Doom: Does it Hold Up?

In continuing my series on nostalgia and retro gaming, I've decided to create a line of articles entitled "Does It Hold Up?" Perhaps the best way to examine whether nostalgia is blind, or if there is sufficient reasoning behind it, is to examine specific games from my past, that I have gone back and played again, for the first time in years.

Today, I will be talking about Doom, which I've been playing over the last few days, for the first time in a decade and a half, or just under that. I picked up the Doom 3 BFG Edition for my PS3 sometime last year, for the reasonable price of $20. I figured I would take a trip down memory lane, sometime in the future. Well, that day has come, and I am going to share exactly how I feel about it.

If I could sum up the game in just one sentence, it would be pure, unfiltered, 1990s, male power fantasy, and I love it. I may not be the nostalgic I was in my early 20s, largely because I woke up one morning, and realized, I really don't remember the 90s that well, for the most part, but one thing I remembered surprisingly well, was Doom, and I still think the concept behind it is great.

There's a bit of a back story, and a single page of text between episodes, but it's not a crucial part of the game, and there's really not much to it. All you really need to know is you're a man trapped on a base, on one of Mars's moons, and there are monsters waiting to kill you, and that's more than enough motivation to waste them all.

One thing that stood out for me, is the inability to aim vertically. Clearly, games have come a long way since the early 90s. On the other hand, strafing in this game is fairly modern-esque. Of course, I do recall having to use the arrow keys on a keyboard, back in the 90s. Long gone are the days of being an 8 year old, huddled around my dad's Windows 95 computer, sometimes with other 8 year olds sitting next to me. Now, it's just me, and my PS3. I think strafing feels much better on a controller, especially an almost equally nostalgic, Dualshock series controller.

I also discovered, that Doom had other episodes. I do recall having the shareware version of the game, so I only had episode 1. I assumed the game just ended after that, but it looks like there was a lot more to Doom than I remember, and, as of episode 3, I think the episodes get progressively better.

They get progressively harder too, so I'm thankful I stuck with the default difficulty of "Hurt Me Plenty". Note, I'm not some pansy who would normally ever consider playing a game on easy, or a difficulty that sounds equally insulting, and I think the default difficulty has the right amount of challenge.

If I had to choose a favorite thing about the game, it's that it's quite imaginative, in a way that makes some modern AAA games look bad. Sure, a cross between sci-fi and horror, has been done since, but not the way this game handles it. The mere presence of hell, and the fact that it slowly, but surely, encroaches on the lunar bases the game is set in, creates an interesting theme.

Looking at some of the game's imagery, such as inverted crosses, and marines, and scientists, being impaled, maimed, and sometimes even crucified, I have to wonder how I turned out as well as I did. I guess that's proof that videogames don't turn people into psychopaths. In summary, I grew up with Doom, and I still love it.

What are your thoughts? Do you find his particular game disturbing, or do you think it is beyond outdated? Do you still enjoy it? Leave your comments below.