Thinking about what to do this weekend? Think no more. Doom, Doom II and Doom 3 have all just appeared on the Switch, Xbox One and PS4, giving you no excuse not to play these classics. All the time. Over and over. Rip and tear!
The announcement was made at QuakeCon 2019, the annual gathering of slayers and gibbers where id Software usually shows off its latest wares. Or in this case, its earliest.
At $5 each, the original Doom and Doom II should provide dozens of hours of old-school fun. I’ve found in revisiting these games that the level design really is spectacular and the gameplay, while of course simple compared to your Dishonors or your Division 2s, is also elegant and carefully calibrated. It’s also amazing how scary these games can still be.
Not that you haven’t had ample opportunity to play them — and the thousands of free maps available for PC players — these last couple decades. But if your console of choice, with your surroundsound system and big screen, is how you tend to play games, then perhaps it’s worth a tenner to put these enduring classics on there.
Importantly, these include 4-play split-screen deathmatch and co-op. Probably been a while since you played it that way, right?
As for Doom 3 — well, my most salient memory of the game is playing the leaked Alpha version, which scared the pants off me and almost put me off the actual game. It was a huge graphical advance at the time, and due to its deliberate use of lighting still looks pretty cool, though of course highly primitive in other ways.
Is it still any good to play? Ten dollars lets you find out.
The original two games are also officially available on iOS as well, and will, amazingly, run at about a dozen times the resolution they originally did back in the ’90s.