Final Doom Review

Game:  Final Doom
Year (s):  1996
Company:  dev.  TeamTNT, Casali brothers, id Software
pub.  many
Engine:  id Tech 1
Type:  First-Person Shooter
Metacritic Score: Not Available
My Score:  ker-BLAM!

Price (as of September 18, 2012)

Regular price on Steam:  $9.99
Lowest Buy-It-Now on eBay (used, with shipping):  $10-15

Game Time: 15-20 hours on default, cheating whenever things got stupid

Obligatory Trailer:  http://www.videodetective.com/games/final-doom/144391

See Also

Doom/Doom 2 Review:  http://fpsandmtg.blogspot.com/2010/12/doom-doom-2-reviewed.html


Plot and Engine

Final Doom is comprised of two 32-level episodes, each utilizing monsters, weapons, and textures from Doom 2.  Both have minor plots of, "portals, demons, blah blah blah."  Final Doom was built on the Doom engine (id Tech 1), so there's no surprises in appearance.


Developers and Gameplay

Plutonia Experiment was developed by the Casali brothers, who were chosen to develop half of Final Doom after sending some of their levels to American McGee.  The first half of Plutonia almost exclusivly featured only the hardest enemies, and ranged in difficulty from "challenging" to "possibly impossible."  The latter half of had a more balanced monster selection, and the closest-to-Doom feel of Final Doom.

Evilution was developed by TeamTNT, a group of WAD-making fans that were active on the Doom editing mailing list.  Their contribution was going to be released for free, but the project was acquired by id before that happened.  Evilution favored large numbers of enemies, the majority of which are humans and imps.  Compared to Plutonia, these were easy.  Evilution uses midi files that I hadn't heard before.


Not to be Confused With...

Thy Flesh Consumed was an additional, damn-hard episode added to the edition of Doom entitled, "The Ultimate Doom."

Master Levels for Doom 2 was an expansion pack for Doom 2.  This contained 21 new levels, which were contracted to third-party developers by id.

Maximum Doom, commercially sold, had nearly 3000 levels.  These were mostly a compilation of amateur WADs found on the internet, so quality was not guaranteed.


Final Thoughts

This is very dated.  I would have played it to death when released, but this was my first time playing it.  While I still appreciate it for what it is, I've become spoiled with more recent games, and have little patience for finding, "that damn switch."

Level design was inconsistent, and the programmer's fondness for a select handful of enemies made progression tedious.  All in all, Final Doom is more Doom gameplay with subpar design.  I find nostalgia in the originals and felt that this (which I first played about fifteen years after release) fell flat.