Doom

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This article or section is about something oldschool - and awesome. Make sure your rose-tinted glasses are on nice and tight, and prepare for a lovely walk down nostalgia lane.

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If you don't already have the first level's music in your head, you may be on the wrong site.

"Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combatting the forces of evil... prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon..."

– Terry Pratchett

The granddaddy of the first person shooter, the original ass-kicking demon-slaying 3D slaughterfest, Doom is a franchise that demands respect even in the hallowed halls of /tg/. It was actually inspired by a Dungeons & Dragons campaign played by the founders of id Software; John Romero had given a demon lord the key to overrunning the material plane in exchange for a magic katana because he's an edgy little bitch like that, and John Carmack (the DM) decided it made a good premise for their new 3D game. The katana in question would later be used in Romero's game Daikatana, which was a total failure for reasons that aren't important enough to go over right now.

The plot? What do you think this is, urchin? Here's your plot: you are a Space Marine (no, not the 40K guy, a jumped-up soldier who is sent to fight on other planets, so closer to the Imperial Guard) stationed on Mars. Somehow, demons break through into our reality and slaughter everyone else. Your job? Fight your way to where, you hope, there's a ride off of this rock, and make bloody mincemeat out of everything standing between you and salvation. Standing in your way are armies of zombified fellow marines and eggheads, fireball-tossing imps, hulking flesh-eating demons, cyborg-demon monstrosities, and various other hell-spawned nasties who want to kill you horribly. Good luck. You'll need it...

Although not the very first of the FPS genre (even its predecessor, Wolfenstein 3D, wasn't the first, as the history of the genre goes back all the way into 70's), Doom was definitive to the genre, so much so that "Doom Clone" was the standard nickname for many years afterwards. People are still playing it and making it even more awesome with their own custom modifications 24 years later, which isn't something you hear that often outside of /tg/; this is one of the main reasons why the franchise is so well-respected.

Fun fact: that iconic Doom monster, the Cacodemon, was actually inspired by the artwork for an Astral Dreadnought on the cover of the Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition Manual of the Planes splatbook. Also relevant to /tg/ is that Sandy Petersen, co-designer of Ghostbusters RPG, creator of Call of Cthulhu, and author of some RuneQuest stuff, worked on the game. He designed some levels (more in the sequel) and made some contributions to the monster design.

Classic DOOM (aka The Good Shit)

"Welcome to DOOM, a lightning-fast virtual reality adventure where you're the toughest space trooper ever to suck vacuum. Your mission is to shoot your way through a monster-infested holocaust. Living to tell the tale if possible."

– README.TXT, Doom 1.8 shareware

The original Doom was fast-paced and bloody compared to what came before, but wasn't afraid to vary the pace with more labyrinthine levels or make you shit your pants by dropping you into a crowd of demons when you least expected it. (Fun fact No. 2: The extra levels included in the full version of Doom were built by the same guy who wrote Call of Cthulhu in just 10 weeks.) Doom II on the other hand was a circle-strafing explosion-rich gorefest, and is what basically everyone thinks of when they think of both Doom and 90s FPS gameplay in general. Plot was bare-minimum: Demons took over Phobos and ate Deimos, kill them all. Or, in Doom 2's case, Demons are trying to infest Earth in revenge, kill them all AGAIN. But this time, it's personal. (No, seriously, they killed your pet bunny Daisy.) The Doom engine is extremely mod-friendly for a 90s game (as both Carmack and Romero had been big into software tinkering in their day) and id Software actually paid a modding group for the right to sell two of their expansion packs commercially. Slightly more obscure but still relevant is Doom 64, which replaced the high-speed explode-o-rama with a stronger horror theme and more deliberate pace. id Software then for a time turned toward more multiplayer-oriented games with the Quake series and gave Doom a rest.

