Has Doom become... Boring?

Doom boring?

The more I play Doom, the more other games make me scream with boredom!

It's not to me. Since I got into map making and music composing, it's even more fun.

Only somewhat. A handful of the features we have today should've been present in Vanilla.

I take breaks from it every now and again, but I've never truly found Doom to be boring. I will say this for nostalgia, though. Even though I've played games with much better graphics, the graphics of Doom have never looked bad to me. It's kind of odd - it's like, I still see the game as the technical achievement it was back when it first came out, and so the graphics impress me just as much now as they did back then. I know the flaws and limitations. If I look for them, I can spot them. But it's never on my mind when I'm playing.

Never will I ever get bored of Doom :)

geekmarine said:

I take breaks from it every now and again, but I've never truly found Doom to be boring. I will say this for nostalgia, though. Even though I've played games with much better graphics, the graphics of Doom have never looked bad to me. It's kind of odd - it's like, I still see the game as the technical achievement it was back when it first came out, and so the graphics impress me just as much now as they did back then. I know the flaws and limitations. If I look for them, I can spot them. But it's never on my mind when I'm playing.

I think the way the graphics look is part of the charm. Like the yucky lighting effects as you go into dark areas is pretty neat actually. Even the way objects shimmer as they scale closer and farther away from you has its own creepy vibe about it.

And I think there's an appreciation for simpler, pixellated graphics among younger people today given the popularity of games like Minecraft and Terraria.

Also I think that a good drawing (Adrian Carmack's work) lasts far longer than a good 3D rendering. I don't know why that is. I suppose because you can look at if from so many angles and adjust resolution and stuff, it changes. 3D renderings tend to often be aiming for realism instead of character/coolness/design, etc. Or maybe it's because a drawing (or painting) just has a personal touch to it in the way that a sculpture hardly does.

Though the 1st, shareware EP maybe be boring, I actually enjoy replaying it on much higher difficulty. No boredom though levels are familiar and known to me. I'm giving Doom another run, this time on UV, like a real man. ;) Doom 3, on default Marine level, is becoming boring. Easy battles. I'm in Communications (Tower) and only story and atmosphere is gripping me to the game. I like it but its so easy! And that Cacos.. ugly! I prefer the good, old red model but I know they would not fit to Doom 3 Doom vision. Doom 3 maybe / is boring (but I like it, maybe I will replay it on higher level) but original Doom is not.

Yes it is very boring. Duke 3d and Blood are much more fun singleplayer.

doomgargoyle said:

Yes it is very boring. Duke 3d and Blood are much more fun singleplayer.

I've played Blood. Not even passed the first level. It's so hard. Doom can be hard too but it's not impossible for me. For now, Blood is the worst game that I have played (and that I remember). Yes, I played on lowest difficulty level / the only a bit harder one.

RadTang said:

I've played Blood. Not even passed the first level. It's so hard. Doom can be hard too but it's not impossible for me. For now, Blood is the worst game that I have played (and that I remember). Yes, I played on lowest difficulty level / the only a bit harder one.

You're playing it wrong. Blood single player is amazing. Probably the best old FPS campaign of all time. It eats doom for breakfast.

doomgargoyle said:

Yes it is very boring. Duke 3d and Blood are much more fun singleplayer.

Haha, no.

doomgargoyle said:

It eats doom for breakfast.

Heretic! Heretic! Heretic!

Burn the heretic, our god Romero is not pleased!

RadTang said:

I've played Blood. Not even passed the first level. It's so hard. Doom can be hard too but it's not impossible for me. For now, Blood is the worst game that I have played (and that I remember). Yes, I played on lowest difficulty level / the only a bit harder one.

I agree that some parts can be overwhelming on Extra Crispy since like in SW even the low tier enemies can be very deadly, but on easy? You're playing it wrong.

Belial said:

I agree that some parts can be overwhelming on Extra Crispy since like in SW even the low tier enemies can be very deadly, but on easy? You're playing it wrong.

When I become bored with Doom I will try Blood again. Currently, done half of Ultimate Doom on UV (that is, done EP 2) and I'm closing to half of Doom 3 (regular, not RoE or The Lost Missions).

I've never forgotten when my best friend said "I'm bored of Doom" - and that was way back in the nineties. There are only so many ways to kill a demon and only so many times one can watch the same death animations. Custom monsters ought to be the cure, but for some reason they break my immersion in the game. Brutal Doom might also be a solution, but it is too sadistic for my comfort.

