Upon starting up Doom from Steam (which worked with ease, surprisingly) and wanted to try an authentic, difficult, “Basic” Doom experience. So, I tried the first mission ( not exactly the shareware version) on the “hurt me plenty” difficulty. It took my about two and a half hours to get through it, with about an hour and a half just on these two levels – levels five and six. With level five in particular, I had the level mapped down to every enemy i should be hitting at precisely the right time. I had died pretty quickly the first time playing the level, and hadn’t saved my game the entirety of my time playing. This made my shotgun ammo (which the level supplied plenty of) a valuable resource for me. After a few tries of just holding down control with the shotgun equipped, I learned to take a deep breath and try to eliminate the enemies one by one by specifically targeting them. What made the level particularly interesting was the chamber in which two hidden doors opened on both sides of the room, with a ton of enemies in them:
Yeah.. this one really got to me. Of all the levels in the first mission, I think this one helped me develop my skill in the game, since I would have to run around in panic mode trying to get the health packs on either side. A couple times I would get past this only to die within the next minute on the next part of the level, which was great. I think whatever skill I gained during that level really helped me with the next several (or I got less anxious and more confident?) because I managed to gather a lot more weapons and health and not die again until the last level of the game. A couple of closing comments about my first time playing Doom: The game doesn’t hold your hand, or even try to. Which was good and bad. I didn’t realize there was a map button until the second to last level, and it took me quite awhile to realize I could shoot the canisters of waste to blow up enemies (and another bit of time before I realized enemies could do the same to me). This lack of handholding really amplified the exploration aspect for me, when I realized the game wasn’t trying to lead me I guess I became more curious about what I could and couldn’t do. Secondly, I thought it was interesting about how the game almost expects you to die several times while playing a level. Maybe it was just me playing the fifth level a billion times, but the moment of finding out where the wall was that all the enemies were hiding behind as well as how to trigger it was very rewarding, and it was something I definitely did not notice on my first playthrough. Super excited for the class!
P.S. – I grabbed that image on a Youtube playthrough of the original shareware version, and totally didn’t even think of there being a hidden wall behind a hidden wall that could lead to the outside of the level .. I guess there’s a lot more to find in this game.