DooM II and friends.

DooM II - 1/1 - Henry Arrambide

NOW IN GLORIOUS EXTRA COLOR!

    Do you think that your fathers are watching? That they weigh you in their ledgerbook? Against what? There is no book and your fathers are dead in the ground. (McCarthy) All that remains are twelve shells, six shots from the double barrel. You face down a flickering hall which can only lead deeper into hell; roars of cacodaemons echo down from the void, each reverberation bearing a unique taunt. Slap those shells in the barrel and walk forth, the end is inevitable.

    Have you ever played DooM? I mean really played it; episode 1 is freeware and most people just download that for a good romp on the easiest difficulty, shooting and running around splattering shrapnel and enjoying the cartoon gore splash about. Or they pirate key wads and then download skulltag or zdoom and some (admittedly awesome) mods like true 3D total conversions and custom campaigns and enjoy an entirely different beast than what they originally downloaded. I'm not asking if you've done that - everyone downloads DooM out of novelty for temporary enjoyment or "hardcore" gamer credit in some form. I'm asking if you've played DooM.

    When you pick up DooM and decide to actually pick Hurt Me Plenty or higher something amazing happens: you no longer can run around senselessly blasting your shotgun and hoping for the best. You have to slow down, note enemy positions, manage health and ammo, and actually pace yourself through the levels. Even if you know the key card locations from playing on the easier difficulties you have a whole new dimension added because your health and ammo appear to run out faster against hordes of the undead; rather than running from keycard point to keycard point you have to make note of where health and ammo is hidden and manage that. Simple zombies become threats and the greater hellspawn become puzzles themselves who take quite an amount of planning to properly fell.

They are here, they crave, they hunger
With the damned the nights grow longer
Twisted limbs and twisted faces
Demons from the darkest places

    Why is it that you suddenly slow down? Well, because you want to survive. Why do you want to survive when all that happens is you're sent back to the beginning of the level? Well you want to keep all the weapons and ammo you've collected - time and pain invested that you don't want to lose; death is inevitable but something has successfully driven you to want to avoid a fake death for your make-believe avatar. Tension. The best video-games know how to do this, that's why they're good. If you're given a game where you don't give a damn about the character you control and the obstacles in the game pose no threat and you don't feel antagonized, you won't feel compelled to play; there is no illusion to get lost in and so the petty bullshit is shown for what it is: button mashing to complete pointless tasks that really have no bearing on your life outside the game world.

    To break in my Wii I picked up Silent Hill Shattered Memories on the cheap; it was everything the previous paragraph wasn't. The mechanics were fun and promising, yet never used. The only sources of conflict in the game were meat men who only appeared during designated segments - only time you could die. For the majority of the game you know exactly when you are in danger, and so during the rest of the game you could explore all the creepy and abandoned environments without a care in the world. No surprises, no trouble. Walk forward solve puzzle, walk forward solve puzzle, run from monsters, plot twist, game end. Death just sent you back to the beginning of the 'scary' segment. You never have to do much besides run blindly to the exit. There is no punishment for dying, there's really no fear. You aren't invested in the game or caring much for the characters; it's reduced to solving some nifty puzzles sadly detached from the story and chasing a single plot twist. Sure you can replay it and pick up some finer plot points, but you aren't invested enough to care and the story while fun holds no deeper meaning. Unlike say, Silent Hill 2, the story here is too shallow and invests itself in a buildup to a single plot point - once that point is known there is no reason to explore further, the player doesn't need to participate in interpretation, the game doesn't really want to speak to you. It's too busy patting itself on the back for the plot twist.

    DooM is none of this. There is no clever plot twist awaiting you at the end, there's just the lead in your gun, a maze full of demons, and an exit somewhere in there. Kill all them hellspawn boy, and get your ass out of the maze. DooM II is more of the same, but a greater improvement; DooM was flat box rooms and extremely front loaded, DooM II is a more refined engine which allowed for more flexible levels which allowed for more complex and clever puzzles. The simple nature of kill or be killed hellscape mazes with all their tricks and traps keep you entertained, the easy to understand mechanics of DON'T DIE, MANAGE AMMO, KILL DEMONS keep tension high. Even when you don't mod the hell out of DooM these levels and mechanics are basic enough, simple enough to remain entertaining. Very straightforward language. It's why the game is still loved today and modded to hell and back by a thriving community online, why both games are re-released and ported to XBLA and hand-held devices. The visual language of DooM ages like fine wine because of the language which put the player first; level designed was based more on making labyrinths loaded with puzzles and threats that would keep the player on their toes. Simple iconography has ingrained DooM into the minds of gamers with these tricks, while Duke Nukem and Marathon and the like were interested in telling a story first or having (slightly more) realistic environments or locations. Sure Duke Nukem 3D has awesome cityscape levels, but find a jetpack or a rocket launcher and the whole thing is broken. Fun to screw around with but I'll happily enjoy the demon-infested rubix cube that is DooM II over any of the imitators any day, even if they can jump and speak witty one liners while following more well-established plotting. Hell, the fact that the DooM marine is a lone man who fights his way through hell and back without saying a single word, bitchery or badass in nature, makes him that much more hardcore in my eyes. 

There's many who've tried to prove that they're faster
but they didn't last and they died as they tried.

    DooM II is a fine crunchy rubix cube of a game. More powerful consoles can lead to more cutscenes, voice acting, 'mature' storytelling and prettier graphics, but that doesn't mean shit when the actual game sucks. Film and Literature can outclass a game any day when it comes to cinematic storytelling and fine writing, considering those are the whole point of said mediums. Most game developers still seem hellbent on being storytellers, yet so few realize how to use the mediums strong point (actually PLAYING and INTERACTING with the world) and rely on falling back to cutscenes and text dumping. DooM II is a fine vehicle of pure player interaction that you can come back to anytime, and I will continue coming back to it for years.