For me, the only thing that keeps my interest alive today is the architectural possibilities, and I'm reaching the point where I feel that I've seen everything. When I see the same old things done badly, it's just annoying.

For me, the standout PWAD that I've played this year was "Bloody Realms of Hell" by Chris Hansen (http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?file=levels/doom/Ports/a-c/blorealm.zip). I think it is mainly the visual style and use of colour. When the gameplay mechanics are as stale as they could possibly be, it is absolutely essential that the environment looks pleasing.

What I don't understand is why people keep designing maps that are all brown or all grey. I don't see much value in those.

Never boring...

Maybe you are boring...

Zulk-RS said:

We all know that Doom is a really fun game to play, even today! Hell, Doom-II is even my favorite game ever! But... Nowadays games are judged on factors like graphics, story, game-play, originality etc. By today's standards, Doom/Doom-II has:
BAD graphics, NO story, Uninteresting monsters and weapons (except a few.), and one-track game-play.
It does have: AWESOME game-play mechanics and AWESOME music.
So, what is it that makes Doom/Doom-II Insanely fun to play even today?

I believe you are expressing a very common confussion that I would very like to dispell from everyone who reads this, once and for all, so please understand this: Good graphics are NOT heavy graphics. bad graphics are not old graphics. Doom has GREAT graphics, and that is why people keep playing it (and why people played it in the past). You see, the quality of graphics is not about realism, but about good, catchy aesthetic. Doom has a 90's comic feel to it, and that is what makes it so fun to play. If you want an example in modern games, Battlefield 3 has horrible graphics, because it's all about filters and lights and shit, like you are looking at a postal card instead of a videogame, but I find call of duty to have much greater graphics, even though they are somehow simpler, I simply find it looks more like a game and less like a shampoo commercial. Warcraft 3 has really old 3d models but the Aesthethic just kicks so much ass that it's still fun to play. And graphics ARE more important than gameplay. I don't care at all about good gameplay if the game looks horrid. NOT OLD, horrid. There are old and new games with good graphics and bad graphics. I guess the main point here is good taste. good graphics are all about doing something good with what you have, even if it is pixels and isometrics.

On the other hand, the monsters on Doom are the reason I play it. The death animations are just so satisfying, and they all match with each and every weapon. Everything feels so fucking badass. Game mechanichs is not tnearly why I play this game: It's all about visuals.


Doom is fun like hell.

Lycaon said:

[ABOUT DOOM] Game mechanichs is not tnearly why I play this game: It's all about visuals.

Interesting. I believe you are in minority here, though, and that most today's Doom players have it vice versa - they play Doom for its gameplay over visuals.

I really like Doom because of the massive fan base and how if you get bored, you can always play multiplayer or a wad. But there always a possibility that we could start like a Big Doom Revival or something like that.

geekmarine said:

I take breaks from it every now and again, but I've never truly found Doom to be boring. I will say this for nostalgia, though. Even though I've played games with much better graphics, the graphics of Doom have never looked bad to me. It's kind of odd - it's like, I still see the game as the technical achievement it was back when it first came out, and so the graphics impress me just as much now as they did back then. I know the flaws and limitations. If I look for them, I can spot them. But it's never on my mind when I'm playing.

I'm this way with graphics in most games. Even for ones I've never played before, I'm really good at putting myself back in their era and still being impressed with what they did.

scifista42 said:

Interesting. I believe you are in minority here, though, and that most today's Doom players have it vice versa - they play Doom for its gameplay over visuals.

Also, when I say visuals i'm referring to everything you see: the weapons, the monsters, they way the weapons shoot and the way monsters die. The combination of 90's futurism with classical demons it's just so great. I'm not saying I don't like the mechanichs ALSO, but if it didn't look like this, there's no way I would play it.

There are, however, some points in Doom in which gameplay is preferable over graphics. A good example is GZdoom. While it looks less pixelated than the original doom, it gives you mouse looking with no side effects, so I prefer using this port, sacrificing the good ol pixels. But that's as far as it goes.

Lycaon said:

There are, however, some points in Doom in which gameplay is preferable over graphics. A good example is GZdoom. While it looks less pixelated than the original doom, it gives you mouse looking with no side effects, so I prefer using this port, sacrificing the good ol pixels. But that's as far as it goes.

