secretanchitman
Member
Same here. As well as IDCLEV so I could warp to DM31 and DM32. Those were fantastic secret levels!
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I just went back to Doom...
- Thread starter Corronchilejano
- Start date
Same here. As well as IDCLEV so I could warp to DM31 and DM32. Those were fantastic secret levels!
Cizeta-Moroder
Banned
Shadow Hog
Member
I know when I was young, my issues with similar games was that the first-person viewpoint meaning a lot of sneak attacks could happen on me, and that I was really squeamish and couldn't get past the gore. Didn't really play Doom, as such, until around 2004, where I'd largely gotten over the first-person issue and kinda forced myself to get over Doom's violence. Neither aspect fazes me now (although violence in films still leaves me squeamish, so I dunno).
Checking out all these DOOM WADs I feel the same. To me DOOM feels like it follows the same core philosophy as the Mario games in terms of how it's constructed.
Like, in Mario games you can clearly see the common rule set with which every level was built. The same applies to DOOM, as opposed to more modern shooters that have the tools to make up pretty much any set piece or event they want. You're very much able to see the mechanical workings behind how DOOM and Mario work, but that just makes them look even more impressive. Very few modern games feel like this, but I would count Valve's single player games among them, as well as today's Mario games.
This is why I hope (but don't expect) DOOM 4 to maybe take some pointers from how Nintendo has handled Mario Galaxy and 3D World. Nintendo added new tricks but has kept the same core philosophy in terms of how they put the games together.
SeventhSon
Member
The same could be said for classic Tomb Raider compared to 2013.
Mister Chippy
Member
Doom's a strange beast for me. On the one hand I like it's level design and find it to generally be a good game. On the other hand I find that twitch shooters have spoiled me and just can't play it without using a mouse. I simply can't react fast enough or accurately enough for my tastes while using the keys, which kinda messes with some of the balance of the game since I'm pretty sure you weren't expected to be as precise as you can be while using a mouse.
My second major problem with Doom is that it's 2D. Looking at it as a 2D game, it's levels are very well laid out and have an impressive amount of verticality. However looking at it as a FPS it's, well, 2D. I don't personally feel that the smart level design is really enough to allow it to hold up as an FPS, at least not when compared to good games today. For example I think that the recent Shadow Warrior simply has better gameplay than Doom does, where basically the only thing Doom unarguably does better is in level layout. Still, if you look at it as a 2D adventure shump with a first person perspective it holds up very nicely, since it's both a good game and there isn't really anything like it currently.
My second major problem with Doom is that it's 2D. Looking at it as a 2D game, it's levels are very well laid out and have an impressive amount of verticality. However looking at it as a FPS it's, well, 2D. I don't personally feel that the smart level design is really enough to allow it to hold up as an FPS, at least not when compared to good games today. For example I think that the recent Shadow Warrior simply has better gameplay than Doom does, where basically the only thing Doom unarguably does better is in level layout. Still, if you look at it as a 2D adventure shump with a first person perspective it holds up very nicely, since it's both a good game and there isn't really anything like it currently.
Raptomex
Member
Games, items, weapons, and enemies are all images I created.
For source ports and mods I planned to have a link to each source port and mod using a quotation box containing the description from the source site. I can do the same for popular megawads I suppose.
The instructions to play mods/wads will have to be typed out. What is needed, installation, dragging to the exe, and autoloading. The OT can always be updated when needed.
We should get some gaf mappers and create some gaf megawads.
Rickenslacker
Banned
Marathon is a kind of funny case of how forward thinking it was at the time leading it to feel antiquated now. Free look aiming, dual wielding, alt fire modes, reloading, AI helpers, a cohesive narrative guiding you through the game and having explicit objectives within levels. It has the bits and pieces that have become normalized within the genre through the years, but with some of those concepts not quite being all there yet; you had clips and magazines to reload, but no actual means of manual reload, so if you only had a couple of rounds left and are in a lull between action, there wasn't really much you could do to top up other than shoot off what you had. Coupled with the early '90s FPS level design we all know and love, you really have this series trying to do the most with just what was known at the time.
Really going back to it now it's kind of weird how it feels like a sort of precursor to Half-Life, right down to wall-mounted health dispensers.
I'd say it's definitely worth playing, despite the things it lacks to just give it the same raw playability that makes Doom as valid as ever to go back to, you might just be fascinated from just how rapid the genre progressed at the time and might find yourself enthralled with the story -- which is a rarity for the genre even now.
The first game had some great level music as well, but Durandal and Infinity ditched that for a more atmospheric approach.
Man your OT sounds awesome! Can't wait!
DoktorEvil
Banned
Durandal and Infinity also had innovations as far as local multiplayer and deathmatch. Fave mode was always kill the man with the ball, a kind of mobile king of the hill. I wish the franchise had more love from the console crowd.
