DOOM - Review
Added October 4th, 2006 by Chris Oder
For most gamers Doom was their first experience with online multiplayer gaming. I still remember blowing my friends’ minds the first time I showed them that four people could play the same game while on separate PCs. Their SNES sure couldn’t do that! Online multiplayer has come a long way from Novell boot disks, dial up modems and piping IPX over TCP/IP. The guys at Xbox Live Arcade must still fondly remember those pioneering days because they’ve brought this veteran out of retirement to show all the punk kids how it was done in the old days.
Doom for XBLA is a port of the PC game Ultimate Doom (a sort of Doom special edition with an extra episode). It’s very similar to the version of Doom that was packaged with the collector’s edition of Doom 3 for the Xbox with the addition of Xbox Live co-op and deathmatch to compliment offline split screen multiplayer and slightly higher resolution graphics. If you haven’t played Doom before you’re either so young that I could be your father or you’ve been living in a hole in the middle of the desert somewhere, but just in case I’ll elaborate on the single player a bit. You’re a marine. In space. And you kill demons. That’s all you really need to know, because you’ll be spending most of your time shooting your fellow marines instead of demons. That would be true if the online multiplayer wasn’t a hackneyed pile of junk.
Let’s start with the basics. This game is almost thirteen years old, so there is no excuse for laggy matches! I tried quick match after quick match and every time the latency was terrible and the game turned into a slideshow. Every time I asked the other players if they were having lag problems as well. In every case the reply was "yes." Well, except for the guy that said "yeah, but it’s no big deal, just enjoy the game." I’m sure his check from Microsoft’s marketing department is in the mail.
By this point I’d pretty much decided that the game has terrible net code, but I decided to put it to the test. I rounded up three of my Chromehounds buddies and we jumped into a deathmatch. For those of you that haven’t experienced Chromehounds, it has some of the most finicky net code of any of the 360 games I’ve played. With the help of a Microsoft MVP and several net savvy folks on the official Chromehounds forums we’d all made our home network configurations as Xbox Live friendly as humanly possible. Guess, what. Lag. Tons of it. Even trying with just myself and one other player it’s unplayable. Sure, that didn’t stop any of us from goofing around with it for a few rounds, but there is only so much one can stand before moving on to a game that actually plays smoothly over Live.
Hypothetically, if you can snag a lag free game together (keep in mind that this is hypothetical, because I’ve yet to find one) your worries should be over. Well, they will be until the match ends and one of the players suggests playing a different level. I’ve dissected the lobby screen and it appears that it is impossible to change the level. All the players have to leave the lobby and the host has to set it up all over again! If you're hosting a private match for three of the folks on your friends list, it’s a major pain to have to keep resending invites just to change the level. If you’re a few folks short of four and you’re looking for a ringer or two in a public match you’re even more out of luck because you can’t kick people that join the lobby. Say I want friend X in my game and we’d like to play with two random people. If three random people show up before I can invite friend X, I have to restart the session if no one will drop when I ask politely. You would think this would be Lobby Design 101 but apparently it’s not. I can change settings and kick people out of lobbies in UNO for crying out loud.
Summary:
Doom plays quite well in single player on the 360 thanks to tight controls, crisp (but definitely dated) graphics, and a smooth frame rate. Split screen is also flawless and it’s a blast to play with four people in the same room. The Xbox Live portion of the game however is in terrible need of a patch. I’ll be playing it long enough to rack up one hundred frags and then I’ll go back to games that actually function correctly over the internet. If you have the collector’s edition of Doom 3 and an old Xbox you're not missing anything, otherwise it’s worth a look for all the features besides XBL play.
Second Opinion by: Serenity Now
I don’t care what anyone says, Doom was a masterpiece thirteen years ago and it’s a masterpiece here in 2006. Some will argue that video games have technically progressed to such an immense extent that playing a decade old game is unbearable. I’ll admit, this is the literal case with most classics, but Doom is different. While it may pale in comparison to today’s shooters visually, its level design is still among the best in the industry. And unlike Doom 3, you can actually see where you’re going. This particular version of Doom is a slight disappointment in that its Xbox Live facet is a tad skewed, but this is only a minor drawback due to it only retailing at around ten bucks. Additionally, its main selling point is without a doubt its brilliant single-player experience. Playing the game that arguably revolutionized the FPS genre on a next-generational console is surreal. Highly recommended.
