Author: Game Infliction

Doom. Four letters, two gunbarrels, one space marine and boatloads of demon guts is all it takes to change the face of gaming forever.

Id Software’s seminal series is ground zero for first-person shooters, PC gaming, online multiplayer, community modding, speedrunning, and so, so much more.

Video games are still living in the shadow of this infernal masterpiece three-decades later. The FPS genre has evolved a lot since the days they were called “Doom-likes,” and so has the series itself– with varying degrees of success.

How does your favorite title rank among the seven (or so) main entries in the franchise? Which Doom games cover themselves in guts and glory, and which are cursed to wallow knee-deep in the unalived? We promise not to be too rough as we rip and tear through the series to bring you every Doom: Ranked.

7. Doom 3

2004’s Doom 3 is the end result of an ultimatum John Carmack issued to the rest of Id, and it kind of feels that way.

Carmack was dead-set on making a next-generation remake of Doom to showcase the impressive new light and shadow capabilities of the IdTech 4 engine. Doom co-creator John Romero was long gone at this point, and the remaining Id OGs were staunchly opposed to what they saw as a retread– a tech demo in search of a purpose. Carmack very publicly overruled them, and thus we have Doom 3.

To their credit, Carmack and crew made some big changes in pursuit of modernizing the series. Doom 3 is a slower, more story-driven affair than the first two games. There are voiced NPCs and lore-filled terminals that you interact with in a super clever way. Its jumpscares and “monster closets” instill a sense of anxious survival horror, a sharp contrast to the run-and-gun arcade frenzy of classic Doom.

It’s a valiant effort to bring Doom to a new generation of gamer culture. The problem is that this generation was extremely ugly.

The graphics tech itself is awesome. The projectiles and explosions almost make the game’s dull metal hallways interesting, but Id’s decision to showcase the game’s lighting engine is the game’s fatal flaw. You can’t see anything. Intentionally. The game is tuned to be super dark until you switch to your flashlight, which you cannot use at the same time as your weapon.

This was largely met with derision from fans, but the combat is actually tuned around it– juggling between seeing your enemy and shooting it creates a huge amount of drama and tension. It’s actually kind of cool, just not that fun. A popular “duct tape” mod addressed this, as did Doom 3’s “BFG Edition” remaster, but it somehow makes things worse. Having your light and your gun trivializes the entire combat loop. It’s the worst of both worlds.

The new demon designs are sapped of color and charm, turning iconic abominations into run-of-the-mill Umbrella B.O.W.s. It’s impossible to envision them as anything but their counterparts in the 2005 movie. The aesthetic is very of its era and just all wrong for Doom.

Doom is a heavy metal mural airbrushed on the side of a speeding van. Doom 3 is the embodiment of nu metal butt rock– more Mudvayne than Metallica. Decent for what it is, but it would take 12 years more before the series got a refresh with some actual rizz.

6. Doom 64

Some fans insist that Doom 64 is the true sequel to Doom 1 and 2. Id closely supervised Midway Games’ development of the N64 exclusive, resulting in an interesting but ultimately inconsequential side entry in the series– A Doom gaiden.

The game still utilizes sprites, but instead of digitized photos of hand-sculpted maquettes, Doom 64’s demons are pre-rendered with the same SGI tech as Donkey Kong Country. The enemy designs are slightly more subdued, but nowhere near the grey blobs of Doom 3, and they’re a higher resolution than the vintage bestiary.

Doom 64 isn’t hurt too much by its titular console’s limitations, but there are fewer enemies thanks to small cartridge sizes, and the reduced animation frames on the shotguns really robs them of their kick. Worst of all, Midway couldn’t get multiplayer working, despite four-player, split-screen Doom deathmatches being a perfect fit for the system that gave us Goldeneye.

Still, on the whole the game looks great. Doom 64 has a uniquely bleak, gothic vibe, with a gorgeous colored lighting system that’s impressively sophisticated for the era.

Instead of MIDI speed metal, the soundtrack is a dark ambient drone. There’s no HUD, no grimacing Doomguy face, only subtle numbers and letters rendered in bleary N64 textures. The gameplay is largely the same, though a new scripted events system creates neat opportunities for map design.

