I found myself playing the original Doom (1993) this weekend and this is the first time I playing it and found myself both enjoying myself and being incredibly frustrated.
The Controls
The arrow keys were used to move forwards and backwards and turning around, this felt very odd for me as usually when playing the mouse and ‘wsad’ is used and ‘a’ and ‘d’ are used for strafing. The turning being set to a certain speed also made it difficult for me to turn around if there were enemies behind me, and if they surrounded me that almost always meant certain death. The control switch from using my left hand for all the player actions and using the right hand for movement. In the end I got used to the controls and was able to control my character without too much confusion, however my hands started getting sore and cramping after playing for too long.
The Gameplay
The first few levels of this game was quite easy but then they ramp up the difficulty quite a lot in the later levels. They slowly introduce more and more enemies and more weapons as they go along. When you die you lose all of your armour, weapons and ammunition adds to the difficulty of the game as when you traverse the level multiple times, you are more familiar with the location and timing of the enemies however you might end up having less resources if you are caught off guard and die in a new area. I was extremely surprised as to how effective shotguns are over long distances and how they travel up/down levels this helped with the difficulty of the game. Also because there was no way for the player to melee an enemy easily it caused me to change my style of play to always keep my distance from enemies.
Level Design
I quite enjoyed the level design, I found that most areas made sense and often gave clues to areas that will be unlocked further in the level. Unlocking a new area was fairly straight forward, often there will be a door coloured blue/red/yellow and you would need to find the corresponding key card for that door. Quite a few areas of the game has the player walk over an area just for it to open a panel in which a large amount of enemies appear behind you, this often cause me to either die or take heavy amounts of damage and meant that knowledge of the level layout extremely important in being able to complete the level.
Overall
Overall it was an enjoyable game with a fair amount of trial and error learning (i.e. learning where the enemies spawn and what triggers their spawn). It was difficult to play for long periods of time due to the frustration in dying and having to restart the level from the very beginning without any equipment, and the awkward controls that would be sore on my hands after a while. Even through this frustrations, each level was a fun challenge that was extremely satisfying when you are able to finish it, I would definitely recommend having a go at playing it if you have a chance.
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