8 games similar to DOOM — handpicked for fans of Action and Fps games.
DOOM on the SNES is a visceral rush — corridors packed with demonic enemies, a shotgun that hits like a freight train, and a relentless pace that demands split-second reflexes and a healthy tolerance for gore. If what keeps you coming back is that cocktail of frantic combat, oppressive atmosphere, and the pure satisfaction of mowing through waves of monsters, these eight picks were built from the same dark blueprint. Whether you crave first-person mayhem, run-and-gun carnage, or sci-fi horror with a weapon in your hand, every recommendation below delivers that same white-knuckle intensity in its own unforgettable way.
Nintendo 64 | 1997 DOOM 64 is the most direct answer to craving more DOOM — not a port, not a greatest-hits remix, but an entirely original entry designed from the ground up for the N64. The game introduces a Unmaker energy weapon, overhauled enemy designs that lean harder into the hellish and grotesque, and a color-coded key system that makes its labyrinthine levels feel genuinely disorienting in the best possible way. The lighting engine gives every room a sickly, flickering dread that the SNES version could only gesture at, and the ambient soundtrack by Aubrey Hodges sits somewhere between industrial drone and nightmare fuel. If you finished the SNES port wishing the atmosphere had more room to breathe, DOOM 64 is exactly where you go next.
Nintendo 64 | 1997 GoldenEye 007 did for console first-person shooters what DOOM did for PC — it proved the format could feel native to a gamepad and still be brutally satisfying. The mission structure gives you actual objectives beyond survival, but when a firefight breaks out in the facility’s hallways or the jungle exterior, the tension maps directly onto the same spatial awareness DOOM demands: manage your angles, conserve ammo, don’t get flanked. The one-hit-kill headshots on higher difficulties inject a punishing lethality that DOOM veterans will recognize immediately. It also introduced a four-player splitscreen mode that turned DOOM’s lone-gunman philosophy into a multiplayer arms race, and almost nobody who played it ever forgot it.
Nintendo 64 | 1997 Turok is a DOOM cousin raised in the jungle — the same first-person perspective, the same arsenal-building loop from knife to BFG-equivalent, and the same philosophy of giving you more enemies than you should reasonably be able to handle. The Chronoscepter, assembled from pieces scattered across the game’s levels, is one of the most satisfying endgame payoffs in any 90s shooter, a direct spiritual descendant of the BFG 9000 power fantasy. The fog that limits draw distance creates a claustrophobic urgency that mirrors DOOM’s tight corridors even in open environments. Enemy variety is excellent — Aztec warriors, mercenaries, and actual dinosaurs keep you cycling through your arsenal in exactly the way DOOM’s demon roster does.
SNES | 1993 This SNES brawler lets you choose between three playable characters — a Colonial Marine, a Predator, or a Xenomorph — each with wildly different combat styles, and it nails the same oppressive sci-fi horror atmosphere that DOOM channels through its hellscape corridors. Playing as the Marine is the most DOOM-adjacent experience: you’re outnumbered, your ammunition is finite, and the Alien hordes swarm you from every direction, making crowd control and resource management feel genuinely urgent. The sprite work for the Xenomorphs is unsettling in exactly the right way, and the game’s dark color palette keeps the tension at a constant simmer. It’s a beat-em-up rather than an FPS, but the DNA is the same — humanity versus something genuinely monstrous, and you are very much outgunned.
SNES | 1992 Contra III is what happens when you distill DOOM’s combat into a side-scrolling run-and-gun with Mode 7 flourishes: pure forward momentum, zero breathing room, and a weapons system that rewards aggression. The spread gun and homing missiles map almost perfectly onto DOOM’s own shotgun-and-rocket satisfaction loop, and the game’s brutalist level design — factories, alien ships, urban hellscapes — shares DOOM’s industrial-meets-supernatural visual vocabulary. Difficulty is severe enough that you will die, repeatedly, and come back smarter each time, which is exactly the tutorial DOOM never bothered to give you. The two-player co-op mode doubles the chaos in a way that feels less like assistance and more like competitive survival.
