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Doom 64
I'm a big fan of all things Doom (except the movie, fuck that abomination) and I remember being blown away by this game when I first played it as a kid. It's classic Doom with a fresh coat of (blood) paint and all-new levels. See my thoughts in reply.
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Thanks to the N64's improved hardware, the graphics get a nice boost compared to the original Doom. The environments are rendered in 3D with better textures and texture filtering, improved lighting, and other spiffy effects. Everything else (items, enemies, your weapons, etc) are still sprites however, so it retains that classic Doom style. The sprite artwork here consists of pre-rendered 3D graphics. The sprites are also higher-resolution than classic Doom and have more frames of animation for smoother movement. The art style is very dark with the same mix of tech and demonic styles as the original Doom, although no artwork is re-used from the original. I think it looks pretty damn good for what it is, and the atmosphere is wonderfully creepy.
The sound plays into this as well. Instead of a metal-inspired soundtrack, Doom 64 features ambient industrial/electronic tracks. It's all very subtle and slow, and does a great job of reinforcing the spooky atmosphere and sense of isolation. Sound effects are also nice. The pistol actually sounds pretty badass in this game, and the reloading sound on the super shotgun is great (although, sadly, the reload is not animated here as it was in Doom 2). The snarls and groans of nearby enemies are particularly menacing, and do manage to scare the shit out of me on occasion. Hitting a switch or picking up an item and hearing a chorus of groans somewhere nearby never fails to make the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
There's not much to say about the gameplay, except that it is classic Doom to the core. The controls work quite well, especially with setup 2 which lets you use the left and right C buttons to strafe. Moving with the analog stick, strafing with the C buttons, and firing with the Z button works quite well. As with the original Doom, there is no vertical aiming or jumping; physical action still takes place on a 2D plane, which is well-suited to playing on a controller with a single analog stick. Once you get the hang of it, zipping around and blasting zombie marines into juicy red chunks is great fun.
The level design is superb; each one has a unique set of challenges, puzzles, and traps to figure out. It mostly boils down to finding key cards to open doors, but the cards (and often the doors as well) are cleverly hidden and often require a bit of thinking to find. There are also TONS of secrets, including a badass new weapon. There's also the hidden 32nd level "Hectic", which, according to what I've read, is one of the hardest Doom levels ever. Beating it unlocks a Features menu with a bunch of cheats and such that you can enable. I haven't actually tried Hectic yet, but from what I've read, it's nasty.
There are a few problems though. The default saving mechanism is to write down long-ass passwords, although thankfully you can use a memory pak instead. For some reason it still shows you the password at the end of each level though, and when you save you have to hit the left and right C buttons together. That's pretty weird. Even worse, the loading option is buried under the Password option on the main menu, and also requires you to hit both C buttons. What the fuck? By far the most annoying problem is that it does NOT save your options; if you change the control scheme, brightness, volume, etc, you have to do it all again the next time you play. This is a pain in the ass because you HAVE to turn the brightness up; this game is DARK, like emo my-soul-is-an-empty-void-and-no-one-loves-me dark. It's hard to see anything at all in some places at the default brightness level. Changing the control scheme is also vital; the default option is set up for using the D-pad; if you use the analog stick with it, you don't have access to a strafe left button. Switching to setup #2 fixes that, but you have to do it every time you play the game.
Aside from that, it's an awesome game and a must-play for any Doom fan. To my knowledge it isn't available on the Wii Virtual Console yet, but you do have another option if you don't have an N64. There's actually a PC version of Doom 64 based on the Doomsday source port called Doom 64: Absolution. In addition to being a near-perfect port of the original Doom 64, it includes some extra levels, mouse control, and other goodies. You can grab it at the link below.
http://www.doom2.net/~doomdepot/abs-download.html
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