Final Doom (PC) Review

By Athanasios 10.05.2016

Review for Final Doom on PC

The modding community of the Doom series has always been one of the most active in gaming, with thousands of people constantly creating all sorts of WADs (which are Doom and Doom II's level/mod packs) since the process is relatively easy, and the possibilities are almost endless, with the only true limit being the imagination. This zeal led to Final Doom, which took two 32-level Mega-WADs, put a price tag on them, and released them as an actual product. Why did id Software choose these two particular packs, though?

Final Doom is, essentially, a stand-alone level-mod for Doom II: Hell on Earth. In other words, don't expect anything new in terms of enemies, weapons, power-ups, and, generally, any original gameplay mechanics. How many levels does this pack include? The answer to this question is, probably, one of the very few good things about this title, since it actually includes two separate full episodes, TNT: Evilution and The Plutonia Experiment, both made by fans of the series.

The thing with Doom II level-mods, however, is that they are insanely abundant. Sure, quantity rarely means quality, but even back when this came out there were plenty of free, as well as fantastic, ones to choose from. Therefore, why these two in particular? Well, for starters, the people behind both did a pretty good job, with every single stage being almost indistinguishable from those made by the hand of John Romero, with almost none of the common flaws that even experienced modders tend to make.

Of course, the most important thing about both level packs is that they are much harder than previous Doom titles, even from the fourth, veterans-only, episode of The Ultimate Doom. Health pick-ups are somewhat rare, available ammunition even worse, and the number of monsters per level aplenty… but, in some strange way, this is not exactly fun. Challenge is one of the factors that can break a game if not handled well, and Final Doom doesn't really pay attention to the balance between difficulty and pleasure.

Screenshot for Final Doom on PC

The generally less challenging The Ultimate Doom could be annoyingly tough at times, but these two seem to take the element of annoyance to a higher level, with every single step being a trap, and an overall bad enemy placement; bad, because they give little time for the player to respond and little room to manoeuvre, with the last flaw being particularly evident in The Plutonia Experiment - and what's up with all those chain gunners? One of the most annoying enemies in the whole series, and he will come out from every crack and crevice!

The worst thing about these two episodes, though, is that, similar to Doom II (and maybe even more so), levels rely more on running around and trying to find keycards and switches that lower floors or raise bridges, than the action - and with lots of back-tracking through corpse-ridden rooms, when the originals would repopulate the level with more bad guys, in all sorts of ingenious ways.

Last, but not least, the audio-visual quality of both episodes is a mess, with brown being the main colour, and no new tunes to listen to, besides a small number of original - and repetitive - compositions for TNT: Evilution (which, by the way, looks better than The Plutonia Experiment). In conclusion: unless an avid collector of everything Doom-related, look elsewhere.

Screenshot for Final Doom on PC

Cubed3 Rating

5/10
Rated 5 out of 10

Average

There's absolutely no reason for the existence of Final Doom - as a product with a price tag, that is. Why? It's not so much that there's nothing new here, and it's not even because the level design can get annoying or boring at times. The problem with this piece of software is that it's a collection of two mods, ones that when compared to the hundreds of poor quality ones out there, are nice, but not impressive enough to justify a purchase… especially since there is an overabundance of level-mods that aren't just ten times better, but also free.

Developer

id

Publisher

id Software

Genre

First Person Shooter

Players

1

C3 Score

Rated $score out of 10  5/10

Reader Score

Rated $score out of 10  0 (0 Votes)

European release date Out now   North America release date Out now   Japan release date None   Australian release date Out now   

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