Doom

The Good
+ New coloured lighting effects
+ Excellent soundtrack
+ It's Ultimate Doom and Doom II combined
+ Exclusive levels
+ Simple, but excellent controls


The Bad
- Passwords only
- Framerate hitches
- Dying is still a large penalty from the PC
- No episode selecting for Ultimate Doom
- Some areas are too dark


The Bottom Line
Presentation: 85/100
The PlayStation grants you with new lighting effects, exclusive levels, and having Ultimate Doom and Doom II combined, granting you 59 levels of absolute carnage. But there's no story.

Graphics: 80/100
The PlayStation port has new coloured lighting to make the theme of this port more gloomy with the sound and music to match. The level designs are made to be similar to the Atari Jaguar version. The framerate is decent, but it can bog down in large, massive areas in levels. The lighting effects are great, but some areas have too low lighting which makes those areas difficult to see, and strangely, gunfire does not create light.

Audio: 95/100
Unlike the PC version, with its rock-and-roll and metal type of music, The PlayStation version has more ambient sounds to its soundtrack, and blending more unsettling music, which fits to the new custom theme. It seems that the music on the PlayStation version feels like it could be the music that was first intended for the PC. The sound effects are changed too, in order to fit to the theme, also the guns have more punch in the sound.

Controls: 99/100
Since that Doom is not a cumbersome shooter, the keyboard-and-mouse controls translate well to the PlayStation controller. Triangle fires your weapon, Square makes you run faster, Circle is action, and X does the Jaguar/32X-styled strafing. L1 and R1 makes you strafe, and the L2 and R2 buttons cycle through your inventory. The map that can be opened by pressing Select. The button controls are customisable, which is always a good sign.

Difficulty: Turn it on hard for it to be more fun
The recommended difficulty for Doom is the hardest difficulty, called Ultra Violence, as it gives you a satisfying amount of enemies and gives you a challenge. The easiest difficulty is not recommended because it's just not fun to play with the small amount of enemies in levels and there's little to no challenge. Amusingly, the name of the easiest difficulty went from "I'm too young to die" to "I am a wimp." There is no Nightmare mode.

Gameplay: 90/100
The gameplay remains unchanged from the original versions. The new lighting effects gives the game a new look with the suspenseful soundtrack. There isn't really to say about the gameplay because it's not that much different from any of the other ports. Due to the game being released back when the PlayStation was just a new console, the game does not use memory cards. The only way to keep up with your progress is by passwords. Unfortunately, dying in Doom is the same on the PC, where if you die, you restart the level with your inventory being stripped down to a pistol. Restarting the level does the same results; the only way to get pass this is to reenter the password for the level.

Overall: 87/100
The PlayStation version is a definite must-have, as it provides 59 levels for Ultimate Doom, Doom II and the levels exclusive to the port. There's also multiplayer, but here's the thing: it requires a link cable, two televisions, two PlayStation consoles. If you have the PSone model, and looking for Doom multiplayer, you're out of luck.

Score: 87/100