Similarly, the weapons have had a facelift for the better with everything feeling a little more substantial and awesome – I found myself switching up weapons way more often, especially back to that chaingun, whereas my normal Doom tactic is to pick up the shotgun and never let it leave my hands. Whilst most enemies fared well in this makeover, the Imp is in my opinion the weakest of these reimaginings having lost that fierce reptilian vibe in favour of disappointingly ‘generic-monster’. This gives them a slightly cartoonish, almost ‘claymation’, quality that takes some getting used to, but gives the game a distinctive feel and adds a breath of fresh air. They’re still sprites, but it appears as thought they are based on 3D-rendered images (just a guess) rather than the physical models of the early games. Visuals are where the game takes a real leap away from the classics all the enemies have been reworked. oh, heck, who’s got time for all that, I just wanted to play Doom. reading informed me has a kind of unlockable-final-boss-fighting ability if you track down all the…. The only major gameplay addition is a solitary new gun, the ‘Unmaker’, some kind of demonic phaser which some F.A.Q. Just look at that plasma rifle fizzing and buzzing in anticipation Doom-guy is as fast and non-jumping as ever without the modern baggage of regenerative health or iron-sight aiming. Sadly Doom 64 is missing the full roster of demons and I was disappointed not to see Arch Viles or Revenants amongst the lineup of gouls, but the rumour is that storage limitations meant a handful of enemies didn’t make the cut. Many of the classic enemies are here too, again with a visual reworking, and in some cases a few tweaks to their behaviour. All the classic weapons have made the cut with a visual reworking as are all the original powerups. The first thing to note is that under the cosmetic changes, the nuts and bolts of Doom are still here beating in the heart of Doom 64. Despite all of this, Doom 64 won me over. I seem to recall hearing at one point or another someone say that “ Doom 64 is what Doom II should have been” and, with this snarling fire-breathing gun in hand, I started to realise that whoever that quote can be attributed to was probably right.ĭoom 64 feels like the next evolutionary step after the original Doom, and I say this with a real affection for the original two outings, and with a hesitation going in to this version knowing that the familiar textures, DoomGuy-face, and enemy sprites would all be missing. Then I pressed fire and holy-heck! Deep thumping shots range out, licks of blue flame erupted from the spinning barrels, and the screen shook as I wrestled to tame this monster of steel and gunpowder. The exact moment that I started to enjoy Doom 64 was when I picked up the chaingun mentally I’d prepared myself for the stock two-frame animation of the original incarnation of this weapon, accompanied by the telltale ‘mouse-hitting-a-snare-drum’ sound effect. … the fact that I’m writing this kind of gives away the reality that I picked it back up a few days later to give it a better shot even then I had to push through a certain amount of ‘meh’ before I began to enjoy it Doom 64 hides its true colours behind a pretty lacklustre couple of opening levels. … before playing it for about 10-minutes and switching it off, having not been very impressed… Eagerly I downloaded it on release day, desperate to step in to, what I recall being, some dramatically new and cutting edge re-imaginings of the Doom universe… Something about these screenshots stuck with me however I’d played Doom on PC of course, but this… this looked so… different. Even without my recent exploration of the Doom back-catalogue, I think the grainy memory of those screenshots would have drawn me in to picking up the (very reasonably priced) ‘Doom 64’ re-master-release that appeared on the Switch store a couple of weeks ago. Despite some more recent interest in the console, at the time when it was relevant I was fairly indifferent to Nintendo’s last big player in the bit-wars. Way back in the pages of a physical print magazine some time during the 90’s are the few screenshots of ‘Doom 64’ that were my first knowledge of this game.
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