DOOM is one of those games that helped to define a genre. From running around with a myriad of realistic and ridiculous weaponry, to the blood and gore, and even the occasionally questionable imagery, DOOM helped define the First Person Shooter for what it was going to become. If you want proof of the games importance, you just have to watch the video here to see Bill Gates deliver a talk about Window 95 from inside the game. The games popularity saw it ported to pretty much every system available at the time in various flavours and forms.

Now, John Carmack himself, has brought it to the iPhone.

Continue reading DOOM Classic now available in the App Store for the iPhone

This is the first in what will hopefully be a series of articles, where we here at Dice of Doom look at old games, and see if they are really as good as we once thought.

Warning: this is a pretty long post. If you don’t want to read everything, just scroll through, scan the pretty pictures, and go to the Conclusions at the bottom.

Half-Life 1 was, indeed, a great move forwards in the First Person Shooter genre. But how does the gameplay hold up these days? I unearthed my copy, jumped through hoops to install it on 64 bit Vista, and started a new game.

Continue reading Nostalgia Revisited: Half-Life 1

Team Fortress 2. In case you didn’t know, it’s a First Person Shooter game, built on the Half Life 2 engine. And it’s incredible. It’s the First Person Shooter for everyone. It caters for every gameplay type you could want, in addition to having a huge focus on teamwork, far more than any other game I’ve played. Also, you can buy the game online for a mere US$20, or US$10 during some promotions. I challenge you to find any half-decent modern game for that kind of price; more on that below.

For those who know nothing about it, TF2 may need some introducing. Let’s do this the interesting way, via the internetz! Oh, and movies. Specifically, the developers have made several videos introducing the classes. Try these on for size:

Continue reading Team Fortress 2

At long last Wolfenstein 3D, the classic first person shooter that helped define the genre (if not the industry), has been released for the iPhone. It’s all here, the cheesy sounds and music, the funny ‘Aiiieeee’ of the Nazi’s that you kill and the flat world that has no stairs. I spent far too much time playing this game, and I mean far too much time. In order to illustrate how much time I spent playing this game, as a right handed person, on a bet, completed the game left handed… Yes, that’s right, I had no life at university…

Continue reading Wolfenstein 3D on the iPhone

Going through a lot of the games that are being made available for the iPhone, many of them appear to be ports or remakes of classic games. On the weekend I spent quite a bit of time enjoying a fairly good reproduction of the classic Space Invaders dubbed Space Invasion. Apparently all you need to do to make a new game is change of few letters. The port of the game is really quite accurate and faithful to the original and is well worth the dollar or two it cost me.

More importantly though, it got me thinking about the sort of games that you would want to take with you if you were going to be stranded on a desert island (not as good as the dessert island which comes with cake and ice-cream). If you had to pick one (reasonably retro) game from each genre and you were to have a permanently charged portable/mobile device – what would you take?

Personally, this is my list:

• Arcade: Space Invaders (made before I was born and still not boring?)
• Puzzle: Tetris (Good ol’ Russian goodness)
• Board Game: Monopoly (not really a computer classic, but a board game classic)
• FPS: Doom II (or Quake 1 – hard to say here…)
• RPG: Pokemon (Cos you will have a long time to catch them all, apparently…)

I would love to hear what your lists would be in the comments below.

I was doing my morning reading when I came across this hilarious HL2 fan fiction
(edit) after a little research I found the source! Squirrelking’s Fanfiction

John Freeman who was Gordon Freemans brother was one day in an office typing on a computer. He got an email from his brother that said that aliens and monsters were attacking his place and aksed him for help so he went.
John Freeman got his computer shut down and wet on the platform to go up to the roof of the building where he left his motorcycle and normal people close because he was in his office lab coat. John Freeman got on his motorcycl and said “its time for me to live up to my family name and face full life consequences” so he had to go.
John Freeman ramped off the building and did a backflip and landed. He kept driving down the road and made sure there was no zombies around because he ddint have weapon.
The contrysides were nice and the plants were singing and the birds and the sun was almost down from the top of the sky. the mood was set for John Freemans quest to help his brother where he was. John Freeman looked around the countrysides and said “its a good day to do what has to be done by me and help my brother to defeat the enemys”.
John Freeman was late so he had to drive really fast. A cop car was hiden near by so when John Freeman went by the cops came and wanted to give him a ticket. Here John Freeman saw the first monster because the cop was posessed and had headcrabs.
“I cant give you my lisense officer” John Freeman said
“Why not?” said the headcrab oficer back to John Freeman.
“Because you are headcrab zombie” so John Freeman shot the oficer in the head and drove off thinking “my brother is in trouble there” and went faster.
John Freeman had to go faster like the speed of sound and got there fast because Gordon needed him where he was. John Freeman looked at road signs and saw “Ravenholm” with someons writing under it saying “u shudnt come here” so John Freeman almost turned around but heard screaming like Gordon so he went faster again.
John Freeman drove in and did another flip n jumped off his motorbike and the motor bike took out some headcrab zombies infront of John Freeman. John Freeman smiled and walked fast. John Freeman then looked on the ground and found wepon so he pickd it up and fired fast at zombie goasts in front of a house.
John Freeman said “Zombie goasts leave this place” and the zombie goasts said “but this is our house” and John Freeman felt sorry for them becaus they couldnt live there anymore because they were zombie goasts so he blew up the house and killed the zombie goasts so they were at piece.
Then John Freeman herd another scream from his brother so he kept walking really faster to get where he was. Ravenholdm was nothing like the countrysides there was no birds singing and the pants were dead and teh dirt was messy and bloody from headcrabs.
When John Freeman got to where the screaming was started from he found his brother Gorden Freeman fightin the final bosss and Gordon said “John Freeman! Over here!” so John Freeman went there to where Gordon Freeman was fighting. John Freeman fired his bullet from teh gun really fast and the bullets went and shot the final boss in the eyes and the final boss couldnt see.
Gordon Freeman said “its time to end this ones and for all!” and punched the final boss in the face and the final boss fell. John Freeman said “thanks i could help, bro” and Gordon Freeman said “you should come here earlier next time” and they laughed.
The laughed overed quickly though because John Freeman yelled “LOOK OUT BRO!” and pointed up to the top of the sky. Gordon Freeman looked up and said “NOO! John Freeman run out of here fast as you can!” and John Freeman walked real fast out.
John Freeman loked back and saw Gordon get steppd on by the next boss and he was mad and angry.
“I’ll get you back evil boss!” John Freeman yelled at the top of lungs.
to be continued..?

Original here.

(click on link to see image at iPhone resolution)

oh wait… How would you control it? That would be a toughy…

In case you are wondering why I am going on about this, id Software’s John Carmack (a fan of the iPhone) has come out and said that one of their current franchises (Doom, Quake or Wolfenstein) is likely to appear on the iPhone in the near future.

Awesome…

“We have a title we want to develop exclusively for iPhone,” he says. “I’m not announcing anything specifically, but it would be a graphical tour de force.”

Fantastic. He goes on to describe the iPhone to be in the same class as the PS2 and Xbox (all-be-it with less graphics grunt, but more RAM).

I personally can’t wait to kill demonic monsters (or Germans) on my iPhone… Controlling the dame thing could be a bit complicated though. Although there have been suggestions in this field as well.

[Via Forbes Magazine]