Uttering the phrase "Knee Deep in the Dead" brings on some of the strongest nostalgia I can muster. I've been thinking a lot about Doom (that's Doom circa 1993) lately. Now, let it be known that I have nothing at all against violence in video games. Have you seen the trailer for Metal Gear Solid: Rising? I'm all for that shit. But Doom is probably the pinnacle of the "Shoot First, Don't Ask Questions About Why You're Shooting First Ever, At All; Just Shoot and then Shoot Some More; and For the Sake of King and Country, Don't Look Up" genre. 

Of course, there was a story. Sort of. And as a child, because I was about nine when I first played Doom (and I'm still perfectly normal, Mom), I tried to fill in the gaps of the story with my imagination. (That's the thing in your head that's kind of like a video game, but has no controller. Well, it does, but... Uh, never mind.) The time I spent trying to understand, with limited mental capacity, the hierarchical relationships between the Barons of Hell, the Cyberdemon and the Spider Mastermind (which is, by the way, one of the sweetest titles for an enemy ever) is staggering. Do you think the Barons of Hell were related to each other? Do you think they were nice to each other? Is the Cyberdemon their father? They look awfully similar. Has the Spider Mastermind ever played the boardgame Mastermind?

A good chunk of my obviously thrilling youth was spent expanding upon the whole outer space/Hell mythos thing. This came (wait for it) in the form of (the delectably named) WADs. Most of the levels I built had a kind of a science fiction motif going on. I liked those textures because they looked cooler. And because, as a nine-year-old, I didn't have a strong enough concept of Hell to really enjoy making my levels hellish. But I knew what space was. Oh yes. I watched Star Trek: The Next Generation. Space was sweet, with glowing blue lights and metal walls everywhere. Oh, the future! So while my brain was busy trying to piece together the more occult aspects of Doom, my need to create resorted to making everything look like the Enterprise, or my house.

These days, however, I pretty much steer clear of shooters. I need a good story, and the majority of shooters over the past ten years have been pretty weak in that department. So have a lot of other genres, but let's focus on one thing at a time. There are exceptions of course (I'll just say it first: Bioshock), but that's not my point. My point is that I liked, no, loved Doom, and it had almost no story whatsoever. And I knew exactly what to do. It's not like I needed to know about the UAC and the moons of Mars and the gateway to Hell to know that everything needed to die. Portal is a good example of a modern game that does this kind of minimalism well. I think many of today's shooters suffer because a story is crammed in where it doesn't really need to be. Do I need a bunch of witty sidekick soldiers? Does it matter if I'm humanity's only hope? Does it really make a difference? I'll shoot everything either way. Half the time, no one in the game even seems to notice what a murderous jackass I am.

I mean, what is more intriguing? Being led through an "epic" story of "love and loss" with "great" dialogue and "strong" characters?

Or arriving in a not-so-empty building, knee deep in the dead?