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scifista42

One enemy and one weapon you see as CHARACTERISTIC for Doom

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The Shotgun was the first weapon sprite they made for the game.. Damn I love it, but when it comes to something that characterizes Doom, it's gotta be the BFG. Many FPS games have a fun to shoot shotgun - Nothing but DOOM has the big green balls of death!

I always thought the zombiemen stuck out for their awesome green flat tops, but we all love the Cyberdemon. The hellspawn in general are all awesome actually, I wish more games would use art similar to this. Most aliens or hellish creatures in newer games look a bit too abstract for me, with a gazillion eyes and six arms and what have you, I like how they've humanized the baddies here. It just works for me.

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I'm surprised the chainsaw hasn't come up, to be honest. Not only does it sum up the 90's "Rule of Cool" approach perfectly, but it was a very talked-about feature at the time.

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I remember the chainsaw hype in reviews/previews before I played the game. They talked about how gory and effective it was. When I actually played the game I was disappointed that it was just like a close range chain gun with no special splatter animation like gibs or anything.

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Pinky demons and shotguns.

Pinky demons specifically because I'm remembering an old "best games of all time" list that used a picture of the Pinky in Episode 1 (E1M9, maybe?) for its representation of the game, and that image has stuck with me for some reason. I suppose Cyberdemons would be more characteristic for some people, but Pinkies are more commonplace.

Shotgun doesn't need explaining. We all know why. Even though the Super Shotgun superceded it in pretty much all aspects, it's still a very satisfying weapon to use in most situations.

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Enemy: Cyberdemon

Weapon: Pump Shotgun

For me the pump shotgun is THE iconic weapon of the game. I was influenced so much that I bought a 12ga pump shotgun as my first gun
when I was 15 back in 1995. It is perfect for all reasons listed above and the weapon animations are great. Still funny that id used digitized photos of a toy shotgun called the Tootsie-Toy Dakota.

Fucking Tootsie-Toy Dakota.

DOOM is such a fucking bad ass game that it brushes off this babyish fact and lays waste to untold hordes of creatures.


No other enemy caused as much fear and dread and hopelessness the fucking Cyberdemon. When that motherfucker wakes up, no matter how far away you are in the level, you hear him wake up. When I'm playing and I hear that fucker wake up, I still get a feeling of dread and I have been playing since 1994 and I know how to take them out with the BFG in 2 shots. Baron of Hell was almost my first choice, but after seeing what the Cyberdemon did to the Barons in Tower of Babel, Cyberdemon has always been first place in DOOM for me.

Brom's cover art of DOOM II fully sums up what DOOM is all about.
The DOOM marine up against an impossible foe with a crude but effective weapon with impossible odds.

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Doominator2 said:

The rocket launcher is pretty common in fps games though.


Yah, but it looks like a big gray penis. How many games allow you to fire giant fat dicks with 100 rocket loads? Best videogame orgasm ever.

Anyways, for enemies, I think anyone who uses a projectile attack it quite symbolic for Doom. The game has a heavy reliance on learning to strafe, which is crucial to survival. Imp or Baron probably stick out the most, especially the Baron due to it's cover prominence and the fact that it was the shareware boss (In the vein that anyone who played Wolf3D, no matter how long ago, remembers "GUTEN TAG!!")

As for weapons, the Shotgun and/or SSG. Both are staple weapons that are basically perfect for the game that they're in. I've felt the only other DB-Shotgun that ever felt right or at least quick and effective in a game was the gun from Blood. Otherwise in other games the weapon always seemed to be fairly ineffective or ponderous to use (Although in WaW this could be fixed by using the Sawed Off Shotgun with the Sleight of Hand Perk, thus making it a hell of a Zombies weapon).

