And Hell Followed With Him: A Doom Journal - Part 1
I played a lot of Doom in 2025. And plan to play more in 2026. These are notes on my journey.
i. Doom
A dip into the modding scene led me to ask myself "Why don't I just replay Doom?" - so I did.
Every visit back, I find myself sinking deeper. Doom is hypnotic. It holds a purity beyond what many games achieve. Find a shotgun, slaughter every demon you can find, until it is done. The thumping violence, the roaring metal, the twisted vistas are almost secondary to a graceful flow I once saw likened to a dance. Movement is everything. It is a gentler pace compared to what followed, but the deep carnal satisfaction of tearing every creature you see to a bloody pulp is impossible to ignore.
There is so much to be said about Doom and what it represents. That it continues to endure, receiving new campaigns thirty years later, is a testament to its artistry, a work that has truly become a genre unto itself.
ii. Doom II
Ultimately, Doom II is an iteration rather than an evolution. Perhaps that is for the best. Mechanically this is where Doom is perfected. Every addition is balanced to expand the game's formula and allow a deeper, more complex level of design. Sadly, Doom II does not exploit this opportunity with grace.
There are teething issues: some levels feel overdesigned, just obtuse enough that you leg it around the level for a bit trying to find a key or a door or a switch needed to proceed. Doom's greatest strength lies not only the visceral combat, it is also the puzzles and exploration that frame it, brief respite from the bloody business. Let the lulls drag out to long, however, and it begin to feel like the levels are just getting in the way of your rampage.
Still, when it comes down to it - it's Doom. Harder, fiercer, the journey is thrilling, chaotic and gruesome. You will learn patience, persistence, and hatred for certain abominations. Great things await, if only you persist. Do not fear the reaper, for you are he.
iii. Doom: The Gallery Experience
Are video games art? I dunno, but Doom is.
iv. Doom: The Golden Souls Remastered
A fantastic Doom mod with great maps, neat ideas, and a delightful Nintendo (and Sega) themed sheen. Highly recommended.
v. A Fistful of Doom
Who knew that shooting cowboys and cops was just as fun as shooting demons. Good level design, too.
vi. Master Levels for Doom II
The modern conveniences of the Doom + Doom II release, I think, helped me enjoy Master Levels far more than I otherwise would have. A play order with a fairly consistent difficult curve and quicksaves left me with a much better taste in my mouth than I'd expected. Some levels are great, some are fine, some are poor, some are hell. A mixed bag, but not too unexpected as an anthology of hobbyist designers.
In some ways, it deserves all the more praise for that, with a couple of levels surpassing many found in Doom II itself. (Bloodsea Keep is a standout, personally.) If you weren't sated by Doom II, Master Levels will quench your bloodlust, for the most part.
That said, I can understand the reputation it has garnered. Imagine pistol starting each of these on Ultra-Violence in the 90s? Good grief.
vii. TNT: Evilution
I enjoyed Evilution, for what it is. Some maps around the midgame threw me and chaingunners can burn in absolute sin for eternity, but overall the levels were mainly good and provides a different flavour of Doom. Like Master Levels, map inconsistency and sometimes batshit progression in levels is the weak point. If your map takes 30 minutes to finish because I spend 20 minutes running around trying to find a switch I missed that opens something completely unrelated, you will test my patience.
That said, as the golden rule goes - it's still Doom.
viii. The Plutonia Experiment
Now I understand Final Doom's reputation. Even as a Hurt Me Plenty player, Plutonia is pants pissingly hard at times, occasionally bringing down maps that are otherwise well designed with unfair difficulty. Spawning into a stage with a chaingunner immediately behind you? Nah fuck off with that nonsense.
But with enough grit and determination, you'll pull through. Sometimes it's about trial and error, sometimes it's about skill, other times about how lucky you get. Map design on the whole is strong, when not bogged down by a sinful amount of chaingunners and revenants - their screams will haunt me. Sometimes the game's solution to making things more challenging is just putting more fucking enemies in the room with you, or utilising chaingunner snipers from across a massive space, and that's rarely the best approach. Going slow, encounter by encounter, and a larger amount of camping than I would have liked, held me through.
As always, a few maps stand a cut above the rest. Hunted is fantastic, Bunker is furious and interesting and is the most tense I've felt playing a Doom map (in a good way). When combat is good, it's exhilarating, pushing the classic Doom formula in ways id never did. It's the kind of game you walk away from a better player than when you went in.
In the end, is it worth the pain? If you like Doom, sure - just know what you're getting yourself into.