

The essential gameplay loop is the same as in the original Doom games - blow the crap out of everything while trying to get to the end of the level. The modern remake of Doom (sometimes casually called "Doom 2016" or "Doom 4" - man it's annoying when games have the exact same name!) actually has a fairly in-depth story but it's conveyed in such a way that it's basically optional. Well, the famine is over and Doom is back in full force! It's like the developers have awoken from a twenty year slumber. I never played Doom 3 but that's because it didn't look appealing to me at all. Even Id Software, the creators of Doom and Doom 2, seem to have had trouble replicating the awesomeness of the first two Doom games. Well, basically every First Person Shooter owes something to Doom, but specifically I've wondered why more games don't have a wide variety of enemies, a variety of weapons (six different types of pistols don't count), and fast-paced action that's light on story (I've had similar thoughts about the N64 classic "Perfect Dark"). I've often wondered why more games haven't copied more from Doom 2. The environments, though basic, have an organic feeling to them since there are no invisible walls - if you fall down into a pit of poison then, well, I guess you'll be more careful next time! Each level is littered with secrets that you might not find on your tenth playthrough.

The pace of the game is frantic - strafing around hurled fireballs and unloading as many shots as you can into enemies.

There are dozens of enemy types that are completely unique and eight distinct weapons. Though it doesn't have sophisticated objectives like modern games, the gameplay itself is just so well designed. To this day I think it's one of the best First Person Shooters ever made. We'd blast through the levels on the highest difficulty, shooting each other whenever possible but cooperating at the difficult parts. My friends and I often ditched school assemblies to play Doom 2 over two LAN connected computers.
