It's been so long since Doom has entered floppy drives around the world that there's an entire generation of console and PC gamers who have never heard of Doom, let alone played it.
And yet, despite its age, this dusty relic inhabits every shooter that has followed since. All the first-person shooters who have taken the world by storm, or failed miserably, can retire from Id Software's seminal software.
Few games can qualify as true milestones, but Doom can confidently claim that title. For TechRadar's 2019 Computer Games Week, we'll take a look at how Doom helped change PC gaming forever.
bloody plan
There are so many elements that programmers John Romero and John Carmack helped popularize in 1993, concepts that laid out a foundational blueprint not just for shooters, but for all Western video games. in the decades that followed.
The use of immersive 3D graphics at a time when games were still resigned to flat 2-bit 16D sprites. This helped set the stage for multiplayer network matches. He encouraged the use of mods (or 'WAD' as they were called at the time). Even how deftly it juggled everything from realistic weapon physics to complex level design. This is one reason why many of the games that followed were called "Doom Clones".
Doom was a breath of fresh air in many ways. Instead of burying the player in useless narrative and the overwhelming presence of lore, Id Software has left the levels to tell the story.
Sharp corners and narrow corridors that exploded into open arenas. Secret rooms full of treasures and deaths. It was both a nightmare and a playground, offering an untenable alternative to Wolfenstein 3D's repetitive tunnels, for example.
Using disorienting means, the teleporters would take you to a new part of the map, or the way some rooms would be nearly black while others were lit by daylight. It involved a labyrinthine approach that fostered a sense of chaos long before the random concept of procedural generation.
But by knowing where each turn would take you, where each secret was hidden, and where each rifle could be found, Doom gave you the means to act the way few other games have ever done.
history of violence
Of course, when you've created your own gaming subculture and created a flashpoint in the development scene, you'll still get copies. However, amongst all these forgettable installments, you can finally see the developers applying the principles that Doom has put in place and pushing them further.
Arriving a good year later in 1994, Marathon, for example, brought a much more fluid and user-friendly approach to network multiplayer (a concept that Bungie would continually crossover with Halo: Combat Evolved seven years later). It would be another five years before the matchups were financed online in 1999, but Doom's influence was already spreading.
The same year, System Shock, the forerunner of BioShock and its own copier group, also went down, inspiring Id's seminal shooter aisle.
The feeling of terror that Doom had captured so well made you even more vulnerable, with more emphasis on puzzle solving and setting. The result was a game that was ahead of its time in the early '90s, especially with regards to its 3D visuals and physics engine.
From now on, Doom's DNA formula continued to flourish in the nascent "hallway shooter" scene. Who would have thought that it would be that kind of thing that would help rejuvenate the Star Wars license? On top of that, these core tenants would evolve accordingly. So when LucasArts released Star Wars: Dark Forces, it was a huge step forward for the genre.
Previously, shooters used to use an XY axis to move (where you could look left and right, but not up or down). Thanks in part to the in-house Jedi engine, Dark Forces players were able to view in 3D, which, combined with the game's innovative use of levels, created one of the most immersive shooters around. in that day.
Three years after Doom was first released in December 1993, 3D graphics have evolved in leaps and bounds, and studios have begun to find new ways to innovate in terms of aesthetics and programming ideas. Duke Nukem 3D was less of a trendsetter and more of a pastiche, but it still needed countless Doom features to seduce them.
The levels were full of secret rooms and shortcuts, the weapons exaggerated for their violence, and no one had ever managed to make a shooter as fun as the titled duke's. It was a satire, but Doom's legacy was visible to all.
The same year, Bethesda Softworks released The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall on the World, finally freeing the runner shooter from its traditional linear environments.
Resembling more of a traditional RPG setting, Daggerfall was a revelation in its approach to "open world" level design (an entirely new term at the time) and its grand narratives.
Honestly, it was a world away from The Elder Scrolls Arena apartment in 1994, but even as an antithesis to Doom's speed and mechanical purity (especially with its heavy accent on story and world-building), it still owes a lot to Doom's pioneering presence.
scene mod
Of course, another great game was released in 1996 and it comes from the creators of Doom. Quake was a giant step forward in every sense of the genre, taking countless elements that made Doom so deeply addictive and making it even more compelling.
While Doom used flat sprites in a 3D environment, the new Quake engine used fully rendered 3D assets. The difference was night and day. It created more complex levels, much more detailed enemies, and set the stage for some of the best online multiplayer arenas of the decade, including the brilliant Quake 3 Arena.
In the late 1990s, Doom's popularity continued to grow despite his age. Why? Due to the way its developer has embraced the large modding community. Tomorrow's programmers built their own levels, tinkered with the game engine, and found ingenious new ways to play online.
John Cormack even went so far as to publish the source code for Doom in 1997. This set a precedent for fan-created content and influenced everything from the rise of Counter-Strike to Half-Life and the sheer volume of changes. made to The Elder Scrolls. V: Skyrim years later.
Just before the millennium, the blueprint for network multiplayer had evolved, with online matchmaking becoming an affordable and technically powerful way to connect shooters.
In the span of a month in 1999, the computer gaming community saw new deathmatches with Quake 3 Arena and Unreal Tournament. Inspired by both the deep creativity of the modding community and the innovative work of Id, these two games have made online multiplayer fast, fun, and constantly playing.
The advent of online multiplayer has been one of Doom's most misunderstood features: movement, momentum, and positioning are far more important than just firepower.
For tournaments like Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 Arena, speed was paramount. Jump pads, teleporters, and the collection of health/shield bonuses were directly accounted for by Doom's focus on tactical movement. Doom has always been a matter of survival: learn to use all the resources at your disposal to go from a desperate survivor to an untouchable god.
eternal damned
Of course, in the modern age, shooters have taken a very different form, in which new systems and ideas have been weighed and the genre has long been weighed. XP progression, art mechanics, settings, and convoluted storylines all blend together to take the genre in countless directions.
It's a good thing in its own way, because games should always move on and it's the developers' prerogative to push the envelope, but it makes you sorry for an uncomplicated shooter.
With only six weapons to his name, Doom didn't need a rack of weapons, a skill tree, and myriad evolving characters, like the Matrix. He just needed a problem-solving mind and an itchy trigger finger. Which is why 26 years later, Doom feels more relevant than ever. There is a purity in the simplicity of it. It may be an arcade blaster to some, but to others, it's a much more nuanced creature full of strategies, secrets, etc.
The 2016 reboot has kept some of this purity with its emphasis on unbridled creative violence and move-move-positioning strategy, and its sequel, 2019's Doom Eternal, seems to want to keep this momentum going, but even it lost some of the magic of the spartan that was close in the early 90s to its predecessor.
Being a low-tech, resource-constrained product, many games have been abandoned as support continues to grow and change, but Doom's features have somehow defied the age. Every pixel has its place and every element has its reason for being, even now.
Welcome to LaComparacion 2019 Computer Gaming Week. We celebrate the world's most powerful gaming platform with in-depth articles, exclusive interviews, and essential buying guides that showcase all of those PC games you can offer. Visit our Computer Game Week 2019 page to see all of our coverage in one place.