Favorite Video Games: Doom/Doom 2 (PC) 1993 and 1994

Am I the only one that feels like sweet box art died out with landlines and VHS tapes?

Doom and Doom 2 were probably my hands-down favorite videogames from the time I acquired them in the 5^th grade or so to my first year of college.  Technically I would say that Doom2 was my real favorite, but if I did’t mention Doom I couldn’t to talk about the games’ historical significance, cultural impact, etc.  Anyway, I got both games around the same time, and aside from a few minor details they’re pretty much the same game.  So I now present to you the first DOUBLE VIDEO GAME REVIEW!  That’s just one review about two games (kinda.)

Doom (PC) 1993/Doom II (PC) 1994

If only real life was as easy as a videogame.

Aside from being one of my favorite games you can make a pretty strong argument that Doom was the most influential first-person-shooter of all time.  In fact up until around 1997 first person shooters were typically called “Doom Clones.”  The term was pretty accurate too, most of the “Doom Clones” coming out around the time were just “Doom in the Old West,” “Star Wars Doom,” or simply “Doom on a different space station than the one in Doom.”  This is partially due to the fact that many of those games actually licensed Doom’s engine, and partially due to the fact that to this day most game designers are fucking hacks.

"Gloom" not not be confused with "Boom," or "Loom: A Weaver's Tale"

Doom is essentially a refinement of the “shoot monsters/find keys/ find exit” formula established in Wolfenstein 3D.  Doom replaced Nazis with demons, and instead of a knife you get a fucking chainsaw.  In Doom you could also go upstairs and downstairs, which may not sound that exciting to all but the most dedicated of Slinky enthusiasts; however adding the ability to move up and down as well as side to side, not to mention varying light levels, non-perpendicular walls and stereo sound allowed the designers build levels that were way more interesting and complex than those seen in the likes of Blakestone 3D.  Speaking of complex, how about that movie Inception?  Why was Lo Pan living in that dude’s brain?  Talk about confusing.

Maybe he was looking for a girl with green eyes?

The graphics were pretty fucking awesome too.  It seems quaint now, but I can still remember looking out the window in the first level (E1M1) at the mountains.  I had never seen graphics like that in a videogame before.  It looked (kinda) like (pixilated) real life mountains.  The graphics may be outdated, but I think they hold up pretty well.  They certainly look better than early polygon based graphics from the mid to late 90’s.  Talk about shitty.  I know it “was the future of gaming,” but we didn’t live in the future in 1997.  Now that we do, we can all agree that women’s breasts look better when they’re not jagged and pointy, like a bunch of glass triangles smashed into a boob shape.

These boobs on the other hand, look great. At least they would if she'd just move her fucking hand.

One of Doom’s best features is probably the one that left the biggest impression on the FPS genre: the deathmatch.  Doom was the first FPS that allowed players to go head to head and try to kill each other.  It was awesome, because killing people is awesome.  I used to stay up all night playing Doom LAN games with my cousins.  (Personally, I preferred using the desktop to the laptop, because it had better controls; although it was much easier to screen look with the laptop.)  Doom deathmatch was so popular at the time that companies even wrote programs like “antidoom” to shut down games on company servers.  Today deathmatch is easily a bigger part of the FPS genre than the single player campaigns.  I think it’s safe to say that 14-year-olds wouldn’t be able to hurl homophobic slurs at each other while playing video games across the world wide internets if Doom hadn’t paved the way almost 20 years earlier.

Cutting edge

Computer piracy is a crime (a sexy crime!)

And there it is the exact moment in my video game review where I start to feel really fucking old.  If you want to play Doom or Doom 2, both can be found relatively easy if you’re willing to resort to piracy (Arr!)  If you manage to get the game or already have it lying around somewhere ZDoom is an excellent front-end program that adds extra features like mouselook, and more importantly ZDoom allows Doom and Doom 2 to be played on a modern PC.  Both Dooms are also available in the recent Doom3 re-release and in the X-Box marketplace, although only the downloadable version for the 360 offers internet deathmatch support.  Just don’t play a bunch of Doom and shoot up your high school.  I know it seems obvious, but I wouldn’t have said anything about it if it hadn’t come up before.  Too soon?   

"This game's so fun I'm going to shoot up my school...?"  Hard to believe people were that sick before the internet

The programmers for Doom were inspired by Evil Dead II and Aliens.