Doom 64 seems like the game Carmack’s co-owners were afraid Id was going to make: More Doom, slightly different. It’s just not different enough to warrant a higher place on the list. Doom 64 is a fun, fascinating, evolutionary dead end.

That brings us to another followup that doesn’t reinvent the wheel:

5. Doom II

Today’s fans demand big changes to make a sequel worthwhile, but in the olden days folks were perfectly happy with an iterative successor like Doom II.

32 new levels designed in-house by Id, a bunch of new enemies, and just one new weapon was more than enough to make Doom II the highest-selling software program of 1994.

Doom II is Doom refined. Old monsters are reconfigured in clever ways while fresh faces like the Revenant and Arch-Vile add more complexity to demon distribution. Your arsenal has only one addition, but it’s a weapon that would come to define Doom: the Super Shotgun.

So, with all this great new stuff, shouldn’t Doom II be a straight upgrade to the original? It almost is, but Doom II’s map design just doesn’t hit the same.

Maybe it’s the amount of larger, more open levels compared to the disciplined precision of the original’s holy spaces. Doom II was billed as “Hell on Earth,” but the aging tech couldn’t really produce convincing Suburbs or Downtown the same way Duke Nukem’s Build Engine would a couple of years later.

It’s also possible that John Romero was checked out. On the verge of leaving the company after clashing over Quake, Romero contributed fewer and less-interesting maps to Doom II compared to his ten definitive levels from the first game, which may be why Id programmers snuck their co-founder’s disembodied head inside the final boss.

Doom II feels like less of a journey than Doom. As shareware, the first game was divided into three (later four) clear episodes, with interstitial map screens between levels tracing your path of destruction across the moons of Mars until thy flesh is consumed by Hell itself.

As a boxed game from the get go, Doom II is presented as a barely-connected 32-level megawad. The game supposedly depicts a full-on demon invasion of Earth, but this is mostly conveyed through three different skyboxes.

Map duties were largely handled by designers American McGee, of later Alice fame, and Sandy Peterson, who really shines with unique gimmick levels like Tricks & Traps and the infamous Barrels o’ Fun. Doom II has some great maps and lots of innovative twists on the formula, but on the whole it’s a less cohesive and satisfying package than the first game.

At the time, map quality didn’t matter quite as much. Fans had already been sharing their own custom levels en masse, passed around as .wad files via floppy disks and 28-kilobaud modems. Doom II is almost more notable as a platform than as a standalone title. It gave modders and wadders a chance to shine and even go legit.

A group called TeamTNT created two megawads that impressed Id so much they bought the rights and slapped them together for retail as “Final Doom.” Today, these maps and others have been fully incorporated into the canon by modern releases of Doom II. It makes the game a more comprehensive product, but that’s not enough to elevate it above our next, and most recent entry:

4. Doom: The Dark Ages

The Dark Ages couldn’t be more different than Doom II. A sequel that refuses to offer more of the same, The Dark Ages takes a sharp turn away from the neon frenzy of Doom Eternal into a grim and gothic new setting, with drastically altered gameplay to match.

If Eternal is Doom meets Devil May Cry, The Dark Ages is Doom Souls. The gameplay isn’t slow, like some of the trailers would have you believe, but it is deliberate, and the player’s individual actions have more consequences.

Stand and fight is more than just a marketing slogan, it’s the only way you’re going to take down some bosses and badder enemies. Melee combat means getting up close and personal with monsters, trading mace blows and shotgun blasts in a boxing match from hell.

Gone is Eternal’s verticality, deliberately downplayed in homage to the original Doom’s lack of a jump button. Projectiles move more slowly, choking the battlefield with patterns that evoke bullet-hell shmups and Serious Sam. Glory kills are a shadow of their former, well, glory, taking a backseat to the new rhythms of The Dark Ages’ combat.

The most impactful addition to the Doom formula is the parry mechanism that allows the player to deflect green attacks with the integral new shield saw. It’s the backbone around which the game is designed and it’s not going to click with everybody, but

The Dark Ages brings a few firsts to the franchise, like friendly NPCs fighting alongside the Slayer and difficulty sliders to make the series more accessible. It’s also the first game since Doom 64 to lack any kind of multiplayer.

