Simple pleasures
Confession time, readers.
Before a couple of weeks ago, I had never played the originalDoom.
Thus, I missed out on a lot of what are now considered PC staples.
With dread, I’m often met with the accursed exclamation, “You’ve not playedinsert gamebefore?”
followed by a good dose of judgment.
With games now stretching out at 100+ hours apiece, where is the time for old classics like Doom?
For me, approaching Doom was cathartic.
Okay, so the controls are quite janky to my modern day sensibilities.
you might only look left to right and you might forget it if you think jumping is an option.
But despite the simple ‘find a coloured key to go through this door’ gameplay loop, it works.
I’mnot the first RPS writerto have come up against Doom as a rickety musuem piece.
Matt Cox (RPS in peace) came to a similar conclusion when he first tried it in 2018.
And like him, I was also struck by how everything looks sort of the same.
Despite this, though, what better way to unleash stress than by spending a couple hours shooting hellspawn?
That is, if you remember to manually secure your progress, which I did not.
Playing Doom 30 years removed from its original release has been a strange experience overall.
Instead, I was the loser collecting 2p coins for the penny pushers.
It’s strange, though, isn’t it?
I’m honestly not sure where this feeling comes from either.
But playing Doom today does invoke that same feeling in me, for better or worse.
But I’m not sure it will trouble my personal list of favourite shooters.
So I’m sorry, Doom, but it’s back onto the museum shelf you go.