The Doom Comic

"DYNAMITE! I'M COOKING WITH GAS! I'VE GOTTA HANDFUL OF VERTEBRAE AND A HEADFUL OF MAD! YEAH, THAT'S YOUR SPINAL CORD, BABY! DIG IT!"

– You, the moment you read that heading

The origin of Rip and Tear. Possibly the most ridiculously, amazingly, stupidly 90s thing that has ever been put to paper with the possible exception of Snowflame. It has to be read to be believed. So go read it.

Monsters

Limited-edition monster minis from Reaper Miniatures. Admit it, you want that Cyberdemon for your Daemons of Chaos army.

• Former human: Wet toilet paper. Only dangerous until you get a shotgun.
• Former sergeant: Still wet toilet paper, but full of broken glass; if one of these assholes gets behind you before you find armor you're probably dead. Likely to be your first source for shotguns.
• Imp: The first true demon you encounter with a dodgeable projectile and more health than the formers. The first meaningful enemy you meet, and runner-up for most iconic non-boss monster.
• Demon: Otherwise known as the pinky demon. Giant hairless gorilla with a mouth that could give a squig lessons in eating. They can't walk and bite at the same time so you can just step out of their way, but they tend to come in large groups and dance around like spastic toddlers (which makes them harder to shoot) as they run up to you.
  • Spectre: Demon with Predator-style optic camo. An absolute bitch to deal with in dark environments, which is naturally where you find them.
• Cacodemon: Mr. Astral Dreadnought Head. These fuckers can fly and you can't look up, so have fun fighting them in close quarters where they can float out of your field of view. Dangerous, but get a rapid-fire weapon and they become a joke as you stunlock them until they are all dead. The most iconic non-boss monster, partially because of its sheer WTFery but mostly because of how easy it is to chibi.
• Lost Soul: Floating flaming skulls that fly at you at approximately SANIC miles per hour. Fairly weak, but very fast and has a habit of nibbling at you while you focus on something more dangerous.
• Baron of Hell: Now we're talking. Big and equipped with nasty melee and projectile attacks. Shooting him in the face with rockets just pisses him off.
  • Hell Knight: Discount Baron with half the health. Still nasty, just less so.
• Former commando: Unlike the other formers this guy is no joke: he's durable enough to not die when breathed on and his hitscan chaingun is almost as powerful as yours. Using hordes of these guys in an open arena with no cover is the pinnacle of dick moves in Doom mapping.
• Revenant: Agitating skeleton. One of the few monsters that moves anywhere near as fast as you do, plus he runs up and tries to punch your head off if you move inside the minimum range of the homing rockets he shoots. It is an established fact that any given Doom map is automatically casuals-only unless the mapper adds at least 100 revenants.
• Mancubus: HELLO I'M FUCKING FAT. Slow, but very tank and he has dual heavy flamers for arms that hurt like hell. Fortunately, this also applies to any nearby demons, so you can make them kill each other for your amusement just by standing between a mancubus and another monster.
• Pain elemental: Meatball demon. Like a cacodemon, but instead of shooting fireballs, it shoots Lost Souls. Has the opposite problem to the pinky demon in that you can stand in front of its face and prevent the lost souls from spawning.
• Arch-vile: One of the few monsters that that's faster than the player at a full run. Sets you on fire with its mind and revives any monsters it comes across so you have to kill them all over again. Meeting one of these guys in a slaughtermap will make you hate everything forever.
• Arachnotron: Giant brains on robot legs that go fast and shit plasma at you.
• Cyberdemon: Is huge, and therefore has huge guts. Basically a Carnifex with a rocket launcher for an arm, and significantly faster than he looks. Without a doubt the fuckingest monster in the classic game, and practically tailor made for soaking up BFG shots.
• Spider Mastermind: Doom 1’s final boss, despite being inferior in almost every way to the Cyberdemon you fight earlier. Go figure. Even more XBOX HUEG than the Cyberdemon, but has a super-chaingun instead of a rocket launcher and refuses to let up until either you or it are dead. Has the critical weakness of BFG shots up the ass due to the way its hugeness interacts with the mechanics of the classic BFG.

