Strife

The struggle for dominance in the world of Doom clones continues...

"Wait for me!" cried Strife, struggling to pull on his jacket and tie up his laces as he ran after the Doom bandwagon. As the vehicle picked up speed, the young pretender thought he wasn't going to make it aboard, but as luck would have it the wagon suddenly slowed as an elderly couple walked across the road in front of it. With one last desperate effort, Strife leapt for the base plate at the rear of the wagon, hoping against hope to grab on and join the party...

When iD announced that they were to allow third-party developers to use their well-tested Doom engine a while back, the games industry must have thought all its Christmasses had come at once. Finally, here was a chance to get their hands on the golden apple. Who could have realised that it was merely gold-plating and that the really precious material was still to come in the form of Quake? So now that the mighty leviathan has hit town you'd have to wonder who's going to be foolish, er, brave enough to release a game using the old code, don't you?

Step forward... Velocity!

Well you have to admire their chutzpah, if nothing else. I don't mean to sound snobbish, but when you're playing a game which causes people passing by every five minutes to say, "It's not exactly Quake, is it?" you can't help but wonder why you're bothering with it.

And that's what's slightly grating. Beneath the rough-hewn, somewhat outdated exterior that is the Doom engine, there lies quite a nice game. Admittedly, Velocity have tried to add a few new twists to the affair, such as including an actual story to go along with the carnage and the ability to talk to people rather than just shoot them. That's right - talk! You remember, it's what sets us apart from the animals.

It'll never catch on

The best label to attach to Strife is that it's perhaps what Doom 2 should have been, which was really nothing more than a collection of extra levels and a shotgun. Strife marries the idea of the basic first-person perspective action game with some of the best elements of the traditional role-playing games we were seeing at the start of this decade (remember Ultima VI and VIII anyone?). Unfortunately these are both dying breeds, victims of technological progress and decaying attention spans. Nobody wants to think anymore, it's all Shoot! Shoot! Shoot! Kill! Kill! Kill! Personally I blame MTV, but then what right-thinking person doesn't?

Strife leapt and just managed to grasp the wood with his fingertips as the vehicle started forward again with a lurch. Helped by the hands of the passengers, the plucky young game was pulled aboard and finally joined the Doom bandwagon as it rolled out of town. Unfortunately that was when the mighty Quake hit the ground and the bandwagon instantly fell into a huge crevice and was never seen again. Such is the inevitable march of progress...