DOOM 64

the game that took me out and showed me a good time came back to inform me she had several diseases even doctors didn't know the origin for. that's the kinda ♥♥♥♥ i want from a game

Rating: 2.8/5 Fun: 1.5/3 Mechanics: 0.8/1 Story & Sound: 0.30/0.5 Graphical Fidelity: 0.2/0.5 Doom 64 arrives on the Nintendo 64 with the unenviable task of justifying its existence on hardware that, by 1997, was demonstrably more capable than what produced the original games. It fails that task almost immediately. The visuals are functionally indistinguishable from Doom 1 and 2 — the same low-resolution sprites, the same flat geometry, the same color palette doing heavy lifting for atmosphere. Contemporary titles on the same hardware were pushing polygonal environments and detailed character models. Doom 64 offers geometry that at least doesn't clip through itself, which is a floor, not a ceiling. Below average for the era is the accurate assessment, and calling it a visual achievement for the platform requires generous application of the word "achievement." The audio situation is worse. There is no music. Not ambient sound design in place of music, not silence used deliberately — nothing. The standard Doom sound library returns in degraded quality: gunshots, enemy vocalizations, death sounds all present but audibly inferior to their PC counterparts. For a game shipping on new hardware four years after the original, the audio represents active regression rather than iteration. The level design is where Doom 64 fully earns its permanent binning. "Convoluted" Doom would be a more honest title than Doom 64. The maps are small by design, which under different circumstances could produce tight, focused encounters. Instead they are dense webs of switches and levers, many of which sit on opposite ends of the map from each other, requiring repeated cross-map traversal through areas already cleared of enemies. Completing most levels devolves into roaming empty corridors hunting the next lever or timed door that will allow progress. The combat, which carried the original games through any design roughness, cannot compensate when there is nothing left to fight. Doom 64 asks you to play hide-and-seek with switches in corpse-strewn hallways and presents this as its core experience. The controls are the game's most defensible element. Standard Doom movement, solid throughout, no glaring bugs, with the addition of a genuine autorun toggle via L3 that meaningfully distinguishes it from prior entries where running was technically possible but not implemented this cleanly. The full legacy weapon roster returns alongside the Unmaker, an exclusive weapon requiring secret level progression to power up — an interesting concept that the game buries behind its own obtuse structure. Force powers and new weapons deserve to be found through skill, not through surviving a switch hunt. Level 28, Absolution, is a final boss encounter that ranks among the worst designed sequences in a franchise not historically known for boss design quality. It is the appropriate conclusion to a game that consistently mistakes complication for challenge. Doom 64 has fans. They are wrong.