My old man raised me right. While my peers were clamouring to throw money at Roblox, he made a wiser investment in my gaming future—800 Microsoft Points for Doom (XBLA, 2006). If mum had have known about this, she would have had a Cacodemon.
Via split-screen co-op, Pops schooled me in the fundamentals of FPS-ing. Circle-strafes, ammo/health management, gibbing with barrel explosions—everything an impressionable young child ought to be taught. As you can imagine, returning to hell in this new Director’s Cut double pack felt like a heavenly homecoming for me.
Because that’s the thing: despite the pixel-cubist nightmare of its aged visuals, the basic gameplay loop of Doom (1993) and Doom II (1994) is timeless. The desperate searching for keys and some new claustrophobic path forward. The relentless ambushes and traps that turn innocuous hallways into hellspawn hoedowns. Those beefy weapons and gory death animations that never seem to lose their sense of satisfaction. Gold!
All of that returns, and it runs smooth at 4K, 120fps. Even better, you can headbang as you slaughter, thanks to an (optional) remastered soundtrack that glow-ups the OG OST into the peak-era Metallica that inspired it.
The options to visually inch these classics into modernity have been given a stimpak shot in the arm, too, but I’ll get to that in a moment. First, I need to speak about the main draw card of this package—id raid the archives and go full Arch-vile to resurrect and inject cut content into two new episodes.
iD raid the archives and go full Arch-vile to resurrect and inject cut content…
Side note: You yourself can dig through the same said sprite treasures by browsing a ludicrously comprehensive Museum gallery. Everything in there is ice cream for Doom tragics—a real gift to the community. I cannot wait for some of the never before seen stuff to filter out to unofficial mods like GZDoom and Brutal Doom.
There’s a new crop of a dozen missions entitled Legacy of Rust, and they were collaboratively built with the teams from Nightdive Studios and Machine Games. The former outfit has made quite the name for itself with reverence-filled remasters of classic shooters (Dark Forces, System Shock, the Turok trilogy, etc). The latter are the extremely talented custodians of the rebooted Wolfenstein series and are about to release that FPS-style Indiana Jones and The Great Circle.
That’s quite the pedigree for this remaster, and this cabal’s combined knowledge and love of the source material shines through often. Legacy of Rust pushes this (admittedly primitive) engine to its limits in terms of labyrinthine architecture, tricksy traps, and a stash of worthy new gats and ghouls.
Though they’re never going to replace Sally (my Super Shotgun), the Incinerator and Calamity Blade are damn fine additions. The former, clearly inspired by Aliens but never implemented, blurts out 2D bursts of fire that melt things harder than a plasma rifle on full auto. The downside: some blowback that can kill you if you use it in close quarters.
Meanwhile, the Calamity Blade is a chargeable BFG-alike that unleashes a ludicrously broad lateral wall of death that can level a small town’s square worth of demons in one whack. It feels outlandish, like something you’d see in Rise of the Triad (another classic I was weaned upon).
You’ll be using these beasts against two Lost Soul variants who didn’t make the cut—plasma-spewing Ghouls and incredibly irritating (and unnerving) Banshees. They’re often flanked by Vassago, winged yet ground-based fire-spitters who rank somewhere around a Hell Baron for HP and fear factor. You can also expect pretty uninspired variants on Masterminds and Cyberdemons.
Because I was playing this LAN with a mate, the newest enemy that truly impressed me was the Shocktrooper. Think: a creepily heavy-breathing foe who’s packing a plasma rifle and looks almost exactly like player two. The only thing cooler than getting “mimic-ed” into thinking your friend is actually a foe? The death animation where you blow his helmeted head right off.
Incidentally, if you have the opportunity to, that’s how you ought to play this package—cross-play co-op via LAN/online (16 marines max) or local split (4). My only gripe with this approach is there’s still no way to save (unlike the quick-save friendly solo route). Quit mid-campaign in co-op and you’ll have to restart the level with a pistol. It blows.
When it comes to visual enhancements and creature comforts, this package falls way short of the aforementioned fan-built tributes. But it’s decent for an official product hamstrung by a legion of purists who are resistant to huge changes.
Doom and Doom II were reissued as recently as 2020, but the options menus of those ports and this package are night and day. Which is to say, the tweak potential in the older ports look about as barebones as a Revenant with anorexia.
Take input, for example. In the 2020 ones, you couldn’t even remap controls. Not only can you switch up your buttons here, but there’s extensive binding options for native mouse and keyboard support now. You can also now mess with a range of smoothing, acceleration, and/or deadzone sliders for your analog sticks.
it’s decent for an official product hamstrung by a legion of purists who are resistant to huge changes.
Likewise, a ludicrous amount of crosshair options are now at your fingertips. So much so, I felt kind of guilty turning it off (because who the hell plays Doom with a crosshair?) I was way less impressed by id removing Cheats out of the options stack on consoles. You can no longer become a god with everything at the expense of trophy unlocks. As somebody who cares not for cheevos, I mourn this loss.
Moving along to Audio you get a choice of a Remix, Original, FM Synth or MIDI Synth soundtrack. As I said before, the rehashed remix is a worthy enhancement; however, a perfect world would have seen godly composer Mick Gordon taking a run at it. But, yeah, something tells me that just wasn’t ever gonna happen…
Beyond the rez and frame rate bumps, there are some interesting tweaks in Video. Resolution scaling (2, 3x, Max) doesn’t radically change the pixelated dog’s breakfast you remember. For me, the biggest switch up was the ability to completely ditch gun/head bobbing and mess with a FOV slider. When cranked up from the default 74 to 120, it feels like you’re a person-fish.
But seriously, playing this classic with all of the spatial awareness of a runner xenomorph from Alien 3—plus the iron-like hand steadiness of John Wick on Diazepam—proved to be an amusing way to replay these old favourites.
Which is how I’d recommend you all approach this. Tweak one or two things to make it feel a touch different, and then commit to a small, two-mission replay. I’m quite confident you’ll find the old muscle memory will kick in, you’ll get that “just found the chainsaw” smile on your dial, and hours will have somehow passed.
Doom is indeed eternal, and, aside from those homebrew ports that arguably go way too far with their tinkerings, this is halcyon days Dooming at its best. Like a chainsaw that makes zero sense being on Mars, every serious action-junkie space marine ought to have this in their stash, just because it rips and tears so good.
Doom + Doom II was reviewed on PS5 using digital code provided by Bethesda AU
