Yes, It’s Doom, THAT Doom from id Software and yes the iPhone is powerful enough to play it. The thing about it is that I love playing this game. No matter where it is, what platform, I will always play it. The iPhone, my netbook ad game console. It doesn’t matter.

There’s nothing special about this version but what’s cool is that it does have multiplayer, local Wi-fi multiplayer. I’m sure if I were in the same room with Tom Balistreri (Dir. of North American Operations here at GDN) and we both had iPhones we would do two things, have a lightsaber battle and play Doom together because we’re gaming geeks regardless of our titles and positions in life.

The multiplayer offers both Co-op and Deathmatch. So once I was done kicking his butt in DM we’d flip over to Co-op and destroy some demon scum. But he’s not here so I had to content myself with the single player mode which faithfully recreates the original.

The thing I wasn’t so sure about were the controls. There’s been a rash of iPhone games of late with horrible controls. Like they have no concept of how we hold our phone, how big our fingers are or how we interface with a touch screen only device. Generally, I hold the phone and game. Sometimes I’ll lie it down on a surface like a tablet but only at home. On the go you have to hold it mostly.

The game offers three choices of controls a 2 ’button’ move and fire, a 3 ’button’ move, turn and fire and a more standard move, aim and fire version. Of these I found the two button version the easiest to control even though it was still more like my guy was flailing about running into walls and panicking incessantly. Image Robin Williams (the actor) on crack and you have a picture of what my character was doing. No not shaking hands the wrong way and saying Na-noo Na-noo, but general spasticness (not that I dislike Robin Williams, on the contrary oh and pop culture ref #1 today).

Anyway after a fairly long period of adjustment to the control scheme I finally got cooking and was even able to pinpoint targets from a fair distance and nail them. I even scored a double kill with a shotgun from about 15 feet (estimating of course). Oh and while writing the review, I realized that you can move the controls and UI elements around. Man they should have included a tutorial with this. That could give you some better control with the three button variations. I stuck to the 2 button.

Is the game fun? That’s like asking if puppy dogs, cotton candy and affectionate grandmothers are sweet. Of course it’s fun! After all, it’s DOOM for Carmack’s sake! They made a lot of changes to the game but in all the right ways. They didn’t add new-fangled things like jumping, jet packs or anything of that sort. It’s still the same run and gun action that made DOOM the grandfather of FPS’s and brought us all into an entirely new game experience. Now I play the game on the iPhone, just because I can and it’s cool.

Further Screens: