DOOM

Doom needs no introduction as it’s the most influential FPS of all time that people still play to this day. With the game’s 25th anniversary coming up, Bethesda and iD trusted Nerve to make a solid remaster of Doom 1 and 2 to resell on modern consoles and mobile devices. How unfortunate then with how bad these ports are. They may have fixed the issue with the slower music, but there is no reason for this game to run capped at 35 FPS with no option to change it. Hell, the mobile port you could get before they replaced this ran at a perfectly fine 60 with no drops, so I don’t know how they managed to screw the pooch with the Unity engine of all things. The aiming also feels terrible due to how your aim drifts whenever you swipe instead of just stopping. Thankfully, this can be bypassed by enabling a controller, but then you run into two more issues: non-rebindable controls, and more importantly, you cannot access the weapon wheel while using a controller, you can only cycle through weapons manually. WHY?! Just let me hold down a bumper and use the analog stick to select a weapon instead of taking a millennium just to cycle through everything I have just for the weapon I want. Hopefully this port will get to a point where it’s acceptable, but right now you’re better off just jailbreaking your phone and porting Doom to it yourself.

I love doom, and when I saw it finally got an update for the most recent OS I was super excited to finally get to play on my iPhone again. Installation was fine, and the game looks pretty great (although I wish it could take up more of the screen during gameplay) but there is one glaring issue that removes all benefits and makes a download not worth it. The controls. The controls make this game almost completely unplayable, especially in the way that Doom is meant to be played: fast paced and frenetic action. With how poorly the controls were optimized for this release, it makes sustained fire for any gun difficult, and maneuvering extremely difficult because the aiming touch controls are very sluggish and non-responsive compared to how they should be. Walking/running is fine, it’s the aiming that makes the game unplayable in the fast-paced way doom is meant to be played. The old control style was fantastic. Bring that back and all will be well in the Doom mobile world because this update, as of now, honestly was a little insulting. I want to say I paid 7 or 8 dollars for the game but my memory is pretty bad, and after waiting years for it to be compatible again I would expect it not to have such a glaring oversight in playability. I’m holding out that it’ll get an update. Please do consider fixing the controls.

The old port of this actually had pretty good controls. This one is laughable. The move stick has a tap to run setting that you can’t change and it also has a pretend sensitivity to it so that if you hold the “stick” further you run faster. I end up basically walking around the whole time because moving my thumb halfway up the screen to move the proper speed is clunky and blocks the view. The tap to shoot setting is awkward as well and something that plagues touch screen games in general, if you want to shoot you can’t aim. You have to aim, pick up your thumb and hope the enemy doesn’t move and if they do, use the awkward strafe stick on the left. Automatic weapons are also not hold down to shoot like you might expect, you double tap for that as well. The old controls where there was a shoot button was awkward but made more sense. Other than that this game has been awesome since it came out so don’t be surprised by anything, you might just be wishing for some arrow keys and the ctl button instead of the clunky crap controls they slapped in here.