Doom for XBLA is a port of the PC game Ultimate Doom (a sort of Doom special edition with an extra episode). It’s very similar to the version of Doom that was packaged with the collector’s edition of Doom 3 for the Xbox with the addition of Xbox Live co-op and deathmatch to compliment offline split screen multiplayer and slightly higher resolution graphics. If you haven’t played Doom before you’re either so young that I could be your father or you’ve been living in a hole in the middle of the desert somewhere, but just in case I’ll elaborate on the single player a bit. You’re a marine. In space. And you kill demons. That’s all you really need to know, because you’ll be spending most of your time shooting your fellow marines instead of demons. That would be true if the online multiplayer wasn’t a hackneyed pile of junk.
Let’s start with the basics. This game is almost thirteen years old, so there is no excuse for laggy matches! I tried quick match after quick match and every time the latency was terrible and the game turned into a slideshow. Every time I asked the other players if they were having lag problems as well. In every case the reply was "yes." Well, except for the guy that said "yeah, but it’s no big deal, just enjoy the game." I’m sure his check from Microsoft’s marketing department is in the mail.
By this point I’d pretty much decided that the game has terrible net code, but I decided to put it to the test. I rounded up three of my Chromehounds buddies and we jumped into a deathmatch. For those of you that haven’t experienced Chromehounds, it has some of the most finicky net code of any of the 360 games I’ve played. With the help of a Microsoft MVP and several net savvy folks on the official Chromehounds forums we’d all made our home network configurations as Xbox Live friendly as humanly possible. Guess, what. Lag. Tons of it. Even trying with just myself and one other player it’s unplayable. Sure, that didn’t stop any of us from goofing around with it for a few rounds, but there is only so much one can stand before moving on to a game that actually plays smoothly over Live.
Hypothetically, if you can snag a lag free game together (keep in mind that this is hypothetical, because I’ve yet to find one) your worries should be over. Well, they will be until the match ends and one of the players suggests playing a different level. I’ve dissected the lobby screen and it appears that it is impossible to change the level. All the players have to leave the lobby and the host has to set it up all over again! If you're hosting a private match for three of the folks on your friends list, it’s a major pain to have to keep resending invites just to change the level. If you’re a few folks short of four and you’re looking for a ringer or two in a public match you’re even more out of luck because you can’t kick people that join the lobby. Say I want friend X in my game and we’d like to play with two random people. If three random people show up before I can invite friend X, I have to restart the session if no one will drop when I ask politely. You would think this would be Lobby Design 101 but apparently it’s not. I can change settings and kick people out of lobbies in UNO for crying out loud.
Summary:
Doom plays quite well in single player on the 360 thanks to tight controls, crisp (but definitely dated) graphics, and a smooth frame rate. Split screen is also flawless and it’s a blast to play with four people in the same room. The Xbox Live portion of the game however is in terrible need of a patch. I’ll be playing it long enough to rack up one hundred frags and then I’ll go back to games that actually function correctly over the internet. If you have the collector’s edition of Doom 3 and an old Xbox you're not missing anything, otherwise it’s worth a look for all the features besides XBL play.
Second Opinion by: Serenity Now
I don’t care what anyone says, Doom was a masterpiece thirteen years ago and it’s a masterpiece here in 2006. Some will argue that video games have technically progressed to such an immense extent that playing a decade old game is unbearable. I’ll admit, this is the literal case with most classics, but Doom is different. While it may pale in comparison to today’s shooters visually, its level design is still among the best in the industry. And unlike Doom 3, you can actually see where you’re going. This particular version of Doom is a slight disappointment in that its Xbox Live facet is a tad skewed, but this is only a minor drawback due to it only retailing at around ten bucks. Additionally, its main selling point is without a doubt its brilliant single-player experience. Playing the game that arguably revolutionized the FPS genre on a next-generational console is surreal. Highly recommended.
