Doom II (2) RPG Review

Anannya Sen’s Review

My kingdom for a toilet.

It's been almost four years since we reviewed Doom and it was one of the early titles on mobile. It was so good that it won our coveted Ice Cold award, and you can have a read of why if you click here.

So what has changed in the last 4 years and has Doom II improved on it's predecessor? Well, yes and no. The graphics are certainly a lot slicker than that of the original and there's a lot more detail. But they still look a bit blocky and are nowhere near as good as some java titles are. That being said, the animation and camera effects are pretty cool. As are the big bulging eyes (you'll find out). Sound is probably the area with the biggest room for improvement. There's not much of a soundtrack and effects are sparse.

Controls are nice and easy. You can cycle through weapons using 7 and *. Movement is the same as the last game, you can turn and move or use 1 and 3 to move sideways. To pick up an item walk over it or press the main button. In fact a little hand icon appears in the top right showing you what you can do to objects.

What has improved slightly is the gameplay. Now we were huge fans of the original and this is no different. The game is essentially an RPG game with some turn based combat. The free roaming parts are cool, battles are cool, improving stats are cool, the variety of weapons is cool, and finding stuff is cool. Oh, and I forgot to mention the plot is cool too. Because this game definitely has some humour to it.

What is also cool, and new, are the mini games. They add a little bit of variety to the gameplay, you can hack into things using a number game, perform target practice to increase your accuracy, use a code to unlock stuff and move blocks to open areas. There's even a mini game where you run on a treadmill and improve your stats. These games can also be played outside of the main game.

The variety of weapons and creatures is really good. You will get a number of weapons as the game progresses and this is complemented by the number and types of creatures. They all look different and are susceptible to different weapons except for one that seems to affect more than others.....

As mentioned, the plot of the game is cool. It's big, just like it's predecessor and already I'm itching to play it through until the end. There are nice discoveries to be made (and I'm not just talking about the secret rooms) and boss battles to be had. You can save your progress at any time, have a look at the map, and even wander back to areas you may have missed.

There are a lot of things to collect. You've got your guns, ammo and snacks. You also get credits for use in vending machines and there are whole hosts of special abilities you can get from certain drinks. This is in addition to the fun of chopping up entrails with a chainsaw.

I'm going to leave it at that for now as I'm still playing it and having a lot of fun. When the game came out, we gave it an ice cold award as it's a perfect game for your mobiles. This is brilliantly addictive to play, but there are a few little tweaks which could have made this amazing. As it is, a gold award is still pretty darn respectable.