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SavageCorona

Why do older maps (as well as some other games) get free passes?

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I've been wondering for quite some time now, based on critique both me and other people have received, why certain maps such as E2M8 and the Overlord boss from Duke 3D get a free pass as a "good boss fight" while modern mappers have to strive to create a highly detailed and "vertical" map just to win the critics over. E2M8 is just a big flat area with some cubes where you circle strafe a Cyberdemon with rockets and then you win. Overlord is a circular room where you circle strafe the boss with rockets and you win. Hell even the Cycloid boss of Duke is just a big rectangle. But when someone nowadays creates such a map, their map is considered sub par (not necessarily bad) or boring because there isn't enough going on in the map besides the boss and some helper monsters. So why exactly do maps of the past get a free pass for being simple and minimalistic?

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Pfft... Kids. E2M8 was brick shitting back in 93. Try killing a Cyber with a keyboard wile epically dodging those rockets behind pillars. And that blood-cooling impending stop that can't be located by ear.

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Well, a big reason that you can't really get away with box arenas is that most players who have beaten the game won't find it challenging, and it offers nothing that the original game didn't provide.

I'd hesitate to give maps like e2m8 a free pass anyway, I think it's a turd despite the nostalgia effect.

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Reviewers are more likely to forgive imperfections of old works if they consider the fact that standards were different (or even non-existent) back when the maps were created - they were pioneers of their own kind. However, if the reviewers reviewed them strictly with current standards of level design / gameplay / visuals in mind (which some people call "objectively"), of cource that the maps wouldn't get a good "free pass" as you strangely call it. Standards change over time, and you can't repeat the same things again and again. The things we see overdone today were OK back in the day, though. So again, it depends on the point of view of the reviewer.

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SavageCorona said:

This is what I'm on about. If E2M8 were released today it wouldn't even be classified as average.


Imo this doesn't have so much sense, you have to contextualize the time when the map was made.

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gaspe said:

Imo this doesn't have so much sense, you have to contextualize the time when the map was made.

Technically, you don't have to. It's certainly possible to disregard context and judge everything from modern standpoint only - and then, yes, old works tend to suck unforgivably. But many people do contextualize them anyway. It also depends on the context of the review itself - who writes it, where, and for what reason. There's your answer, SavageCorona. There are different ways how people can judge artwork.

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People appreciate classic cars for what they are and the foundation of style and standards they set. By modern standards, however, classic cars are garbage. It doesn't mean they have no intrinsic value just because they're worse at being a car than contemporary ones, though.

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If E2M8 were released today, it'd be slammed for being a low-effort homage to E2M8.

The important thing in E2M8 isn't its layout, it's its unique new enemy (provided you're playing the episodes in sequence). E2M8 is the cyberdemon map. It's the cyberdemon that counts, not the map.

After playing through E2M8, the cyberdemon is now a known quantity, and its fellow cybies will start showing up as regular enemies more and more. Once the cyberdemon isn't "the unique and frightening Episode 2 boss" but just "some tough monster you'll circle-strafe around for a bit so that it takes out three or four scores of those pesky revenants", then a simple arena where you fight it is not exciting anymore.

If E2M8 was released today, then the original E2M8 would have been some other map. But you know what this other, different map would have been? A simple arena where you fight the cyberdemon. So it would still have been E2M8.

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Just to clarify I'm not implying if E2M8 were released today then it would have been a different fight in the game itself. I was just saying that a large square with cubes would be called bland, simple, minimalistic and sub-par if it were released today.

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Read through the DWmegawad Club's playthrough of Ultimate Doom. The bad maps get their fair share of criticism. That's even when the criticism is tinted by the "by 1993's standards" lens.

Various lines about E2M8 in posts acknowledging that it was a passable (or good) level by the standards of yore but would be dull in 201x:

Of course, beating a Cyberdemon is old hat in this day and age

Of course, to a modern player, having this much space to face the cyb in renders the challenge paltry

This map has not aged well, fighting a cyber in a wide open space like this is so easy. The only hard thing about this map is trying to avoid the Lost Souls, which are extremely annoying.


No free passes!

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Maps are judged against their predecessors, and iwad maps have no predecessors.

That's not to say that e2m8 isn't objectively less interesting than modern ones, but if you consider that in the doom universe all subsequent maps (including custom ones) are essentially a continuation of the same game, then it makes sense that the first ever appearance of the cyberdemon would be such a simple scenario.

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Nostalgia. Like I point out people don't want new Star Wars, they want updated 1970s Sarwars, 1980s Super Mario and e1m1 just modernized. no one ever talks about e2m1. We all want to relive those memories back then. People want that first feeling. By now there is no first feeling with Doom except maybe Brutal Doom.

Plus map makers now have more time and better tools to work with. So we expect better, but there are so many that they all just get lost in the shuffle. Nothing sticks.

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This is literally what the movie Jurassic World's message is about. You are the kid who was looking at his phone and texting and couldn't give two shits about the T-Rex. In 1993, the T-Rex in Jurassic Park was awe inspiring stuff but now, in 2015, nobody is impressed anymore. Just having a T-Rex is too simple.

You know what else made its first appearance in 1993? The Cyberdemon.

E2M8 is Jurassic Park. The Cyberdemon is the T-Rex.

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SavageCorona said:

Just to clarify I'm not implying if E2M8 were released today then it would have been a different fight in the game itself. I was just saying that a large square with cubes would be called bland, simple, minimalistic and sub-par if it were released today.


The cyberdemon is a big guy. He needs room to move around. Granted, maybe not that much room, but a spacious environment nonetheless. Fact is, this goes for many a boss level in many a game since. Boss arenas serve a single function and are rarely any more complex than an orthogonal room with a few columns. Back then, there was nothing to compare it to.

