It's been months that DOOM 2016 was released~

And a new Wolfenstien game is gonna be release this year.

Been wondering are you satisfied about Doom 2016 or satisfied but not enough?
For me I am satisfied, i enjoyed the game for what it is. Kill demons and shit! But i really wish it had more enemies coming at you outside of the arena styled room! That's the only thing i didn't like about it. But over all, i am satisfied how about you?

Don't like the game? it's ok, we are one happy family in the Doom community~ 

It's been a whole year and one month now since DOOM 2016 has been released. I am happy with it 110%, I know some people say it gets too much praise, and to some extent, maybe. But really, the sense of freedom with how you want to play (Don't want to use Upgrades? Go ahead, no one is stopping you) and the customization with the HUD is surprising to me, it really is. I guess my criticisms are that some of the Doom enemies in the classic games don't make a return and some are kind of weak and easy to defeat (Such as the Revenants). Still my favorite FPS game this year and really I can't love the game enough.

It's pretty good. I had extraordinarily high expectations from this game and most of them were met, which frankly is a miracle. I do have a lot of nitpicks but I'm too lazy to list them.

I' m happy with it 80%.

Good:

- Fast action gameplay, the new moves like mantling and double-jumping were integrated very well.

- Some really great non-linear level design (Resource Operations, Foundry, Argent Facility)

- The deathmatch arena-like sections were integrated cleverly (in some levels, others relied too heavily on that design).

- Great weapons plus the ability to upgrade them in various ways.

- Secrets, mini games and suit upgrades.

- Some cool main characters (Olivia Pierce, Samuel Hayden).

- Some really cool demon designs (Summoner, Hell Knight, Baron of Hell, Hell Raizer, Possessed).

- Some great architecture and settings (Mars exterior, Argent Tower, Necropolis).

Bad:

- Atmosphere is not nearly as mysterious and foreboding as in Doom 3.

- The way the story is presented is a huge step back from Doom 3, I miss reading messages and combining bits of information from PDAs and logs. You learn absolutley nothing about any of the normal UAC personnel.

- The UAC is depicted as a loony, self-destructive techno-demon cult and because it all seems so implausible you don't really care for all the victims.

- The protagonist acts like an aggressive dick and you have no influence on it, and the whole super warrior from the past thing feels unreal.

- Some monster designs embrace that juvenile metalhead design way too much, those don't feel threatening enough  (Pinkys, Lost Souls, Imps, Cyberdemon).

- While the level design in the first part of the game is great, it becomes notably less good in the later half of the game. It even includes boring extremely linear layouts like Lazarus Labs (what a waste of the cool setting). And there wasn't a single Hell level that had non-linearity, they all are designed as a chain of secluded arena battles.

Is good

Compared to the originals? its weak 

4 hours ago, Maisth said:

Compared to the originals? its weak 

Nice YouTube-tier post, bro.

On 6/17/2017 at 8:22 AM, Tetzlaff said:

Bad:

- Atmosphere is not nearly as mysterious and foreboding as in Doom 3.

- The way the story is presented is a huge step back from Doom 3, I miss reading messages and combining bits of information from PDAs and logs. You learn absolutley nothing about any of the normal UAC personnel.

- The UAC is depicted as a loony, self-destructive techno-demon cult and because it all seems so implausible you don't really care for all the victims.

- The protagonist acts like an aggressive dick and you have no influence on it, and the whole super warrior from the past thing feels unreal.

- Some monster designs embrace that juvenile metalhead design way too much, those don't feel threatening enough  (Pinkys, Lost Souls, Imps, Cyberdemon).

- While the level design in the first part of the game is great, it becomes notably less good in the later half of the game. It even includes boring extremely linear layouts like Lazarus Labs (what a waste of the cool setting). And there wasn't a single Hell level that had non-linearity, they all are designed as a chain of secluded arena battles.

 

You don't like the more light hearted tone? I feel like Doom 4's tone is one of it's best features. I feel like it shares the tone of Ultimate Doom and Doom 2 and it holds over some of the visuals of Doom 3. I like it. Different strokes for different folks I suppose.

On 6/17/2017 at 2:22 PM, Tetzlaff said:

 

- The way the story is presented is a huge step back from Doom 3, I miss reading messages and combining bits of information from PDAs and logs. You learn absolutley nothing about any of the normal UAC personnel.

 

- The UAC is depicted as a loony, self-destructive techno-demon cult and because it all seems so implausible you don't really care for all the victims.

