DoomZone Demo

Doom is probably one of the most well-known first-person shooters out there, especially since it innovated the horror genre as well. Over the years, many other video games copied Doom’s ideas and mechanics, but few managed to gain as much fame and commercial success as id Software’s original title did. Naturally, there were many fan attempts at the challenge as well, not many of which managed to be more than unfinished side projects.

DoomZone doesn’t really make too much of an originality leap either, especially not when it comes to the name. Just like the game it takes most of its inspiration from, this is also a first-person shooter with horror elements, featuring monsters as enemies and a succession of dark levels you have to explore in order to complete the adventure. Moreover, the action even takes place on Mars again.

Not much detail is given on the rest of the story, and it doesn’t really matter anyway, because it’s all about shooting and advancing from one stage to the other. Making your way through the copy-pasted corridors can be a tad tricky, though, because you can easily get disoriented and lost, especially since the camera controls are a bit glitchy and every wrong move can flip your perspective and leave you wondering.

The actual shooter mechanics are sketchy at best as well, because you can hit or miss the target even if your crosshair is a few centimeters away from the monster. The enemies have ranged attacks and it can be almost impossible to hit them with a melee weapon, which happens to be your only option when you first start the adventure.

From a technical point of view, the game is about as basic as it can get, featuring sprites and the usual old-school tricks to make you think that you’re playing something retro. However, the gimmick only works when it’s done right, which is definitely not the case here, due to all the flaws that plague the game. Hence, even if the graphics are quite similar to what Doom featured over two decades ago, the level design is too awful to be worth exploring.

All things considered, DoomZone just fails at everything it tries to do, either as a tribute to id Software’s classic, or as a standalone game. Thus, there are too many mistakes and inconveniences that hurt the overall experience, which makes it difficult to both enjoy or recommend the game.