Look out Rock! You didn't kill Doom after all......

Wow. I come home from a long day of work to find out that them internets are all abuzz over the announcement of DOOM IV. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Even more than Wolfenstein, Doom did kind of define id software the way Street Fighter embodies Capcom, or Mario embodies Nintendo.

Doom was a huge game when it came out. It came out at a time when the internet was becoming bigger than the BBS would ever be. It was at a time when there were literally hundreds of dial up providers shilling the "Excitement" of "Chat Rooms", and immediately big wigs everywhere started saying, "No one wants to talk to our under-appreciated employees whose souls we crush forcing them to peddle crap extra stuff. Let's put our crap on the website"
While some of these things did, in fact psyche people. id had also seen this as the perfect opportunity to expand their shareware fanbase. For the longest time, a consortium of independent developers had distributed shareware over the old BBS systems to many a PC gamer in the know. But with Compuserve, AOL, Prodigy, and the like, it was even easier to garner new fans. And unlike Wolfenstein 3-D (Which was in fact a very popular widespread game)
Doom introduced something many of today's younger gamers see as a mere bullet point on every box that is taken for granted: DEATHMATCH.

I remember Doom fondly because it was a game that more than even the addictive need for an internet connection, had been the killer computer application.
Where Super Mario World, and Sonic The Hedgehog made one want to run out and dump money on a 16 Bit Console
Doom was the game that made one want to spend a little bit more for that 486 processor. (Oh sure a 386 might play it, but did you really want to deal with a choppy frame rate?)

Doom reportedly crashed many a network. Even white collar fifty somethings, who hadn't played a game since Space Invaders were playing Doom with their colleagues instead of their Jacobson Files, and TPS reports.

Doom II came out a short time later, and did ok for itself, adding a few new baddies, and a double barreled shotgun.
But it didn't reach the quite reach the popularity of the original.

Even my late Grandfather enjoyed Doom. Yes you would think his Generation would be among those who do no research before slagging on something. But after helping with whatever computer problems my Grandparents had, he would want me to stick around, looking up random stuff on 14.4 baud, and of course defeating friends, and relatives in Modem to Modem Doom.
Probably the best time, was the one where my friend Jason was dialed in for a game (His Grandparents, Ironically enough had also gotten a 486, and also had the shareware edition of Doom), and we played E1M6.
My Grandfather had decided to tell me where to go, and what to do, because I still had reflexes.
But anyway at one point in the map there is a HUGE pool of acid with a very small walkway through the middle.
Off in the distance a hole could be seen in the wall. My Grandfather said to me "Fire a rocket into that hole." I did, and a mass explosion could be heard. "Go in there!" I was perplexed. "Grandpa, we can't. We'll die from the acid before we even get in there." "Ah Baloney!" he refuted. So I go in there, and sure enough there was a bounty of rockets, respawning health kits, and armor.

Grampsdoom

"Now wait." After about five minutes, Jason had found his way to that walk way. As he got about a quarter of the way across my Grandfather yelled " Fire at the middle of the walkway!" What you may or may not have guessed by now is that my Grandfather, like many people during the 1940's had served in the US Navy.
Basically, he was "Leading". He had also taught me what would become lamentable in Doom. "Camping"
Jason finally realized where the rockets were coming from, but by that time we were fully stocked on ammunition, medkits, and shields. Around 5 or 6 frags later he would disconnect in disgust.

Grampskilledjaaaaake

Several years later Wolfenstein Got a face lift. So it was reported Doom would follow.

But as great as those early Doom games were, Doom III would be a very good, yet much less arcadey Shooter.
By the time it was coming out, id's own Quake III, and Epic's Unreal Tournament proved that arcadey shooters were the realm of multiplayer. While Valve's Half - Life evolved the genre into well acted, survival horror.
Doom III blended these trends. It took the setting of Doom I, re telling the story of how an experiment on a colony on Mars would go awry, and a demon loving mad scientist would be proven to have actually opened the Gates of Hell on purpose. The thing that disappointed folks, was that the Survival Horror vibe peters out when one begins to realize the formulaic nature of how the demons come to get you. Other fans who wanted another crazy "Kill anything that moves" game in the vein of the first Doom had been hooked on the never serious Serious Sam.

A short time later Quake IV would come out promising to continue the story of Quake II, but few people got into it.
Even less than with Doom III.

So with that tirade done, Doom IV is supposed to be coming to pass.
It leaves me sort of on the fence. Will it be the answer to Half Life, Doom III wasn't? Will it veer back to it's fragfest roots giving Painkiller a run for it's money?
But then maybe none of that matters. So long as Senior Citizens keep teaching Teenagers how to effectively hoard weapons, and rocket camp.