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Stats:
Author+Hyena
Views5225
Date12/16/2002
Time09:10:46PM
 Doom
- or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Id Software
DOOM

This game is my vindication. I have seen many console versions of Doom and none of them are worthy to squat naked in a tub of their own urine next to the original masterpiece. Except this one. The quality of this game is outright masturbatory. It screams out as you play it, "Whoever says 'Console FPS games are worthless' should be shot" and gives you the BFG 9000 to shoot them with.


Good old fashioned Doom-style nukage

To begin with, it has that "fast and furious" feeling that Doom conveys all so well. If the SNES version was this good, I wouldn't be the jaded and cynical doomer I am now.
Okay, you've twisted my arm. Yes, I'm a doom freak. I've played Doom on SNES, genesis, on more than ten PCs, N64 and probably others I've forgotten in the wake of a caffeine haze.
I've played most, if not all games based on the doom engine, including Heretic, Hexen, and other smaller titles like Hacx and Strife. I've played several hundred addons, total conversions, and megawads. I have printouts of doom art, and I've collected all the different sizes of Doom brand tampons.
So maybe you understand now why my spirit has been crushed under an immense pile of doom-based dog crap. I want there to be good Doom but there never is.

Everyone's favourite; The plasma rifle

The GBA Doom is so much more than that, however. The speed is up to par, the enemies don't have drastic changes in behaviour, and the weapons maintain their finely-tuned firing rate. Eat plasma, you damn dirty imp!

On rare occasions, it does lag. It's to be expected with a hand-held system, sadly. But as long as it doesn't interfere, I don't think it constitutes bad gameplay. The fact remains that this is the only version of Doom you can play on the bus. And you'll need a hand-held copy of Doom to keep you company after you miss your stop four times as a direct result of you playing gameboy.


I'm slow. But you can't rush art.

The controls can be somewhat difficult to master. But this can be expected when you only have four buttons to work with. To help out, there are also several different control styles to use. Control A is a good all-around type, but Control D seems to be closer to how the PC version operates.
Under no circumstances would I recommend Control C because it's impossible to run or turn fast. This has serious repercussions when you're trudging through lava or being eaten from behind. You have been warned.
One annoying factor of the controls is that the "activate" button is often shared with the "run" or "strafe" button. This means that if you're already running or strafing, you might accidentally open a secret door or flick a switch that you weren't intending to. (Don't you hate it when that happens in real life?)
However these occasions are rare, and I suppose it can't be that bad to accidentally stumble into a secret.

The Nightmare skill from the original Doom has been removed, and that means no lightning-fast respawning monsters. But the "Ultra-violence" skill has been renamed to Nightmare. This ensures that Nintendo keeps the game acceptable for ten-year olds, and still allows them to use the cool "Nightmare" graphic.


NIGHTMARE!

And with some pride, I can hold up my head and tell you this: All of your favourite items and weapons are still here.
Lest we forget our old pal, the chainsaw!

Now where can I find some meat?
.

Here we are! Yummy!

And you can still explode barrels of nuclear waste. Just don't chainsaw them like I did.

One setback involved in porting Doom to a GBA is that some enemies didn't make the cut. Namely, the Cyberdemon and the Spider Mastermind. It kind of takes away from your glorious victory if you don't face any bosses, so in this way it's somewhat disappointing. It does however, have new levels without bosses. It still isn't really the same thing. It also means some weapons are wasted.
If you're like me, you'll wonder to yourself, "Why did I spend all this time gathering weapons when I don't have a decent boss to fight."
Then this thought is briefly interrupted with, "Hey where am I? This isn't my bus terminal."
Perhaps I can best illustrate this with a simple table. See how effective these weapons are against these monsters.

Fist
Chainsaw
Pistol
Shotgun
Chaingun
R. Launcher
Plasma Rifle
BFG-9000
Zombieman
Okay
Good
Great
Wasteful
Great
Overkill
Wasteful
OVERKILL
Sergeant
Bad
Good
Good
Great
Great
Overkill
Wasteful
OVERKILL
Imp
Okay
Good
Good
Great
Great
Overkill
Wasteful
OVERKILL
Demon
Okay
Great
Good
Great
Good
Wasteful
Good
OVERKILL
Lost Soul
Okay
Good
Good
Great
Great
Overkill
Wasteful
OVERKILL
Cacodemon
Bad
Great
Bad
Great
Great
Good
Good
Overkill
Baron of Hell
Suicide
Suicide
Suicide
Good
Good
Great
Great
Wasteful

The only time when a BFG would be worth using is against, say, two Barons and a pile of imps standing conveniently around them. If you do it right, one shot will kill one Baron, all of the imps, and leave the remaining Baron weakened. All you'll need is a good couple of shotgun blasts after that.
As you may have guessed, I was never a big fan of the BFG. It sort of throws off the game's balance. The lack of major bosses just accentuates that.
Oh, and to some of the more astute and very obnoxious readers, you'll notice I left the spectre out of the table. This is because they are identical to demons except that they are partially invisible. So there's no point in even mentioning them. Furthermore, I don't think there are any spectres in the GBA version.
Can we move on, please? Thank you.


