Final Doom (PC) Review

Final Doom is, essentially, a stand-alone level-mod for Doom II: Hell on Earth. In other words, don't expect anything new in terms of enemies, weapons, power-ups, and, generally, any original gameplay mechanics. How many levels does this pack include? The answer to this question is, probably, one of the very few good things about this title, since it actually includes two separate full episodes, TNT: Evilution and The Plutonia Experiment, both made by fans of the series.

The thing with Doom II level-mods, however, is that they are insanely abundant. Sure, quantity rarely means quality, but even back when this came out there were plenty of free, as well as fantastic, ones to choose from. Therefore, why these two in particular? Well, for starters, the people behind both did a pretty good job, with every single stage being almost indistinguishable from those made by the hand of John Romero, with almost none of the common flaws that even experienced modders tend to make.

Of course, the most important thing about both level packs is that they are much harder than previous Doom titles, even from the fourth, veterans-only, episode of The Ultimate Doom. Health pick-ups are somewhat rare, available ammunition even worse, and the number of monsters per level aplenty… but, in some strange way, this is not exactly fun. Challenge is one of the factors that can break a game if not handled well, and Final Doom doesn't really pay attention to the balance between difficulty and pleasure.

The generally less challenging The Ultimate Doom could be annoyingly tough at times, but these two seem to take the element of annoyance to a higher level, with every single step being a trap, and an overall bad enemy placement; bad, because they give little time for the player to respond and little room to manoeuvre, with the last flaw being particularly evident in The Plutonia Experiment - and what's up with all those chain gunners? One of the most annoying enemies in the whole series, and he will come out from every crack and crevice!

The worst thing about these two episodes, though, is that, similar to Doom II (and maybe even more so), levels rely more on running around and trying to find keycards and switches that lower floors or raise bridges, than the action - and with lots of back-tracking through corpse-ridden rooms, when the originals would repopulate the level with more bad guys, in all sorts of ingenious ways.

Last, but not least, the audio-visual quality of both episodes is a mess, with brown being the main colour, and no new tunes to listen to, besides a small number of original - and repetitive - compositions for TNT: Evilution (which, by the way, looks better than The Plutonia Experiment). In conclusion: unless an avid collector of everything Doom-related, look elsewhere.