AtimZarr1

Doom Background:

Grew up watching my dad play PSX Doom and my first Doom game was Doom 3. Played the hell out of the latter, especially for multiplayer and mods like Last Man Standing and Dungeon Doom. My dad made his own "Ultimate Hell Campaign Hardcore", which you can download here:

https://www.gamefront.com/games/doom-iii/file/the-ultimate-hell-campaign

Classic Doom Era:

I only got back into Classic Doom when I discovered Brutal Doom and had to figure out sourceports and wads. I think I actually finished the iwads when I got my hands on Doom 3 BFG Edition. Knee Deep in the Dead is the best, and I think E3M9 is my favorite secret map because I thought there was a bug that I reloaded the map before the twist. I may not replay Doom 2 as much (Tricks and Traps is my favorite map though), but I play a lot of custom content, at least relatively compared to other games. I make a habit of downloading every Cacoward map even if I don't get through them all, although I find motivation to actually beat anything added to the Unity port's add-on page. I get way too much amusement out of generating random maps from Oblige, especially when combining it with the MetaDoom mod.

I remember playing the early levels of TNT a lot, but coming back to finish all of Final Doom - I can definitely understand the mixed reception to it. Even when I think about replaying the series, the completionist in me dreads thinking about Final Doom. I'm also not a fan of Master Levels for Doom II, although I remember my dad playing through their PSX counterparts. It was pretty amusing when it took me too long to realize my favorite Master map, Attack.wad, was actually the one my dad replayed a lot as well.

I played Doom 64 out of curiosity but wasn't a fan of its puzzle design at first. The PSX sound effects are still amazing even here though. I only got a better appreciation of the game once the official remaster came out, and I enjoyed it a lot more as an alternative and darker take on Classic Doom. Probably the "main" Doom I'm least personally attached to, but still a solid time. The opening theme, sound effects, and atmosphere is great.

I'd like to make Classic Doom maps one day.

Doom 3 Era:

I'm a biased Doom 3 fan - the world, atmosphere, everything about it is so immersive to me. I never get tired from coming back to the game every now and then to appreciate and get lost in its design. Replaying it in VR decades later was a treat. Despite that, I always felt reserved about Resurrection of Evil - probably because it "trades out" some weapons for some others, and the campaign didn't feel as refined as the main campaign's. Conversely I have a soft spot for The Lost Mission because it was cool to "come back" to official Doom 3 gameplay years later. My profile picture is of the Doom 3 Commando because it was my favorite enemy growing up for some reason. I guess he looks cool.

I hadn't played too much of the mobile spin-offs during this time. I vaguely remember Doom RPG, and played some bits of Doom II RPG until I got stuck. I did finish Doom Resurrection, which was amusing to play on the phone at all but it's terribly dated in retrospect.

I'm currently trying to learn mapping for Doom 3...

New Doom Era:

As a Doom 3 enthusiast, I was rabid in following Doom 4's development. I waited ages for that game and it did not disappoint. I have over 700+ hours on Doom 2016, playing since the multiplayer alpha, beat the campaign on Ultra-Nightmare, achieved Slayer rankings on all stages' Nightmares, and reached max level in multiplayer (twice). Besides the campaign being a great reimagining, I found the multiplayer to be novel (because my only exposure to FPS multiplayer up until then was literally Doom 3's multiplayer), and SnapMap was a dream come true for me since I always wanted to design levels. The Custom Geo content was especially great, but it's a shame it didn't continue onwards and still lacked needed features. I still check back in every few months or so. I did make a bunch of SnapMaps for the game as well, mostly experimental with most efforts put into recreations:

Before Eternal came out, I made sure to complete 2016 on Ultra-Nightmare, and recorded it because people would cheat to complete it. It's amusing in retrospect because I spent a long time reading a Steam guide, playing very conservatively, and taking a break after each level (all habits I would discard later on):

I only played Doom VFR long after 2016 and Eternal, but I thought it was mostly decent after some involved set-up to fix controls. Its mixed reception is understandable - it's more of a tech demo than an actual game. Still, it was neat as a Doom 2016 fan. That one extra original level was a nice surprise. Those Classic maps are brutal here...

Doom Eternal is probably my favorite in terms of gameplay. It just feels so satisfying to master its mechanics. That said, the story, multiplayer, and DLCs left a bit to be desired but they don't bring down the whole product for me. Despite that, I played 300+ hours, completed Ultra-Nightmare on all campaigns/DLCs/Master Levels, unlocked the Golden Podium in Battlemode, and have the 25th Anniversary Slayer skin. I got a lot of enjoyment out of trying out other users' "custom" Master Levels for Eternal and other mods, which I check back from time to time. My favorite was probably the Randomizer mod. I did also record the most Ultra-Nightmare gameplay from Eternal. My skill development across the videos is interesting for me to track, playing more aggressively with time and eventually learning skills like Heavy Cannon Quick-Swapping. Maybe one day I will be brave enough to tackle Classic Nightmare...:

Mighty Doom was interesting to me because I live in Canada so I got early access to its beta. I did appreciate the developers' responding well to criticism with their updates, although the core gameplay loop was a bit of a drag to play long-term and its monetization was egregious. Still, I ended up enjoying it as a side daily thing. The Mars Core track is also surprisingly good. I ended up completing every stage, and getting all primary/ultimate weapons to Legendary, a demonic set of armor to Legendary, and most secondary weapons to Legendary as well, and reached maximum account level 90. I recorded a gameplay playlist of missions and events, mostly as a preservation effort since its lifespan was always in question as an always-online game:

Non-Gaming Dooms:

I never read the Classic Doom novels although I'd like to one day, but Masters of Doom was a great read. I did read the Doom comic but only because of new Doom's reverence for it - it's a funny thing at least. Also never read the Doom 3 novels, but I'd like to for those as well one day. The Doom 2005 movie is amusing in a sense, but still not particularly good. I did play a bunch of the Doom 3 boardgame a long time ago, its modular "map" sections are pretty neat. I did play the Doom 2016 board game, which was a cute thing (although felt not as strongly defined like the Doom 3 boardgame was). Doom Annihilation was about the same as the 2005 movie, it gives and takes a few things but its overall still not good despite its amusing handling of certain topics.

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Non-Doom Background:

Other gaming franchises I'm a big fan of are Warcraft, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Street Fighter, and Need for Speed. I also have a childhood fondness for Spore, Age of Mythology, and Onimusha. While I finished 100+ games, I still have too many games in my collection (1000+) and I'd like to get through them all someday. I have watched 500+ movies (trust me, I made a list) but despite that, I still prefer video games over them. I've mostly seen big franchise movies, and early MCU is one of my favorites, but outside that I really enjoyed John Wick, Parasite, Knives Out, American Psycho, Wolf of Wall Street, Whiplash, Back to the Future, and many more. I have watched probably 40+ shows, mostly anime - my favorites being Berserk, Attack on Titan, and Death Note.

My username is made of two parts: atim and zarr. Atim is the mispelling of Atem (from Yu-Gi-Oh!) that I used as my first World of Warcraft character's name. AtimZarr was my Origin account name when Atim was apparently unavailable, and as I was signing up to beta-test Darkspore, I figured "Zarr" sounded like a sci-fi-ish suffix. AtimZarr has become my go-to handle on most platforms, but it's AtimZarr1 here because I lost access to my first DoomWorld account and for some reason I didn't bother with my go-to alternate account names.

Steam account: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198109880977/

YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_E0gOP_bPq48tB5klzIntw

Discord username: atimzarr