO, even the GBA.
Today we'll be going over the Playstation port, one of the more infamous ones.
Click on any photo you wish to enlarge!
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| Woahhhhhhhhhh! |
The DOOM logo rises from the fire as an epic rock track plays in the background! Now this is how you start a game! This should've been in the original!
The epic rock continues on the main menu, and here you get to choose between playing the Ultimate DOOM or DOOM 2 (There's also the option of playing Cooperative, but I won't be covering that). The lack of a Save/Load option is worrying, though.
Now I got my copy from a friend and he lost the manual, so I should check what the controls are...
Uh-oh, "Password". Please, don't tell me...
FUCK!
We're off to a bad start. As someone who's played a lot of Metroid, I'm used to writing down long passwords, but this isn't an NES! Silent Hill and Resident Evil use regular save files, so why not this?! Thankfully despite the lack of a manual, there's still a cheat sheet left by my friend, so I'm not entirely fucked.
Okay, let's start the game, I'll be playing on "Ultra Violence" (no "Nightmare"?) for the complete experience, whatever that may be...
.....Oh.
The game is darker and instead of the usual rock track, there's this weird noise playing. Is this the music?
Sure enough, it is. Aside from the title screen, intermission screen, and win screen's normal music, the rest of the soundtrack is made of these weird droning horror tracks.
I'm not sure how to feel about this...
I turn to the left to pick up the armor and...
Ugh, this game uses tank controls. I don't know if there's a better way to translate the controls of DOOM to Playstation, but surely tank controls aren't the way!
This is going to take some getting used to.
Guess they had to cut corners with the level design, the 2 pillars in this room are missing.
I pick up the armor, turn around and go down the usual route.
The zombie soldiers here have new sounds. Same goes for my weapons. Definitely better than the original, since the pistol actually sounds like a pistol now!
As I was walking towards the corridor here, I got attacked by a chaingunner!
Chaingunners only appeared in DOOM 2, so this was a surprise. Fortunately, he's not a challenge on his own, so I quickly finished him and took his chaingun.
Oh, this texture is different... Maybe they wanted to highlight the secret area?
Well, I decided to go check it and...
OH FUCK!
A pain elemental! Really?! The corridor was tight at least, so it made dealing with him easy.
Oh, that texture wasn't just a recolor, it's transparent... Cool!
Something I neglected to mention until now, but it seems that there's some sort of colored lights and shadows added to the engine, too. It actually gives the level a certain feeling...
Dark levels, less objects, red lighting, ambient music... It all makes the game feel different to its DOS counterpart...
I remember reading an article about it somewhere, and the author described the feeling perfectly- "You are alone."
And yeah, that's it! It all reinforces the feeling of being alone! In both games you are alone, but while the DOS version ignored that feeling whilst serenading you with rock, the Playstation version embraces it... Incredible!
Which makes me wonder, which came first? Did they make the levels dark because the music was scary, or did they make the music scary because the levels were dark?
I digress.
That takes care of Level 1 of Episode 1.
My thoughts so far? Mixed. I like the new direction this port has taken, but I'm nore sure if it will hold out until the end.
Click here to teleport to part 2.Click here to teleport to the main menu.