Doom (franchise)

The Doom video games consist of first-person shooters in which the player controls an unnamed space marine commonly referred to as Doomguy or Doomslayer by fans. The player has to battle the forces of Hell, consisting of demons and the undead. In the games, the player's character will often go back and forth through hell. Doom II: Hell on Earth follows after the events in Doom, the player once again assumes the role of the unnamed space marine. After returning from Hell, the player finds that Earth has also been invaded by the demons, who have killed billions of people.[2]

The development of the original Doom started in 1992, when John Carmack developed a new game engine, the Doom engine, while the rest of the id Software team finished the Wolfenstein 3D prequel, Spear of Destiny.

Doom II: Hell on Earth was released in 1994, followed by two other official releases based on its version of the Doom engine: Master Levels for Doom II in 1995, and Final Doom in 1996.

Doom 64 was released in 1997, developed by Midway Games and supervised by id Software.[3]

Doom 3 was announced in 2000. A reboot to the original Doom, it uses new graphics technology. Doom 3 was hyped to provide as large a leap in realism and interactivity as the original game and helped renew interest in the franchise when it was released in 2004. Doom 3 had its own expansion pack released in 2005, titled Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil.

After the Doom 4 project development was scrapped in 2013, id Software's Tim Willits said that the next game in the Doom series was still the team's focus, but it has not been confirmed to be titled Doom 4.[4] It was later renamed to simply Doom in 2014. The game became a second reboot of the series, rather than a continuation or origin story of earlier games and was released in 2016.[5]

A sequel to the 2016 reboot, Doom Eternal was released in 2020.

In 1996, Next Generation ranked the series as the 19th top game of all time, for how "despite the hundreds of copycat titles, no one has ever been able to equal id's original, pulsing classic."[67] In 1999, Next Generation listed the Doom series as number 25 on their "Top 50 Games of All Time", commenting that, "despite the graphic advances since Doom was released, the pixilated Barons of Hell and Cyber Demons still rank as some of the scariest things that can grace your screen."[68]

The series' unnamed protagonist, a marine, has had a mostly positive reception. In 2009, GameDaily included "the Marine" on its list of "ten game heroes who fail at the simple stuff" for his inability to look up and down in the original series.[69] UGO Networks ranked him fourth on its 2012's list of best silent protagonists in video games, noting his courage to continue in silence even when he faces Hell's army.[70] In 2013, Complex ranked Doomguy at number 16 on its list of the greatest soldiers in video games for being "the original video game space marine" and "one of the classic silent protagonists".[71] Both CraveOnline and VGRC ranked him the fifth most "badass" male character in the video game's history.[72][73]