| Coming Soon... |
| Thursday, Apr 18 |
| All Day | Tickets on Sale Now for "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown!" |
| Friday, Apr 19 |
| All Day | Tickets on Sale Now for "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown!" |
| Saturday, Apr 20 |
| All Day | Tickets on Sale Now for "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown!" |
| All Day | The 7th Annual Crafty Chicks Spring Market |
| All Day | Big Plans at Big Trees State Park for Earth Day! |
| All Day | The Big Used XC Ski Sale Starts April 20th at Bear Valley Adventure Company! |
| All Day | Huge Savings at Millworkz Inventory Reduction Sale Every Saturday! |
| 09:00 AM | Spring Cleaning Time at Shred Fest 2024 on April 20th |
| 01:00 PM | Celebration of Life for Robyn Victoria Williams |
| 05:00 PM | Fundraiser Dinner at VFW San Andreas |
| Sunday, Apr 21 |
| All Day | Tickets on Sale Now for "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown!" |
| All Day | Big Plans at Big Trees State Park for Earth Day! |
| All Day | The Big Used XC Ski Sale Starts April 20th at Bear Valley Adventure Company! |
| All Day | Our Sunday Edition with Local Features, Local Specials & More Every Sunday All Day Long! |
| 09:00 AM | Get Ready to Run in the 2024 Mr. Frog's Wild Run on April 21st. |
| 11:30 AM | The 11th Annual Mountain Ranch Chili Cook Off! |
| Monday, Apr 22 |
| All Day | The Big Used XC Ski Sale Starts April 20th at Bear Valley Adventure Company! |
| Tuesday, Apr 23 |
| All Day | The Big Used XC Ski Sale Starts April 20th at Bear Valley Adventure Company! |
| Wednesday, Apr 24 |
| All Day | The Big Used XC Ski Sale Starts April 20th at Bear Valley Adventure Company! |
| Thursday, Apr 25 |
| All Day | The Big Used XC Ski Sale Starts April 20th at Bear Valley Adventure Company! |
| Friday, Apr 26 |
| All Day | The Big Used XC Ski Sale Starts April 20th at Bear Valley Adventure Company! |
| Saturday, Apr 27 |
| All Day | Come Celebrate Calaveras’ Spring Wine Weekend |
| All Day | The Big Used XC Ski Sale Starts April 20th at Bear Valley Adventure Company! |
| All Day | Huge Savings at Millworkz Inventory Reduction Sale Every Saturday! |
| Sunday, Apr 28 |
| All Day | Come Celebrate Calaveras’ Spring Wine Weekend |
| All Day | The Big Used XC Ski Sale Starts April 20th at Bear Valley Adventure Company! |
| All Day | Our Sunday Edition with Local Features, Local Specials & More Every Sunday All Day Long! |
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Posted by: Kim_Hamilton on 06/26/2007 11:13 PM
Updated by: thepinetree on 08/01/2007 07:17 AM
Expires: 01/01/2012 12:00 AM
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In Media Res...Gaming Column for June 2007 "Doom"~By Coyote and Raven
"Frag the weak, hurdle the dead." That's the way of life in the first person shooter (FPS) genre. This month IMR will revisit the grandaddy of thes games... You guessed it, we're talking about Doom....
Released in 1993, Doom defined the FPS genre. The game was undeniably a significant graphical improvement over earlier games like Wolfenstein 3D, offering more realistic lighting and backgrounds, including outdoor areas. However, it was the addition of an ethernet multiplayer option that made the game unique in its day. Although cooperation was a possiblity, death-matches were far more popular. There was something appealing about tracking down and killing opponents that could think and react more flexibly than the AI that was built into the game.
Although many games now incorporate network-play options, Doom is still unique among FPS's in at least one respect; the number of different forms it has taken on. In addition to the game, a series of four novels exploring the Doom universe were written by sci-fi authors Dafydd ab Hugh and Brad Linaweaver in 1995 and 1996, and most recently the 2005 release of the Doom movie. Although other video games (Tomb Raider and Resident Evil are the ones that hop to mind) have gotten the game to book to movie progression, Doom seems to be the only FPS to have done so.
The basis of the original game was simple; you are a Marine ordered to Mars as a punishment detail. Something goes wrong at a high-tech base on Phobos, one of the two moons of Mars, and your character, dubbed "the Doomguy" by the players, is sent in, ending up the only survivor of his team. You fight your way through hordes of zombies, imps, and cybernetically enhanced demonic enemies, only to be teleported to the other Martian moon, Deimos, which disappeared from orbit at the beginning of the game. After a boss battle you discover that Deimos is now suspended above Hell. If you can dole out enough hurt to survive the final encounter with a huge cybernetic spider you're rewarded with a door leading back to Earth.
In the first Doom novel, the storyline begins much as it does in the game, although Flynn Taggert, the main character, is at least given a name. He becomes a three dimensional character with dreams beyond trying to live through the day. Within the setting of the Doom novels, the demonic entities aren't truly demons. Instead they're the bio-engineered soldiers of a race of alien invaders. The hellish motif is a psychological play against the human race, the result of the alien invaders being surprised by the speed at which human culture has advanced. Rather than going to Hell, Deimos is dragged through hyperspace into Earth orbit as a staging area for the alien invasion. The authors also (in my opinion wisely) decided to bring in a secondary Marine character for Flynn to interact with; Arlene Sanders.
The Doom film adaptation gives the Doomguy another face and a new name; he is John "Reaper" Grimm, played by Karl Urban, not only a Marine but also a member of the "Rapid Response Tactical Squad." While the novels were reasonably true to the game's story, the film is a major departure. The main setting is a base on Mars itself, rather than one of its moons. Teleportation is an established technology, but is only used for transportation from Earth to Mars and back. In-base teleporters have been replaced by selectively permeable "nano-walls." The mission starts with a full team of heavily armed military men. As in the novels, the film has no genuine supernatural elements, although the alien invaders are far smaller; artificial chromosomes that turn some people into monsters, others into superhumans. Despite the massive deviations from the game's storyline, the film acknowledges and honors its origin with a first-person sequence, a live-action echo of the original gameplay.
Which of the faces of Doom is best? Ultimately that's a matter of taste. My personal choice would be the novels, since the special effects that I can imagine as I read always trump what Hollywood can crank out. Printed media also allows for more effective communication of a character's thoughts and motivations, allowing for more character development than is usually possible in film. The game is the weakest of the three faces from a storyteller's point of view, most of the story being contained in the instruction manual instead of the game itself. Without the game, however, the film and novels never would have come to be, so it is worthy of notice regardless of what your favorite facet of Doom happens to be. Despite its age, the fanbase for Doom lives on. Nowhere is that more apparent than in iDoom, a release of the game intended for the Apple iPod. Complete instructions for installing iDoom are available at the iPod Linux Wiki. It's not fot the faint of heart, but then neither is Doom.
Questions? Comments? Drop us a line at In Media Res.
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