Doom 3

In the early 2000s, Doom 3 came along. It blows chunks compared to the classics, but since the classics are so damn good it ends up being passable anyway. Since Valve had made "story-driven" shooters and "realistic" scripted encounters the in thing id decided to rip off Half-Life, grafting on elements of the original Doom that had been scrapped at the concept stage. Unfortunately the gameplay was too slow and similar to the rest of the genre, the scripting and story interludes just made the gameplay even clunkier and the big technological gimmick (per-pixel lighting) meant you had to choose between seeing what you're supposed to shoot with a crappy little flashlight and actually being able to shoot it. Supposedly the lighting effects were resource intense during development and this was the "solution" (of course we know better that they wanted to make it a quasi survival horror). Naturally the first mod for the game was duct tape.

Doom 4 (aka DOOM aka DOOD aka Brutal Doom HD)

"They are rage, brutal, without mercy. But you? You will be worse. Rip and Tear, until it is done."

– A direct order from what is either God's seraphs or Khorne himself. Seriously, is there really a difference? And do you really need more of a mission briefing?

Then the latest Doom came out in May 2016. This rendition can basically be described as "3d Brutal Doom II" only sexier, with features like ripping enemies apart with your bare hands and having to stay on the move to avoid being torn to shreds. The plot is also about as bare minimum as the original (albeit with a surprising amount of lore hidden away in the Codex), kicking the player straight into the action with waking up on Mars, immediately smashing a zombie’s skull, and basically being told “demonic invasion, go kill everything.” Also, the player this time around is someone the demons call the “Doom Slayer", who has traveled through “Worlds and Time” (hinting that the Doom Slayer could very well be the original Doomguy from the first two games, having also survived Doom 64 and has been traveling Hell since but that's deliberately left ambiguous in-game, names will be used interchangeably), and millennia ago kicked Hell’s ass so hard that the best the demons could do is seal him away so that he wouldn’t destroy Hell. Then the UAC decides to deal with an Energy Crisis by quite literally slamming an Oil Derrick on a Hell Portal to siphon off Hell Energy for power, and just for giggles starts tomb raiding Hell for artifacts and treasures as well, ultimately running off with the Doomguy's sarcophagus. The demons see that the Doomguy’s prison/tomb is empty, and the subsequent invasion is actually a panicked attempt to stop the Doomguy from being woken up. Obviously they fail and he butchers ever last one of them.

Samuel Hayden is the guy in charge of the UAC, a cyborg the size of a Space Marine. He and Vega, the Mars UAC AI, are basically quest givers for the most part. His subordinate Olivia Pierce pretty much ran a cult while Hayden was pillaging artifacts from Hell, being the only one to make it back from the expeditions. When shit hits the fan he decides to wake the Doom Slayer up. Of course once awoke, he goes on a rampage and busts the UACs shit, as Hayden's disregard for human life is too far even for Doomguy to take, expressing his outrage without the need for a voice actor.

So now its up to the Doom Slayer in awesome power armor to rip_and_tear and dakka every demon he comes across to stop Olivia, while wrecking UACs energy production. After going to hell at least once due to Olivia breaking an Argent Accumulator and making it back to Mars, than after Hayden installs a "tether" to him, Hayden sends Doomguy on a quest to find the Helix Stone, picking up the most powerful version of the BFG 9000 yet on the way(more on that below). Once he reaches the Helix Stone it directs Doomguy to acquire the Crucible, a relic in the Titan's Realm. So Doomguy has to kill the Cyberdemon to get back to hell, make a long trek and fight three bosses, two of them at once, for the Crucible, and returns to Mars again. Then to finally stop Olivia, Hayden, being the bastard that he is, even sacrifices his old friend Vega, though unlike everyone else, at least our player character is nice enough to make a backup. The first major hint that Hayden is a corporate douchebag is that he doesn't tell Doomguy that the backup function even exists. The Doom Slayer uses the Crucible to shutdown Hell's energy wells and release the spirits of his old friends, the Night Sentinels.

