I have only one criticism of the "definitive, newly enhanced versions" of Doom and Doom II you can now pick up in a $10 package or as a free upgrade if you already owned one of those two games. My gripe is that it is entirely your own fault when you get hit by enemies.
On a PC, Xbox X or S, or PlayStation 5, you can play Doom at 120 fps at 4K. You are moving so ridiculously fast, speed-skating across those Marine bases and/or hellscapes, that the imps tossing fireballs at you feel like they're a parent gently coaxing their kid to catch a softball. Even the enemies with instant-hitting guns feel like they're winding up a tree sap cannon. The one time I died inside the first three levels of classic Doom was when I jet-walked right off a circular path and into an inescapable poison moat.
It's easy to recommend this newly packed-up and enhanced edition of these two first-person icons, released Thursday as part of QuakeCon. For one thing, it's being offered by Nightdive Studios, which has been turning out fan-favorite (and generally Ars-approved) remasters of games like Dark Forces, System Shock, Quake, and Quake II. For another, it's a real bundle, with both games, a huge number of classic add-on maps (including John Romero's Sigil), and an entirely new episode, Legacy of Rust, made by folks from Nightdive, id Software, and Wolfenstein auteurs MachineGames.
And then there's how playing these levels feels, which to me is as close as I can get to the caffeine-pulsing, speed-metal-blasting flow state I remember from much younger days. I've installed Doom and played a few levels now and then, but this is the first time I've made plans to keep going after the first session. After sprinting through a well-trod Hell, I'll be eager to keep going in Legacy of Rust, where I saw quite a few cool design tricks in just a couple levels. Further along, new weapons await me, and I am eager to pick them up.
Wonderful, optional options
It helps that this version incorporates the rearranged, real-instruments "IDKFA" soundtrack from Andrew Hulshult, first made available in 2016 and now officially putting some heavy crunch into the classic tunes, along with some new Doom II tracks. It deserves its place in this official package, because it rips. As with almost everything else, the upgrade is optional—you can stick with MIDI if you like.
There are lots of accessibility options now—high-contrast text, text-to-speech in chat, and more—along with quality-of-life stuff. I was wary of having the crosshairs light up when an enemy (or barrel) would be hit, but given the sometimes unfair 2.5-D nature of the level design, and the spread of some of the bullet weapons, I'm keeping it on.
If all that wasn't enough for you, there's 16-player co-op and deathmatch, with cross-platform play across Steam, Windows, Epic, and GOG on PC, and on Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch consoles, using room codes to connect everybody (and, it must be noted, a Bethesda account). There's even split-screen multiplayer, with up to eight people on a (very big) PC screen. Nightdive's port of the code to its KEX engine should make it easier for mods to be brought forward to this edition.
A caveat here that while the author is broadly aware of the many, many upgrades, mods, and other good things made possible by the open-source code and ports of Doom games (including ZDoom), he can't say exactly how they compare to this bundle. While Bethesda and Nightdive seem to have created a space for uploading mods and levels, and keeping the basic DOS version available, it remains to be seen how they work out over the long run. If open-source Doom was always good enough for you, or you don't like the idea of rebundling stuff that started out in the open, by all means, save yourself the $10 here. For many, though, this is just a far easier way to get at all the good stuff now possible in demon-shooting land.
If you haven't checked out Doom in a while, whether sitting in your library or just $10 away now, this is too easy an excuse to check in on it again. Do it soon. Hell devours the indolent, you know.
This post was updated at 8:40 a.m. to note the potential tension of Bethesda's rebundling of Doom against its open-source community.