Favorite Video Games: Fallout 2 (PC) 1998

If you haven't seen the Road Warrior stop reading this right now and go do it.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog you’ve no doubt surmised that I love beer, sports, beer, and skinny girls with large breasts.  You’ve also probably noticed that I’m kind of a nerd.  One of my all time favorite nerdly pursuits is playing good ol’ fashioned Pen and Paper Role Playing Games.  Unfortunately I don’t get to play them as often as I’d like because I, ya’ know, have a life.

Livin' large and in charge.

Probably the best representation of a PnP RPG I’ve ever experienced was my favorite video game of all time: Fallout 2.  If I was doing a top ten list of my favorite video games, as was my original intention, this would be the end of my video game reviews.  But since I’m doing a series of blog posts I can kind of just do what I want because I’m the John McClane of bloggers.  I play by my own set of rules. 

Different game, also awesome.  I would appreciate it if from now on everyone imagined my blog was being read to them by Alan Rickman

Fallout 2 (PC) 1998

Muscle Beach is now Pork Chop Hill

Fallut 2 takes place in a post-apocalyptic future as imagined by America in the 1950’s (reel-to-reel computers, radiation zombies, and giant mutated insects.)  The setting was a radical departure from the wimpy Unicorn and Pegasus worlds of most RPG’s; especially at the time the game was released.  In other words: that Fallout 2 used to fuck guys like Final Fantasy in prison.  I loved it immediately.  Growing up in the shadow of the Cold War, I’ve always had a bit of an obsession with nuclear war.  Also, the Road Warrior is one of the single greatest movies of all time and any game in that tradition is alright by me.

Also, as I understand it all women will dress like this in the post-apocalypse

As good as everything that is even slightly associated with The Road Warrior is, I would say that it was even more important to me that Fallout 2 played much more like a PnP RPG than any other video game I’d ever played before.  At their best PnP RPG’s allow Sex Commando the Barbarian bi-cleave skeletons with his chainsaw/electric guitar.  Fallout 2 is a bit more structured than that, but not much.  You can do drugs, become a fluffer for a porn studio, or get married and pimp your wife in a seedy brothel (as if there’s a lot of non-seedy brothels.  It’s not like anyone walks in and says, “Oh, this seems nice.”)

It should be noted however that some brothels are much worse than others.

If my description makes Fallout 2 sounds kind of Gran Theft Auto-esque, it’s not.  Any actions you take have consequences.  If you do something that most people find off putting/morally reprehensible (killing a child, becoming a slaver) most NPC’s will thereafter refuse to talk to you.  If you want to go through the game indiscriminately blasting people with a laser mini-gun you can do it, but you might game-breakingly kill an NPC.  For what it’s worth I always play as a good character, because that’s how I see myself in real life: a little rough around the edges but basically a good guy; deadly but not aggressive.   A hero…  But what’s a hero?  I am, and so is my character Dixie Nourmous.      

R.I.P. Peter Steele

Dixie Nourmous is a beacon of hope for the people of the wastes; fortunately for the poor devils I discovered this game in college.  In college I would frequently be playing Fallout 2, look out my dorm window, see the sunrise, and say, “Oh shit, it happened again.”  It’s true that at the time I could stay up all night playing video games and drinking beer with almost no negative consequences, but it was the writing in Fallout 2 more than anything else that frequently put me in that situation.  The game had a great plot, interesting dialog, meaningful choices, and most importantly well rounded characters that I actually cared about.  Some have even gone so far as to call Fallout 2 the “Downton Abbey” of roleplaying games, and by some I mean me just now.  Actually the more I think about it Fallout 2 is more the “All Creatures Great and Small” of roleplaying games.

Don't pet the radscorpians Dixie Nourmous!

I could keep going, but fortunately for you dear reader, I edit my work.  Anyway I could write a book about Fallout 2, and I still don’t think I’d be any closer to capturing the experience of playing the game.  You really just have to play it yourself.  Of course if you’re anything like me playing with yourself isn’t something you skip out on very often.  Updating your blog with one hand isn't a skill, it's a gift.  Speaking of...

I've been waiting months to use this picture.

I know they re-released it a year or two ago, but if you need help playing Fallout 2 on a modern computer check the tech forum at No Mutants Allowed.