- The protagonist acts like an aggressive dick and you have no influence on it, and the whole super warrior from the past thing feels unreal.

- Some monster designs embrace that juvenile metalhead design way too much, those don't feel threatening enough  (Pinkys, Lost Souls, Imps, Cyberdemon).

 

Well, to each his own.

I found reading lore about the demons and guns in Doom 2016 to be far more interesting than reading the various complaints from workers in Doom 3 and that the story in the new Doom doesn't drag as much. I also found the important characters were better fleshed out; the key players in Doom 3 weren't given much of a background or explanation for their motivations.

But I will grant you that Doom 3 scores a few pluses for actually letting you skip cutscenes... /glares angrily as Samuel Hayden makes his lengthy speech for the 110th time...

I found the loony cult stuff to be funny and refreshing without being obnoxious - why does everything need to be super-serious anyway? You've got an old-fashioned breech-loaded shotgun and a chainsaw in a futuristic setting anyway. Might as well roll with it and have fun. Besides, we've already tried the "super-serious" take on Doom with Doom 3; change is refreshing and not always bad. In fact, I'm overjoyed that Id software decided to try something completely fresh with the Doom 2016 plot.

I don't know what's so 'dickish' about the Doom Slayer - he pretty much acted out feelings most of us would feel when playing Doom and his actions make perfect sense given his background, the circumstances and the kinds of creatures and individuals he deals with; The UAC are a bunch of shitty nut-jobs. Do you honestly believe they can be negotiated with? They're going to spin some bullshit excuses and "justifications" for their insane practices and refuse to acknowledge even the possibility that they're in the wrong. You can't discuss stuff with such people (well you can, but you won't get anywhere).

Demons? Get out of here!

Besides, his body language and a few of his actions suggests that he empathizes with the innocent bystanders (looks down at a dead low-tier UAC worker when Hayden says "It was for the betterment of Mankind" as a contemptuous response to Hayden's bullshit - takes a backup of VEGA, who has proven both selfless and kinda nice for an AI) - hardly the actions of a dickhead.

I can somewhat understand your annoyance at having no influence over his character, but that's pretty much a modern shooter in a nutshell; at least the Doom slayer doesn't talk so you can at least roleplay that side of his character.

The Doom Slayer being a super-warrior is perfectly in keeping with the original Doom, in which you were essentially a late 1980s one-man army Schwarzenegger archetype, except even more powerful (since those were demons you were slaughtering by the truckloads). The old concept is dated now, so making him an ancient immortal super-warrior was the best way to update it while staying true to the spirit of the old game of making the player feel powerful.

I will concede that this was not what Doom 3 was, but hey, that was Doom 3 - a lot of people didn't consider that a proper Doom game and I'm pretty sure that most of those people felt it needed more of the feeling I described in the paragraph above; You being overpowered compared to the baddies. It was inevitable that Id Software was going to address this complaint in some way and this was it.

Doom always had metalhead monster designs and after having seen the Doom 2016 monster designs, I've taken the opinion that this is what real Doom demons need to look like. I'm sorry, I liked the Doom 3 monsters (most of them anyway), but they never felt "Doomy" in my book. Would've been more at home in a Quake game which always was more of a creepier version of Doom anyway - perhaps we should wait for Id to reboot Quake if we want a more "horror-centric" Doom-type game.

2 hours ago, dsm said:

I found reading lore about the demons and guns in Doom 2016 to be far more interesting than reading the various complaints from workers in Doom 3 and that the story in the new Doom doesn't drag as much.

...

I also found the important characters were better fleshed out; the key players in Doom 3 weren't given much of a background or explanation for their motivations.

...

Besides, his body language and a few of his actions suggests that he empathizes with the innocent bystanders (looks down at a dead low-tier UAC worker when Hayden says "It was for the betterment of Mankind" as a contemptuous response to Hayden's bullshit - takes a backup of VEGA, who has proven both selfless and kinda nice for an AI) - hardly the actions of a dickhead.

Don't get me wrong, I also enjoyed reading all the Codex lore in Doom2016. But I would have enjoyed the same if it was printed out in a booklet. Or on some website. It just wasn't integrated well into the game, it was always on a meta-level that was not in-game and therefore felt disconnected from the gameworld. Messages and monologues from Hayden or Pierce, or even the hell story teller from those "lore stations" worked better.

Yes, Samuel and Olivia were better fleshed out, that's why I noted them under "good". Malcolm Betruger on the other hand was a flat and unbelievable character. For my personal taste the perfect Doom game would have Doom 3's story telling technique and side characters and Doom 2016's main characters.

