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DOOM
Special thanks to PC Zone
Magazine for allowing us to reprint their original article (published March 1994, Issue #12) here for you.
 So
much hype, so much panic. I was almost sick of this program before it appeared.
The tenth of December will go down as Doomsday. This was the day it was to be
uploaded. People in the Action/Arcade forum of Compuserve lost all semblance of
patience or manners. A message timed 05:23 am Eastern Standard Time read:
Well ... it's now 12/10 (e.s.t.), and no Doom!
What's going on here anyway !!!
I demand DOOM be released immediately!!!!
Then all hell broke loose:
Well now it is 7: 25 am est and still no Doom.
What's goign on?
It's now 8:26 and still... no Doom :(
8:47am eastern... NO DOOM...:-0
I came to work early for nothing!
IT'S 9:00am!!! WHERE IS IT??!!!!!!
9:40 Dallas Time - Where's DOOM!!!!!
Will somebody PLEASE shoot me and put me out of
my misery????
IWANTDOOM!ANDIWANTITNOW!
What had happened was that these whingers had
filled up Compuserve's disk and iD couldn't upload. The more they clogged up
the system with demands for Doom, the more they delayed its arrival. A lesson
here perhaps? ID then posted a plaintive message:
I cannot upload the rest of the DOOM files (2/3
& 3/3) to the action section. The system returns a FILE SECTION FULL when I
attempt to upload it.
HELP!
Jay, id Software
SYSOP ONLY: PAGE ME I WILL STAY ONLINE
 Well,
it arrived in the end. Is it as good as we all hoped? Oh yes. Let's get the plot
out of the way first. You play a space marine who has been posted to Mars after
disciplinary problems (they had to bury your superior officer). Mars' moon, Phobos,
is being used for experimental 'gateways' for inter-dimensional travel. These
have become dangerously unstable and a garbled message from Phobos says that 'somethign
evil' is coming out of them.
You're part of the crack team sent to deal with
ths crisis. But as you wait outside (playing pocket billiards) all your comrades
die hideous deaths. This leaves you in that iD cliche, alone but for your trusty
pistol. You have to go inside, find some proper weapons, kill everything and
get the hell out.
It's not an adventure game, iD cheerfully admit,
but an 'action orientated slugathon'. There is no limit of lives but as you
always restart with a feeble pistol, it's best to save often. Especially as
all the monsters come back to live as well.
The weapons you'll find are shotguns, good for
close range mayhem, chainguns to deal with those annoying platoons and rocket
launchers. There is also a chainsaw which is useful for those close encounters.
The registered version also has a plasma rifle and the awesome BFG 9000 which
can clear whole rooms at a time.
 There
all sorts of things to collect including keycards, ammunition, four types of health
booster, three types of armous, devices for invisibility, immortality and night
vision. Computer maps will show the whole level and radiation suits will give
you limited protection in the pools of radioactive waste. There are a few puzzles,
generally concerned with switches or getting your timing right, but really Doom
doesn't require a keen analytical brain.
Other objects dotted around the place include
petrol drums which you can blow up with a couple of chosen shots. Few things
are more satisfying than the squelch and the jam sandwich effect when you explode
one in the middle of your attackers.
It is a very violent game, more so than Wolfenstein
and on par with Blake Stone. The monsters include zombies, brown imps, pink
demons, transparent spectres, flying skulls, one-eyed heads and Barons of Hell.
The graphics are some of the best, if not the
best, ever seen on a PC. The smoothness of the near-full screen scrolling makes
most commercial action games look simply pathetic. The texture mapping of Wolfenstein
is now seamless over the floors and ceilings. The walls can be any shape and
the floors and ceilings any height. This means poles, diases, stairs, altars
and a huge variety of rooms. Light diminishing adds to the realism and explosions
light up the surroundings. The result is absolutely superb and atmospheric;
this game can be genuinely frightening. iD has always been at the forefront
of graphics programming and Doom is likely to keep them ahead for some time
to come.
 The
sound is excellent too; the monsters growl as they attack and shriek gruisomly
as they die. There is no music, which makes the atmosphere even moe tense.
For real panic, there is a multiple player option.
This allows up to four players over an IPX standard network. The game can eithe
be Co-operative - with all players together against the foe - or Deathmatch.
The latter si the most popular in our office. As well as dealing with the monsters
you have to kill the other marines. These come in different colours and stay
where they are when dead. It's not unusual to blunder across a dozen different
corpses of the same player.
The shareware mission is 'Knee Deep In The Dead'
and registration brings the next two, 'The Shores Of Hell' and 'Inferno'. Each
as at least eight levels. iD has exceeded all expectations with Doom, it won't
be equalled, let alone surpassed, for a long time.
 Shareware
by: iD
Registration: 34.95 from Accane
(0695 51999), 37.95 from Transend
(0274 622228) and 39.95 from PSP (0223 208288)
Needs: 386 or better, 4MB RAM, VGA
Supports: Sound Blaster, IPX protocol (for networks)
Rating: 
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