Stuck?  Check out Per Jorner's comprehensive walkthrough.

Favorite Video Games: Wolfenstein 3D (PC) 1992

 I salute you for dressing in that outfit

Three things I love about World War II

3. The The M4A3R3 “Zippo” Tank

The only thing cooler than a tank is a tank with a fucking flamethrower

2. Ball turret gunners

You have to have brass balls to lock yourself in a plastic ball without a parachute

1. We won.

Score

My absolute favorite thing in the entirety of human history is winning World War II. For me, nothing cures a bad mood like watching the Nazis lose on the History Channel (please stop showing “Pickers” fleecing old men out of historical relics.) World War II and the victory thereof, was the ultimate triumph of good over evil, and the marked ascendency of the United States as a global Super Power. As to how that relates to video games…

Wolfenstein 3D (PC) 1992

I can't look at this picture without hearing the theme song.

Wolfenstein or Wolf 3D was released on May 5, 1992, but I got it for Christmas in either the 4th grade (late ’92) or the 5th grade (late ’93.) As I’ve mentioned before, I kind of sucked at platform jumpers, but it turned out I was pretty good at Wolfenstein. Resultantly, Wolfenstein was the first video game I really got into, and I would play it for hours on end.

Nazi scum!

It’s true that puzzles in first person shooters have gotten more complex than Wolfenstein’s standard “finding the key that opens the door in front of the elevator,” but all the basic mechanics of Modern Warfare and Half-Life 2 are pretty much present and accounted for. The game even had realistic gunshot sound effects and voice acting; something I didn’t have a chance to appreciate until I got a sound card a few years later. For 2 years I had to contend with a PC speaker, which had two settings: “off” and “SKULL SPLITTING!” and sound quality ranging from shrill beeps to dial-up-internet-esque computer gargles. Wolf3D was cinematic too; to this day it’s the only game I can think of that has missions that end on a true freeze frame, like a movie from the 80’s or an episode of Degrassi.

"Don't you forget about me..."

It was like nothing I’d played before. Most games, especially the ones that I was exposed to previously tended to involve killing things that were decidedly not human. To put it in perspective: in Bubble Bobble you imprisoned monsters in bubbles and when you popped them they turned into candy. Imagine the childish glee I felt as I brutally filled Nazis full of lead. The game’s about 20 years old, so I don’t think I’m giving too much away when I tell you that when you kill Hitler he melts into a pile of gore and then the game is kind enough to give you a fucking instant replay. Maybe Hitler didn’t really get machine gunned to death by a ten year old, but it would’ve been a cooler ending to the war than just committing suicide (like a bitch.)

"Let's see that again!"

I fell in love with the game instantly, but as much as I liked shooting Nazis the important thing was that they were Nazis. Prior to Wolfenstein I’d never heard of the Nazis before, so I asked my dad who they were. He explained that they tried to take over the world, like a bunch of comic book villains. I mean seriously, who tries to take over the world? Let’s see, there’s Doctor Doom, Darkseid, M. Bison, the Daleks, Cobra Commander, S.P.E.C.T.R.E, Brain (of Pinky and the Brain), and Adolf Hitler. When I inquired as to what stopped the Nazis he explained that men of his father’s generation fought and defeated them. I was shocked. My own grandfather served as an airplane mechanic during the war, and although he died before I was born, I couldn’t believe that someone I was related to helped defeat an group of people so evil they didn’t even seem real . My curiosity was piqued to say the least. I read every book I could on the subject, and eventually I graduated with a BA in history from Illinois State.

My Grandfather, Uncle Jerry, and my Grandmother

Wolfenstein 3D is the only game that I can honestly say changed my life for the better. (The time I’ve spent playing video games instead of doing homework is staggering.) It kicked off my interest in WWII and history, but it’s also a sweet game. There’s a reason it’s been ported to every system worth its salt, including the iPad, X-box 360, and PS3. As DLC on modern platforms it’s pretty cheap and convenient to check it out, but it can be expensive and inconvenient if you want to play the Atari Jaguar port for some reason.

A Jaguar cost like 300,000 tickets at Hollywood Park and I wanted one so bad.  Crappy system though.

...also, remember when Christina Aguilera was really hot?  Now I wouldn't touch her with yours.