Doom

I didn't purchase the X-Box Live Arcade port of the old PC first-person shooter, Doom- my little brother did. Who knows what his motivations were, but since it was still there on the 360 just waiting to be beaten, I figured I'd add it to my backlog and got through it over the past few days. Doom is pretty short and lacks many of the amenities of other modern FPS games, but it does have a certain charm that the current crop of games lacks. Doom comes from a time before grit and maturity were expected from shooters, a time when the Duke was kicking ass and chewing bubblegum; a time when Wolfenstein was killing Hitler and his Nazi hordes (was the protagonist of those games named Wolfenstein? Eh, who cares). A few screens of text give all the story Doom needs, and the word 'bad-ass' makes several appearances. Basically, you're in Hell and you have to fight your way out. I've lamented that modern shooters just seem like a mindless race to the end of the level (lookin at you, Halo) but Doom separates itself from the pack by actually requiring some thought to get through levels. Sure, it's the most rudimentary puzzle possible- find the blue key to open the blue door, red opens red, yellow opens yellow; but now there's a reason to explore every hallway in a level and to remember things like where you've been and whether you left any enemies alive. On the other hand you've got some shitty graphics, can't look up or down, and a bizarre glitch will change your gun every time you try to look at your mini-map. I had some fleeting fun during my brief time with Doom, but while tons of bonus levels have been added to this X-Box port, I put the game down once I had beaten all of the originals. It was a nice change of pace and I'd like to see more first-person shooters take hints from it, but it's still a very old game that shows its age.