The Slayer trilogy’s online components have been a noble but largely perfunctory effort. Id decided to ditch it entirely and focus on making the most compelling campaign they could, exchanging multiplayer and snapmap for dragon riding and giant mechs. It’s bummer to see the IP that literally invented deathmatch drift away from multiplayer entirely, but frankly a lot of fans aren’t going to miss it.

You have to give modern Id credit: they just will not make the same game twice. Will The Dark Ages become the new way forward for the franchise or merely an interesting diversion like the aforementioned Doom 64? Only time will tell if it has the same staying power as our next entry,

3. Doom: Eternal

Doom: Eternal is a Doom game’s Doom game. It’s everything a fan of Doom 2016 would expect from a sequel, and while the vibe is different from its predecessor, the whole experience feels more vibrant and alive.

The Doom franchise isn’t exactly known for its awe-inspiring vistas and diverse biomes, but Eternal impressively mixes snow levels and baroque ivory fortresses in with the usual techbases and fleshy hellscapes. We’re not used to seeing this kind of environmental variety in Doom, and it’s a refreshing change of pace.

The monsters have shed the last remnants of their realistic Doom 3 designs and embraced their inner iconography. Cacodemons bleed blue again, the Imps have all their spikes back, and the former humans have once again embraced the crew cut. If Illumination ever made an animated Doom movie, this is what the monsters would look like.

In line with the more expressive demons, Doom: Eternal embraces its inherent arcadeiness. The Doomslayer now has extra lives, which he secures from glowing in-world pickups that literally say “1UP.” Weapons and items now float off the ground and spin around, easier to spot and snag as you double jump across implausible arenas with not one but two airdashes.

Doom: Eternal is unrepentantly a video game, designed for maximum readability and playability. It’s worth noting that the game’s technical performance is impeccable, offering smooth frame rates across a variety of hardware that would make its famously compatible ancestor proud.

When it comes to combat, Doom: Eternal asks a lot more of you than 2016. Ammo is much more scarce, forcing you to juggle through most of your weapons in nearly every fight. Choosing the right gun for the right enemy and exploiting their weak spots is essential, though some fans argue that the Marauders, dark Doomguy counterparts with a limited vulnerability window, are a bridge too far for the power fantasy.

Doom: Eternal’s biggest flaw is that it’s doing too much. The Doomslayer has new guns and enemies to deal with, a meathook to yank yourself across the battlefield, and a shoulder cannon with grenades and bombs and fire belches that are crucial for survival– on top of an avalanche of additional collectibles, resources, and upgrade trees

Even the Doomguy himself has gotten a little too big for his armored green britches, having somehow come into possession of a massive outer space fortress between games, a vast hub to explore that has plenty of great easter eggs and secrets but also a lot of locked doors and samey-looking hallways to get lost in.

Speaking of getting lost, Doom: Eternal suffers under a sheer mountain of lore. Endless paragraphs of indecipherable sci-fi fantasy with more proper nouns than a phone book are at your bloody fingertips. To some, it’s a welcome addition that makes the series that much more rich. For others, it’s an albatross around the neck of Doom’s action-first ethos: start shooting as soon as the screen melts.

It’s an excellent sequel, superior to its predecessor in many ways, but as a total package, it falls just short of

2. Doom (2016)

Doom 2016 is the platonic ideal of Doom.

It marries the kinetic and aesthetic purity of the original with a winking, self-aware tone that evokes not just the first game’s “Hurt Me Plenty” attitude but society’s perception of the series.

This is the Doom we envisioned in our adolescent brains. It’s the Doom of the infamous ‘90s comic, the ultraviolent nightmare that Jack Thompson and Joe Lieberman warned us about– and it is glorious. But Doom 2016 almost didn’t happen.

The game was originally conceived as “Doom 4,” designed around a dull-looking modern-day demon invasion that incorporated some of the worst excesses of 7th-gen shooter design.

Scripted setpieces, cover-based firefights, and health regeneration earned Doom 4 the derisive nickname “Call of Doom.” Why “press F to pay respects” when you could “press F to rip a demon’s jaw off and slice open its belly?”

Marty Silva and Hugo Martin salvaged Doom 4 from the shores of development hell by stripping it into a back-to-basics, gleefully indulgent romp that fully rekindles the lost soul of the series.

