Doom II RPG (J2ME)

2005 saw John Carmack get a new mobile phone and immediately think about what he could do to push its basic graphics. The result was Doom RPG – a satirical, turn-based dungeon crawler that retells the original game’s limited story through 90-degree movement and chatty NPCs. I thought it worked really well and was surprisingly funny. I’d say a measure of a good mobile game is if you’re still playing it when you don’t need to be. Stuck on the train or at work is one thing. Sitting next to your PlayStation or PC while still fiddling away with a phone game is entirely another. Doom RPG fell into the latter category for me.

id Mobile would go on to reuse that engine in a few more games, notably updating its graphics and technical capabilities for Wolfenstein RPG in 2008. This new engine powers Doom II RPG – the last in id’s series. Gameplay isn’t much different from the first RPG spin-off, but the graphics are a generational improvement that will certainly toasty up your Nokia’s battery. If you’ll also be having fun is the real question.

Acting as a direct sequel, we find ourselves in a new Marine squad responding to a distress call from UAC’s base on Earth’s moon. Though there’s been whispers of recent “classified” trouble on Mars, no one’s aware of what’s in store. Sure enough, it’s those daggum demons. After an ambush (and a collapsing elevator) kill off the main squad, three survivors must work with what’s left of the base’s security team to try and stop this new lunar invasion.

Those advanced graphics show themselves off right away. Doom RPG was all flat levels with untextured floors and ceilings, looking similar to Wolfenstein 3D. This sequel adds up to six height levels, with lifts and ramps transitioning up and down.  Scripting has been improved and cutscenes now have camera moves. Holes get blown into the floor, hallways collapse, or a decompression sequence sucks out enemies and supplies before a door seals the breach. It’s definitely more dynamic and exciting than the original, while looking closer to a Nintendo DS game. How could phone technology ever get better than this??

There are nine, fairly large levels in all. Chatty NPCs return, though they’re a little more rare than they were in the original. A grumpy AI named SAL and an evil one named VIOS end up the major characters. End-level boss battles pull you into cyberspace, where VIOS takes the form of an electric demon. He gives you the option to submit resources to him or destroy them instead. Destroying resources prolongs the fight. Submitting them ends it – helpful if you’re hurt and low on supplies – but it makes things much, much harder for you in the endgame. You’ll always want to destroy if you’re healthy enough to survive the fight.

Doom II RPG’s marquee feature is letting you select which survivor to control. Sgt. Stan Blazkowicz reuses the classic Doom Marine art and continues the mobile RPGs’ trend of tying all the id plots together. Major Morgan lets you play as a lady for the first time in a Doom game. Dr. O’Reilly is a weedy scientist quite out of his element. Each has different starting stats, suggesting you can play through three times and have three different experiences. Just like System Shock 2, this doesn’t work out in practice. Events happen identically, with no branching pathways or exclusive content. Some dialogue gets tweaked based on the character, but the meaning will be similar. Most lines just get copied across all three.

Gameplay has you wander the base, looking for keys, backstory within terminal messages, and the exit. You’ll travel through greenhouses, mechanical areas, and even areas off the moon. Scripted sequences keep some variety going, like a avoiding a gas leak or searching for a keycard hidden inside a cafeteria. These help give parts of levels a unique utility or feel – certainly much more Doom RPG was able to. Along with the advanced graphics, exploration is a definite improvement over id’s other mobile RPGs and a strong reason to play this sequel. Unfortunately, I felt it falters elsewhere.

Combat is still turn-based. Moving, shooting, or using an item ends your turn, then every nearby enemy gets to advance or take a swipe. There’s no way to actively block, or use cover, so you’ll be taking unavoidable damage in every fight. You can pass your turn with 9, to try and goad enemies into using their turn to move into your line of fire, but that’s about it for strategy. Like the other id RPGs, combat’s a real back-and-forth slugfest with your survival mostly determined by how many health kits are left in your inventory.  “Difficult” and “Nightmare” end up more about resource management and finding all the secrets, rather than playing the game differently.

RPG-style character stats do affect combat, but only slightly. It’s another reason why the three characters feel similar, despite having different starting stats. These quickly balance out anyway. Stats raise slightly when you level up (from killing baddies), through actions like chainsawing everything you see (for Strength), or from playing training minigames. These boost Agility and Accuracy stats without much effort, all the way to a max of 99. You’ll only be stopped by running out of in-game money or patience. But maxing out both hardly makes you superhuman – you’ll still get hit and miss shots often.

