More Doom

I haven’t played Doom Eternal yet as my laptop tends to throw a fit if it’s asked to render things in 3D. Happily though Bethesda have seen fit to celebrate the launch of Doom Eternal by making Doom 64 available for the Switch, rereleasing it for the first time since its original release on the Nintendo 64 back in 1997. A third of the way in and it’s an odd duck, as might be expected for a game released roughly contemporaneously with Quake but running on a rather older engine. The graphics are sort of an upgrade, you can see a lot of the design development that would later go on to inform Doom 3, a game I intensely dislike, and Doom 2016 which I very much enjoyed when it appeared on the Switch. The level design is best described as Machiavellian, taking a lot more cues from Doom than Doom 2 which is probably a sensible decision. It’s arguably a better Doom sequel than Doom 2 itself as there’s a focus on throwing a lot of high power enemies at you from the start and a number of the monsters have had their aggression dialled up a notch or two. This combined with claustrophobic environments that shift and morph when buttons are pressed or certain events trigger gives it more of a considered horror vibe than Doom 2 managed. It’s like being trapped in a sadistic puzzle box at times which feels very appropriate. It hits a lot of the things that Doom 3 aimed for in terms of atmosphere but without coming at the cost of playability, you can still zip around blasting things at speed. For £4 I’ve definitely had my money’s worth already, anything else is a bonus.