The Ultimate Doom | DOOM.WAD
id Software
This review was originally posted in parts to Medium and tumblr.
Around the late eighties through the mid nineties, it was common for up-and-coming game development houses to release their games under the shareware model: divide the game into distinct episodes, sell the first one at a loss, and slather it in ads for the full version, complete with a mailing address to send money to. These developers were often working out of their homes and garages; Commander Keen was created on computers “borrowed” from the workplace of the guys who would found id Software, smuggled out of the office after hours and taken to a rented house in Shreveport before being returned under cover of darkness on Monday morning. By the time Doom came around, id Software had their own office, cut ties with their publisher Apogee, and were making money hand over fist. Ten months later, GT Interactive had taken on publishing duties, allowing for Doom II: Hell on Earth to be sold directly on store shelves — but the original game remained a mail order product.
Enter The Ultimate Doom, what you get when id Software finally get around to putting their biggest smash hit in a box and selling it out of ̶G̶a̶m̶e̶s̶t̶o̶p̶ ̶E̶B̶ ̶G̶a̶m̶e̶s̶̶ E̶l̶e̶c̶t̶r̶o̶n̶i̶c̶s̶ ̶B̶o̶t̶i̶q̶u̶e̶ ̶S̶o̶f̶t̶w̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶E̶t̶c̶.̶ Babbage’s. In a move that would become relatively common, the re-release would feature a whole new episode on top of all the bug fixes and new features. This new episode eschews the more straightforward naming convention of its predecessors, with the episode name and that of all the levels within (well, maybe not E4M9, “Fear”) being Biblical references. Welcome to “Thy Flesh Consumed.”
I suppose I should talk about what The Ultimate Doom brings to the table in general. Unlike re-releases of later games like Duke Nukem 3D, there are no new gameplay elements — no new enemies or weapons, I’m not sure there’s even any new textures. Certainly no new music whatsoever either, instead reusing stock music from the original game. (It’s situations like this that Doomworld’s penchant for MIDI packs intended to remedy.) There are a few bugfixes, which ironically broke user-made content, such as demo files, but most notably a change in how the engine’s tag 666 worked, which broke the early classic map Doomsday of UAC.
But that’s not what you’re here for, is it? No, you’re here for the new maps. Alright, here we go.
id Software had already been working on an expansion of sorts for Doom II titled The Master Levels, cheekily intended to compete with those shovelware releases like D!ZONE that just scraped hundreds of levels off the internet and puked them into boxes for people with shitty or no internet. To that end they’d gotten together a number of community giants, among them Tim Willits who would wind up joining id Software outright. When GT Interactive pushed for the idea of a new episode, John Romero got the band back together, so to speak, consisting of him, fellow Doom II mappers American McGee (who got his industry start by being neighbors with John Carmack) and Shawn Green (who like McGee graduated from tech support into level design) as well as Willits, Willits’ sister Theresa Chasar, and the late, great John “Dr. Sleep” Anderson. With six people designing levels the end result is a wild mishmash of styles and themes, but overall tending towards lots of wood, green brick, and subtle Quake-like use of light fixtures. It’s Hell, but it’s a different kind of hell from Sandy and Tom’s “Inferno;” that one was fire and brimstone, a heavy metal pandemonium. Aesthetically, “Consumed” seemed to hint strongly towards the upcoming Quake, and indeed most of that game’s designers also worked on this.
“Thy Flesh Consumed” does have a story, of sorts. It retcons the end of the main game by implying that you are traveling through a hellish dimension to make it back to Earth after destroying the Spiderdemon at the end of the third episode, though you could probably fudge it by saying that the locales you travel through in “Consumed” are just Earth locations consumed by Hell’s corruption. But really, who cares? When you break it down, “Consumed” is a less than straightforward episode. Romero especially was experimenting with his level design, with a tendency towards large, deep chasms the player must navigate — something we’d already seen him do in Doom II with the likes of “Circle of Death” and “The Living End.” His maps for “Consumed” constitute what are likely the most difficult maps in the episode, especially E4M2, “Perfect Hatred,” which can be utterly brutal if you didn’t do American McGee’s tight little nightmare “Hell Beneath” as perfectly as possible. The rest of the episode after “Perfect Hatred” is certainly hectic — Shawn Green’s “Sever the Wicked” is crawling with hordes of shotgunners — but never quite reaches the heights of “fuck you” as the opening two maps.
These days, The Ultimate Doom is considered the definitive edition of Doom. And sure, why not — the extra content alone makes it worth supplanting the mail order version. You can’t even really find the retail version anymore, not unless you get really lucky on eBay or know where archivals of old Doom IWADs are kept. But I dunno, I like to keep a copy of Doom 1.9 laying around just for the authenticity when I play through the original levels now and then. (Well, that and Romero’s addition of a button to E1M1 that opens a secret door into the courtyard for deathmatch purposes triggers a purist itch that I didn’t know I had.) Still, though, if nothing else, The Ultimate Doom is a fascinating piece of Doom history.
