TITLE: Doom: Roguelike, or "You die!" AUTHOR: Jim9137 DATE: 3/30/2005 09:14:00 ip. ----- BODY:

I recently found this little gem on the vast sea of freeware games. Yes, vast and dangerous. They are many freeware jewels out there, you just have to use scuba gear to find them. What is Doom: Roguelike you ask? Better click that 'Read More...' to find out... But please, bring in your own ammunition, I don't have any extra to spare. Save me from this squeeze! Heeheheee. --- Well, as many you probably already have noticed - thanks to my relentless advertising, or not - There actually is a rogue game of Doom. How is that possible? How did they do it? DOOM? What the heck is a roguelike anyway? WHY SHOULD I CARE?! Each one of those questions is a good one and worthy of answer. But first, what is a roguelike? This word has many definitions, but on the gaming world and especially when categorizing a game it means a game that is mainly made by ASCII characters. Ie, letters working as graphics. The word comes from Rogue, the first game to use this way to display things on screen if I'm not totally mistaken. Ehm, why are you looking at me like that? It's disturbing. Yes, you can remake Doom with only text character. No, not in the way as say, that Quake Text-only remake was, but in the traditional top-down style. And guess what is the scariest part in this whole thing (besides the demons)? It actually works. It works so well that it nearly rivals the original game itself, in my honest opinion. Although I never was huge fan of Doom so... But the interesting question is why? Is it just the good old nostalgia kicking in? Is it the light-RPG system that is embedded into it? Is it that the rogue-likes are, in fact, extremely addictive (ie, NetHack)? Or is it just the joy of seeing that dratty imp's guts spilled in a gory way all over the place, in a pure text format just is fun to watch? It's something I can't answer. Maybe it's just because the simple games are more addictive than more complex ones, even if they miss some realism. Maybe it's easier for players to grasp when it's only you, your dear double-barreled shotgun and the hordes of hellspawn. But let's get back to the game review, shall we? So, if you REALLY don't know what the one of the biggest and most important game hit is, in which case I feel a slight stab in my heart for no reason at all, let me sum it up for you quickly. Doom, one of the most important game titles on the gaming titles, practically popularized the FPS genre. It just put you, the marine of UAC and also humanity's last hope, against masses and masses of hellspawn. With a pistol, shotgun, chaingun, RPG, plasma rifle and the goo' ole' BFG9000 you sliced, ripped and tore the baddies into piles of corpses. The backstory goes sort of like this: You're a recruit who just happened to arrive on Phobos base, and to your surprise the whole base has been overrun by various monsters. Apparently the scientists had triggered something nasty while experimenting and opened a dimension gate to Hell. Of course, as such lucky person as you are, you go fulfilling your duty and start saving the world, and your pet bunny. Straightforward action, and didn't have much anything else. Great fun, I hear. I pee'd my pants though while playing it. How does the Doom: RL differ from the original? Most noticeable difference is that you have Traits. Okay, apparently we have a lightweight RPG system in place. A little character development hasn't ever hurt anyone. They range from "Ironman" to such traits like "Hellrunner" and "Son of a gun", "Reloader"... Et cetera. They just give bonuses to your hitpoints, damage, body armor, accuracy and reloading time and various other things. The damage is determined somewhat randomly, for example double-barreled shotgun is (6d3)x2, or roll 12 three-sided dices and see how much you got. Even the path of fire is randomized, you can accidentally blow up something totally different than that ugly ex-human sergeant who was waving that ugly shotgun at you moment ago. In a true rogue-like fashion, the dungeons are randomized. Except for few of course, but mostly it's random. You have these levers, doors and bonus items placed at random locations, but be vary about the levers. They can turn the floor into acid or spawn few big hellknights to ruin your day if you happen to be jinxed. Basically, what you would except from doom is here. Except not the keycards, thanks developers! That was considerate thing to do. Cough, anyway. You also have these stairs of course, to take you into various levels inside the Phobos base. You also have red stairs, that take you to special locations... Hell's Arena for example, strips you away from all your guns and armor and pits you against hordes of enemies in a vain attempt of collecting the reward. When you die, which happens quite often it seems, your poor marine's score is put on highscore table. And if you happen to beat the game, I tip my (fur)hat at you. I think I already mentioned the gore... Yes, this game has it. In the form of red %'s, #'s, and "'s. The blood actually spurts from the poor zombies when you fire that chaingun at them! Rip and tear, says the Doom comic! To sum up, I really like this rogue-like. I'm not great fan of them, I usually find them too complex and time-consuming to truly enjoy them, but this one is both simple and good timewaster in the morning while you're waiting for that coffee. Except that you might get stuck in the front of the screen, waving your hands in terror as that lever just summoned huge amount of Demons behind your back and you don't have any medpaks left, and that dratty shotgun is out of ammo again...

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