The Ultimate Doom (Xbox) and Doom II (Xbox) Complete

Since the release of Doom 3: Limited Collector's Edition on Xbox, I've been playing through The Ultimate Doom and Doom II, generally taking my time since I went through the PC versions so many times back in the day. Well it took a while, but this past Saturday I finally managed to finish both titles.

Despite being released in 1993 (Episode 4 was released in 1995 though) and 1994 respectively, the Classic Doom titles are still great fun to play due to their simple, arcade nature. It's also enjoyable to see where the FPS genre really got its start, really went mainstream.

All the original gameplay is there, with the only real major hitch being the lack of weapon hotkeys, you have to cycle through every bloody weapon to get to it. Otherwise, everything is just as fun and responsive as it used to be (and I'll never get tired of cutting Demons and Spectres up with the Chainsaw).

Last summer I went through the original 3 Episodes of The Ultimate Doom, however I was finding the newer 4th Episode too hard and started up on Doom II. I was never as much of a fan of Doom II as The Ultimate Doom, the dark, claustrophobic corders of the original really hit it off with me, but I got through it and had a great time save that really annoying bug that is in Level 30, Icon of Sin.

It seems in the Xbox version of Doom II that if you save your game in the Demon Gatekeeper's chamber, should you load that save game it will almost always freeze your Xbox. This means you need to do the final battle without saves, something that was very difficult. However after completing Doom II I decided to try and tackle the 4th Episode of The Ultimate Doom again, and was able to go through it all in one sitting. Love that final level with all the Zombies and the Spider Mastermind.

For this playthrough, both The Ultimate Doom and Doom II were completed on Ultra-Violence (Hard).