As a kid of the late 80s/ early 90s, I’ve always been a huge fan of games like Wolfenstein 3D and especially DOOM. Making a rendition on the OHRRPGCE in RPG format sounds pretty cool, though past experience tells me not to get my hopes up too high (Doom RPG for iPhone, anyone?).


Doom RPG for the OHRRPGCE follows closely to the story of the original game released by id Software in 1993. You take form of a space marine named Flynn, who is assigned to Phobos (which is considered to be a pretty dull station with no real activity). You and your team are shipped out, and before you know it all hell breaks loose; literally.


If you remember the original game, this is the part when you run around and start killing demons and blowing stuff up; which is pretty fun. The OHRRPGCE version, not so much; in fact it is kind of a chore to play after about five minutes. Although it is nice to see familiar enemies such as the Imp and Baron of Hell, both the player characters and the enemies have no options other than a standard attack; making it pretty uneventful.


Battles are extremely easy and the only difference between regular enemies and bosses are a boost in strength and a crap ton of health. When you first see a Baron of Hell in the original game, you have to use a little bit of strategy to defeat him or he will rip you apart. All he has in the OHRRPGCE rendition is a bunch of health; making the fight last way too long and just boring. I think that increasing the difficulty and adding some more abilities (in turn adding a bit more strategy) would go a long way in the battle mechanics of this game.

In addition, I think some work needs to be done on the maps themselves. Some of them are pretty big and essentially barren. Perhaps they are big to compensate for more content updates. The sad truth is that right now it is kind of disheartening to walk around a big map to find nothing but incomplete sections. Running around shooting stuff blindly in the original game works, but it is just not enough here.


The majority of the graphics were ripped from the original game itself. Even though I don’t agree with the idea of ripping graphics, it could work okay if the author takes a bit more time to get the coloring/shading right. Importing the graphics and picking colors that will “just do” won’t be enough unfortunately. Ripped or not, they look kinda bad in their current form. I challenge the author to implement more of his own graphics and slowly replace the ripped ones. Who knows, we all may like those better than the original graphics (plus you made more of an effort to make the game YOUR game!).


My favorite part of this rendition is the sound. The majority of it stays true to the original game; even down to sound effects. It's pretty nice killing one of the demons and it be accompanied by the classic death sounds from the original game. There were a few other tracks used that were not associated with the Doom series but seemed to fit pretty well nonetheless.


Just like the iPhone version, I was not throughly impressed by Doom RPG for the OHRRPGCE. Perhaps my expectations are just too high considering I’m a huge fan of the original series. On the other hand, being a fan I'd love to see the idea behind this really come to fruition though changes will need to be made for that to happen.