It’s difficult to find appropriate enough words to describe the kind of impact Doom had when it dropped on the gaming world as shareware in 1993, both in a larger sense, but also at an individual level.
Its impact was like that of an atomic bomb being detonated. It sent shock waves through the industry.
Most of us hadn’t seen anything like this before.
Sure, there had been first-person efforts in the past, but most of those games suffered from significant frame rate issues that made proper interaction with the environment borderline impossible. Even a game like Wolfenstein-3D, the direct predecessor to Doom, struggled to get traction with a wider audience, probably at least in part due to its technical limitations.
Doom provided a first-person experience wherein the player felt as though they were truly inserted into a real-time environment, and more pressingly for the gamer, an environment filled with demons bent on killing you.
This had simply not been done.
It’s no wonder why this game was a smash hit and inspired an entire genre of video gaming and direct clones that kept the spirit of the vision alive and truly well … all the way into the present and no doubt the future as well.
First-person shooters are here to stay. And if you want to know why, look no further than Doom.
Doom
Genre: First-person shooter
Released: 1993
Platform: PC
PC Gamer’s Most Influential Game of All Time
It starts with the game play.
It always does.
You can’t get away with coming up with a good idea (first-person shooter!), bathe it in a gimmick (violence, blood, demons!), and just expect it to be transformative hit. These things don’t “just happen.” You have to have the meat and bones of a good game built into the framework.
Part of the meat and bones here is the engine that allowed this game to run smoothly on PCs that we all laugh at today. That was a tall enough task on an individual computer, but add in a bunch of other players in a network setting (many on dial-up modems!), and now you’re looking at something that was never going to be easy.
Naturally, they passed with flying colors. One of the first examples of 3D graphics, it would have stood out for being exciting and beautiful regardless. But this engine kept it all running well, giving the user the impression of being fully immersed.
That’s something the Doom-clones that inevitably sprang up didn’t always understand (or at least weren’t capable of duplicating). The immersion gets broken if the game doesn’t run, and the folks making Doom understood that.
Performance matters. Anyone who’s made a successful first-person shooter since has absolutely had to get that part right.
One of the other things that the developers did correctly here was make everything feel impactful. We’ve all played games where you land a blow of some kind and it feels like you brushed your opponent with tissue paper. It’s a hard thing to describe in any sort of detail beyond that, but it’s a real phenomenon. Every programmer should want to make their game “feel” like the blows hurt. A shotgun should look, sound and FEEL like it’s blowing someone in two. It’s perhaps an under-emphasized thing among gamers and reviewers, but it’s hugely important. And it’s one of the main reasons a game like Doom can connect. Yeah, I want to cut up zombies with a chainsaw. But that experience becomes inauthentic and boring if it doesn’t provide a genuine feeling of actually doing the damned thing.
The gore was, naturally, at least part of the point here. And once again, the makers of the game approached that intelligently. You’re running around shooting things and blood is spraying everywhere and “oh my,” say the parents, “what about the children?” Well, it’s a group of demons and zombies from hell. That stuff is inherently evil … so blow it away with a rocket launcher!
This was really a group of geniuses putting this thing together, wasn’t it?
Ultimately, yes, yes it was. Good design begets good games. And this game was so smartly put together, it should probably be taught in design classes.
(It probably is.)
Of course, I’ve alluded to the impact, and it’s hard to quantify at a macro scale just HOW important a game Doom was. I mean, aside from the anecdotal examples, such as the fact everyone and their grandmother was playing this thing in the mid-90s. It was apparently played by an estimated 20 million people within its first two years of release. That’s … a lot. And it explains how this genre of game became such a huge chunk of the video game market.
Individually, I was as taken aback by the game as anyone. Perhaps a teenage boy would gravitate more to it than someone else (read into that what you will), but even stripping away some of the ultra violence of the game, it was still a genuine EXPERIENCE. You didn’t just play this game. You got folded into it. And I’ll always be fond of it for that.
So what makes it worth playing today?
I circled back to the game recently, for the first time in probably two decades, just to see for myself how the original experience held up. I mean, sure, this game is important as hell and worth playing for that reason alone, but was playing it nowadays still enjoyable?
Thankfully, yes.
The aforementioned flow of the game still works; this game runs well, with no hiccups or problem spots that make the experience unpleasant. Likewise, the previously addressed “impact” of the game holds up too. It really feels like you’re running around shooting rockets and bullets at critters and zombies.
Where I think I was most pleasantly surprised in my revisit, however, was the game’s layout. These world maps, complete with secret passages and item collection, were so well laid out originally that they’re still a genuine joy to experience today. Navigating your way through this game alternates between puzzle solving, inching your way forward through a wall of demons, and just running around like a maniac, guns blazing.
In a word, yes.
This level of variety (and the balance from stage to stage) is something you don’t always see today, and it’s very much a kind of palate cleanser to go back and play this granddaddy of the genre because of that.
Are shooters more advanced today? Of course. Are they better? Ehhhhhh, I’m not so sure. At the very least, Doom still holds up. And as influential as this game was, that makes circling back to play it an absolute no-brainer.
Dave’s Score: 10/10
Check out the whole Retro Gaming Essentials list here!
How to play
- Original hardware (old as hell PC or Mac)
- Sega 32X
- Atari Jaguar
- SNES
- Playstation
- 3DO
- Sega Saturn
- Gameboy Advance
- Xbox 360
- iPhone
- Nintendo Switch