E4M1: Hell Beneath
American McGee
American
McGee starts you off with this extremely tight little crypt of sorts.
On Ultraviolence you can expect health to be at a premium with a mere
nine health bonuses. He does you the solid of giving you an armor once
you’ve cleared the initial swarm of shotgunners and imps, but the ambush
in the Nine Inch Nails-themed blue key room will have you running for
your life.
E4M2: Perfect Hatred
John Romero
It’s all about pain, you bastard. Romero returns to Doom mapping with this nightmare of a level that starts off with a bang as a horde of enemies, including cacodemons, start throwing fire your way. You can use the shotgun guys stationed obliviously in front of you to help soften them up a bit, and bringing the rocket launcher from the last level will certainly level the playing field a bit, but your biggest problem isn’t the trapped cyberdemon lording over the exit, it’s dealing with the mess of Barons who gradually take over the level. If you know where the good shit is buried – like the plasma rifle in the side room – it’ll help you get your footing. It’s just a matter of reaching it.
E4M9: Fear
Tim Willits
Tim Willits gives us the episode’s lone techbase, a stark little series of courtyards and rooms that with the orange sky remind me of Willits’ earlier map “Attack” from Doom II: The Master Levels. It’s actually pretty easy to miss this level if you don’t know how to deal with the cyberdemon in “Perfect Hatred,” but if you do manage to find it, you get a map that surprisingly isn’t gimmicky at all (except perhaps for being a techbase in a predominantly Hell-themed episode.) It starts you off with a bang, but if you can silence the wandering zombies and their friends you’ll have a little more room to run around.
E4M3: Sever The Wicked
Shawn Green
Shawn Green offers a freewheeling horror show that has smart players running for the bunker in sight of the start, but it’s a borderline zombie apocalypse with hordes of shotgunners, supplemented by imps, Barons, and, inexplicably, a single cacodemon on UV but six on Hurt Me Plenty. This is probably where the tide begins to turn in your favor as you’re granted the opportunity to really load up on ammunition, especially for your rocket launcher, but the tight corners make actually using it a somewhat dicey proposition. Nobody’s saying you can’t blow up everyone outside, though!
E4M4: Unruly Evil
American McGee
McGee returns with another little complex reminiscent of some of his work for Doom II; this one is significantly easier than “Hell Beneath” if you’re playing continuous, and even from pistol start it’s not too bad. It makes use of a slight variance in texture choices compared to the rest of the episode, which I think makes it stand out a little and reminds me, just a little bit, of Quake.
E4M5: They Will Repent
Theresa Chasar and Tim Willits
Tim Willits usually gets top billing for this map but the level geometry is actually his sister Theresa’s design; Willits did the texturing and thing placements. It’s a small-to-medium-sized little complex of green marble and blood rivers. Lots of height variation and open windows make for dangerous situations, but if you follow the stream of blood from the fountain at the beginning it will (eventually) get you to where you need to go.
E4M6: Against Thee Wickedly
John Romero
Like “Unruly Evil” was for McGee, Romero’s second outing for this episode isn’t nearly as punishing, but it’s still a difficult map, consisting of a smouldering lava pit beneath a sunken castle. The teleporter at the center is a pain to use, but it’s your only reliable way of getting around until you can raise the walkways – but doing that invites the cyberdemon to preside over the chamber, and unless you can find the invulnerability he is one tough nut to crack.
E4M7: And Hell Followed
John Anderson
We meet again, Dr. Sleep. The late great John Anderson’s lone contribution to “Thy Flesh Consumed” feels a bit like a subverted techbase, with straight hallways and stairs, electric lighting and just outright techy stuff towards the end. He likes imp ambushes, from the wooden colonnades to the west and the pitch-black supercharge room to the east, but it’ll be the courtyard to the north that provides the biggest challenge, packed full of assholes as it is.
E4M8: Unto The Cruel
Shawn Green
Shawn Green gives us a boss level that actually is just a regular level in its own right. Your job is to raise the bridge and doorway to the final arena, and doing that requires finding the red and yellow keys. Red is easy enough, but yellow requires a jaunt into a ruined garden with snipers on the walkway. Don’t try to run across the pillars nearby – you can simply lower them instead. The final encounter has a Spiderdemon assisted by a mess of trash mobs and a few barons, but if you can get into the upper rooms beyond you’ll have some much-needed cover.
-June <3
Hell, thy mouth devour me
Consume my flesh, erase my soul
Part of a series on Classic Doom
| Doom |
The Ultimate Doom |
| Doom II: Hell on Earth | |
| The Master Levels | No Rest for the Living |
| Final Doom | |
| TNT: Evilution | The Plutonia Experiment |
| Doom 64 | The Lost Levels |
No comments:
Post a Comment