Strength gave the biggest noticeable difference, making it so I could lay zombies out in a single chainsaw swipe. But that’s the only weapon that improves damage through stats, and by mid-game, monster hides are resistant to its blades. Some enemies are lightly weaker to certain weapons – zombies to chainsaws, imps to shotguns, Cacodemons to the chaingun – but not enough to build a strategy around it. I didn’t feel like I was finding any weaknesses on end-game monsters, while the plasma rifle seemed strong against everything – as long as I had the ammo for it.

This is where nano-drinks are supposed to come in. Gulping these raise stats for a set number of turns, like +100% attack damage or +30 Agility. The most expensive drinks juice multiple stats at once. Their effects stack, so you can rack up some truly excessive boosts. You’ll want to bust these out for boss fights, or any of the frequent times a cutscene ambushes and surrounds you. Unfortunately, you’re restricted in how many drinks you can get. Hacking vending machines through a minigame lowers their cost by about 25%, but there’s still limited cash across the whole game. It’s resource management again, and you’ll have to save these up for when it really matters.

You also get two new weapons. One is the Soul Cube from Doom 3. It works the same – kill five enemies to “charge” it, then release to instantly kill the demon in front of you. It levels anything except bosses. The other is the Holy Water pistol. When you shoot demons – most enemies are this type – their eyes bulge like a cartoon and they run away. The effect wears off in about three turns and they come charging back, but you can just blast them again, taking chunks off their health each hit. You can refill at any water source, so if you’re near one, you’ve got infinite ammo. You can keep this up until everyone is dead. If you’re surrounded, drinking from it scares everyone away for one turn, giving you a chance to escape.

But honestly – it’s so dumb. The cartoon eyes (or eye, for a Cacodemon) draw a snicker once, but then it’s just a boring slog, repeatedly passing your turns, waiting to splash them again. It’s not exciting, but it’s just too useful to ignore. If you stagger which demon you’re shooting, you can keep everyone away from you and prevented from attacking . If you take damage, a sip from the pistol will preserve your health kits. It’s awfully slow to kill bigger demons, but if they can’t attack the whole time, it really doesn’t matter. It pretty much becomes the gun you plan your whole game around, and I found myself seeking out the level’s water source and using it as a base of operations.

I also think this was the least funny or clever of id’s RPGs. Doom RPG did a much better job at blending legitimately funny moments and scenarios with a plot that kept you guessing. This game has no such mystery. SAL and VIOS aren’t nearly as subtle as the suspicion between doctors Jensen and Guerard. The funniest scripted sequence is an NPC who moonwalks away (it’s not that funny). The only real chuckles came from the bogus loot demons drop (3-in-one oil, a Chinese finger-trap, etc). But these are just throwaway lines of text with no connection to gameplay.

Now, let’s be fair. I may have loved Doom RPG so much because it was my introduction to the series, and it was a real, big-boy, capital-G Game on a platform known for clones of Bejeweled and Bubble Bobble. Gameplay between 1 and 2 is awfully similar, to the point that this one may be your favorite if it’s the game you start with. But I’d still recommend you play Doom RPG first. I haven’t seen anything in id’s RPG series that matches the comedy of trying to blow up the door with barrels, while I actually enjoyed being able to replay levels to get overpowered. You’re just not allowed to do that here, making this feel much more like a linear, 4-5 hour, one-and-done game.

If you’re going to play, you’ll also want the iPhone release from a year later. Graphics are redrawn at a massively improved resolution and level of detail. Blood in most of the J2ME releases is green (I think it depends on the phone manufacturer) while the iPhone is uncensored. Sound in Java is rare, while the iPhone uses clear samples from the PC games. You’ve got that virtual d-pad over half the screen, but you can set opacity to 0 – especially useful if you’ve got a controller paired. If you use the fan-made PC conversions to play the RPGs, you’ll also be using the iPhone release. There’s no good reason to play this version.

Doom II RPG looks great and has better tools to tell a story with, but I just didn’t enjoy it at much. Combat is identical to the other id RPGs, so expect to endlessly eat health kits mid-fight just to stay alive. The Holy Water pistol is ridiculous, but also wildly overpowered, so you just have to deal with it. I didn’t want to chainsaw everything in sight, but I wasn’t building Strength if I didn’t. Which is to say, I felt corralled into a specific playstyle here more than the other id RPGs, while I also wasn’t laughing as much or intrigued by the story. Flashier for sure, but frankly, it feels like their best ideas were used up in Doom RPG.

 

The Good

Runs on an impressive engine. Health kits are plentiful on lower difficulties.

 

The Bad

Little reason to replay. Not as funny as id’s previous RPGs. Limited options in combat is awfully frustrating.

 

“Moon? What are you talking about? You’re on Earth! You bump your head or something?” — Worker