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Breakdown of Doom 64's Game Elements:
Graphics:
4.8 out of 5: Doom 64's graphics are wonderfully
atmospheric. The game is so dark that it's just bright enough to see everything
necessary when playing in a normally lit room. The brightness is slightly adjustable
to make things easier to see if you're playing in a brighter room.
There are unique touches in the graphics that make them so neat,
such as walking under a flickering light bulb or watching a giant pile
driver in the ceiling fall down and open up a new area. These touches make
Doom 64 the most varied version of Doom yet. The N64's mip-mapping keeps
the wall textures detailed and realistic, only enhancing the mood of the
game. The levels move at a very smooth frame rate. The blood wash-out effect at
the end of each stage is disturbingly well done.
The only flaw in the graphics is that the sprite-based enemies are poorly animated,
giving the game a B movie quality. I guess a lot of Doom enthusiasts are
upset by such stiff animation, but to me this ads a bit of levity to such
a dark and serious game. The enemies themselves look just fine, despite
the jerky animation. Also, the blood and explosions aren't as prevalent
as in a game such as Turok, but this doesn't affect the total atmosphere,
which is impressive.
Music:
5 out of 5: Take the music of the Batman movies,
The X Files and Super Metroid and mix them together. That's Doom 64's music.
At times it's just a series of well placed, eerie sounds. Other times it's
deep, dark music that will raise hairs on the back of your neck. Doom 64's
music really adds to the overall mood of Doom, and it fully immerses you
into the game.
Sound FX:
4 out of 5: The sound effects are pretty much
the same as on the PC. The spatialization of sounds is better, but other
than that, the sound effects are nearly identical.
Play Control:
9 out of 10: Doom 64's control scheme is tweaked
to near perfection. The Control Stick gives precise control of movement.
The weapons function better than in Turok (they cycle through inventory
faster too), and that rush of adrenaline as you clear a room of demons
is wonderfully intact. The only significant problem I had was adjusting
to the side-step and strafe controls. I just wasn't quick enough to get
my thumb on Bottom C and I had trouble strafing around corners in confined
areas.
Frustration Factor:
9 out of 10 (10 being the worst): The easiest
difficulty eased me into a false sense of security, giving me the incorrect
impression that Doom 64 would be the first Doom game to have a reasonable
challenge. This false sense of security was squashed upon reaching level
5. It wasn't until that level that I realized that if you die, you are
always sent back to the beginning of the level, practically unarmed and
having lost any keys you've found. This means that in order to play through
Doom, you must complete every level using one life. Needless to say, there'll
be an insane amount of replaying each of the later stages before moving
on. This can be extremely frustrating. Not to mention that if you actually
finish Doom 64, the only other challenge that awaits you is finishing it
again with more enemies that are even more vicious.
If you're good at Doom, then Doom 64 shouldn't be any more difficult
that any other version. If, on the other hand, you've never really been
good at Doom, then Doom 64 is actually a little more likely to change that than
other Doom games -- provided that you are really committed to replaying each
stage over and over and over again (or you could wait until the inevitable
Doom 64 codes become available ;-).
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