myk
patron mod of ugly ducklings and black sheep
Posts: 10458
Registered: 04-02 |
One thing I found innovative was the use of intermission messages in every level in Perdition's Gate was pretty innovative... although the gameplay of that WAD was pretty normal or non-exceptional.
Scuba Steve said:
Hmm, I'm going to disagree. I don't think any megawads, that I've ever played, could really be called "most innovative".
I think whiteboy567's post did add something to consider (I admit I hadn't, at first thought). In certain departments Hell Revealed is certainly more innovative that Aliens TC, for example. Rather than a generic "innovation" it might be necessary to point out in what way the WAD is innovative. Perhaps some manage to be innovative in various ways, which is worth noting, and might lead to a "most innovative" in general.
They are all variations on Doom's "shoot stuff"... but sometimes you shoot more guys in better looking maps.
I would say something like that if I didn't have the ability to judge the differences between the way WADs that don't alter the behavior of the game entities or features. Saying that you're just downplaying an element that may require creativity and planning to make original and unseen before in such a light. But you can innovate in how to handle that sort of gameplay, and such innovations can be lost to a certain degree in WADs that modify the behavior, because it gets mixed up in other changes: the gameplay may be very standard except for changes that were determined by technical changes, and not thought and work put on adjusting playability.
It happens in many creative disciplines... some more subtle or smaller change may have an essential effect, leaving its mark as a true novelty. This is because the quality of the innovation and its effect on the design is more relevant than the quantity of change. Thus it's wrong to base "innovation" merely on how much something is changed.
There are other WADs that are innovative in how they deal with the "classic" DOOM gameplay, such as the Chord series by Malcolm Sailor, which go in a clearly different direction than Hell Revealed to provide challenging play using the standard elements of the game.
It's true that such WADs aren't innovative in many other ways and that comparatively the WADs that stand out as innovative among the ones that change the game less are few in relation to the amount of WADs there are of that kind (it's arguably hard to make a relevant and lasting change to something worked on "to the death"), but they certainly specialize in a certain type of innovation, and when they manage it, it sticks. Perhaps even The Darkening II can be considered innovative, in how it manages to provide a full "basically from scratch" texture set, and in the style used for that set... at least in that department.
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05-11-08 22:51 