I don't see anything inherently good about pixelation. Doom artwork looks good when rendered at any resolution or colour depth.

cs99cjb said:

I don't see anything inherently good about pixelation. Doom artwork looks good when rendered at any resolution or colour depth.

Oh, well, I do love pixels very much. Opengl seems so blurry. It doesn't look awful but I prefer the little dots.

Yeah I definitely prefer software rendering to OpenGL, no doubt.

Lycaon said:

I believe you are expressing a very common confussion that I would very like to dispell from everyone who reads this, once and for all, so please understand this: Good graphics are NOT heavy graphics. bad graphics are not old graphics. Doom has GREAT graphics, and that is why people keep playing it (and why people played it in the past). You see, the quality of graphics is not about realism, but about good, catchy aesthetic. Doom has a 90's comic feel to it, and that is what makes it so fun to play. If you want an example in modern games, Battlefield 3 has horrible graphics, because it's all about filters and lights and shit, like you are looking at a postal card instead of a videogame, but I find call of duty to have much greater graphics, even though they are somehow simpler, I simply find it looks more like a game and less like a shampoo commercial. Warcraft 3 has really old 3d models but the Aesthethic just kicks so much ass that it's still fun to play. And graphics ARE more important than gameplay. I don't care at all about good gameplay if the game looks horrid. NOT OLD, horrid. There are old and new games with good graphics and bad graphics. I guess the main point here is good taste. good graphics are all about doing something good with what you have, even if it is pixels and isometrics.

On the other hand, the monsters on Doom are the reason I play it. The death animations are just so satisfying, and they all match with each and every weapon. Everything feels so fucking badass. Game mechanichs is not tnearly why I play this game: It's all about visuals.


Doom is fun like hell.

Funny you say that. I do agree with the notion that style and art direction trump hi-fidelity GFX anyday, but at the time, id software was going for realism with Doom. Doom was the Crysis of 1993. They didnt set out to make a comic-looking game, they set out to make the most realistic looking game that the technology of the era allowed them to do. Carmack began the whole push for more realism in 3d engines.

doomgargoyle said:

Funny you say that. I do agree with the notion that style and art direction trump hi-fidelity GFX anyday, but at the time, id software was going for realism with Doom. Doom was the Crysis of 1993. They didnt set out to make a comic-looking game, they set out to make the most realistic looking game that the technology of the era allowed them to do. Carmack began the whole push for more realism in 3d engines.

I'm aware of that, still, you can see how the style of the demons is extremely classic (goat horns and stuff), which is very different from nowadays realism, ie doom 3, in which "demons" look like they actually are a species that came out of a different planet with its own evolution process, hence they all look alike. That is, they all look like oversized worms. So even if Doom and Doom 2 had a realistic approach, it focused more on things like weapons design and gore effects, whereas the feeling of the game is more like an 80's action movie. It only lacked the puns, but we all know Duke Nukem took care of that matter. Even those gore effects are exagerated and look real but not "realistically real", I don't know how to explain this. It's like there are two ways of being realistic, and Doom had the pretty one.

This is a good question I guess for someone that has Doom depression. I have Doom depression going on I think (lost focus on my Doom treasures).

I don't see how Doom is a bad game. Vanilla Doom probably isn't as good as Blood for me (yeah I just said that), but Zdoom more than makes up for that along with all the wad authors. Then there's Eternity which I personally like. If I wasn't such a dumb ass I'd love to port Doom to a different language. It's funny I've been so confused about learning to code and this thread pops up.

If there's anything wrong with Doom I think it's Doom 2's ending. I like Doom 2 for its quirky humour which I really like, but I kinda wished they made something rewarding for the player. After beating it I got a bunch of free wads available and it didn't suck at all so suck my!... I mean never mind.

Maes said:

When Doom starts appearing boring, then it's really time for a good night's sleep.

It'd be a good time to shove a bfg up your ass.

Doomkid said:

Yeah I definitely prefer software rendering to OpenGL, no doubt.

Me too! Remember, if you really dislike the blurring effect in OpenGL, you can disable it via Options-Display-OpenGL-Texture Options-Texture Filter Mode "None". Then, sprites AND textures will look pixelated like in software renderer, except with fully 3D view (you can perfectly look up and down with no perspective distortion).

EDIT: 2000th post. :)