Doom Resurrection- iPhone

If you’re a first-person shooter whore and own an iPhone/iPod Touch, here’s a game to satiate those shooter pangs while you’re on the go. Developed for the iPhone OS by Escalation Studios under the leadership of the legendary John Carmack himself, Doom Resurrection runs parallel to Doom 3. This on-rails shooter puts you in the demon-gibs covered boots of a space marine of Delta Squad, who’s sole mission is to escape the Union Aerospace Corporation (UAC) complex after an experiment accidentally opens a portal to hell.

The game was initially designed as a standard shooter that allowed you to control the movement of the marine, but when that didn’t work, as a last ditch effort the game was revamped to play like Virtua Cop, House of the Dead, and other arcade shooters where you’re given control of just the crosshair, and the protagonist moves on his own. This old-school arcade style’s not been used in the Doom series before, but it works really well for this game. You control the aiming reticule by tilting your iPod Touch/iPhone around, and shoot by clicking on the lower right corner of the screen. Similarly, you can reload by touching the upper right corner and switch weapons by tapping the upper left corner of the screen.

You can stash up a maximum of 3 weapons at any given point of time, and ammunition isn’t too abundant either - so the game feels like a real survival horror (minus the scary elements) since you’re always swapping between weapons, conserving ammo, and at the same time, disposing off hordes of relentless demons. Even with such a diverse turn from the series standard FPS style, the newly adopted gameplay works incredibly well, and is more fun than quite a few older iterations of Doom.

Where presentation is concerned, Resurrection gives little to complain about. The game looks absolutely phenomenal when compared to other games on the platform, with fluid animations, respectably detailed character meshes, detailed textures and heaps of eye-candy. In fact, I’d say its one of the best looking games on the iPhone OS. The sound on the other hand leaves a lot to be desired, since the game’s arsenal of powerful weapons sound like bottom-of-the-pit quality sound-clips, or peashooters.

There’s quite a bit to be offered in Doom Resurrection, but longevity is certainly not on the list. The game lasts for a mere two and a half hours, which makes it pricey for a $9.99 USD (Rs. 500) game. But, for what it’s worth, the game offers quality over quantity with some really well-paced action, a story-line that never comes in the way, and it really shows the extent a developer that knows what they’re doing, can harness the power of the iPhone/ iPod Touch. If you think size (or length rather) doesn’t matter, this one’s a good buy.