Product description
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You killed the Demons once, they were all dead. Or so
you thought... A single Demon Entity escaped detection.
Systematically it altered decaying, dead carnage back into
grotesque living tissue. The Demons have returned - stronger and
more vicious than ever before. You mission is clear, there are no
options: kill or be killed!
Review
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Doom set the standard for first-person shooters when it
hit PCs in 1993. Since then, we've seen versions for every system
that could handle it, from Sony's PlayStation to Sega's
ill-conceived 32X add-on, with varying results. While most would
argue that Doom is finally dead, Midway is attempting to keep the
series alive with its latest release, Doom 64 for the N64. While
it's probably the best version to date, it pales in comparison to
id Software's follow-up, Quake, which currently looms on the
console horizon.
Doom 64 picks up where all the other Doom games left off. After
tearing through space, hell, and wherever else your Space Marine
was sent, you thought that the threat of the demons was finally
past. Of course, one survived, and it is currently reanimating
all of the fallen monsters in a last-ditch attempt to revitalize
their evil mission. Your task is to finally rid the universe of
all the crazy hellions - from the dead guy with the pistol to the
rocket-spewing Cyberdemon.
Of all the changes made for the N64 version, the upgraded
graphics are perhaps the most striking. There are new images and
texture s for every weapon, monster, and wall. Every character
looks crisp and maintains his sharpness at close range - finally
removing the pixelation that previous versions have suffered
from. True lightsourcing has also been added, so colored lights
and shadows permeate the game's 30-plus levels. The sound has
also been tweaked and now boasts a few new death screams and a
hauntingly ambient soundtrack. Thrown in (seemingly) as an
afterthought is a new weapon, the laser, which proves to be next
to useless and is nowhere near as cool as it's made out to be.
The basic rules have been adjusted as well. Some changes are
major - the switch system is no longer a "flip once" process -
some are now used for multiple openings and must be returned to
more than once. Several items teleport in now, making it much
harder to find keys and other power-ups integral to completing
the game. The minor changes, while not noticeable to everyone,
will surely bother hard-core Doom fans. For instance, now that
the engine is true 3-D, rooms can exist on top of each other -
gone are the gratuitous staircases and ramps that dominated the
original. It's almost as if the design team set out to make
people re-think what Doom was capable of doing. While no one
could argue that this is an unworthy ambition, if the team was
prepared to make minor, annoying changes to the game, then why
couldn't they throw in completely new features like jumping or
the ability to look up and down. Better yet - why not just make
an entirely new game instead? Play control remains the same in
Doom 64 but seems somewhat restrictive when compared to that of
the PC version. The analog stick enables you to force your Marine
along at several different speeds - but it never feels quite
right. In fact, this sense of being 'wrong' permeates the entire
title. On paper, Doom 64 sounds better than the original could
ever hope to be, but the end result feels more like a
bastardization of the original.
Uninitiated or casual Doom players may get a kick out of Doom 64
- the graphics are fairly impressive and the game still has a
spooky atmosphere. But anyone who has downloaded custom WADs for
the PC with new levels, graphics, and sounds has already seen
greater things from the world of Doom. Sigh... yet another
mediocre N64 game. --Jeff Gerstmann
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