
Thing is, three of the four secret levels have items called demon keys hidden in them, and earning demon keys boosts the damage output of the unmaker to the point it eats pain elementals and barons for breakfast, and can cut through a cyberdemon’s health fairly quick. It starts as an energy weapon that shoots lasers that works great at a distance, but isn’t too impressive. The BFG gets nerfed a bit due to how the game handles its damage spread, but that’s okay because the new addition more than makes up for it.ĭoom 64‘s unmaker is a ridiculous weapon. All the weapons return, however, with more limited animations, but this has the side effect of making the super shotgun lead faster and making it the new workhorse weapon for the whole campaign. Some monsters have also been tweaked, including letting hell knights and barons in-fight, and the game has a unique final boss and the fast fireball shooting nightmare imps.


Monsters from Doom and Doom II are included, with exception to the chaingunner, spider mastermind, arch-viles, or revenants, though the last’s still has their homing missiles left over for a trap on one level. That title was probably more fitting in the original release because Doom 64 didn’t have saves during levels, only after, and it was also way too dark on first release. The difficulty levels are also a bit weird, with the equivalent to Ultra Violence being the hardest difficulty called Watch Me Die. The level will also teach you that the rocket launcher also has recoil now, as you’ll most likely unfortunately learn by falling in the death pit.īesides Hectic, Doom 64 is generally fair, outside the odd obnoxious pit trap, as the game doesn’t give you ways out often. The first secret level, Hectic, is a great example, with its big ending trap where the entire room reshapes to be a tense walkway above a death pit, along with old tricks like the two closets filled with hell knights. Doom 64 lacks a lot of the spectacle of Doom II, due to the limited space on the N64 carts limiting the size of mobs for most levels (there’s still a few with big numbers), but the new tech allows for more memorable levels in terms of surprises it has to share. This is Id Tech 1, but heavily modified to allow for more complicated traps and scripted events. You’ll notice very quickly that this is very unique among the classic series. The bits of writing in here are much edgier then before, and that somehow makes them goofier, the primal muck that would become the modern Doomslayer clearly present here. Called the mother demon, it is mutating demon flesh into new forms, and the Doomguy is sent in to deal with it since he, you know, kind of stopped a demonic invasion all by himself so he’s probably the right guy for the job even with the Hell struck PTSD. Some would even argue this to be the real Doom 3, and yeah, the fact it’s a direct sequel and not a reboot would make it a proper Doom 3.ĭoom 64 is set some time after Doom II, the Doomguy having severe PTSD from all the demon murder and murders committed by demonic entities and having to back into the thick of it due to a powerful demon bringing back the demonic dead. Doom 64 is a unique creature in the Doom franchise, with a mood all its own and with some fun new elements that had never been seen in the franchise until now. It was assumed to be a port just pointing out that it was the N64 version, but it is much more than that. This caused confusion as a lot of people, for a very long time, had no idea this once N64 exclusive was a completely original Doom game, a direct sequel no less. It was under the working title of The Absolution, which is a fantastic title that for one reason or another got the much worse title of Doom 64. It’s still the same guys, mind you, and they had been working on this particular game since 1994 with guidance and final say from Id Software, if you can believe it.

Towards the end of 1996, Williams Entertainment was renamed to be apart of the Midway branding, which is why the same team as those PS1 ports made an original Doom game under a completely different studio credit. Williams Entertainment, the company behind the Doom PS1 ports, were apart of a larger company called WMS Industries, which also owned Midway, a gaming company you may have heard of. Note: All screens, unless stated otherwise, come from Nightdive Studios remaster, which makes various graphical improvements while aiming to retain the game’s unique art style.
