Putting its recent motion picture adaptation of questionable quality aside, the Doom franchise is looked upon highly for various reasons. Wolfenstein 3D may have been the dawn of the first person shooter genre, but the original Doom was certainly the explosion. Notable for its violence and dark themes just as much as its gameplay, Doom made some players feel as if they were really part of the experience. Time has gone by and the first person shooter genre is saturated with some clear copycats as well as with some games that aim to innovate the way we play them, but to go forward, Doom is always a great game to look back on. If you consider yourself a serious gamer, it’s kind of difficult to have not heard of the franchise as its three editions have appeared on a laundry list of consoles including the PC, Super Nintendo, Playstation, GameBoy Advance and most recently the Xbox with Doom 3. So when Activision and Microsoft unveiled at X06 that Doom would be its bombshell top secret Xbox Live Arcade game for that week, some fans were very excited, but others were understandably confused. For a price of $10 (in Microsoft points) what could the original Doom possibly offer 360 owners? Well, another trip to mars to fight a few more demons for one.



Well firstly, regardless of how old the game is, it’s still undeniably fun and addictive. With Doom, there is no focus on secondary modes of fire, fancy interactive physics and having to look in every direction with your analog stick. So what makes it fun? Room after room of enemies that do the same thing time after time but still manage to knock you down, overwhelm you or even for some, creep you out. Doom follows a simple key system that in later levels manages to be anything but “simple”. To progress in levels, you have to find color coded keys that will help you travel deeper in a level. Sometimes the key is put in plain sight, but often times they are guarded by many enemies or have to be put within your reach by completing switch puzzles. Considering the age of the game its still surprising how well designed some of the maps are, and better yet that the enemies (like the Imp, Baron of Hell, Cacodemon and the Pinky Demons) can still give you a run for your money. They don’t duck and cover or feature some of the amazing AI we have been treated to in the past few years, but they make up for that in the strength of their attacks and abilities to inundate you with incoming fireballs and bullets when they clump in groups. Some enemies will even pursue you across a level if you try to make a break for it. As for the weapons, all of the favorites are here including the now mega-famous BFG, but it is of course missing the popular double barreled shotgun from Doom 2.



The game includes four episodes that each contains their own set of levels. The game is basically a port over from the most complete edition of the original Doom. As for what the Live Arcade version has added, players can enjoy the single player portion of the game with up to four people by either using splitscreen or Xbox Live online. Deathmatch is also included with the game and you can duke it out with up to three other people using the single player maps or a few deathmatch specific maps. The biggest draw for many people including those who have played it to death in the past is most likely going to be the online co-op. Having played through the game online with a fellow editor, it’s safe to say that the experience is just as, if not more fun to play with a friend online. In terms of lag, some people have claimed it to be a problem, but in our play tests of the game, it ran fairly smoothly with only intermittent hiccups in the connection. The most chaotic part of playing online is when playing with four people in co-op on the Nightmare difficulty setting. With four people, the game is often too easy at its lower and mid-range difficulties. On Nightmare however, the game is chaotic, difficult and insanely fun as friends (and strangers) try to race to the finish and avoid shooting each other as swarms of enemies close in. It might have helped to tweak the turning speed to be a bit faster because it’s often hard to find out who or what you are being shot by before it’s too late, but this preference will vary. The most significant lag is of course experienced in a full server with quite a bit going on.



Visually, the game hasn’t been changed at all, though when playing it on a high definition display, the game will look sharper than many of its versions on earlier consoles. It would have been great to see some minor tweaks or adjustments to really make it shine in HD (and even standard), but as it stands, it has aged quite well when compared to other games of the time. It all depends on how much you can appreciate its legacy, but it is understandable for Live users to expect a bit more for the money they paid. The only glaring issue that the game seems to have is that when playing with a friend on the same standard television in splitscreen, the game seems to act as if you are on a widescreen setup, shrinks the two game screens and centers them in the middle. It’s far too small to really enjoy and with four players it’s probably even worse. Hopefully a future patch will remedy this. As for the sound, Doom’s MIDI tracks are just as fans remembered them and some of them are quite addictive. The music can become repetitive after awhile especially after searching for a key (with no luck) for a long time. You can be tempted to just turn it off at times.



When it comes down to it, the biggest factor for most people will probably be justifying the price of ten dollars for such an old game with relatively nothing added new to the package. It may have seemed like a much better deal to some if Doom 2 had been included, since the games technology wise are relatively similar and probably wouldn’t have been too difficult to pack together. The Arcade is of course a business though and one can assume with relative certainty that we will see Doom 2 pop up on the arcade for the same price in the future. If you enjoy first person shooters, and especially older ones, Doom is an excellent Live Arcade choice to play with your friends. The levels twist and turn, the enemies never back down and the included four player co-op can provide some of the best fun the arcade has ever offered up to this point. So the next time you check out the Live marketplace and see its shining logo stare you in the face, will you take up your plasma gun and enter the portal to hell itself? We sure did.