Doom64 was released, unsurprisingly, on the Nintendo 64 in 1997 and unlike previous console ports of Doom where it was just Doom 1 or 2 being brough to console, this was a whole new thing. A unique Doom game for a brand new system, fucking wow, but in terms of the larger conversation of Doom and Boomer Shooters in general, 64 is a bit of a black sheep in the series and the genre.
On it's surface its a pretty competently made Doom game. It's basically just more of what we got with Doom 1 and 2 with some redesigned monsters and a new gun to play with, what could possibly go wrong? Well fucking everything really.
The first and most minor problem is the controls. The N64 controller is already a gigantic piece of garbage made for octopus people (and even they don't like it that much, they told me) and playing an FPS on it feels like pulling teeth. Running with the stick and walking with D-Pad is irritating but but the absolute worst thing about the controls is weapon switching. The number of times I fucking died because I got ambushed by a large number of pinkies or imps and either couldn't pull the appropriate gun out fast enough OR accidentally switching to the rocket launcher and blowing my own face off made me want to rip and tear my own throat out. There's a reason these games were originally made for PC where you could switch guns with a number key. It's because using the right gun for the right situation is key to gameplay and having that shit hindered by having the guns just be in a list makes for a fucking awful time.
Then there's the level design just being generally fucking awful. When I was playing Doom 1 and 2 on stream I'd often complain pretty vocally about how I dislike the majority of levels designed by Sandy Petersen but I feel like I owe him an apology now because the Doom64 levels make even his most diabolical outings look like a walk in the park. Sudden pits, crushers out of nowhere, pitch black rooms full of enemies, PLATFORMING are all common features in Doom64 maps that are likely to drive you insane. One of the worst examples of this is a level early on where you are expected to sprint across a number of platforms that change height as you touch them. I didn't know that's what was going on at first so I had 3 or 4 attempts where I just fell into the black pit of pinkies and ate shit. The point of the section was so poorly conveyed that I had to look up a fucking YouTube walkthrough just to be able to tell what was even going on. That's just one example too, go watch the VoDs on my YouTube channel of the playthrough I did recently for many, many hours of similar and equally frustrating bullshit.
Then there's the thing that really stuck in my brain which is the games penchant for teleport ambushes. In original Doom, ambush rooms were a common-ish thing. You would walk into a room where there would be a gun or a key and when you grabbed it the walls would open. The concept is introduced in E1M3 (I think) where picking up a blue key opens a wall to a few shotgunners and then you know its a thing you're supposed to look out for. You can walk into a room and maybe predict if the walls are going on open, for a new player its a guessing game that keeps proceedings intense, keeps you on your toes. Doom64 said fuck that though and just teleports enemies into a level, usually in positions that will completely fuck you with no warning. The second to last level in the game is a great example of this where killing a Mancubus (at least I think that's the trigger) will spawn in an ARMY of imps, directly in your face. If you know its coming you can move out of the area as your rocket travels through the air and avoid too much damage but for a new player it's just a shitty rookie trap. Kill the enemy, OH WHOOPS NOW YOU'RE TRAPPED, dead and restart the level. Imagine if you were playing something like Dungeons and Dragons and then when you kill a monster the dungeon master suddenly goes "oh by the way, there's 100 goblins in the room with you now". You'd call him a piece of shit, break his teeth and never invite him to DnD sessions again. That's what teleporting ambush spawns makes me want to do in Doom64.
The final and most irritating thing in Doom64 though is the final level. It's a simple stage, a small room with a bunch of guns in it and then an arena. At one end of the arena are 3 portals that spawn in an absolutely unreasonable amount of demons. Once you kill them the final boss appears in the middle and starts barraging you with what I can only describe as a Mushihime-sama style bullet hell pattern. Here's the kicker though, if you were thorough enough in the previous levels to find the secret maps then you may have also found 3 Hell Keys. The hell keys upgrade one of your guns AND allow you to close the portals early, meaning the number of pre-boss demons you have to fight is significantly more reasonable. The game makes no mention of this at any point and I don't care if its written in the manual because who the fuck ever kept manuals for N64 games? No one I knew that's for damn sure. I have seen footage of people beating this stage from a pistol start without the keys because my initial reaction was that it seemed impossible without them but in order to pull it off you actually have to be some kind of Doom God.
Here's the thing though. The game fucking sucks. I don't WANT to explore the levels because the levels are ass and full of bullshit, I just want to get through them as fast as possible so I can stop fucking playing Doom64 and move onto a better game like Action52 or Video Cart-8: Magic Numbers for the Fairchild Channel F. Getting good at something or taking the time to explore something is only worth doing when the game is good and Doom64 is certainly not that. Therefore, I fucking cheated to see the ending. Usually I'm extremely anti using codes and stuff to get through a game but when the thought of playing it any longer was actually ruining my mood and the prospect of streaming it further was ruining my entire DAY before going live, I don't give a shit. Maybe if there was any indication of the existance of those keys, even in the form of a cryptic comment or something, I would have grinned and beared it because then its my fault, but to be blindsided by a sudden key requirement on the final level that would require me to go play the majority of the game over again? Get fucked.
Doom64 got re-released for PC where you can use mouse and keyboard and they brightened the game a little bit so its not so unplayably dark at all times but even then I can't imagine it being any better. Maybe my point about the controls being ass would be fixed but the rest of the broken, rancid design of Doom64 still remains.
Fuck this game, send it to hell along with the people who made it
Lol amazing
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