Yes, you should play them. They are classics and hold on remarkably well. I don't think you have to play them to completion, though... with a couple of levels is enough to understand the appeal.

However, you don't need to play them to have an appreciation of the new Doom. It is fun to see the old enemies being remade with current graphics, but other than that, it adds little to the game. There is no narrative connection between the old and the new doom, other than some references made for nostalgia sake...

I strongly disagree, which I suppose is a given when you look at all my posts in this thread.

The guns in Doom are some of the most fun to use in the genre. That fucking CHU-CHUNK that you get every time you furiously pump shell after shell into a Pinky, and then just watch it collapse into itself in a heap of meat, is borderline erotic. It's the perfect blend of sounds, graphics, and weapon handling.

Aiming up and down isn't important when the game does it for you. You just look in the general direction and you are good to go.

I've had numerous people on my Steam friends play Doom for the first time recently, and while some felt it is overrated, everyone agreed, the guns feel really, really good.

As for your second point, have you played the original Half Life recently? It doesn't hold up nearly as well as Doom does. Even with Black Mesa, I found myself forcing myself to play what I had thought was one of my favorite games.

yeah, do yourself a favor and play with Brutal Doom, makes a world of difference.

Of course you should play it. Not only is it a hugely impactful piece of gaming history, it's a great and very well balanced action game with a near limitless amount of user generated content. Grab Doom 2 off Steam and download ZDoom. Anyone who tells you it hasn't aged well is clearly wrong and doesn't know anything.

So, I finally managed to find some time to play Doom!

As a few people suggested, I started recording the gameplay! Not sure if it's ok to post the youtube links here so I posted in my blog here on giantbomb, along with some initial impressions!

A Mood For Doom

Nice! Are you using Wolfenstein's key controls (holding alt to strafe)?

Skip episode four if you just want to see the original game. Thy Flesh Consumed was the final episode produced by Id for the retail version of Doom, so it has some pretty challenging levels. Also, I highly recommend playing Doom 2 with ZDoom and auto-run enabled, with WASD for movement and forward/back movement on the mouse disabled.

Get DOOM off GOG, get Chocolate DOOM for that original experience, and go!