Doom 64 (1997)

Beat on the hardest difficulty. I can't believe I never had this game back in the day given how much I played Doom 1 and 2, Goldeneye and Perfect Dark. It was probably because the rental shops never had it so I never knew it existed. I started off with the settings, upping the mouse sensitivity and upping the fov to around the middle. I didn't like the fish bowl appearance of max fov. Some of the levels were familiar because I played fan remakes on Doom 4. The amount of challenge was great. I had to make use of most ammo pickups and pretty much never had full ammo for any weapon for long. I rationed my ammo types to try and make use of every available pickup. Chainsaw for pinkies, shotgun for general purpose mid range and killing weak enemies, super shotgun for tougher enemies as long as I had room/cover to dodge, chaingun was best for lost souls and pain elementals but I also used it for general purpose, rockets for groups of tough enemies, plasma any time I was going into a suspected ambush so I would have the highest dps, and BFG only used a few times for ridiculous groups (like at the final boss). The new laser gun was interesting because it combined the high dps of the plasma rifle with the accuracy and hit scan of the chaingun, making it extremely effective at all ranges. It could even shoot between the bars that plasma could not fit through, and almost every cyberdemon was conveniently behind bars. I did not need health and armor pickups as much because I made sure to secret hunt to leave each level in great condition. I found most secrets. A few times I used no clipping to figure out how to get the secret, and a few I had to look up (usually tricky ones involving precise timing, platforming and shooting switches). If there was a soul sphere, mega sphere or combat armor that I could not figure out how to get, I looked it up. I only found 1 of the secret levels.

Most of the levels were excellent, and I especially liked the ridiculously large battles that put my strafing skills to the test, bobbing and weaving around while having zero safe space. Figuring out what switches did was obnoxious at times but I never needed a walkthrough. The teleporting items and enemies, and traps added a new aspect of challenge, but they could be very annoying. I hated the level with the minigame of guessing which pillar a soul sphere teleported into. I ended up no clipping to find out where it was. The final boss was a massive difficulty spike. I did not know I could use my 1 alien artifact to close off a monster spawner so I killed everyone the hard way. I circle strafed around the room full speed bombing them with BFG blasts. The pain elementals and lost Souls were the largest threats because they could be difficult to avoid, could box me in and could make me hurt myself with rockets. After I ran out of energy ammo I used the chaingun. After that I focused the mancubi with rockets because their shots were more difficult to avoid. The rest were easy after that. Then the final boss herself killed me so many times until I figured out what to do. She was a Heretic/Hexen boss without the useful item system to make it manageable. I had to circle strafe around at full speed to stay ahead of the damn homing missiles while smoking her with rockets. Try to weave in such a way to avoid the flame shots, use the buildings as cover, and get the health and armor pickups. Then I did the lost levels and found the challenge to be even greater. Some of the big ambush fights put the challenge through the roof and I almost never had full ammo for any weapon, or health/armor over 100. The final level started off insane but became easy once I cleared a safe spot to hold up. Since the level gave me a fully powered up laser gun, the cyberdemons and final boss all died in seconds without even damaging me. I did not even use the BFG. I used invulnerability to target the pain elementals with rockets and chaingun first, then the mancubi.

This game is basically Doom 2 with proper 3D levels, greatly enhanced visuals and sound, new features, intricate new maps and a respectable challenge. The new graphics and sounds on the weapons really enhance the sense of power and impact, especially for the chaingun. My only real complaint (other than some of the levels being a bit too intricate) is the weak reloading animations for both shotguns and how the pistol and shotgun zombies look nearly identical. The weak shotgun animations fooled up my timing a bit because in Doom 2 I relied on the animations to let me know when I could shoot again. The developers really dropped the ball there, but that is only a tiny part of an otherwise excellent game. I did like the more powerful imp variation but I missed the enemies that did not make it into this game; chaingunner zombie, arch vile, revenant and spider mastermind. They really could have gone all out to add variations of more enemy types and even some brand new enemies. The game is still Doom, and rather than being just a port is its own separate thing. That puts it on the same level as Doom in my book; a legendary masterpiece.

9.5+/10