Once Olivia is found, she transforms into the Spider Mastermind. If you've been collecting all the stuff like you should have, she can easily be(and the other bosses) can be cheesed by the best weapons even on the highest difficulty, with the Rich get Richer Rune fully upgraded. Once she's dead its the final cutscene, Where Hayden steals the "Crucible" which turns out to be energy blade that makes a Lightsaber look like a toothpick, Then sends the Doom Slayer off to who knows where with the tether he installed into the Praetor suit earlier. So he can have gopher who isn't dead or something. Then you experience one of the best credit sequences made for a video game in over a decade.

Mick Gordon's soundtrack gives the game the best metal music ever. BFG Divison being the standout in the soundtrack. Used for two whole levels and the final boss music is a Glitch remix of it. There is also some inspiration from RPG style FPS a la Metro 2033 and Metroid Prime. As collecting Argent Energy, weapon mods and Runes allow them to upgrade the Praetor Suit to suite their preferred play style. The engine allows the Doom Slayer a wide range of first person animations. As his destruction of UAC property and actions portrays a "I'm too old for this shit" attitude. Having to fight demons for centuries doesn't make for a happy camper.

The damage of the BFG 9000 itself is notable. This thing instantly vaporize every non-boss enemy on screen!(and them too if you exploit a glitch. However what a player does that the devs didn't intend is dubious in canon.) You read that correctly you don't have to aim it directly at your targets to kill them. You just have to find the right opening to make it kill every demon you can. As the Plasma Bolt throws out lightening or much more likely, solar flares. That would mean the Plasma the BFG fires is likely firing a fucking miniature star with each shot! The F in BFG may stand for Fermentation, Grimdark! with science!. We can wait while you Google it.

Don't be impressed just yet. A Baron of Hell is 2000 pounds and because it turns everything into gibs it comes in contact with. That means it has to have 7 Gigajoules of energy and would have to be heated up to over 100,000 degrees Celsius! A temperature range which is only seen in small stars and nebula! That's not just GrimDark, that's just fucking cold in the most brutal way possible and speaks to the insanity of the UAC for building this thing. Are we sure somebody didn't screw up the name? Though Brown Dwarf Gun 9000 doesn't sound as cool.(Though why is it green? Because it's blue green! As blue in space equals very fucking hot!) In all possibility, if the Doom Slayer didn't wear his Praetor suit. Firing the weapon would instantly annihilate him too! (since Photons are their own particle and antiparticle the word is valid) No apologies for the science jokes. They are necessary evils in explaining how the BFG 9000 works.

It also says a lot of the bosses as a direct hit will merely stun them (without using the weapon wheel glitch) while shaving off large portions of their health. So you need either a very advanced suit of Powered Armor or a significant amount of mass to survive a direct hit from the plasma bolt and its flares. The only real con to using the BFG 9000 is it's limited ammo of four shots. Though a good player can get around that it they set up their Runes correctly.

Science and math mostly explained in this Youtube video . So yeah, the BFG 9000 shoots miniature stars.

DOOM Eternal

Doom Eternal was announced at E3 and a gameplay reveal was shown at Quakecon 2018. From the look of it, it's glorious, and is set on a demonically infested Earth,the now post Exterminatus Mars, Phobos research Center, featuring the BFG10000 (A stationary attack Ship sized Version of the BFG9000, wich likley has enough power to eliminate a World Engine on its own). The Doom Slayer has a shitload of new abilities, gone is the Preator suit and hello Predator Suit. (Includes now a shoulder mounted flamethrower/grenade launcher,for the sweet lovechild of Salamanders and Iron Warrior can function WHILE you fire your Chaingun.) A retractable arm blade to split every poor Fucker in half, foward dash, the super shotgun with a grappling hook, A FUCKING DEMON SWORD (another Crucible confirmed by the devs, how many of those things are there?), and shitloads of other toys. Some demons from the old Doom have returned (such as the Arch-Vile and Arachnotron). The designs have also been updated; for example, the Mancubus looks more like its Doom II design, and the Baron of Hell has dual flaming swords. There is also an awesome feature called "Destructible Demons", where demons will actually show more damage on their bodies. There will also be a player mode called Invasion, a Dark Souls-inspired feature where players can join another player's campaign and fight them as demons (it can be turned off if you want). Overall, a lot of amazing things are in this game.

