I’m actually quite surprised that DOOM Resurrection for the iPhone turned-out to be a House-of-the-Dead kind of shooter, you know, like the one that you find in arcades.
Basically a linear, on-rails shooter, you don’t get much control on where you are heading, but once you bump into those nasties (staple stuff if you have played Doom 3), you are supposed to tilt the iPhone/iPod Touch to aim and fire away.
I doubt that many would take up to the kind of control scheme offered in John Carmack’s latest game, but at the end of the day, it was probably done to keep the game running at a decent frame rate. The buttons to reload, duck, change weapons and shoot are assigned to the four corners of the iPhone.
Talking bout frame rates, one key area that received lavish attention is the graphics; it’s really like having the desktop version of DOOM 3 in the palm of your hand. Everything looks so crisp, and while some enemies suffer from lower res textures, Doom Resurrection puts every other 3D iPhone game in the shed.
Guiding you through the game is a flying robot owned by a scientist encountered early in the game. And as far as I recall, DOOM Resurrection contains a whole lot more dialogue (done through static cutscenes, ala Phoenix Wright) compared to its PC predecessor.
The linear gameplay does spring up some annoying suprises, as the game tends to place you right in the middle of a room, directly in front one of those nasties. Or have one of them appear right behind you and you’ll get a mandatory stomping when you turn around. Along with those cheap tricks, the game does provide a sense of horror, especially when you have them nasties coming out from the dark areas of the screen (there’s an overbright option should you feel chicken).
Having said all that, DOOM Resurrection provides an experience like no other on the iPod Touch/iPhone, so if you have 10 bucks to spare, do check it out! Click here to purchase and download DOOM Resurrection from the App Store.
You summed it up very well in this piece. Even though this game is light years behind the PC equivalents (obviously) it is also light years ahead of most other 3d shooters on the iPhone. I actually found the ‘on rails’ gameplay to be kind of rewarding, because it took some burden off me and just let me do a shoot anything that moves kind of thing.