Back when I was way, way too young to see R-rated movies — before the ESRB brought its particular brand of hateration to kids’ gaming experience — there was Doom. Not the first, not the best, but nevertheless the undisputed O.G. of first-person shooters. Doom rocked my pre-pubescent socks with its demon-blasting, space-marine-grunting, 16-bit slices of killin’.
Now, its sequel, Doom II, was really more of what would be considered an expansion pack today — some new enemies, a couple new weapons, new maps, and a little engine tweaking. Gameplay was the same. And it remains the same in its latest incarnation/revisitation on Xbox Live Arcade. If you’ve never played the series before, have no fear, it’s not so different from what you know already — but it is extremely…ancient, for lack of a better term. In fact, playing Doom II for the first time in maybe 15 years, I was struck by just how incredibly dated it felt. Like going from typing to shorthand, or from Windows to DOS.