Also check out this video where the Doom Slayer's presence scares the shit out of humans and demons alike. Awesome.

Of course, we can assume Sammy boy fails to save Earth from its energy crisis. Also obvious is that whatever hell-cult took over the UAC in Mars wasn't an isolated case, as it seems to have dug itself deep enough to make Earth undergo its own apocalypse. Based on the above clip, a significant portion of upper management is part of the cult as they tell their terrified subordinates to let the demons through; another clip tells employees to outright welcome demons to Earth, going full on Quisling even as they’re being turned into zombies left and right. One would think Hayden would replace his dead Elite Guard with cyborgs loyal to himself who wouldn't be influenced by a bunch of fanatics. But since this is a video game series that mocks corporate malfeasance every chance it gets, Hayden's doctorate seems to have been sparse on the ability for strategic planning. This is all speculation though, as we've only seen two members high ranking members of the UAC so far in the reboot series.

On top of all that, the Doom Slayer appears to have a demonic counterpart now, wearing armor that looks similar to his Praetor Suit, and equipped with a super shotgun and demonic axe. Who is he? Where did he come from? Whatever the case it’s looking like Doomy May have found a worthy adversary. In a notable first for the series, there are also signs of an opposing (but not necessarily friendly to Humanity) force opposing Hell, with screenshots and boxart showing vaguely angelic (or at least non-demonic) vistas and enemies to be fought. Because of course the Doom Slayer would be able to tear Heaven down too..

Doom: The Board Game

Yes, there is a Board Game - made by Fantasy Flight Games no less - giving the vague '/tg/ related' qualifications this site uses. It was released around the time Doom 3 was released, though it wasn't that remarkable and is pretty hard to find nowadays.

One guy plays the baddies, the other 1-4 players play a band of unfortunate marines. The heroes start with 2-3 powerup cards, and the baddies get 5 cards from his own deck and during the game, he gets to draw more (the rate of which is equal to how many marines there are) and if his deck is empty, he gets to insta-kill one of the Marines. His guys are more varied in their movement but they can only shoot once.

The marines have three options: move 8 spaces without shooting, move 4 spaces and shoot once, or shoot twice without movement. They need to explore the board, find computers and other events as the board provides. The baddies, meanwhile, can either upgrade his monsters or bring more to the board. Either way, his goal is to score 6 kills on the Marines.

A new board game got released shortly after May 2016 Doom, which, to my understanding, is basically just the same shit as before with a new coat of paint.

• It's different, but not too different. Similar in concept and design, with the main differences seeming to be in how the Marines play, and victory conditions for certain scenarios. Absolutely beautiful models however, and incredibly fun. Highly recommended.

Movie

Also (roughly) around the same time as Doom 3 was a movie starring Karl Urban and former WWE superstar Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. It pretty much replaced the whole Hell plot with some genetic experimentation to give people superpowers that only succeeds in creating hyper-aggressive mutants, and a squad of Marines sent to investigate the mayhem. It wasn't that good, with the only really 'good' scene being this one scene where it's all FPS-style like the original games and has monster killing.

External Links

• Doom Wiki for all your Doom-related autism needs
• /idgames/, the home of pretty much every Doom mod worth playing (and pretty much every Doom mod that isn't worth playing) since 1994.