Doom lover’s may well recoil in utter horror and disgust at the mere mention of their landmark classic being placed “on rails”. This seems to go against all that is holy and good in the gaming universe. Yet Doom Resurrection by Id is a product of the genius that is John Carmack and as such we all need to bow our head and pay him the respect that is due the Godfather of the first person shooter.
If you’re a gaming youngblood and know little of the shareware history of Doom and its impact on your life you may well think that Call of Duty and Halo simply sprang from the mist to steal away your life. Wrong. It all traces back to the wellspring of Doom, a game that when I loaded it onto my PC, I immediately deleted it because it was too intense, too frightening and more violent than anything I’d ever experienced in a video game. Yet the images wouldn’t leave until I reloaded it and played till the wee hours of the morning thus kicking off my gaming life.
So it was with some trepidation that I fired up this latest edition of Doom for the Iphone hoping for the best but expecting the worst having been disappointed by the shallow on-the-rails shooting gallery that was Metal Gear Solid. The best decision Carmack makes is to give Doom Resurrection an accelerometer controlled aiming reticule instead of the all-too-easy tap-the-monster firing mechanism that turns any shooter into an uninvolved slide show. Even though Carmack states that he placed Doom Resurrection on rails to appeal to the casual gamer, you still need an element of skill to draw you into a game and DR definitely draws you in. Instead of simply being a series of scenes, Doom Resurrection walks you down the hallways and through the doors of an infected UAC Research Facility on Mars City to confront the demons of hell and you have no choice but to go.
Doom Resurrection is very much a scripted game but being placed in the directorial hands of a master like John Carmack is not a bad place to be. In some ways it adds a level of unease to the mayhem as you have no control over how you confront the beasts.
You can’t walk into a room and then back out to draw them into the doorway for an little one-on-one or you can’t seek out the best defensive position. No, you’re forced to wade into whatever mess the game takes you which is usually right into the middle of the fray for some in-you-face fun with multiple monsters.
Be prepared to do a lot of shaking with your Iphone which is how you get the flesh eaters off your neck. The left lower button is for dodging fireballs when prompted and also for taking cover. The right lower botton is for firing off rounds from the best sounding weapons on the Iphone as, like all Id games, the sound is fantastic.
The tilt control aiming is a little loose. In fact, the reticule seems to float with a slight response lag and no sensitivity adjustment. I get the feeling this was done on purpose to make head shots more difficult and add a sense of panic to DR. The dodge button is also a little tricky as you must wait until the last second to dodge or you will snap back into position and get hit. This all goes to make survival a challenge against the uncontrollable onslaught of monster.
There are exploding yellow barrels scattered throughout the levels that must be used wisely for multiple kills and life/ammo packs that are picked up by touching on them. If you don’t touch them when they appear in your view, you may lose them as you can’t tell if you’ll be facing in that direction again! In typical Carmack fashion, there are several secrets in each level. The checkpoints are well spaced across 6 levels in the research facility and 2 in hell and with 4 difficulty levels you have plenty of time to enjoy the flying giblets of flesh.
There’s and overall story to Doom Resurrection with great cut scenes like a Demon ominously breaking its way through a steel door. You constant companion is a flying bot that accesses computers, cuts through locked doors, and communicates with a research scientist who guides you through the facility.
While it’s not the free roaming Doom we’re all use to, Doom Resurrection is the best on-the-rails FPS that I’ve ever played. Id has created an explosive roller coaster ride that defines this type of directed shooter. I give it 4 ½ stars only because I expect more greatness from Carmack who’s announced plans to release multiple games to rock the Iphone from the Classic Doom to Quake2!