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I'd go with SSG and Caco. SSG, because it started (or popularized?) the trend of super strong shotguns with weak range that persists in the FPS genre to this day. Caco, because it's fairly iconic and unique to this day in all its bright red glory, at least as a video game enemy (re: Enjay's comment, I always pictured a beholder with a bunch of tentacles, a much bigger eye, and a green-ish or gray-ish hue, so never made the connection).

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for Doom, the Shotgun and the Shotgun sergeant! I feel like the entire of Doom 1 was balanced around repeated shotgun usage while the heavy weapons mostly felt unnecessary. of course Doom 2 and Final Doom are love letters to the SSG.

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Solid Snake said:

good old shotgun and imp

I was surprised that not all posts were like this.

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Darch said:

I was surprised that not all posts were like this.


To be fair, if this was 1994, I'd say "chainsaw and pinky", as the cliche of "treating" the player to a little pinky chainsaw massacre as soon as he picked up a chainsaw, was a staple of early maps.

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Maes said:Being cornered by zombies OTOH, is much harder, as they are easier to kill and tend to infight/kill each other much before they achieve that.


There's a map from back before dirt called Bodybag (I can't find it on the archive offhand) which swarms you with multiple waves of poor dumb troopers, and you have very little cover or ammo. The whole idea was to demonstrate how a zillion weak enemies could be more deadly than one strong enemy.

I think that concept is at the core of DOOM. It's not just about how one megamonster can bash your head in. There's a lot more variety available with weaker monsters, especially used in combination.

But if I had to pick a single enemy that most represents DOOM, I think it would be the imp. It's our first indicator that these creatures are not of this world. It's neither human nor ape, and it looks and sounds like nothing we know from Heaven, Hell, or Earth. It has its own weird mix of intelligence and braindeath, surpassed only by the caco (which adds sneaky to its makeup). It is quick to anger and fearless against stronger opponents... including marines armed with shotguns. It falls perfectly into the "uncanny valley" between strange and familiar.

At a certain point in one's DOOMing career, the imp stops being scary and foreign, and becomes a strange sort of friend. Its voice is familiar and comforting, even as its fireballs singe you from afar and its claws rake you from behind. You cringe in terror of the oncoming unknown monster, only to find yourself going "Gah! It's just an imp!" You gleefully mow them down, yet you feel lonely if there are no imps in your world. No other monster invokes this paradox of fear and fondness.

And for committing that slaughter, I am torn between the shotgun, that the most basic and necessary of weapons, and the super-shotgun, which empowers us to take down anything that comes at us. How many of us have collected a berserk and a SSG and shouted, "NOW I'm armed!"

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Pistol and Shotgun Guy

This is more a personal story. when i was little, i had played doom once or twice, and that pistol was all i got, then my parents decided that it was all evil and such and wouldn't let me play it for like, ten years. any time i'd think of doom, id think of the pistol, and those skull things that highlighted your menu choice. so there's that.
as for the shotgun guy, he's essential, its a consistent challenge when there's a few around, and doom would be worse off it weren't around.

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Rez said:

There's a map from back before dirt called Bodybag (I can't find it on the archive offhand) which swarms you with multiple waves of poor dumb troopers, and you have very little cover or ammo.


I thought of Hordes and Hordes 2, but yeah, the concept was the same.

Rez said:

At a certain point in one's DOOMing career, the imp stops being scary and foreign, and becomes a strange sort of friend. Its voice is familiar and comforting

....


you feel lonely if there are no imps in your world. No other monster invokes this paradox of fear and fondness.


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Maes said:

Imp encounter...


Haha! Yes!!

Hmmm... ya know, there's lots more 'opportunity' out there.... some may recall a Usenet thread entitled "Fisting a Baron". :D

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Rez said:

Hmmm... ya know, there's lots more 'opportunity' out there.... some may recall a Usenet thread entitled "Fisting a Baron". :D


Link? :-p

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Maes said:
Link? :-p


Alas, this was back about 1996, and I have no idea where that's preserved.

But I can attest to the thread title, cuz I posted it. :D

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