Doom with a view

A hand appears, clutching an automatic pistol. Walls of gray and slimy concrete provide the gloomy surroundings. The flickering half-light of low ceilings, dark corridors, and sliding steel doors offer little orientation as the handgun begins to negotiate the uninviting dungeon. Outside, a bleak, rocky landscape is visible. So, too, the harsh walls of the desolate bunker fortress, labyrinth, and prison. Suddenly, a shadowy movement is glimpsed through the pale glow of dials and lamps. A shot. The assailant, a barely human figure in fatigues and body armor, lumbers from a dark alcove, preparing to fire again. The pistol reacts, kicking slightly in the hand. It kicks again. The attacker recoils and falls, a bloody mess on the floor. More shapes lurch from the darkness. The pistol responds, its semicrazed fire continuing until all the mutant soldiers are splattered corpses. Welcome to Doom.

There is something strangely familiar about this popular computer game. Its labyrinths, ghostly figures, and monstrous mutants evoke primitive fears and instinctual responses; its violent shocks and graphic images set the pulse racing; its repetitive structure sacrifices imaginative narrative involvement for more immediate sensational pleasures. Computer games owe a debt to horror cinema: Silent Hill evokes tension through dark, obscure settings, its player/wanderer suddenly shocked by “blood-curdling monsters”; Resident Evil takes scenes directly from George Romero’s 1978 cult horror movie, Dawn of the Dead.