Doom 64 (Nintendo 64) Review

Doom 64 is disappointing for numerous reasons. For starters, unlike Doom 3 that made the mistake of not looking like a Doom entry, this takes its cue from the originals, and expands on that. Unfortunately, though, Midway has only done half of the job right. The first flaw is that it uses 3D for levels and 2D for enemies, and while that happened back in Doom, here it doesn't look right because those two don't blend together, leaving behind flawless, smooth 3D surfaces, littered by pixelated, cardboard cut-outs.

As for the designs of the enemies themselves, they look like the plastic toy versions of the older, but also far better-looking, prototypes. The next issue is that it is all so annoyingly dark. Now, the thing with the franchise is that every single title in it has lots of darkness in it, yet there is also lots of light sources to create the required contrast, while this simply doesn't. Finally, a problem that may or may not affect gamers (note: it did happen during this review process) is that the frame-rate is pretty low, which, coupled with the overall darkness and overabundance in coloured lighting, can make people dizzy after 10 to 20 minutes of playing.

The major problem, though, is that it all looks boring. The common theme in the series is the notion that a hellish dimension has invaded a sci-fi space station and then merged with it, which leads to a level design where rooms with monitors, artificial lights, and cement walls are "plagued" with pentagrams, corpses, lava in the ceiling, or tentacles in the floor. Here stages fall in two major categories: dull space station, and stereotypical, fire and brimstone hell.

Sound-wise, it's a mixed bag. Enemies and weapons are just fine, but the ambient music is pretty lame, first because this is not a horror/mood game, therefore, it could benefit from some good 'ol heavy metal tunes, and, second, because the ambient tracks themselves are more annoying than atmosphere-enhancing; like a nail scratching a wall somewhere in the distance, or the humming of a generator.

Sadly, everything so far, was just a big pile of nit-picks. All that matters here is the gameplay, and, unfortunately, it's mediocre at best. Why? Here is a typical level: the player walks down a poor-lit hallway, sees one or maybe two zombie soldiers who, for some strange reason, aren't exactly eager to do some killing, and, therefore, are a piece of cake to shoot, and then there is another room with a slightly more aggressive, but equally slow, fire-throwing Imp inside, which, as expected, dies quite easily.

In other words, Doom 64 is slow, and far from adrenaline pumping. The enemies? Slow. Weapon changing? Slow. Even worse, the levels themselves are slow. Why? Simple. Key-searching in Doom was there just to break the - pleasurable - monotony of killing things, but here this is the monotony, with the majority of time having to be spent on finding the right switch, key, level, or door, with the few enemy confrontations left feeling tedious and with areas that rarely get repopulated.