DOOM! A Great iPhone Port or hilarious pun?

Many of us remember back to the days of Yore. When first person shooter games like Wolf 3D and Doom were taking the PC market by storm. These games completely changed the video game market and have been reproduced on nearly every gaming platform there is. It’s funny to think how Doom in particular was so revolutionary for its time, and continues to be that way to this day as it makes its way onto the iPhone via always groundbreaking Cydia. Now, groundbreaking usually means stability issues, which those who have read previous articles of mine know how much I despise, but I decided to give it a run.

After a quick splash screen, I’m thrust in the middle of a dark, alien crowded room. Simple, but different on screen controls, make for easy maneuvering. At first it seems as though the game has you in continuous forward motion, then you’ll notice if you tilt your phone towards you, it uses the iPhone’s accelerometer to stop or move backwards. After trying to laugh off an awkwardly dumb moment, I decided it was time to kick some monster butt. Negative. It took several minutes to locate my first monster. The motion sensing seems off, and that tends to make for a frustrating time (maybe it’s something you have to get used to). Combine that with an already boring and hard-to-distinguish-objects, 2D graphics, and it makes for an overall negative experience. Now ZodTTD did get a few things right. The game was actually extremely stable for an iPhone port, didn’t crash on me once. And the control system is one of the better ones I’ve seen, with large left and right arrows placed perfectly for your thumbs.

Maybe it would be better if there was a different way you could move forwards and backwards. Maybe the actual playing screen needs to be larger with smoother graphics. Maybe old school ports like this just aren’t my cup of tea. I’m sure many of our readers love this game. ZodTTD is definitely one of the most respected guys in the community, and I’m sure that Doom will continue to evolve. Is this game going to be deleted from my springboard due to low level of playability? Yes. Does that mean it’s doomed? No. I will continue to watch for future updates and hopefully some things will have been revamped.

Update: I always try and make sure to cover all the bases when posting opinions on software people work really hard on. Upon submitting this article, I stumbled across a ‘mouse sensitivity’ setting in the ‘Options’ category of my Doom menu, I know, who woulda thunk it. This did improve some of my movement issues, however be cautious when tweaking your settings, as this caused my once crash-free app to well, crash. Bottom line, it still did not change my opinion of the game, but as I stated before these old school ports really aren’t my bag.