Story:

Play mechanics:

Doom 64's controls are as follows:

A=Switch to a more powerful weapon in your possession.
B=Switch to a less powerful weapon in your possession.

Z=Fire the current weapon. If the current weapon runs out of ammo, the fire button will switch to the next available weapon and commence firing.

Control Stick= Controls the speed and direction of your movement..

Right C=Open a door or use a wall switch.

Left C= Hold Left C down while moving to "run." You can often run across small chasms and gaps using this technique.

Top C=Press once to access a map of a level with texture maps to help identify level areas. Press again to remove the texture maps and access a map better suited for navigation. You can move while the map screen is active (this is a useful navigation technique), but remember that the game is not paused, and any enemies around will still attack!

Bottom C= Hold this down while pressing the Control Stick left or right to sidestep instead of turning. This is useful in continuing an attack while dodging an enemy blast.

R Button= Strafe. Use this in conjunction with the Control Stick to circle an enemy while firing your weapon.

Start= Brings up the game's pause screen, giving you access to many different options.

While these controls may seem complicated, they quickly become second nature.

There are several difficulty levels ranging from Be Gentle to Watch Me Die!

Games can be saved to a Controller Pak (the 2 pages of Doom 64 data allow for quite a few saved games), or you can write down the continue password at the end of each level. Either way is equally good. If you want to access a particular level, it would be wise to write down the passwords no matter what. That way, if none of your Controller Pak games are on the level you wish to play, you can still access it via a password.

What's it like to play?:

The game starts with a clever demo of the monsters shooting each-other on a polygonal stage that spells out the DooM logo. The music playing during this demo sounds very similar to part of the score from a Batman movie. It's pretty clever, and I think it's kind of cool.

The game is very, very dark. Overall, it's just right. If you're playing in a room with a lot of sunlight or a TV with a reflective screen, however, you may have problems seeing what you need to. The game includes an option to adjust the brightness, and this does help a bit, but this game was made to be played in the dark at night.

I have been really, really bad at the versions of Doom that I've played in the past, and I wasn't expecting to get far at all. Surprisingly, I found the first levels (on the easiest difficulty) very playable without any codes at all. At first, the challenge seemed just right. If I carefully moved around the levels, I was able to dispense enemy threats quickly and without frustration.

This unexpected initial lack of frustration is not what makes Doom 64 so different from its PC brethren -- it's the atmosphere and play control that make it stand out. The music sets the mood extremely well, and can easily send chills up your spine at the right moments. The graphics are surprisingly varied and detailed. Panels in the walls light up and change. Lights overhead flicker on and off. Each section of a level is clearly identifiable from the rest. The levels scroll by very smoothly. The graphics and sound completely envelop you in the interactive horror movie about survival that is known as Doom 64. There’s just one problem: the enemies are poorly animated.

Indeed, the enemies look vicious enough, but their animation gives the impression that they were an 8th grade claymation film made for art class. Personally, I like this a lot. It adds levity to what would be an overly serious setting. With better animation this game could have rivaled Super Metroid for atmosphere, but without it, the feeling is that of playing the lead role in a B movie. Each time you die, you must film another take of the scene until you get it right. It's different, but fun.

Also worth noting is the fact that the actual quantity of blood is considerably smaller than a game like Turok. The major difference is that the blood doesn't splatter. Don't get me wrong -- there’s still blood -- but those of you who like Doom for the gore will probably be slightly disappointed.

The explosions and weapon effects in the game are pitiful when compared to Turok -- but then again, just about any first-person game's weapon and explosion effects pale when compaired to Turok, so maybe the comparison isn't fair. Anyway, flame effects don't make a video game, gameplay does.

Being immersed in the world of Doom with such responsive play control makes the gameplay quite enjoyable. The Control Stick provides precise, intuitive movement. Only occasionally did I get caught in a corner by some protruding object. The weapons control much better than Turok's, with weapon changes being much quicker to complete. The Z button also feels more like a trigger than ever, because as soon as you press it the gun fires -- no charging required. The shotgun takes a second to reload, but it's not bad. The visceral thrill of the original Doom remains intact.

The puzzles are different than I expected. Several of them require backtracking through a level and some of them actually take some thought. It's nice that once you wipe out the bad guys in an area, more don't appear until you get farther into the level (like if you find a key, for example). This lets you sort out difficult puzzles without having to worry about losing your head.

I really enjoyed playing the first four levels of Doom 64 on the easiest difficulty and I actually felt a decent sense of accomplishment when I completed them. But when I got to the first level involving some of the bigger and more numerous bad guys, the game became instantly more difficult. Soon the game reminded me of playing Doom on the PC, and my honeymoon with this game was over.

It wasn't until I got this far (which admittedly is just scratching the surface of the game's 32 levels) that I realized that there are no continue points in each level. You must play each level from start to finish in one life. If you fail, you start back at the beginning of the level with only your fists and a pistol to fight with. Back in the days of 2-D side scrollers, I used to hate games like this. After putting in a huge amount of effort and repetition, if you make one mistake, you have to begin all over again. A lot of people like this sort of game. I do not.

Despite my dislike of the do or redo gameplay, I honestly felt that if I spent enough time replaying each stage over and over and over (which is something I would not care to do), I think I could eventually get good enough to finish the game. I have never before felt that a Doom game would be possible for me to finish, and it was nice to feel that the developers of Doom 64 made the game have a steadier learning curve than the PC versions. Unfortunately, I don't know if this remains the case throughout the game's 32 levels and the other difficulty settings. I can tell you that the first level on Watch Me Die! mode seemed noticeably more challenging, but again, I felt the sense that I would be able to finish it successfully given enough repetition. Or, of course, I could just wait until the inevitable Doom 64 codes for invincibility and unlimited ammo are discovered ;-)

For current Doom fans, this is probably as good as Doom gets, but you might want to rent it to make sure that it's not too different from the original for your tastes. A lot of Doom fans have expressed disappointment at the fact that Doom 64 didn't include a multi-player mode, but honestly, the one player action is good enough that the absence of a multi-player mode is barely worth noting.

Doom 64 is awesome to play at night, with the volume turned up, and it would be an awesome addition to a Halloween party. There's a lot of repetition in Doom 64 if you're not very good at it, and that can make Doom 64 frustrating for those who dislike a be-perfect-or-repeat-it-all game. Even for these people, Doom 64 is definitely worth renting, and depending on your tastes, maybe even owning.