The Depths of Doom Trilogy

Gameplay
The original Doom set the gaming world on fire when it was released, due to the controversy of its violent content, needing some fairly high hardware requirements in order to run on most computers back then, and making the First person shooter (Fps) into a huge gaming genre, making it very popular then.

The game involves a lone Marine investigating a distress call from one of Mars' moons, which the player (controlling the Marine) must make their way through over a dozen levels, trying to stay alive while battling against a variety of creatures, ex-Marines, and various other dangers, such as traps that can cause damage, if not death to the player. There is also a multitude of weapons for the player to pick up and use, along with ammo and several ways to increase a player's health and armor status.

There are also various secret rooms and a variety of functions needed for the player to utilize in order to open up more areas of levels (i. e. such as using keys, pressing buttons and flipping switches found in areas of the game) in order to make it to the exit.

The player only has one life, although they can save the game at any time, along with having five skill levels to choose from.

As far as the sequel of Doom 2 went, all the graphics, controls, and weapons were the same as the original, with only a couple of additions, such as the Super Shotgun being added and a Mega Sphere to increase a player's health and armor to 200%. However, the gameplay was widened by adding the ability to jump (actually the player couldn't physically jump, but there were many levels where the player had to jump, or fall down a distance in order to make it through various levels) and by having several additional monsters added to the mix.

Controls (in-game)

 * Move—arrow keys
 * Fire—control key
 * View automap—tab key
 * Run—shift + arrow key
 * Strafe—alt + arrow key
 * Moving/strafing and firing—mouse and/or joystick has various options for these that the player can choose and assign
 * Operate doors, switches and elevators—spacebar
 * 1 (numeric) key—use hands or chainsaw as weapon
 * 2 key—change to pistol
 * 3 key—shotgun (note: if the player presses this key again and is in possession of the Super Shotgun [in Doom 2 only], the player's Marine will switch between the regular and Super shotguns)
 * 4 key—chaingun
 * 5 key—rocket launcher
 * 6 key—plasma rifle
 * 7 key—BFG 9000
 * Escape key—bring up menu/pause
 * F1 key—help menu
 * F2/F3—save/load games
 * F4—adjust sound volume
 * F5—adjust graphical detail
 * F6—quicksave game
 * F7—end game
 * F8—toggle messages
 * F9—quickload
 * F10—quit
 * F11—gamma correction
 * + and - keys—increase/reduce viewing area

(automap)

 * Automap—tab key
 * Zoom in and out--+ and - keys
 * Follow mode—F key
 * Grid mode—G key
 * Mark place—M key
 * Clear marks—C key
 * Zoom—0 key

The Depths of Doom Trilogy
This three cd set contains a lot of material, including the original Doom game. There were a few changes made, like a couple of secrets were added, a few were totally redone, some levels have a few added graphical details to them, a crushing ceiling was added in one level that wasn't in the original, and the game now ends on level eight after the player gets past the Barons, as when the player enters the building behind the Baron area that originally would have the exit, now the player is warped to a hidden area where there is no way to escape, and they will die there, as not even the invincible mode will save the player. So the game will have to be continued by manually restarting on level nine.

Also, the Cyberdemon is also present in the new final level in the game, which it did not make its appearance in the Doom series until Doom 2.

This package also includes Doom 2 as well as 20 Master Levels that was originally released as an expansion pack to the latter, along with Inferno, originally billed as a sequel to Doom, as it lives up to its name, rather than going by the theme of a tough Marine forced to survive, as the levels are more supernatural-themed, containing macabre graphics, lava (the first level), demons and a creepy vibe in general (the grayish-black stalagmites in level two). Also included is Thy Flesh Consumed, which has a high difficulty level, as it's first two levels don't have much room to maneuver, yet there is a high level of bombardment from enemy attacks. Other levels are bigger but can have traps that will unleash many monsters from confined areas.

Finally, the majority of this release included over three thousand homebrewed levels collected from the internet. These really varied in quality, from being very easy to totally impossible to get through without using cheat codes, as the player can be put in a level with the most powerful monsters possible but with practically no chance at all of survival. WAD (as these levels are called) creators did all kinds of things as well, such as creating or using different music other than what was originally included with the Doom games (a MIDI version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" from the band Nirvana adorns one level), using new graphics, replacing game sound effects with clips sampled from various entertainment venues (soundbites from the first RoboCop movie to the Beavis and Butthead TV show can be heard, among many others), or to having certain WADs not work at all, as several patches had to be made for this release.

Also, many WADs were repeated as well, since it would be a very difficult job for id Software or GT Interactive to keep track of them all, since many WADs contain several levels each, which the player could find many of these levels used over and over again as they went through the package.

Also varying in quality is the mixture of the types of levels included in a WAD batch, as the player could go through several levels of a batch with monsters and all to finding levels totally devoid of enemies, since there are levels thrown into some batches that are Deathmatch or Co-op only, and can require other players.

Links

 * Stage Select review (5/10)
 * All Doom Wiki