Toxic goo gets an appropriately lime glow.

Delightfully cliched red emergency lighting makes appearances. As was introduced with the Playstation port, the area around doors now glow faintly with the color of their corresponding key. Lighting is still sector-based, and can still fade and flicker as it has throughout the series, but basic color is now a value. While the earlier Dooms had some brighter colors and even a touch of camp, Doom 64 is purely dark, foreboding, and sinister. Fog rarely appears, but to great effect when it does. It’s all new, albeit familiar, challenges. This doesn’t mean you’re fighting through the same levels though – with the exception of a remake of Doom II‘s infamous “Dead Simple” arena, you won’t see any nods or recreations of previous maps. Sending you in alone seems like a good idea to someone, and your journey begins through renovated science complexes on your way back down to Hell. The plot has you, the anonymous space marine from Doom 1 and 2, returning to Mars after a lingering demon named the Mother Demon resurrects (and mutates, hence the new designs) all the monsters you slayed before. Provided, of course, that you’re willing to take it significantly slower and with no sweet metal riffs to embolden you. Its level design is frequently inspired, its enemy placement has certainly taken notes from the masters at id, and it’s a surprisingly excellent campaign overall. This is not a game about raw action as much as it is about devious traps, basic puzzles, and more than a few cheap scares. On the other hand, if you naturally played Doom slow, creeping cautiously through a deadly sci-fi haunted house, you’re more likely to be in sync with what Midway has done here. If the original Doom to you was high-octane splattery fun set to MIDI mimicries of Pantera and Slayer, and if you were one of the ones furious when Doom 3 decided to ape Half-Life, then you will hate Doom 64. All of which form the basic test of whether you’ll like Doom 64. The pace is tweaked as well, with a slower run speed and a greater focus on caution and atmosphere. It’s a title obviously influenced by Quake, with facility artwork that wouldn’t look out of place in Quake’s techier levels, none of the original’s shotgun racking animations, and an audio track comprised solely of background ambiance and mewling demon babies. The gang is back in town!ĭoom 64 is a half-remake, half-update to the original Doom. And while id eventually found their way back to the series, Midway was ready in the interim to develop and release the next Doom we all expected, on the one console we didn’t. Despite id’s assertions that they had moved on, it seemed highly unlikely anyone would ever kill the golden goose. Final Doom was a bit of a joke, even when it was released.

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