Lordwindowlicker
Member
Nothing compares to Doom and Doom 2 as far as amazing fast paced, arcade style fps gameplay is concerned. Not even Quake and Quake 2 can hit that level for me.
Played Doom when it was still just episode 1 "shareware". Downloaded it on dialup modem on AOL. Replayed it recently with GZDoom.
Still one of the best FPS games ever made.
- Fast
- Great level design, not overly linear, requires some exploration with lots of secrets, but fast enough to be fun
- Great music (lookup the live version of the soundtrack)
- Great art design, from the wall textures to the monster designs
- Hard, unforgiving, brutal, challenging, but smart and fair
- No hand holding (see the "if doom was made today" videos)
- FAST
Also it's nice and fast and smooth and also fast. I don't like most modern FPS. They're boring. Doom is not boring. Doom is awesome.
Quake was a disappointment to me after Doom. Yes, Quake was a better multiplayer game. Yes, it was 3d. Yes, Quake is the foundation that modern FPS games are built on, originating most of what we take for granted, from online design to modding to community and even to code base, but Doom is a better game. Quake is a tech demo for an engine.
Still one of the best FPS games ever made.
- Fast
- Great level design, not overly linear, requires some exploration with lots of secrets, but fast enough to be fun
- Great music (lookup the live version of the soundtrack)
- Great art design, from the wall textures to the monster designs
- Hard, unforgiving, brutal, challenging, but smart and fair
- No hand holding (see the "if doom was made today" videos)
- FAST
Also it's nice and fast and smooth and also fast. I don't like most modern FPS. They're boring. Doom is not boring. Doom is awesome.
Quake was a disappointment to me after Doom. Yes, Quake was a better multiplayer game. Yes, it was 3d. Yes, Quake is the foundation that modern FPS games are built on, originating most of what we take for granted, from online design to modding to community and even to code base, but Doom is a better game. Quake is a tech demo for an engine.
Ulysses 31
Member
Does it have any official name to make looking it up easier?
nextgeneration
Member
Well said, and completely agree with all of your points.
Look for the "Doom Limited Edition Audio CD" by Robert Prince, the game's original composer.
^5
Rickenslacker
Banned
That's really all that needs to be said. As straight to the point as the games are.
I've only ever heard of the cool things Marathon featured in MP but have nothing to share in regards to personal experience, sadly.
Having recently played a lot of both back to back I gotta disagree. I enjoyed the recent Shadow Warrior but once I was done with that, I was done. Finishing Ultimate Doom only brought me to want to start up Doom 2, which then made me want to play some wads, which then made me want to play Master Levels, which then got me starting Final Doom, and that's just because the enemies allow for a lot of variety in creative setups while Shadow Warrior exhausted its uses pretty quickly. That, and the general combat loop of Doom just works out so much better. What is the most durable enemy within Doom's regular sandbox? The Baron of Hell, who takes 5 rockets or super shotgun blasts on Ultra-Violence, so even as beefy as he is he can go down with relative brevity. I'm not sure of the enemy names in Shadow Warrior but for instance there is an encounter with two of the necromancers, and it just feels like it goes on forever. I'm getting spammed with skeletons, I'm just barraging the necros with bullets and explosions to seemingly no reaction, they erect invincible shields constantly, the whole fight lasts something like 5-7 minutes but doesn't justify the length as I'm just repeating the same thing over and over and just exhausting all my ammo because the non-fodder enemies are just so spongy. It starts becoming a regular thing to encounter enemies like the necros, or the berserkers, or the minotaurs, and it just gets especially tedious in later encounters when their idea of challenge is to pit you against multiple sponges simultaneously.
In Ultimate Doom, the level in which you finally encounter the Cyberdemon immediately hands you all the tools you need, and an arena to face him in; he soaks in a lot of damage but all told it should take a couple minutes to take him down while attempting to dodge the rockets he sends your way in an attempt to ruin your day. Your resources are finite however, and wasting them all means death and restarting the level, which then tops you up with enough to face him again. Shadow Warrior puts you in an arena for the boss fights as well, but like the enemy types mentioned before, the bosses just end up taking too much to take down without offering much to fill in all the time it takes to do it. And since you end up running out of ammo so quickly, the arena infinitely spawns ammo for you to collect for the boss to sponge up; you end up taking something like 10 minutes with nothing but circle strafe shooting a single target and it's not engaging in the slightest.
That doesn't take into account things like the healing system, where Shadow Warrior lets you heal a significant amount of health whenever you like with no cost, or how the weapons are weak feeling in general with a slight disconnect between shooting and seeing the result (this is a Flying Wild Hog problem specifically I find). I don't mean to crap all over Shadow Warrior here, I highly enjoyed my playthrough of it and am being critical for the sake of comparison, but if given the choice of what I'd want to play it'd be Doom and it's simply because it plays better, feels better, and is way better balanced.
