Doom Travelogues 04: A Little Less Conversation

Welcome to Contraville, USA, where slow-moving bullets are the #1 cause of death.

Some things come along and take you totally by surprise, it seems. I had heard a little bit about 2004’s Action Doom prior to playing it, most of that little having to do with its over-the-top, tongue-in-cheek PR campaign involving fake print adverts, physical copies complete with manuals, and Action Doom-branded t-shirts. All of this build-up for a four-map Doom WAD is in and of itself pretty amusing, but, lo and behold, the WAD itself is also pretty fucking great. In my professional assessment, anyway. Pretty, fucking, great. With only a handful of levels “Scuba” Steve Browning somehow manages to catapult his WAD into a position alongside Aliens TC and Batman Doom, where it assumes its rightful place in the hallowed pantheon of truly impressive Doom total conversions.

So, what exactly is Action Doom, you say? Well, in the simplest terms it’s the answer to the question “What would the lovechild of Doom and Metal Slug look like?” Less simply, it is a side-scrolling 2D arcade game seen through the lens of a first-person shooter, where every bullet is a physical object that can be dodged and the only way to go is forward. Okay, I guess that’s a pretty simple explanation, too. It’s really not that hard to wrap your head around. You’re dropped into a level, as you always are in Doom, and fight your way across it in linear-like fashion. And Bosses. There are also bosses. More of them than there are levels, in fact.

I REGRET NOTHING!!!!

There’s a narrative setup for the WAD which, I’ll be honest, I didn’t read, but that’s okay since everything you need to know is conveyed through the game itself. Your journey is bookended by a couple brief cutscenes and, in a unique use of weapon sprites, you’ll occasionally come across clipboards giving you a brief glimpse into the UAC’s latest bad idea, that being genetic experimentation. Also aliens are in the mix this time, so look out for that. As is the case with many user WADs, if you go in assuming the story is “Those knuckleheads at the UAC are at it again!”, you won’t be wrong. The Metal Slug-style paramilitary theme and the addition of aliens are enough to give it an identity of its own, though, and the presentation doesn’t hurt either.

Speaking of presentation, the Metal Slug comparison continues to bear fruit. These levels are more or less straight lines with things to shoot along the way. The first mission is literally a one-way street with exploding buildings that enemies materialize from, a standoff with a tank, and a friggin’ Contra boss at the end. The second mission is even more Metal Sluggy due to multiple branching paths (including a super secret one!) that do a great job of selling the notion that you’re playing through a 2D arcade side-scroller in the first person. Despite the A-to-B construction and small number of levels there is a lot of variety here visually. Apart from the aforementioned cityscape, you’ll traipse through a forest, a lab, Hell, a space station, and a few other locales. All of it is well-realized and some sections are really impressive. Suffice it to say Scuba Steve pulls some things off in these levels that you’ve probably never seen before.

Yup, this is also a screenshot from this WAD. No, I'm not going to explain this one, either.

The gameplay end of the equation works pretty seamlessly with the level design to make this crazy arcade retrofit actually work. The Action Doom project apparently metastasized from a Metal Slug weapon mod, and not surprisingly you’ll be seeing heavy machine guns, raw-kit lawn-churrrs, and flamethrowers. There’s also an interesting spread-shot gun and a BFG replacement that, so far as I can tell, just kills you. All guns fire projectiles, and much like arcade shooters, these weapons are treated more or less like luxury items that temporarily boost your killing power. Most of the time you’ll be using your pistol, which isn’t a problem since most enemies die in one hit anyway. You also have a knife, though I can’t imagine why you’d want to get close enough to an enemy to use it since any hit will kill you.

You heard that right. You die in one hit. No health packs. No armor. Just you, your gun, and a single hit point. It’s straight-up Contra, which incidentally is also the name of the highest difficulty setting. Starting on the lowest difficulty setting does boost you to a full hundred hit points, but A) Who plays on the lowest difficulty setting?, B) Remember when I said no health packs?, and C) The true ending is only accessible through Contra difficulty. The WAD does autosave at specific points to ease the challenge a bit, but all the same you’ll probably want to maintain a separate save even if you’re the type of person who doesn’t normally like to. I decided on this course of action pretty early on and was extremely glad I did. Certain segments can get pretty bullet hellish.

It's hard to tell from this screenshot, but that's a river of corpses complete with bodies cascading over a waterfall. Grisly!

Opposition is a mixture of familiar faces and new additions. You’ll see a lot of sergeants and chaingunners, though their bullets are now projectile-class attacks. There’s also a new black ops trooper that in the dark is only visible by its eyes, which makes for a cool first impression when you first encounter them. Imps are back, but now try to sidle up to you and explode, kamikaze-style. There are also Thing-inspired imp headcrabs that show up at one point. Some pinkies make a cameo during your brief Hell jaunt, as do a couple of Bruiser Brothers. From time to time you’ll also have to take out stationary artillery pieces.

By far the most impressive new enemies are the WAD’s bosses. All of these fights are quite inventive and a lot of fun to tackle. They’re also a pretty bizarre lot, to the point that I feel like I shouldn’t say much more than that lest I ruin the fun. I’ll just say that a couple of these bosses had me shaking my head at just how ridiculous they were. The super-secret final boss is just the icing on the proverbial cake, requiring you to think outside the box a little in order to secure victory. To be honest, I have never witnessed this many creative, enjoyable boss fights in a single WAD, and I don’t imagine I’ll see anything that surpasses it anytime soon.

Nothing like relaxing at home with a six-pack, my Caco plushy, and... a copy of Daikatana? What the Hell?!

The soundtrack for Action Doom, contributed by Julian Aubourg, deserves special mention for doing an excellent job of setting the tone for your bloody gun-venture. We’re mostly talking about tunes that feel like they could have originated from some adrenaline-fueled 80’s action sci-fi affair. They’re fast-paced and percussive; in other words, good music to shoot dudes to. There’re also a few borrowed tracks that make their way to Action Doom from other series, including Metroid, Contra, and Metal Slug, which all feel like they’re used appropriately.

Action Doom just hits all the right notes for an arcade-inspired WAD. There’s even a score counter at the top center of the screen. And functional arcade cabinets inside it. A lot of it is super dumb and it’s not afraid to lean into it. Clearly, though, a lot of love and effort went into the creation of this big dumb thing and it shows. You can’t fake passion. In all aspects Scuba Steve went above and beyond with Action Doom, and I look forward to someday playing the sequel/prequel, Urban Brawl. If you haven’t figured out by now, I had a blast playing Action Doom, and if you give it a shot you probably will too. And Scuba Steve, wherever you are, thank you.