Doom for Gameboy Advance

Doom on Gameboy Advance faithfully recreates the frenetic gameplay of the computer version. The GBA version offers nothing new, but with this portable version of a classic game you can battle the demons of Hell wherever you go. Doom's storyline is fairly simple: you are a marine on Phobos, a moon of Mars. The UAC corporation has been conducting teleportation gateway experiments, with mixed results. One day a gateway to Hell is opened and demons spew forth from it. Your friends have all become zombified and bloodthirsty, leaving only you against a horde of creatures. Now you must battle your way across 24 demon-infested levels and find a way back to Earth.

All of the classic Doom gameplay is here, and playing it on the GBA is just as exciting as playing it on a computer. Doom is played in the first-person perspective, and movement is in 3D. The directional pad functions for movement and turning, the A button fires, the B button operates doors and switches, and the L - R buttons cause you to sidestep away from enemy fire. Holding the L-R buttons together and pressing the directional pad changes weapons. No vertical aiming is required in Doom: if you can see it, you can shoot it. Compared to today's sophisticated games, Doom is mindlessly simplistic: you simply go from level to level mowing down hordes of evil demons, collecting keys and picking up bigger, meaner weapons and ammo. There's little storyline or plot involved: you simply just keep killing demons until you win. That said, there are times when we need a little twitch gameplay to give our brains a rest.

Doom's blocky, pixelly graphics, while in low resolution, run at a consistent framerate. The Gameboy Advance wasn't designed to be a system which pushes 3D graphics, so Doom is a remarkable achievement. Still, sometimes it can be difficult to discern what is in front of you. (although in Doom, admittedly, anything that moves is generally something you should try to kill). The game has a brightness setting to compensate for the sometimes confusing visuals.

The sound effects are lifted directly from the computer version. Doom veterans will instantly feel at home when they hear the groans of the zombified soldiers, the snorts of imps and roars of the cacodemons. The eerie sound effects from the Playstation remix of Doom are much better, but the nostalgia factor will definitely kick in to Doom veterans. The music has taken a hit and it sounds much less prolific than the computer version. It is soft and tinny, far in the background, like a cheap synthesizer.

The blood has been changed from its original red color to a zombie-blood green. Apparently, Activision wanted to earn a Teen rating for Doom in order to increase its sales potential. The corpses of slain demons also disappear a few seconds after you gun them down, so you can't slaughter everything in a room and admire your handiwork of littering the place with demon bodies.

Multiplayer support is available via the GBA link cable. There are options for competitive deathmatch modes as well as the cooperative play where you and a few buddies fight the demons together. A save feature allows you to save your game at the end of levels, but it is only available in the single player game.

Doom on GBA may not be a pixel-perfect port of the computer version, but it is a remarkable achievement on the GBA. Stay tuned for coverage of Doom III, which will be unveiled at E3 this year.

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