Shadow Hog
Member
Nah, that's no fun.
Mister Chippy
Member
First, I agree with you about the boss fights. They were probably the weakest part of Shadow Warrior. I think the biggest problem there though was the sudden shift to fighting giants when previously almost all of the combat had taken place against similarly sized enemies. Boss fights in Shadow Warrior were less like fighting an enemy and more like attacking a giant statue with laser eyes.
I'll also say that the healing system in Shadow Warrior is something that I was on the fence about for a while, especially the health back on ki strikes thing. However after beating the game I think that I really like it's inclusion. Given how the mechanic works if you're in trouble trying to heal up with your spell isn't gonna save you, it'll just cause you to die faster. I'm pretty sure it's inclusion was to take those situations where you take a stray rocket and get wounded enough that you can't fight properly but not wounded enough that you're gonna die. By allowing you to heal up to basically the minimum required to return to the fray, but only if you had managed to extract yourself from any immediate danger, it actually promotes a much more aggressive playstyle since it minimized the time spent hiding and trying to pick off enemies from safety.
The ability to heal yourself with your katana is simply there to make the weapon viable. It's actually quite well balanced IMO, since it's actually rather difficult to outheal the damage that comes from most of the stronger enemies, plus it rewards you for using riskier attacks.
As for the bigger enemies, they actually aren't nearly as spongy as you'd think. The thing is you need to take their limbs first. Hacking off a limb isn't all that difficult, and since removing specific limbs will also disable certain abilities it adds a level of strategy to those fights that I love. I personally think the big enemies in Shadow Warrior are way better than the big enemies in Doom, since in Shadow Warrior each one of them has specific tactics required to defeat them optimally while Doom is just "USE BIG GUN!" The only exception is those chargers, which are kinda bullshit until you learn their movement patterns. I spent quite a while trying to get them to run into walls before I realized that they could actually turn pretty well. You either need to wait for them to tire of chasing you or purposely aggro them when you have some cover you can duck behind.
I also actually like the combinations of the big enemies in the same fight that you get later on in Shadow Warrior, since choosing which enemy (or which limbs) to go after first provides interesting tactical decisions. Chargers are the most dangerous by themselves, but they're not all that likely to kill you if you keep moving and they take around 6~8 strong hits to kill. Generals (the minotaurs) are a more immediate threat. Their left arm can enrage all the lesser demons around them, and their right arm is able to lasso you and drag you right into a world of hurt. However their limbs are relatively weak and they drop one of the most powerful weapons in the game if you kill them (assuming you've taken that perk). Necromancers also have fairly squishy limbs, and they keep reviving the cannon fodder you kill. They also can cast spells to barrage you with artillery and put up an impenetrable shield for a little bit. While you're fighting not only do you have to keep blowing up enemies, dodging attack, and trying not to die, you've also got to consider which limbs pose the greatest threat to you and how to safely take them out. That level of tacticality is something that you just don't find in doom, where normally you're just shooting whoever the biggest enemy on the screen is with whatever your biggest gun is.
As for the problems you had with the weapons that's not really something I had. I'll admit that the flamethrower was quite underwhelming until you got the bombs, same with the shotgun until you got the quad barrels and the big red button, but for example I found the Uzi to feel simply devastating, especially once I got the double Uzi upgrade. The Rocket Launcher was kinda "meh", mainly because precision damage is so much stronger than AOE in that game.
Basically, I think the combat in Shadow Warrior is just way more tactical than Doom, since you've got to make so many choices. Plus, the sword is just so much fun. Learning all the enemy ranges and dancing in and out of them while dealing massive damage is just so satisfying.
Rickenslacker
Banned
The sword is pretty fun as well as the standout weapon, and I'd say Shadow Warrior easily has Doom beat in terms of melee combat, not even the berserker pack can compare. But pondering on your post a bit I still don't find the general combat design as well developed from my experiences.
My approach seems to blame, but for the bigger enemy types I would opt for maintaining distance and using guns, when it seems I should have gone for katana surgery. I tried picking up from a point in chapter 9 on Insane to just get more of a feel of my issues, and another thing I think that piles onto it is that you're often placed in arenas before you can continue. In Doom, levels were fairly open for you to backtrack through or even charge past encounters, but Shadow Warrior tends to lock you into an area where it will not allow you to do anything but fight until everything's dead. This leads to moments like the one where I just came across where I'm in a construction site, used up my remaining ammo on the grounded enemies that you're immediately presented, then leaving me with solely my katana as a group of flying types spawn in. Then I'm just kind of left clumsily doing the energy wave over and over again on enemies that don't really present a threat, but are overly numerous and are blocking my ability to progress for simply being there. Making a little more progress I get inside, find some shielded foes that are easy enough to dispatch, then a General comes in and I'm kind of reminded why I opt for a distanced strategy. I try to go in and hack away at limbs where I'm either swiped or hit with an AOE slam, then I make my retreat, heal up, and continue the repetition.
