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MajorRawne

Was PC Doom considered scary?

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Patch93 said:

WHAT? Not even this track scared you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IE1NmyrbWA


This track was the main reason I couldn't beat Doom 64. It used to scare me when I was a kid.

As for the other Doom games, I can't exactly say I found them scary as a kid, but there are rare occasions where I will jump from the sudden enemy around the dark corner. This happens when I'm tired and not really paying much attention to the game.

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It sure was, I was really scared of the hanging corpses they were very disgusting to me when I just begun playing doom(8 Years old)
And some parts of the game(MAP27 of doom2 MAP04 of Icarus made you go through the corpses) so I started to minimize the screen before I go there.

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Piper Maru said:

I wonder if Aubrey Hodges still visits this forum. He'd be very upset with you guys and your disapproval of his work.

For shame.

Says the guy who bashes Bobby Prince's soundtrack. For shame indeed.

I think he's professional enough to accept that not everyone gets the exact same experience from a piece of art and that some Doom players will prefer the original PC soundtrack to his, without losing any sleep over it.

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When I first played Doom it was on an Amiga with no soundtrack at all. That made for a pretty eerie atmosphere in its own right. It was an incredibly immersive experience walking through the dark only to hear a monster hiss in surprise at the sight of you.

When I finally got a PC and played Doom with the soundtrack I actually found it completely jarring. That first map with the loud and abrasive Metallica rip off just didn't have the scare factor any more... It added excitement, sure, but not any kind of fear factor. Other pieces of the PC OST rectified that (IMHO) so it wasn't all bad. :)

Nowadays, I tend to play with either ambient soundtracks or nothing. It just keeps me in the game and that in turn keeps me a little bit scared. :)

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Doom II: i'll admit that when i played all the way through, i just quit playing the game once i reached MAP30. i never wanted to see what was the face on the other side of the teleporter.

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not scared, exactly, but it had a whole different bout of atmosphere to it back then. perhaps rose-tinted nostalgia? at any rate, i'd love to experience that all over again, if only i know what soundcard the rig had... (it had a specific set of instruments that are nostalgic to me, and no it was not OPL)

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i never had any problems with doom and doom 2 even when i first 'was allowed' to see it when i was five. Doom 3 on the other hand... ugh, nerve wreking.

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Coming out of a conservative hell-fire-preaching Christian evangelical background as a young teenager, the most creepy thing in Doom for me was the concept of Hell, as I hadn't fully decided whether I still believed in it as a literal place of fire and brimstone yet.

Seeing all the crucified and mutilated corpses outside those windows in the House of Pain genuinely freaked me out.

Playing DOOM itself was perhaps the first step of my abandonment of religious paranoia and repression which eventually lead to my embracing of atheism, if I think back on it. The idea of such repugnant tortures being inflicted on souls for all of eternity was not acceptable to me :P

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I think I was spoiled, because my first real Doom experience, aside from the frustrating SNES port, was Doom 64. Going from the SNES version to that was incredible... And horrifying. Hodges ambient atonal tracks really do get under the skin, especially on a good sound system. I have distinct memories of late summer nights, shotgun firing away, and the low end of some of those songs riding up my spine and making my hairs stand on end. I don't recall ever having nightmares.

AS far as PC Doom is concerned, I think it's very easy to see why it would frighten some. Just looking at the other games of the time, Doom had at least some photo sourced artwork, not just lighting, but dynamic lighting and shading. The shading in particular.

When you put an image of Doom next to Wolf3D, it's night and day. Wolfenstein 3D looks like a cartoon. Everything is fully lit, and colorful. Doom is dark, foreboding, the shading makes certain dark tunnels fade into blackness as they go away from you, creating a sense of apprehension. It all adds up, and then you add in the theme of Hellspawn, an abandoned base, dead comrades at your feet. Traps like those found in E1M3 when you go to get the key and those imps come out behind you.

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fraggle said:

Don't tell me that's not scary.

Darkness isn't scary for me. It's mostly annoying because it hinders my vision (if it's too dark for my eyes to adjust).

What gets me is psychological unexplained stuff with a mask of sanity. The thought that any Wolfenstein level could hide nigh-invincible surprise bosses or huge ghosts if I looked too hard for secrets made me nervous.

In Doom's defense, the thing that finally got me creeped out was KDiZD. What I expected to be another (but nice-looking) tame Episode 1 variation, steadily got harder and harder to swallow as I advanced.

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Gez said:

Says the guy who bashes Bobby Prince's soundtrack. For shame indeed.

I think he's professional enough to accept that not everyone gets the exact same experience from a piece of art and that some Doom players will prefer the original PC soundtrack to his, without losing any sleep over it.


Now now, I like Bobby Princes Atmospheric tracks, just not the upbeat salsa dance music. But I am quite fond of the 3DO versions.

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TimeOfDeath said:

Same here. I was 11 or 12 and thought Doom was really scary.


I am 12. No kidding, I actually am!





No! I'm NOT trollling either!




