COVID-19 Has Me Playing – Classic DOOM Games
If before the global pandemic you said to me that you will be playing through the DOOM series, I would have laughed in your face. I haven’t really played FPS games since Goldeneye during the N64 days. However…
During Bethesda’s recent sale that saw DOOM, DOOM 2, and DOOM 3 reduced to absurdly low prices, I impulsively bought all of them. In my mind it would be foolish to pass up such a ludicrous sale. Anyway, I didn’t intend to play any of them right away, but I found myself booting up the original portal-to-hell-on-Mars game just to amuse myself for a short time one evening; I ended up playing through the entire game. I didn’t use a guide for any of the secrets, so it was just a strict play-through that took about 2-2.5 hours give or take. It is a fun little time waster.
The first and second games are super archaic, but there is a beauty in the simplicity of their premise — shoot demons with various increasingly destructive weapons, reload, collect key cards, finish level, rinse, repeat. Opportunities arise to grab odd power-up to grab here and there like Supercharge which increases your health 100 points beyond capacity, or Partial Invisibility that is supposed to hide you from enemies a bit, but doesn’t work in my estimation. More play and experimentation is necessary.
I downloaded DOOM 64 recently to play when I’m done with DOOM 2, and before I move on to the massive graphical and narrative upgrade of DOOM 3. D3 looks to be much more immersive, so I probably won’t be able to watch TV and play like I do with the first two games; not a bad problem to have. I yearn for more lore from these games beyond shoot up hellspawns — I think the third entry will provide that given some of the media I’ve seen.
Playing these action games sporadically when I need a break from the RPG grind of Final Fantasy 8: Remastered helps keep things fresh during these monotonous times. I’m not yet sure that I’ll play DOOM Eternal, but these classic romps have been a great distraction.
