Doom slayer

So the new Doom came out a few weeks back. That’s kind of cool. I guess. I have some fond childhood memories playing the original. Suppose it’s kind of an odd game to have fond childhood memories of, but there you go. One of the primary games targeted as a poster child of the stupid “violent video games lead to violent actions” debate, looking back now the original is almost cartoonish – usually anyway – in its depictions of violence compared to many modern games. I’m not a fan of gratuitous and/or graphic violence by any means; there are situations in games and shows where I feel it’s permissible, but there are plenty of others that go way farther than I want to stomach. Brief clips I’ve seen of the recent Mortal Kombat games and Saw movies are prime examples of what I consider going way too far. If you're into that sort of thing, enjoy; I just know they're not for me.

I don’t have much to say on the new Doom besides that it looks pretty fun to play. The glory kills are definitely very graphic but I wasn’t terribly bothered by them – it makes a difference for me that it’s demonic monsters that are getting ripped apart as opposed to people. Anyway, I haven’t actually played the new one, I’ve just been watching Markiplier play through it. I don’t have the hardware capable of playing it myself, and even if I did I’m not anywhere near interested enough to get it for full price right now.

This all did spark enough interest in me to feel like going back and playing the original, so I downloaded The Ultimate Doom from my Steam library. It’s still a really fun game. The gameplay has aged remarkably well. Granted, there is no looking up or down, but the purity of the run-and-gun action is still very much there. I went to the trouble of finding all the secrets and killing all the monsters in every level, something I don’t remember bothering to do back in the day. Was thinking of going straight into Doom 2: Hell on Earth when I finished. Getting through the original three acts ended up being enough for me though before I lost my steam. Maybe I’ll pick up where I left off the next time I get the itch to fill the bodies of demons with white hot lead.