X06 has brought a wealth of announcements: Halo Wars, Wingnut Interactive, and even an exclusive Splinter Cell game for the 360. I enjoy my 360 (despite being in Japan, which automatically makes me the laughing stock of my local community), and i enjoy the odd game that releases for the system, but X06 has been, largely, a rather mundane occasion for me, apart from one single announcement:



DOOM. On XBLA. With Thy Flesh Consumed. 4 Player online co-op over Live. TODAY.

Those that grew up without Doom have my sympathies. The pixelated visceral gut punch of Doom was a masterpiece of ultraviolence and midi music when it was first released in the early infancy of the first person shooting genre. Those only privy to Halo and its ilk would probably find Doom wasted on them. The XBLA incarnation intentionally (or perhaps unintentionally) plays upon the nostalgia of old school FPS gamers like myself.

Doom for Xbox Live Arcade is PC perfect, from start to finish. For a game originally tooled for the PC, the 360 controller works without a hitch. Despite never playing Doom with a controller in the past (and staying with the PC version almost exclusively), I found myself racing around E1M1's hangar like a pro in under a second flat.

The achievements are rather inventive. Apart from the regular mundane achievements that one would expect (finishing episodes on Hurt Me Plenty, for instance), the game also offers a plethora of side achievements that I already found myself trying to achieve when I was a young tyke.

As I mentioned to a friend over Live chat, finding secrets in Doom, for me (and I suspect many of those who downloaded it yesterday and today), is not a game of chance. It's a perpetual struggle with my own memory, hoping to recall the smooth path through each level I had mastered and perfected after countless hours playing Doom on the PC.

Now I just need to find someone to fucking play the game with me on Live! Play with me, you dorks!