It’s no coincidence that retro “boomer shooters” comeback began right around Doom 2016. The aggressive, push-forward gameplay has you leaping onto cacodemons in midair as Mick Gordon’s impossibly detuned guitars belch out riffs of pure hype. It’s here we first see the glory kills, expanded on in future sequels but never quite as elegant as their debut.

Simple is the operative word of Doom 2016, and sometimes to its detriment. Unlike later games, there’s little incentive to cycle through your weapons. It’s easy to let the rockets or the SSG carry you to the Spider-Mastermind. Still, the barebones approach is appreciated, particularly when it comes to the plot.

It was John Carmack who famously compared video game stories to those of x-rated movies: “It’s expected to be there, but not important.” Doom 2016’s less-is-more approach is extremely refreshing after the dense Metal Hurlant nightmares of its sequels. The storytelling is never really bad in Eternal or The Dark Ages, but also never quite as funny as the Doomslayer seething with impatient rage as exposition drones on.

It took some huge guts to name the 2016 reboot “Doom,” but that very confidence is what propels this game to greatness. There’s only one shooter in the world that could possibly top Doom 2016.

But first:

1. Doom

Doom has more than earned its spot on the Mt. Rushmore of the medium.

As chronicled in the excellent book Masters of Doom, the game’s creation is a brilliant example of developers stripping away extraneous details and focusing on what works. As a followup to Id’s groundbreaking but plodding and plain shooter Wolfenstein 3D, original designer Tom Hall dreamed up a sprawling space RPG with multiple playable characters, an inventory system, and a thick “bible” filled with backstory and lore.

Carmack and Romero rightly recognized all of this as chaff that got in the way of the fast and brutal gameplay they envisioned. They slowly stripped away unnecessary flavor and realism until what remained was a bare-bones, no BS exercise in adrenaline. Doom is like the titular Xenomorph in Alien: One must respect its purity.

There’s no mouselook in the original Doom. Aiming on the y-axis literally doesn’t matter, you can hit that Imp on a ledge above you as long as it’s centered on your gun. Doomguy cannot jump, and his only interaction with the world besides shooting, punching, and chainsawing is a single “use” button that you’ll spam endlessly as you search each legendary map for secret doors.

Anyone can pick up the game today, whether through a fan-made source port or an official rerelease, and immediately understand the assignment. Run, gun, rip and tear. Find keys and snag powerups to keep Doomguy alive as he stares bullets through your soul from the UI.

To say Doom has aged is to say Tetris or Pac Man has aged. Its simplicity is its greatest strength– there’s almost no friction between you and the coveted “flow state” towards which all action games aspire. Doom’s kinetic appeal makes it immortal,

Released as shareware, anyone with a working PC was free to play the first episode of Doom, from the iconic first moments of E1M1 to beating the Bruiser Brothers in Phobos Anomaly. You could mail a check to Id if you wanted more, but the sheer accessibility and availability of Knee-Deep in the Dead’s nine perfect levels all but ensured Doom’s dominance.

Doom became shorthand for gaming itself. The moral panic over video game violence resulted in pundits and politicians alike warning parents of the gory, demonic slaughter simulator warping their children’s minds, blaming the shooter for real-world tragedies. It’s a sad footnote in an otherwise unparalleled success story, and a formative moment in gaming history that helped shape a still-developing industry.

At the start of every new project, the current developers at Id play through the original Doom, to re-familiarize themselves with its brilliance and look for interesting new ways to expand the formula.

Every single entry on this list is in some way a response to the first game, either trying to recapture its glory or recreate what makes it fun. Some games succeed, others have faltered, but they’re all chasing after perfection that was already achieved in 1993. Doom is still the best Doom.

Where does your favorite Doom rank on the spectrum? Would you have put Eternal above 2016? Should we have included the surprisingly awesome mobile phone RPGs? Leave a comment and let us know.

When The Mandalorian and Grogu is released next year on May 22, 2026 – the first new Star Wars movie to hit theaters in six and a half years – and then Grand Theft Auto VI hits four days later on May 26, 2026 – the first new GTA game in 12 and a half years – which one do you think is going to be the bigger deal? And which is going to be same old/same old?