That said, try Cat And Mouse from Doom64 for a less conventional boss encounter.

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Ralphis, that's a great analogy.

To further the point, if I were to sit here and play Jimi Hendrix riffs, or ones arguably more complex, I'm not exactly breaking new ground. An imitation can be ""better"" than the innovation but not recieve as much credit because it didn't "make waves".

The wheel is commonplace nowadays sure, but that doesn't mean it wasn't impressive when the first person came up with it.

EDIT: In terms of mapping for Doom specifically, editors are far, FAR more user friendly these days than in the bygone era. Yet another analogy: If someone paints a masterpiece from a paintboard featuring many colors, that's awesome. If they paint that exact same picture using twigs and berries and shit they found in their yard, it's doubly impressive. (I think that's a fair comparison from DEU to Doom Builder..)

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They don't get free passes. They paid their own way a long time ago. Fares have just gone up since then.

The cool thing about E2M8 wasn't the design, it was that we got to meet a new monster. Without that novelty, of course the level itself has to do more of the work in a modern boss fight. Include an awesome never-before-seen boss in your flat square 2015 level, and maybe then people will be less picky about how boring the architecture is.

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There's not much to be done in the "new monster" department though. Most of it has been done.

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E2M8 gets a free pass because it was one of the very first significant fps boss battles, introduced a brand new terrifying monster, and was quite challenging to face using only the keyboard on a 1993 setup. That's literally everything a good boss fight should be. It makes no sense to judge something 22 years old as if it were made today. You can, but it would be very ignorant to do so.

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John Romero admited that the official maps suck compared to what we make now, so I guess the classic maps don't get a free pass, even from the authors.

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scifista42 said:

Technically, you don't have to. It's certainly possible to disregard context and judge everything from modern standpoint only - and then, yes, old works tend to suck unforgivably.

Well, technically, some people don't know the history of their own countries, and some can't even write the language they speak properly. In the end, once or if they get wiser and better, people who thought at first that some past breakthrough or bit of genius was "mediocre" will start to understand in what way it came to influence what they were doing "better" without understanding the sequence of events. The supposed "free pass" is much about giving proper credit, and it's rather awkward to attempt to gain respect and recognition if one doesn't offer it oneself.

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gaspe said:

Imo this doesn't have so much sense, you have to contextualize the time when the map was made.



This - and only this!
Without context to judge against the entire act of judging something is meaningless.

Even though most has already been said, let's quickly summarize the impact of this map:

- it featured a big and deadly new enemy for the first time.
- that enemy had an attack that was far more deadly than anything that came before
- the stomping sound gave most players the creeps
- with the low resolution the rockets were much harder to make out than on modern source ports which added a lot to the challenge.
- people were far less skilled at controlling the player.

And despite all this, the battle never seemed unfair, like so many boss fights that came after it did. It was incredibly tough but even some lesser skilled players eventually got the reward of having beaten the boss.

Of course, as technology evolved, the challenge of this map decreased and its deficiencies became more apparent - but if you think about it, it's the same with old movies which in the time they were made they were truly breaking new ground but today are just old news.

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Because Doom is a legendary game, keep that in mind people. If Doom would have been a cheap 2D game with 0.0 graphical advances the history would be different. But in 1993 the world was stunned, the whole game get a free pass to gaming history and E2M8 is an important part of the DOOM experience.

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SavageCorona said:

This is what I'm on about. If E2M8 were released today it wouldn't even be classified as average.

Duuuuuuuuuuuude...

Just the boss alone made that an awesome boss map, and many undertones that went into the atmosphere that played with you psychologically; first thing you see is the boss from episode one... butchered, strung across the wall... the dread you felt when you heard the footsteps and growls coming from right next to you as you're taking cover (cowering) inside the building, and the panic that ensured when suddenly seeing the him pop around the corner! A twisted half demon, half machine abomination that towers over you and anything you've seen up to that point with it's creepy horns, high health, a rocket launcher that makes your entire screen go red with one hit. You died a lot because of a different keyboard setup, and not being familiar with it's attack pattern (no other monster up to that point fired three shots before moving again). The location also felt really desolate and creepy, back then with low resolution (the resolution it was designed for) you didn't see it as "empty space", you saw it as a cold, dark, and desolate hell...

Even when I replayed DooM for the first time it was an intense map. :P

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SavageCorona said:

This is what I'm on about. If E2M8 were released today it wouldn't even be classified as average.

The point is, it wasn't released today.

Compared to all the other first-person shooter boss maps with towering, rocket throwing, multi-thousand hit point enemies that were also available in 1993, E2M8 was pretty good.

At least it wasn't just a big room with an elevator in it that rises and falls in front of a big wall with a hole in it that you need to post a few rockets through to win the game. That would be terrible. :P


Personally, I've always been a bit "meh" about boss encounters anyway. I've never really understood the fascination with punctuating a game with single huge enemies that must be defeated to progress in the game. This, for me, is made even worse when such fights are in ridiculous arenas that have no reason to exist than being boss arenas (why the hell do bosses live in big arenas that house the only way of killing them) and contrived tasks, special weapons/vulnerabilities and particular sequences that are unlike the gameplay of the rest of the game just add to the WTF factor for me.

Personally, I find a good, tough, situational fight more fun than a boss fight most of the time.

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Yet another masturbatory let's compare classic iWAD maps to modern mapping thread.

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esselfortium said:

"What's the deal with all these gregorian chants? They don't even use chords!"

Why do people love Keaton? His best work didn't even use sound!

Seriously, if you're comparing E2M8 to modern mapping sensibilities, you're missing the very essence of what made Doom so revolutionary and there's probably no help for you.

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