Doom Review

Where would videogames be today if Doom hadnât been invented, well the PC gaming market would probably never have grown to its current size, deathmatch may never have been invented, 3D games may have taken a little longer to establish themselves and big name titles such as Quake, Unreal Tournament, even Halo all owe a certain some thing to the one game that can claim to creating and establishing a genre, the only other game I can think of to claim such credit is Mario.



Itâs testimony to the games strength that Doom has appeared on no less then 10 different formats, and here we are eight years later and the game has made a re-appearance on the GBA.

You know the story; youâre the sole survivor of a demon attack on the Martian military colony of Phobos, youâre out to gain some revenge and escape through 24 levels, blah blah blah⦠since when has Doom ever been about the story!



You may have noticed the number 24, yes Doom fanatics will notice this is 3 levels short of the PC version, also gone are the Spider Mastermind and Cyber Demon bosses. But thatâs about it and Iâm glad to say that same frantic gameplay has been ported across beautifully.



The control mechanism works well, turning may not be as quick with a mouse/keyboard or analogue stick, however having the shoulder buttons strafe works wonderfully, so youâll soon be nipping across levels, dodging gunfire and sending those demons back to hell. 

Visually the developers have done a marvellous job of bringing this game over to the GBA, apparently an impossibility. The game runs very fast and extremely smooth, slowdown does occasionally occur when rooms become packed full of characters but its nothing to worry about. Iâm told the developers took the Jaguar version as the main resource, and this shows as the game looks much better then itâs SFX chip enhanced SNES version ever did. Textures do pixellate and are murky on close inspection, but what do you expect. 



Of more worry is the GBAâs Achilles heel, the damn backlight, or lack of it. Youâll need to be playing this in front of a light source even on the highest brightness level, and occasionally there are times when youâll not be able to see anything and just have to fumble your way around.



Theyâve also done a good job of converting those mechanical, cranky MIDIâs sounds from the original, and whilst it does sound a little tinny at times the overall impression is the same that happened eight years ago, i.e it puts the willies right up you at times.



However the feather in Doom GBAâs cap is the multiplayer modes, four players can engage in deathmatch or two players in co-op on any of the levels. This works wonderfully, and is what the GBA was made for, if youâve got 3 mates with GBAâs make sure you get this
game, unfortunately you'll need a cartridge for every player but it is worth it.



To view all of the information on Doom please visit the
TVG
Doom Game Index Page