On paper at least, these should be two of the biggest pop culture events of the year – the Barbenheimer of 2026. A new Star Wars movie? A new GTA title!? Grand Theft Watto!!? And while we can guarantee that GTA 6 will be huge – it’s already huge – The Mandalorian and his little friend are actually far less of a sure thing.

It reminds me of when I was a kid and I told my Noni that I would eat pizza every day if I could. And I meant it! She was like, no, you’d get sick of it eventually. But man, pizza every day sounds amazing! You know what though? Noni was 100% right. Pizza every day is actually really freaking gross, and it’s bad for you, and it’s bad for the people selling the pizza in the long run because eventually I’m just going to not want to even think about pizza again for a long, long time.

And this is where we’re at with Star Wars right now: It’s pizza every day, over and over again. But GTA… the anticipation for a new GTA game has been building for years. And in some ways, that very anticipation is a big part of the allure of the franchise as well. It’s something Lucasfilm and Disney would do well to take note of.

It’s not that GTA has a bigger cultural footprint than Star Wars. On the contrary, everyone knows who Darth Vader is (even my Noni did, I expect; at the very least she got me a TIE Fighter toy for my third-grade graduation). But the GTAs of the world are still aimed at a tighter demographic. The reason something like GTA can make as much money as it does (more on that in a sec) is because folks spend a lot more playing a game like that than they do going to see a movie. Its success is not because more people are playing it than are watching Star Wars. But one must also consider the lasting impact of a game of this nature, the amount of time that it takes to complete, the replayability, and the interactivity versus the, frankly, old-fashioned act of watching a movie or show and then moving on.

2015’s The Force Awakens, which kicked off the era of modern (i.e., Disney) Star Wars, brought in $2.071 billion at the box office worldwide. But Lucasfilm’s hyperdrive motivator was already starting to lose some steam by the time the Sequel Trilogy closed out: The last new Star Wars movie to be released, 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker, made $1.077 billion, almost half what The Force Awakens did. Star Wars was already feeling pretty commonplace after just four short years of its return to the big screen, and the numbers bear that out.

The Force Awakens actually serves as a better comparison than Rise of Skywalker to the last Grand Theft Auto game, GTA 5, since the game came out in 2013. That just lets us compare the amount of money the two properties brought in a little more cleanly since it’s just a two-year gap between releases. And even though Rey, Finn and Poe’s first adventure (remember them?) is also the fifth-highest grossing film of all time worldwide (not adjusted for inflation), its numbers still pale in comparison to those of GTA 5.

So about that: Released in September 2013, GTA 5 made a billion dollars in three days. By May of 2014, the game had sold 33 million copies, which would come to approximately $1.98 billion in sales (based on a price of $60 per unit, which is an estimate and doesn’t take into account sale prices, for example). I know – you’re thinking, ‘That’s still below The Force Awakens’ $2.017 billion and it took nine months to get there.’ But whereas The Force Awakens made all that theatrical dough in just a couple of months before leaving theaters, GTA 5 just kept on grabbing the loot year after year after year.

In 2023, Barron’s reported that GTA 5 had grossed over $8.5 billion since its release in 2013. And last year, publisher Take-Two revealed in an earnings report that the game had, at that time, continued to sell approximately five million units every three months. This is of course in part due to the fact that GTA 5 has been released on three generations of consoles over the years, and the revenue from GTA Online must be considered as well.

By comparison, the combined box office total of all the Disney-era Star Wars movies – The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, The Rise of Skywalker, Rogue One, and Solo – is $5.934 billion. That’s, well, a few billion dollars less than what is essentially a single game in GTA 5. But the other money that the Star Wars franchise brings in is a little harder to track – Blu-rays, digital downloads, streaming, merchandising, theme parks, and, of course, its licensed video games as well.

Things get a bit opaque here because while having, for example, all the Star Wars movies (and TV shows) available on Disney+ exclusively is certainly a draw for potential subscribers, it’s also difficult to attach a dollar value to that scenario. Ditto the theme parks. Yes, you too can rub elbows with an ersatz Rey while at Galaxy’s Edge, and you can also pay $200-plus for a custom lightsaber to shut up your kid’s whining, but how much does that add to the overall take-home of quote/unquote Star Wars itself? (Star Wars games, meanwhile, can be hit or miss; for every Jedi Fallen Order success there’s an Outlaws that has a rough go of it.) Does all the Star Wars stuff in the world that people can and do buy make up that extra three billion dollars to put the series at the same gross revenue point as GTA 5? Maybe.