Arcade / Neo Geo | 1996 Metal Slug operates at DOOM’s rhythm even without the first-person perspective — enemies come from everywhere at once, ammo management is life or death, and every encounter is a micro-puzzle about positioning and timing. The heavy machine gun and rocket launcher feel physically weighty in a way that echoes DOOM’s weapon feedback, and the game’s wartime aesthetic — crumbling fortresses, jungles full of ambushes, tanks that explode in spectacular chain reactions — has the same go-for-broke energy as ripping through DOOM’s second episode. The pixel art is extraordinary even by the standards of the era, with enemy death animations detailed enough to be genuinely grim. It’s short but relentlessly replayable, the kind of game that rewards mastery the same way DOOM’s speedrunning community has proven the original does.
SNES | 1994 Super Metroid shares DOOM’s spatial intelligence — both games are about reading a hostile environment quickly, prioritizing targets, and always knowing where your next cover is coming from. The beam upgrades, bomb mechanics, and missile expansion system give Super Metroid the same sense of accumulating firepower that makes DOOM’s weapon progression so satisfying, and the Planet Zebes map is as hostile and labyrinthine as any of DOOM’s episode layouts. The atmosphere is peerless: Ridley’s lair and Maridia’s underwater corridors carry a dread that rivals DOOM’s demon-infested hellscapes without ever resorting to jump scares. If DOOM’s appeal is partly about being alone in a hostile space with a gun and trusting your instincts, Super Metroid understands that same feeling at a molecular level.
SNES | 1994 Blackthorne — developed by Blizzard before they were Blizzard — puts you in the boots of Kyle “Blackthorne” Vlaros, a shotgun-wielding warrior sent to liberate a dark fantasy world from a warlord’s forces. The gameplay loop of blasting enemies, using your environment for cover, and managing a finite supply of bombs and potions feels remarkably close to DOOM’s own resource economy, and the game’s grimy industrial-fantasy aesthetic shares DOOM’s penchant for making ugliness feel intentional and atmospheric. The cover system — pressing against walls to avoid fire before stepping out to unload your shotgun — introduces a tactical layer DOOM doesn’t have, but the satisfaction of timing a perfect counterattack scratches the same itch. It’s slower than DOOM but no less violent, and its tone never lightens.
The connective tissue running through every game on this list is what game designers sometimes call “pressure management” — the constant, real-time negotiation between aggression and survival. DOOM is fundamentally a game about momentum: staying still means dying, but moving recklessly means dying faster. Every title above replicates that core tension in its own idiom. GoldenEye and Turok do it spatially, in three dimensions. Contra III and Metal Slug do it laterally, with enemy density that punishes hesitation. Super Metroid and Blackthorne do it structurally, through environments designed to feel actively hostile.
There’s also a shared philosophy about weaponry as identity. In DOOM, picking up a rocket launcher is a transformative moment — suddenly you’re not running from imps, you’re hunting them. That weapon-as-power-shift design appears in every recommendation here, whether it’s Turok’s Chronoscepter, Metroid’s charge beam, or Metal Slug’s heavy machine gun. The upgrade or acquisition moment is deliberately theatrical, because these games understand that what players are actually buying is the fantasy of capability. You are not powerful at the start. You become powerful. DOOM invented the modern template for that arc.
The aesthetic dimension matters too. These games are all visually and tonally committed to a specific kind of darkness — not grimdark nihilism, but a pulpy, almost B-movie seriousness that takes its monsters and its stakes completely at face value. DOOM’s demons aren’t winking at the audience. Neither are Contra III’s alien commanders, or Super Metroid’s Space Pirates, or Metal Slug’s general Morden. There’s a sincerity to the threat that makes the combat feel meaningful rather than ironic, and that sincerity is what earns player investment across decades and console generations.
Finally, all of these games are built around replayability through mastery. DOOM’s maps reward players who learn them cold — who know where the shotgun shells are, which closets trigger ambushes, how to route through a level in half the intended time. The same mastery curve exists in every game here. A second run through GoldenEye on 00 Agent, a second playthrough of Super Metroid targeting a low-percentage item completion, a no-death Metal Slug clear — these are goals that feel achievable and satisfying in exactly the same way DOOM’s own par times do.
