Straight-forward shooters like this aren't even really my thing - or so I thought! No crouching? No jumping? No looking up or down? No leaning left or right? No problem! Even for such an old game, released at a time when so many advancements had yet to be made, playing ye olde DOOM feels deeply and surprisingly good! The shotgun in DOOM is honestly the best-feeling shotgun I've seen in a game, and the chain gun - which you don't have to wait very long to get - is wonderful. I was also surprised at how little it takes to set a disconcerting mood; stepping into an area with janky, strobing lights honestly makes me stop and say "ohhhh, dear..." As anyone else will tell you, there is a metric TON of mods out there for this game, many of which are rightly praised, but I say it honestly needs very little in the way of TLC. I'm playing it with Zdoom, but really all I'm using it for is to sharpen the graphics up to 800x600. Do what you feel is right, but you owe it to yourself to at least *try* DOOM with no (or minimal) mods; it's tasty! Even if you never played it back in the '90s (like I hadn't) and this is your first time touching a game like DOOM (like it was for me), give it a whirl, tweak the controls to your taste and see if this game doesn't suck you in. And come on - it's six bucks!
So, as per GOG's new guidelines, I'm supposed to let this game "stand on its own merits." Fair enough. However, I feel obligated to point out that if Beamdog themselves really thought their *own* products could stand on their own merits, they wouldn't have felt the need to *remove* the classic BG1, BG2 and Icewind Dale from sale altogether, opting instead to include the classic games as "extras" with these much pricier Enhanced Edition releases. They wouldn't have felt the need to deprive buyers of the option to buy the classics *without* fronting the cash to *also* buy a version of the game they may not necessarily want. I'm willing to let this game stand on its own merits. I wonder... is the *developer* willing to do the same?
I can't believe THIS was sold for money. I also can't believe the praise that gets lavished on it. So I snapped this up because it was on sale (like I said, for $3), installed it and took it for a 20-minute test drive. Let me tell you, after having played and thoroughly enjoyed the classic version of the game (might I add, WITHOUT the graphics mods everyone seems to want... seriously, what's with the cry for high resolution support? How tiny do your little men on the screen need to be?)... after my previous experience with the REAL Baldur's Gate, this Enhanced version came as a slap in the face. The blur filter that actually makes the game look *worse* (unless you're zoomed ALL the way out) was just the start. Sure, some bits *are* improved; for example, the Friendly Arm Inn at nighttime has torches in the gates, on the towers, and light inside the windows, and so *that* looks nicer. But for everything they did that I *liked*, there were *two* things that made me say "Why did they DO that!?" Excuse me while I rant... Little weapon icons popping up on character portraits, so that I KNOW they're attacking, as if I WOULDN'T know otherwise... menus that are bogged down with a TON of extra crap I never needed before... launch menu screens that fade to black between choosing "Single-Player" and "Load Game"... big, fat windows that drop into the top of the screen to alert me of new Journal entries AS WELL AS said Journal entries popping up in full in the text window below (did they make this for slow children? "HEY STUPID, you have a new JOURNAL ENTRY. Did'ya know you have a new JOURNAL ENTRY, here's a JOURNAL ENTRY!! TIME to READ your JOURNAL ENTRY!!")... I can now scroll way, way off the edges of the map, for some reason... "cinematics" with music you can probably tell were chopped even *without* having heard the original... Long story short: I can't recommend the *original* Baldur's Gate enough. But I guess they're getting packaged together now, so... <sigh>