I found Doom interesting enough when my dad played the levels of Doom and Doom II (although I wasn't aware they were seperate games) and me and my sisters would watch when I was 4.

Then I would be far too scared to move when he let us have a go.

I remember he left us with it and I boldly selected Inferno on Nightmare (Although I thought Inferno was a difficulty level) and I remembered the eye switch fondly when I replayed E3M1 when I picked up Doom again when I was 11 because I'd press it and then BAM! Imps shooting at me and I couldn't dodge and I was too scared to move and hey those are some nasty trees and hey am I standing on tentacles and BAM!


I'm dead.










Oh, and the dark, broken-light-fitted room at the end of Phobos Lab.

That's.

Freaking.

SCARY.

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On the subject of music, I wondered what it'd be like to switch between Prince's and Aubrey's soundtracks based on context like how Deus Ex has a different theme for combat and stealth.

By default, it'd play the PSX version tracks. When one or more monsters are awake and within a certain distance of you, it switches to the PC tracks, and lingers for maybe 5-10 seconds after those conditions become false again. The engine would need to remember which position both tracks were left on so as to not get annoying hearing the just the start of each track over and over.

It probably wouldn't be very pleasing in practice, but who knows.

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fraggle said:

Absolutely it was considered scary. It's not very scary any more, because we've all played it a hundred times over. But back when it was first released, certainly.

[snip]



those were exactly my thoughts when i played doom for the first time. i was 20 then. well i wasn't exactly scared, rather impressed in a way no game before managed to do. before the advent of first person shooters, i always wanted to play a game where i was "inside" the action, seeing everything with my own eyes. wolf3d brought that, i played it again and again, tirelessly humping the walls for every secret. but immersion wasn't complete yet, for the reasons you listed: same light level, orthogonal walls, comic-like graphics and sounds. this broke immersion for me.

then doom came, and i remind us spoiled kids that its 320x200 vga graphics seemed "life-like" back then. i can't forget standing at the green armor in e1m1 looking at those chinese mountains outside and thinking "how the hell did they do this" and "hey, i want to get out there". it was similar to the scene i would watch many years later in cameron's "avatar", when jake entered his clone body for the first time: immersion was complete. i was "in" the world there, right in the action. those hands holding the gun were mine. this was not only because of the graphics. doom had the perfect mix, of sounds, design, and control. hence my preference for (unrealistically) oldschool fast movement and accurate input. modern games are graphically much more advanced, but i don't feel as much "at home" when moving at a snail's pace in comparison.

as for the soundtrack, sure the psx version is darker, but it's also a bit the same, at least to me. add the growls and constant distorted sounds and it gets tiring in the long run. bobby prince's soundtrack has these metal rip-offs, but also more variation.

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I've trashed Prince's work a lot in the past. On the one hand this is unfair, as some of his Ultimate Doom music is very good and has a place in my heart with lots of good memories discovering custom wad files when I figured out how to get them working. I associate them with newness, discovery, being young with a wide future in front of me.

Unfortunately I cannot mess about with the truth: some of his music is very poorly suited to the game. I mean, The Gantlet is atrocious, it's like something they'd play in a library. Compare the music used in PSX Doom's Redemption Denied with the laughable noise from Icon of Sin. However - these are just my opinions and it's not fair to expect other people to agree - there must be someone out these who thinks Icon of Sin music is eerie and appropriate.

I've noticed that PC and PSX fans tend to clash like rival football fans. Ironically, we all love the same thing, we just prefer different interpretations of it. I personally do not find PC Doom scary because of some rather alarming texture choices, music which is occasionally inappropriate and the generally high light levels.

BUT - this is influenced by my experiences with the PlayStation port. In a sense, this port "reimagines" Doom to be a more intense, deliberately paced horror story. It is much darker, grittier, with immersive effects that I had not seen before in a game. It is quite easy to imagine PC players thinking "what have those tards done to my favourite game!" because the differences are not small, they are major.

Hodges' music is not particularly melodic (Hangar and Toxin Refinery aside), it is aimed at being unsettling and disturbing. It is easy to see why PC fans would feel it is inappropriate to something that was supposed to be an action shooter. I think the PSX port was the only one to differentiate itself like this.

I always see Doom 64 as a spin off inspired by PSX Doom. Hodges probably overdid it here, I really don't like the Doom 64 soundtrack.

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How the hell does Countdown To Death sound like anything you'd play in a fucking library?

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The imagery of "House of Pain" really upset me when I first played it when I was 10/11/12 (can't remember my age, probable 11) as well as the the ending sequence to E3. I'm not sure I'd say Doom was scary, but very unsettling.






E3M5 was creepy as well.

The first Arch-vile in "Circle of Death" was scary too:

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Doom 2 MAP30 was very scary for me when I was like six. I would always play with IDDQD+IDKFA back then. And yet with all these godly powers I still couldn't beat that map, just didn't know what the hell to do there. It was mysterious and very creepy (the music helped a lot too).

