The Evolution of the FPS: DOOM

I’ll begin my exploration into the first person shooter with the 1993 classic, DOOM. I’ll be playing the XBLA version because it happens to be the only one I currently own and I’m a total achievement whore, which brings up a good point from which to start. Back in the late 90’s when I got my first PC, my buddy and I would take turns in the roles of trigger finger and navigator, there were no Gamertags or nebulous space points to hunt down for bragging rights or maybe even to pick-up ladies. No, it was just Timmy and me, hunkered in front of a 12 inch CRT and a list of cheat codes. The goal was simply to splatter as many pixilated brains onto the tapioca walls as possible in an effort to reach the BFG 9000, that’s when the real fun began.

As I fire up my copy, I am greeted by a menu not all that foreign. The DOOM logo rests atop a fairly standard set of options while gameplay (including sound) runs as a menu backdrop. I notice there is no indication of story or locale. I simply select new game and my difficulty (Hurt Me Plenty!), all the while a pneumatic door sounds as I scroll through my options and a gun fires when I make a selection. One item of note here is the option to continue a previous game set as the first option after Single Player. Sixteen years later, why does Fable 2 deny me this luxury? I enter the Hangar of the Knee Deep in Dead campaign and am greeted by the most absurdly awesome guitar riff ever conceived; thirty seconds in, I realize I have heard the entirety of this levels music selection. I find that a smile has crept across my face, but I’m a little surprised at its cause. I’m no longer enthralled by the Die Hard, 90’s badassery of this game, but rather, am charmed by the cheesy delight of nostalgia.

In the opening room, a sparsely decorated atrium with computers along the ceiling, I am stricken by a sudden sense of restriction. I can neither jump nor look vertically. I am the epitome of the floating head with a gun. I also notice my extremely oversized HUD consuming the bottom two inches of the screen which relates to me my health, ammo, weapon, face condition, armor, keys, and overall ammo supply. To my insane, one riff rock ballad, I frantically sprint around the room picking up obscure blue bottles, green visored helmets, and body armor. Another nuance that catches my eye is the game’s amazing “3D” graphics. Dead bodies on the floor miraculously face with the same side, no matter what angle I approach from, laws of physics be damned. Speaking of physics, I am blown away, literally, by the all important exploding barrels of toxic waste whose blast radius far exceeds their fiery animation.

As I roam my initial confines I locate a panel that opens a secret door across the room. Sprinting through it I find myself in a courtyard at the center of the complex which contains mega armor simmering amidst a green acid bath. Through a window I spot my first hostile, a spiky brown fireball guy, sitting atop a ledge inside, about one-hundred feet away and twenty feet above me. Thankfully, the bullets in this strange realm automatically track demonic entities and I quickly off said beast with about twenty well placed, however, un-aimed rounds to the chest. Following this, I recognize yet another long forgotten voodoo trick of old, enormous clips of ammo. Currently my small hand gun has forty-three bullets in the magazine and having fired nearly thirty shots already, I am yet to reload.

After I finish off the last bady I head to the Exit, conveniently marked as such, and flip the switch which subsequently melts the screen to a new riff, revealing my stats for the level and, for the first time, a map of my location. Apparently all of this takes place in a military instillation within a Mars crater (thanks Wiki) and I’ve just traversed a demon infested hangar, minus the actual hangar or aircraft of course.

I play for another hour or so before something I had expected finally takes hold, boredom. My childhood memories and the fast-paced gameplay just aren’t enough to hold me for any extended amount of time. Not even the allure of achievements is able to keep me going. I can’t decide what it is exactly, whether it be the repetitive formula of run down the hallway, find the key, and run for the exit, or the antiquated controls (or lack thereof), or even the absence of any meaningful narrative, but the fact is, I’m bored. As I progress there is very little new to see and new game mechanics are unheard of. While brief, the first level includes just about everything you will do in the game. While more modern games such as Prince of Persia could also be accused of this, the amount of things to do and the way in which those things are done just aren’t compelling enough for this modern gaming pallet. All complaints aside, I must commend the game and its creators for changing the gaming landscape. Indeed, from DOOM we get the standard slew of bullet tossing hardware (melee, pistol, shotgun, machine gun, rocket launcher, big gun, etc.) as well as a rich multiplayer and moding culture that carries the genre even today.