The concept of evaluating the encounter and picking out priority targets is pretty common, and I see that as just as much of an element of Doom's combat, if not moreso. Between enemy types present, level design, and weapons currently available to me my priorities might be completely different. In terms of weapon use, I don't see it as "USE BIG GUN", assuming you mean to just use what's strongest available at a given time. When I'm playing the shotgun/super shotgun is my bread and butter while everything else is situational. Even against hard hitters like the Mancubus, Arachnotron, Baron or Revenant, the super shotgun will usually be my go-to, but depending on enemy count, health, general ammo count, and level layout, I might go with the BFG, the plasma gun, rocket launcher, chaingun; I might even intentionally go for starting an in-fight between them. While the scope of an enemy's capabilities is far more simple in Doom, most enemies having a single means of attack, some also having a melee to use in close range, leaving only the Archvile to offer a secondary purpose, I think they intermingle to make for more interesting fights.
The thing I like about Doom's combat is just how calculated everything feels, projectiles are designed around dodging, you don't have specific regions to attack so you know in your head just how much ammo you need to spend to take down a given enemy, it's very crisp. By comparison, Shadow Warrior feels very messy, going back to the healing technique, a lot of the bigger encounters revolved around me shooting/slashing, getting hit, running away while using the healing technique, and going back to the fray -- I didn't feel this added an interesting back and forth or allowed me to be more aggressive, it just took away any real sense of high stakes knowing that I could always make my retreat and heal up again. And since healing had a cap at how high it would heal you, but not how often you could use it, it just resulted in a quicker loop of getting attacked, running away while healing, and trying to attack again.
I agree that the uzis actually do feel pretty good, but unlike Doom I don't have specific use cases for how I mix up what I use, outside of using the pistol or crossbow on winged enemies. In Shadow Warrior it often is just "USE BIG GUN" in the sense that I'm not really being explicitly aware of ammo use (and don't even know what my ammo count is until I switch to the weapon) and just use whatever's available to me. The uzis deplete quickly, so then I go to the next thing, then the next thing, then the next, there's no real sense of anything being more effective in situations over the other; some enemies will just as easily shrug off a four shell blast to the face as they will a rocket to the chest, and my ammo for everything just seems to disappear. I don't have any consideration for what I'm using other than what I have ammo for.
I just get way more satisfaction out of Doom as an FPS. Though from your response I probably didn't use the katana to its fullest, but speaking shot for shot I just think Doom is better executed.
Mister Chippy
Member
I'll accept that. Level design in Shadow Warrior is definitely not as good as Doom. Not much else to say there.
I do think that quite a few of your problems with Shadow Warrior come from your approach though. Firstly, your sword is really important. I've done a full sword only (excluding bosses because fuck that) playthrough and it worked quite well. Choosing the right gun for the right situation is also important though. Namely, save that Uzi ammo! Using the Uzi on grunts is only slightly less overkill than using the rocket launcher. Use the revolver or flamethrower (or the sword), they're fairly worthless against larger enemies. Always save some of your crossbow ammo for birds. Shotgun is probably your best gun for removing limbs after the Uzi. Also, don't shoot the face. Any shot to a larger enemy that's not on a limb might as well be wasted ammo.
I think your biggest problem though was the lack of sufficient katana usage. The game was balanced around that being a fairly huge part of your arsenal. That katana is not situational, it's the default. It's the guns that are all situational.
Still, come to think of it I'm pretty sure most of the things that specifically make me like Shadow Warrior are it's little quirks and gimmicks that I could totally see turning people off it. That and I'm conservative as hell when it comes to playing single player games, so any game where being right in the middle of the action is the safest place (and with the katana it is, assuming you've got good awareness of your enemies) is instantly going to be more exciting for me than a more traditional title. I also love the precision required to play it optimally, it makes me feel very satisfied to know that I killed that giant enemy so fast because I hit all the sweet spots perfectly. Still, I can totally see how people might dislike the idea that even some fairly basic enemies can be damage sponges if you don't hit them in the sweet spot.
I still prefer Shadow Warrior's combat to Doom's, but that's probably because Shadow Warrior just offers me something different from Doom.
uncleslappy
nethack is my favorite dark souls clone
My review from 3 years ago on my now defunct backlog blog http://thegameadventure.blogspot.com/2011/01/review-doom.html
Surprisingly I found the level design to be the standout characteristic as well.
Surprisingly I found the level design to be the standout characteristic as well.