Doom

Doom was originally released on the PC in 1993 by ID Software. It was not the first First Person Shooter, but it was the game that sparked a deluge of them ranging from Chex Quest, an FPS promotional game where you play as "The Chex Warrior" to stop an alien invasion, to the popular Call of Duty series where you're a War Fighter trying to stop a human invasion. Doom has been ported to many systems and the quality of those ports varies widely, but the port to the PSX is one of only a few that is quite good.

Graphically, the PSX version of Doom is very familiar to anyone who has played the original. The enemies are sprite-based dioramas that all die the same way and flinch the same way. The level layouts and textures are largely untouched with some areas with changes that only someone who has played the original can pick out. For instance, in the first level to the room immediately to your left where the green armor pick up sits on a pedestal at the top of some stairs; that room in the PC version has 4 pillars flanking the stairs and shotgun guys hiding behind those pillars on each side. In the PSX version, those pillars are gone and the room is much less claustrophobic making dispatching the shotty dudes much easier. Another thing they added were more dark rooms, flickering lights, and colored lighting. You have to have colored lights; It was the mid-90s, after all.

Speaking of levels, this Custom Playstation Edition of Doom comes with Ultimate Doom and Doom II on one disc, but with some caveats. 17 of the original maps from Ultimate Doom and Doom II were removed and 8 new maps were added as secret levels. While that's cool, I do miss those original maps. I suspect that those maps were removed because of lag that the game generated in those levels. In a lot of the later levels, the game chugs enough to be noticeable, but it's not terrible and still playable. Compared to the Sega Saturn version, the PSX version handles the later levels of the game much better, but it's still a shame they couldn't have smoothed it out a bit. Besides those missing maps, the original map order for both games is largely intact.

One thing that I do prefer this version to the original PC version is the music and sound effects. They removed the rocking midi guitar and replaced it with a creepy ambient soundtrack. That along with the increased darkening of rooms and flickering lights almost makes this a horror game. I got a good jump scare on more than one occasion while playing. The grunts, growls, and screams from the many creatures you face sound good and the click-click-boom of the Double Barrel shotgun is a satisfying sound as you clear the room of your foes.

With difficulty, the game is as hard as how often you die. The longer you live and keep all of your resources, the easier time you'll have blasting through the hordes of demons in your wake. As soon as you die though, the difficulty spikes as you try and fend off the mobs of monsters with your little peashooter desperately trying to find a shotgun and enough ammo, health, and armor to make it through the level. Depending on how much you like hard games, this can be both good and bad. I found it frustrating myself so I used a little help.

I played as much as I could before I inevitably died. I'm not ashamed to say that I used cheats to play through the rest of the game. For me, it didn't take away any enjoyment or fun the game had to offer. Just like the original Doom, a myriad of cheats are available for you as long as you had the button combinations at hand to do them. As a kid, I definitely used them all as I played through this game and still enjoyed myself. The different cheats you can do are Invincibility, all weapons and ammo, and a complete map.

I love Doom, in all incarnations, versions, and ports that have been released over the years. It's quite possibly my favorite First Person Shooter and is the reason I like that genre as much as I do. The sprite-based graphics and simple map designs are good for a game early in the PSX's life and the fast-paced action is fun and enjoyable despite some framey-ness in later levels. The sound is done very well and the music has that dark atmospheric tone that I largely prefer and feel fits the game more than the rockin' midi guitar. The game can be difficult and there are easily accessible cheat codes that you can input and still get to see the rest of the game. This game, despite some of the flaws it has, is still a 5 out of 5 and I would recommend it to anyone.