USA Todat Article on Doom. At Computer Gaming World magazine, where people play games for a living, playing Doom during working hours is forbidden. People have been known to play non-stop up to 36 hours, says Ian Mapleson, a student at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, who is writing a thesis on the game. Doom is an unabashedly violent action game with a boilerplate plot pitting you against aliens on a godforsaken moon of Mars. You defend yourself with an arsenal that includes a pistol, pump-action shotgun, rocket launcher and chain saw.
Blood flows liberally.
But Doom's attraction is more than blood lust. Other games have 3-D graphics, which allow players to move forward or backward or spin in any direction and see a continuous image as if they were there. But Doom's 3-D environment seems seamless. And it's very fast - a key feature in an action game and a difficult technical trick to accomplish. Innovative use of lighting and stereo sound only add to the realism.