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Joe667 said:

How the hell does Countdown To Death sound like anything you'd play in a fucking library?


Sounds like the ticking of a clock while you read the Adventures of TinTin, not very Doomy lol.

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Sodaholic said:

On the subject of music, I wondered what it'd be like to switch between Prince's and Aubrey's soundtracks based on context like how Deus Ex has a different theme for combat and stealth.

By default, it'd play the PSX version tracks. When one or more monsters are awake and within a certain distance of you, it switches to the PC tracks, and lingers for maybe 5-10 seconds after those conditions become false again. The engine would need to remember which position both tracks were left on so as to not get annoying hearing the just the start of each track over and over.

It probably wouldn't be very pleasing in practice, but who knows.

Witchaven II did something kind of like this. I believe Shadowcaster did as well. In both cases the main effect was to chop the music up somewhat annoyingly.

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Shadowcaster has one theme music for each level, and then two combat tracks: one "normal" and one "intense" for when you're low on health. Then a victory song for when combat ends with the monster's death. The implementation was quite clumsy, as if you are attacked by multiple monsters simultaneously the victory track will interrupt the battle track and then be interrupted by it.

Using a teleporter also interrupts the music because the teleport sound effect is actually a song!

Shadowcaster was a scary game, though. There's a level where you fight multiple spiders in dark mines -- and then suddenly the silhouette of a giant spider emerges from the shadow! Gave me a scare the first time. Much later, in one of the very last few levels, there was that wall texture of tortured faces writhing and silently howling in pain. Creeped me out. Doom had tortured faces textures too, but they're static, at most they scrolled silently. There, the faces were constantly twisting and contorting, it was a lot more effective.

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"Countdown to Death" offers all the fearful menace of the words "You are on the way to destruction". It's not scary, it's quite funny. But that's just my opinion, it's nobody's gospel. (For proper countdown music that doesn't resort to actually sounding like a ticking clock, listen to the bomb music on Die Hard Trilogy. That's how you do a countdown to death.

X-Com Apocalypse and Need for Speed Most Wanted on the original Xbox also changed music during action scenes. The normal music for Apocalypse was amazing, kind of like something Aubrey Hodges might write, then when the aliens or hostile humans appeared, you get action music.

NFS:MW was very interesting. During the normal course of the game, you are treated to the usual humdrum selection of pop and rock songs, but when the police come after you, the music changes and becomes orchestral. I always felt that was a really good way to go about it. The songs are there when you're having fun, but when you're fleeing the law, it turns into an action film.

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Memfis said:

Doom 2 MAP30 was very scary for me when I was like six. I would always play with IDDQD+IDKFA back then. And yet with all these godly powers I still couldn't beat that map, just didn't know what the hell to do there. It was mysterious and very creepy (the music helped a lot too).

It was worse when 30 minutes of IDDQD/IDKFA carnage ended with a telefrag. I never fathomed the possibility of one of those cubes hitting me, so it was very scary when my failsafe, wasn't a failsafe.

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I'll say I found the D64 and PSX music tracks genuinely chilling. As for the PC, the lurking sounds of high level monsters at least put me on my toes.

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Countdown to Death sounds like it would be more at home in Wolfenstein or Commander Keen. Spook from Duke Nukem 3D is essentially that song done right IMO, as it actually sounds like it has a genuine feeling of dread to it.

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i haven't played Keen, but Countdown doesn't sound much like a Wolfenstein 3D song. i never played through the entire game, however, and didn't play much of Spear of Destiny, so don't take my word for it. however, Doom 2's music sounds a lot different compared to Doom's, even if it's done by the same composer. Doom's music feels more 'involved', while Doom 2's is more like background music to accompany the levels. probably why Doom 2's music doesn't fit very well in custom PWADs, but Doom's still work quite well.

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I see some strange consensus here that Countdown to Death sounds lame. To me, it's one of the better Doom 2 tracks. It's one of the few from Doom 2 that fits with hell dungeon maps; I can see the green stone with red slime when I hear it, unlike most of the others which just sound like "modern US city invaded by zombies and demons, let's smoke and sing about it".

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Pretty much all of Doom II's tracks sound perfectly appropriate to me, but it's in large part because of how often I've heard them in Doom II's context that they're now definitely associated to it.

Trying to make abstraction of that, I still think that the following tracks are fitting:
- DOOM (MAP05, MAP13)
- Shawn's Got the Shotgun (MAP07, MAP19, MAP29)
- Into Sandy's City (MAP09)
- The Demon's Dead (MAP10, MAP16)
- Waiting for Romero to Play (MAP18, MAP27)
- Message for the Arch-Vile (MAP20, MAP26)
- Adrian's Asleep (MAP25)
- Opening to Hell (MAP30)
- Read Me (text screens)

The only tracks I don't really like are Bye bye American Pie and Getting too Tense, which I find tiring to listen to for too long.

Shame that Into Sandy's City wasn't used for Sandy's City (MAP13).

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