But that’s only one Grand Theft Auto game as compared to the entirety of the modern Star Wars line. Of course, GTA’s online multiplayer mode, with its new cars and interactive events, keeps players coming back over and over again – easily spending beyond the price of the game itself thanks to its in-game currency. (And by the way, why doesn’t GTA have a more extensive line of merchandise IRL? Where are my GTA toys? Why can’t I go to a GTA theme park in California, or even better, Florida, where I can get in an awesome car and run over people to my heart’s desire before buying a custom uzi!?)

Well actually, maybe that’s where the real difference between these two franchises – in the here and now of the year 2025 – can best be articulated, and why people rolled their eyes when, for example, the Ryan Gosling/Shawn Levy Star Wars movie Starfighter was officially announced recently compared to the incredible excitement that can be felt around any and all GTA 6 news. As noted, it’s going on 13 years since a new GTA game was released. Compare that to the constant watering down of Star Wars through streaming shows, announced movies that never happen, bad movies (and, sure, some good ones!), and the aforementioned ever-present merchandising that we’ve been inundated with since at least 2014, when the marketing build-up to The Force Awakens kicked in. There’s just so much Star Wars now.

And that brings me back Noni and my pizza dreams – dreams that were dashed (Dash Rendar’d?) when I realized she was right about too much of a good thing. Sure, sometimes the toppings are different, and some days it tastes better than others, but Star Wars is just always there now. There’s nothing special about it anymore.

But GTA… GTA brings me to a different Noni memory. Rockstar only serves new editions of the beloved franchise on the most special of occasions. It’s sort of like lasagna on Christmas! We didn’t get lasagna all the time growing up, so when we found out Noni was making sauce and lasagna was in the offing, it was awesome. The meatballs and sausage sliced up, the oozing ricotta, the basil leaves on top, the toasted Italian bread to go with it – just the best. And it wasn’t just the actual lasagna, but even the anticipation of it. Knowing that it was coming was almost as good as actually sitting down and eating it. It was a rare and special thing, like a new GTA game.

Rockstar also has a history of delaying new installments of the series – they will serve no wine before its time. The result of this philosophy is that when a new GTA title finally is released, there is a huge demand, but also the amount of time and resources that have been put into the game are clear in the finished version. With all due respect to the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, there was obviously no plan in terms of the trilogy part of it all. (One day Rian Johnson will say how he really feels about the 180-degree turn The Rise of Skywalker took after his film.) Audiences aren’t dumb; they can tell the difference between something that is rushed to make a date versus a work of art that is given its due time to develop and evolve as it should.

Is the GTA series an outlier in the world of games? Certainly. And yet, as of 2023, Minecraft had sold over 300 million copies (including sales across the many platforms it’s released on) and Tetris had sold over 520 million copies. (GTA 5 is at 200 million+ and the Grand Theft Auto franchise overall has 430 million units sold.) And that’s just the top of the pile of best-selling games. People like video games! Who knew?

It’s crazy to think now that there was a 16-year gap between Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace. It was a relatively fallow period for Star Wars (even if the expanded universe and merchandising continued), and when George Lucas finally did return to theaters in 1999 with young Ani and Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon, there were lines around the block everywhere. That was excitement. There was huge anticipation for a thing we all loved that we hadn’t gotten a new installment of in a long, long time. The same happened 10 years after Revenge of the Sith, which we had all thought was the end of the Star Wars movies forever, when The Force Awakens rekindled the Star Wars flame. Audiences were truly amped to return to that galaxy far, far away again.

And that gap between Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace, that 16 years, that’s not far off from the 13 years that will have passed between GTA 5 and GTA 6. The expectations, the hopes, the theorizing, the fun of knowing a new game in the series is coming. It’s almost as important as the game itself.

But in the case of the next Star Wars movie… which is the continuation of a TV show… which has had three seasons already… and at least a couple of spin-offs… well, it’s gonna be kind of hard for audiences to get too excited for that, I think. Sure, it may prove to be a good or even a great movie – I hope it does.

But you have to wonder. How many people are gonna say to themselves, “Eh, I’ll wait for when it hits streaming.”