Gloom is probably my favourite first person shooter on the Amiga. When I first played it, it amazed me to enter a 3D world on the Amiga, which I never thought was possible.
As someone who grew up with an Amiga as my main gaming platform for some time, I was a little behind the times when it came to some of the bigger hyped games that you’d get on PC or on consoles. As the mid 1990s hit, the hype was all about 3D gaming, and the game that really got everyone into moving around in 3D was Doom.
These days we’ll call the genre first person shooters, but back in the day people just called them Doom clones. It didn’t matter if you had Duke Nukem 3D, Hexen or Quake, even though the first significant game of the genre was Wolfenstein 3D, the game that got everyone’s attention was Doom. So at that stage every first person shooter was a Doom clone…but not for me. I had an Amiga and Doom was nowhere in sight. Instead I had Gloom!
Created by developer Black Magic, Gloom was a Doom clone, but as it was the game I played first, to me, everything was a Gloom clone. There were a few first person shooters released for the Amiga, but for me there were none better or more special than Gloom. And that includes when later down the line I believe some people did get the likes of Quake and Doom running on the Amiga.
In Gloom you play as a badass marine, and you go through around twenty-one levels which are split into three distinct looking chapters. In the first one, you are in something of a military base. In this set of seven levels you will be confronted by soldiers who look much like your character, but with army helmets on. These guys will shoot orange balls of fire…or energy balls…or something like that…at you. Then you meet the Aggro Skinheads who are tougher, but are topless and have no weapon. They have no need for weapons as long as they can walk into you. And then you meet the ED-209 looking robot which shoots huge white and purple glowing balls of energy at you. These are tough to kill as the fire rate is insane.
As you go through each of the levels in each chapter you’ll have to find switches and teleport around levels as you look for the exit teleporter. There are occasional environmental obstacles like rotating or sliding walls and blocks which can do damage if they hit you.
After you have got through the first chapter and dodged the wheel of death, you’ll move onto the second chapter which is the Gothic Tomb. This is probably my favourite as the enemies are the best found in the game. To begin with you have Gorn looking green lizard men who look like they were ripped straight from Star Trek. They just walk at you exactly like the Aggro Skinheads do in chapter one. Then there are ghosts which can appear out of nowhere and they shoot green lazer balls at you. Then you meet another kind of ghost thing which look like the scary shadow ghosts form the movie ghost. You do get a cameo from some yellow demon things from the final chapter before you get through the Gothic levels.
Some of these levels get a bit maze like which isn’t the most fun. For clarity, I’ve completed Gloom back in the day on the Amiga and it took me a couple of years to achieve it as I always found the third chapter too hard. The second time I beat it was on a PC about ten years ago, and it was at this point I discovered the game could allow you to strafe, which when I played originally with my Mega Drive controller plugged into the Amiga I had no idea was possible.
Playing today for the purposes of this review I’m playing it strangely on an Analogue Pocket with an Amiga core. Works well, and have also played it about a year ago on the A500 Mini. For the ease of capturing footage I switched on an infinite energy cheat which meant I could breeze through the game to explore and also record a longplay of where to go and what to do without the stress of dying every two minutes in the third chapter.
Speaking of which, the third chapter is just called Hell, and whilst the first chapter was like a futuristic space ship or space base, and the second was all wooden panels and cult like symbols, the third is just the fiery pits of hell.
You get a new enemy type which is a floating skull which draws you in close to it, and eventually you get a tall demon, which I guess may be a version of the demon you see on the title screen. If the two aren’t the same it would mean that you don’t meet the title screen demon in the game. The last few levels are more relentless in the enemies they throw at you rather than as mazey as the gothic ones, and you do face off with a final boss which is a multi headed green dragon that will run at you super fast. It’s a slightly strange final boss as why is a dragon the final boss in hell? Shouldn’t it be the devil?
Other than a screen to show two army dudes celebrating and letting you know you’ve completed the game, there is no ending story, but this was typical of the time.
It’s best to fight a lot of the enemies in the game on the back foot. Many won’t appear until you are near to them and then just back up and blast. They’re not super smart and as long as you dodge their fire you’ll be ok.
Unlike most first person shooters of the era, you never see your character’s hands and never seen the weapon you are firing. You just see bouncing balls and pick one up and then it appears in the middle of the screen as you shoot it. It’s a shame they didn’t figure out showing an onscreen weapon, but think they did for Gloom 3 if I remember correctly. Strangely there is no Gloom 2, but there is Gloom Deluxe.
As well as the three or four types of ammo you can pick up, you can also pick up health which is represented by a baby bottle…which is odd. You can also find a defender like arcade game which you can play and this is another bizarre inclusion…
You can pick up items that mean the bullets can bounce which is cool. It means you can fire around corners. You can also find an invisibility item and an item that lets you see enemies through walls. As lacking as the game is by today’s standards I do really think most things that are part of the game are inventive and that it’s a great game.
Maybe I see it through rose tinted glasses, as it was my first first person shooter, but I think it holds up for an Amiga shooter of the era. I certainly prefer it to the likes of Alien Breed 3D which I couldn’t get into until years later.
The game is quite challenging, but I’m sure if you got into it you could get through it pretty quick. My infinite energy run was just over an hour, but that was also a ‘I have no idea where I’m going in the maze levels run’, so I’m sure it could be speed run in around half an hour if you were an expert.
You can get loads more Gaming articles in the Gaming section of the site, and don’t forget to check out all our gaming videos on the Geek Battle Gaming YouTube Channel and the Geek Battle comedy panel show on the Extreme Improv XStreamed YouTube Channel
