Without a doubt, the game that really popularised the FPS genre as we know it today is id Software’s DOOM which was released back in 1993 and was a huge upgrade over Wolfenstein 3D which was the current standard for FPS games at the time. Now, Bethesda released the DOOM triology for every current-gen home console albeit with a little nuisance in the form of useless DRM…

What did Bethesda release?

Earlier today, Bethesda released ports of the DOOM triology for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and XBOX One thus making it possible to play these games without having to hack your console.

DOOM can run on anything from a toaster to current home consoles and smartphones. However, you won’t be running Brutal DOOM or certain intensive mods at 60+FPS on every computer as they can be pretty demanding!

Furthermore, they also updated the iOS port of DOOM I to finally support iOS 11+ (it didn’t have a 64-bit binary before) and released DOOM II for it. On the Android side, ports of DOOM I and DOOM II got released although they require Android 8.0 probably for no good reason.

Price-wise, DOOM I and DOOM II come at $5 each while DOOM III comes at $10 thus being quite a bit more expensive than the same offerings on GOG/Steam as they’re all 67% off at the moment with the first two costing around $2 and DOOM III BFG costing around $7.50. However, you’re probably paying a bit extra for the porting work although if you have a hacked console, you can provide your own legitimate game files and play away!

What about the DRM? Should I be concerned?

Apparently, Bethesda thinks that games that are over 15 years old with the oldest one being released a quarter of a century ago should have protection against pirates and as a result, bundled DRM with them.

Apparently, Bethesda doesn’t want you pirating their newly released DOOM ports even though WADs for the full PC version are a Google search away

According to this article by The Verge, DOOM I and DOOM II require you to have a Bethesda account and log into it before being able to play the game although you’re allowed to play it offline once you do that. However, DOOM III appears to let you back out of the account log in/creation prompt but it still requires you to have an account in order to use some features and play online.

As usual, with the above DRM, there always a few issues namely:

• Someday, Bethesda might decide to shut down authentication services for these games which would render them unplayable
• You’re forced to create yet another account that you probably won’t be using
• If you download your game at home and open it the first time outside where you don’t have internet access, you won’t be able to play it
• It is unclear whether the DRM check on DOOM I/DOOM II is once-only or if it needs to be done periodically

Conclusion

While console ports of old games are fun and all, you might be better off playing the original DOOM games with a keyboard and mouse on a PC as they were originally intended to be played. Not only will you get the original experience but you’ll also be able to download tons of mods and go online to play on heavily modded servers with clients like DoomSeeker 😉

Note: Featured Image is from the video in the announcement tweet linked above