A Lost Soul. Charming as always.

Unfortunately, another sad truth is that the bad guys do not have exploding frames. So blowing up barrels will not get you the satisfying splatter of gibs that we all associate with Doom. But Nintendo censorship has gone much further in the past and I consider this to be a very minor setback.
Just sit back and enjoy the fact that you can still slice up demons.

While we're on the subject of censorship, you'll notice everyone has green blood.
Now this is priceless. Nintendo decided that blood would be fine, as long as it's green. I sort of saw where they were coming from and I let it go at that. But they didn't stop there. They have green guts.

Flu season again . . .

A green pool of blood, with little bits of green innards in there. If they wanted to censor it, why didn't they just remove it altogether? It's mind-boggling. And although you can't explode your zombie pals, you will invariably find exploded corpses of marines along the way. It looks to me like these guys are second generation garbage-eaters that spent their whole life inside a nuclear reactor core.


Johnny! What have they done to you?

Your guess is as good as mine why they did this.
Another problem is sprites. Remember that Doom was before polygon models became popular and that means all the characters are hand-drawn sprites. While this can mean the characters look more detailed, it also makes them look pixelated when you're up close. And because GBA has a lower resolution than a PC, it makes matters slightly worse.
PC version

GBA version

This can have its toll on "suspension of disbelief". Either it will annoy you or it will make you laugh. But I'm warning you that I'm in touch with doom fans all over the planet who can kill you if you do the latter.
Don't make me press the button, damn you! Don't make me press it!

The wrath of the Baron of Hell
.

So much for an encore. He killed me.

Another thing I noticed was the doom guy's portrait. When he's injured, he bleeds. But not quite like the original doom. As you can see above, his death portrait has a bloody nose. It looks nothing like the original doom face, which closely resembles raw hamburger. I suppose it's not necessarily a bad thing, though. You barely notice the face, anyway.


Why is the ammo box neon?
And why is the wall texture so different?

Then there are parts that were changed for no reason whatsoever. My guess about the ammo box is lack of colours. But from what I hear, the Gameboy Advance has over thirty-two thousand colours. And Doom had 256. Awful mysterious, you ask me.
Wall textures are similarly messed with. Not all of them. Maybe some egotistical perfectionist wanted to "improve" on the less "glamourous" textures. Note my quotation marks to denote "sarcasm".

Now onto the sound effects. They're great!
They're just as I remember them when I last played Doom . . . earlier this week. The imps still have that delightfully evil snarl that sounds incredibly like they're grinding out the words "apocalypse". And the illustrious Baron of Hell still sounds as menacing as ever. Cacodemons? Oh, yes. Those cute cycloptic spheres still have retained their eminent "Hisssssssssssssssss".

I'd love to have one of these for a pet.

But what baffles me is the oof sound that goes off when you fall from a ledge. It's gone!
Okay, not a big loss as far as the big picture goes, but they decided to replace it with the doom guy's pain noise. Now every time he runs down stairs, gasping for breath on each step, you start thinking "Crap! Someone's shooting me!" or "Uh oh. Doom guy has a hernia"
It could be the sheer weight of his UAC marine armour, I suppose. The same armour, mind you, that renders him incapable of jumping, or looking up and down. It's damn good, though, considering it doesn't ever slow him down and can withstand rocket blasts. Not to mention it keeps room for up to 200% more armour that you can find lying around later on. Now that's some nifterific armour.

The music? It's Bobby Prince's soundtrack of doom. The pun is unfortunately intended.
Some of the cooler pieces of music are missing. Possibly because of legal trouble. In case you didn't hear, many of the songs in the Doom and Doom 2 soundtrack are suspiciously similar to the work of some mainstream musical artists. I'm not taking sides here, but it may explain why some of them are missing.
As long as it still has my personal favourites-the themes to E2M2, E1M9, and the intermission music-I'm as happy as a fat kid in a cheesecake bakery.

Well, actually the intermission screen is musicless. And E2M2 has a new composition by some other guy. Shut up.

Okay, so it has its flaws. Many, many flaws. But it also has many strengths which outweigh the rest.
You still have the classic Doom feel to it. And that means it's a fast-fingered demon-killing energy-dispensing adrenaline-producing bag of bliss.
Being the proud owner of a can of whoop-ass, I think I can vouch for this with some authority.

While the game's been altered somewhat from the original, be reminded that Nintendo has been much more unforgiving with SNES titles such as Mortal Kombat and Wolfenstein 3d. Grasp doom and embrace it tightly with knowledge that it could have been much worse. Now if you'll excuse me, I hear there's a lifesize model of the BFG-9000 on ebay.

Nice Article ;) posted by @kiwibonga
on 01/10/2003 at 02:30:46AM
Well, this is Hyena's first article here, when I saw it, I thought... "Wow... I need that staffer." -- And there he is now! Isn't that just great?



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