If you’re a DOOM player looking to expand your horizons, start with DOOM 64 — it requires no adjustment in mindset, only hardware. From there, Turok and GoldenEye extend the first-person formula into more complex territory without abandoning what made DOOM work. Both games reward the same spatial awareness and weapon discipline you already developed on Phobos. Once you’ve exhausted the FPS well, Super Metroid is the ideal bridge into action-exploration: it’s slower and more contemplative, but the alien hostility and upgrade progression will feel immediately familiar.
For players who want something more arcade-immediate, start with Metal Slug before moving to Contra III — Metal Slug’s slower enemy movement and slightly more generous hit detection makes it a gentler introduction to the run-and-gun genre, while Contra III assumes you’re already comfortable taking damage on purpose to maintain aggression. Alien vs. Predator and Blackthorne are both excellent but idiosyncratic; save them for when you’ve gotten your bearings in the broader genre and are ready for entries that color a bit further outside the lines. Across all of these games, the most transferable skill you carry from DOOM is the instinct to keep moving — trust that instinct, and every single one of these picks will click into place.
| Feature | Platform | Year | Score | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Doom 64 | NINTENDO-64 | 1997 | 8.9 | Fps, Action |
| GoldenEye 007 | NINTENDO-64 | 1997 | 9.7 | Shooter, Action |
| Turok: Dinosaur Hunter | NINTENDO-64 | 1997 | 8 | Fps, Action |
| Alien vs. Predator | SNES | 1993 | 8.6 | Action, Beat 'em Up |
| Contra III: The Alien Wars | SNES | 1992 | 9 | Run and Gun, Action |
| Metal Slug | NEO-GEO | 1996 | 9.2 | Action, Shooter |
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Often mistaken for a port, Doom 64 is an entirely new game: 32 original levels, new enemy designs, a darker atmosphere, and the exclusive Unmaker weapon. It is widely considered the best DOOM game released between the original 1993 trilogy and DOOM 2016, and it spent over two decades as an N64 exclusive before finally receiving its long-deserved PC/modern release.
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Rare's landmark first-person shooter defined console multiplayer gaming and demonstrated that licensed movie games could be exceptional. GoldenEye 007 introduced aiming, stealth mechanics, and objectives-based mission design to console FPS games, and its four-player split-screen became the standard for living room multiplayer.
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The N64's first major first-person shooter — Turok's fog-shrouded jungle combat against dinosaurs and alien technology established what the N64 FPS would look like before GoldenEye.
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Capcom's 1993 SNES beat-em-up — Alien vs. Predator is not the arcade game but a distinct SNES-exclusive action game where players control Dutch Schaefer or Linn Kurosawa fighting Aliens across seven stages. Two-player co-op, weapons including plasma cannon and smart discs, and dark action that captures the sci-fi horror tone.
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The SNES Contra masterpiece. Contra III: The Alien Wars brought the series into the 16-bit era with spectacular Mode 7 boss battles, dual weapon wielding, and relentless action that matched the hardware's capabilities.
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The run-and-gun masterpiece that pushed the Neo-Geo hardware to its absolute limits. Metal Slug's hand-drawn animation — hundreds of frames per character, explosions, and environmental details that no other arcade game matched — combined with cooperative two-player action, weapon variety, and relentless design to create what many consider the greatest run-and-gun game ever made.
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Super Metroid is widely considered one of the greatest games ever made — a masterpiece of atmospheric exploration, environmental storytelling, and movement-based design that defined the Metroidvania genre.
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Blizzard Entertainment's 1994 SNES dark platformer — Blackthorne follows Kyle Vlaros, a prince returning to the planet Tuul after being raised on Earth, shooting his way through alien environments with a shotgun and environmental puzzle mechanics inspired by Prince of Persia's rotoscoped movement. An early Blizzard production with distinctive dark atmosphere.