DooM - No, that's how they spell it, it's not a typo...

Wait...are the ones on the right smiling?

Good lord, talk about a game that really changed the face of video games.  There are some landmark games in history, and this one seems to get overlooked by things like Mario, Pong, or Halo.  For god's sake, before the term "First Person Shooter" came in to common usage, any FPS was called a DooM Clone.  Few other games bear the distinction of having their entire genre defined with their name.

DooM, for the eight people who don't know, is about a outbreak of demons.  To be specific, a far-future lab on Mars is toying with teleportation and manage to open a direct pipeline to Hell, and get the entire moon the lab is based on sucked in to the plane of suffering to boot.  You, the gritty space marine, are the only one left to fight back the hordes of demonic horrors and save the earth.

Ok, so this is such a tired line, but the thing to remember is, THIS IS WHAT STARTED IT.  This base concept, with a few tweaks here and there, was rehashed for the next ten years, and is still in circulation to this day.  What's more, this is one of the first games to really bring the concept of video game violence to the main stream, both in the game community and the mainstream media.

FEEL THE FURY OF MY TEEN ANGST!

And oh momma the violence.  No, it's not the beat-you-with-your-own-arm shock of God of War, but it's amazing for the day.  Unlike Wolfenstine, where people just drop in a small spray of blood, the enemies ooze, shudder, scream and melt when they're killed.  The slow explosion of oddly colored guts that come with the death of the Cacao Demon is still a favorite of mine, in all its pixilated glory.

Not only did you get to fight zombies, pink flesh-ripping bull horrors, spider-brains and floating balls of death, but you got to wander through a field of gory wreckage afterward.  What's more, the levels themselves were creepy as hell, and sparked a whole wave of parent outreach and protest to stave off the impending doom of western civilization.

Are you trying to say wandering through oceans of blood is anything more then good, clean fun?

Another amazing aspect of this whole thing is the modding community.  They must be one of the most dedicated, longest-running bunch of gaming geeks in the world, because they have created literally THOUSANDS of levels, packs, and whole games based off the DooM code.  There is no limit to what's been done, everything from megaman and barney themes, to stuff that makes Silent Hill look like Yo Gabba Gabba.  Pick a movie, there's probably a mod of it floating around, the Alien mod got awards for years and years.

Not Pictured: When the Marshmallow Man explodes like a hefty bag full of meat.

If you've never played it, PLEASE do so.  If you have, dust it off and play it again.  Yes, you'll giggle over the cheap graphics and simple gameplay, but the Cyberdemon can still get the pulse racing now and then.  The ZDooM project has made some amazing strides in bringing the game to new audiences and cleaning it up a bit, while still keeping it faithful to the core system.  Check it out if you can, really.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go get knee deep in the dead...