The two instances you mention were the only situations where I actually liked "Doom Slayer": When he noticed and seemingly felt sorry for the dead UAC guy and when he took the extra time to make a backup copy of VEGA.

Edit: And when he joked around with the little Doomguy figurines. Although it also kinda felt a little bit self-centered...

The original Doom monsters are a big mixed bag of different influences. There are the metalhead designs, like the Lost Soul. There is the pinky, which is influenced by a Cenobite design (but turned out quite differently). There are creepier designs, like the Acrh-Vile, that lead the direction to the Doom 3 designs.

6 hours ago, Lo_Mein said:

You don't like the more light hearted tone? I feel like Doom 4's tone is one of it's best features. I feel like it shares the tone of Ultimate Doom and Doom 2 and it holds over some of the visuals of Doom 3. I like it. Different strokes for different folks I suppose.

No, don't like the light-hearted tone in a Doom game. There are other games where something like this feels more at home.

While I'm approaching Titan's Realm (thus not finished yet) I only have one gripe with this game and that is the weapon order. It goes in the order of the weapons you collect and not a more traditional grouped order (shotguns, automatics, explosives, energy weapons) and it throws me off when I'm trying to get to a certain gun only to bring up one I did not want.

Oh yeah, and the lack of a standalone expansion like Wolf TNO got. I see Dishonored 2 is getting one with Death of the Outsider and Wolf is obviously getting a sequel, but no more single player Doom. I wouldn't mind a full fledged sequel, but that's obviously not going to be any time soon so I was hoping they'd do some kind of expansion pack in the meantime to hold us over.

2 hours ago, cyan0s1s said:

Oh yeah, and the lack of a standalone expansion like Wolf TNO got.

Wolfenstein TOB was much more than an expansion. Despite the lack of story telling elements (like in TNO) it was almost a full game.

The only thing I'm upset about is they haven't released any more single player content. Otherwise it's everything I could've wanted from a 2016 DOOM.

18 hours ago, CARRiON said:

The only thing I'm upset about is they haven't released any more single player content. Otherwise it's everything I could've wanted from a 2016 DOOM.

Same here.

I don't understand why they don't release a SP addon now - SP was the focus of the game and obviously also the most successful part of it.

I'd like to see a more fucked up Hell, demons we never seen before (the Hell Guard was a nice curve ball) and Hayden being an antagonist with a robot army and demon vs. robot infighting. Also, dat fuggin' sword.

I'm finally getting around to finish it after a friend gave me the collector's edition like a year ago. I enjoy it. I definitely far enjoy the original games more, but this is probably my favorite FPS of 2016, and really my favorite fps in a long while.

I guess though the trouble is that the things I would want in a hugely doom-styled FPS just aren't the kind of things that are that viable with these really detailed models and fancy AI algorithms, though. I really like how vanilla Doom maps all have their monsters already set out, and how they act in general. Doom IV's way of doing combat isn't that bad though in my eyes.

I love the game, but sadly am depressed that they are releasing the VR crap and then obviously keep supporting it which means another 2-3 years minimum for an expansion or sequel.

Played it, finished it, unlocked all upgrades, secrets, etc, tried Snapmap, forgot it, went back playing classic Doom.

It was well done for a AAA game, with it's flaws too. But somehow it's classic Doom that keeps me playing for years with the classic gameplay I don't think they managed to pull and all the older and newer maps from the community. I could maybe replay some Snapmap maps but they mostly consist of square blocks of rooms puzzled together.

I found it to be a pretty boring game, and am surprised by the praise it receives. From a technical standpoint, I suppose you'd have to say it plays well and has good controls. And the combat itself in isolation is a pretty good translation of Doom combat into 3D space. But the core game-loop for me was too shallow and repetitive.

The game mainly consists of going from scripted arena to scripted arena, fighting the same waves of enemies over and over again, and having to kill every last one before the doors will open again. The arenas themselves are all very similar in design. At the same time, there's very little exploration, beyond briefly taking a detour that inevitably leads to some bonus. They even marked to main paths with green lights so there would never be any ambiguity about what was the "right way." I also found the general art direction to be pretty weak, especially hell.

Now people like what they like and there's no point in debating that, but it does annoy me that many critics described this Doom as going back to the series' roots, when I think it really is missing a lot of the key ingredients actually: creative, non-linear level design, resource management, exploration, and a bit of dread. I feel like the new Doom has allowed for Doom to be re-branded as a big-dumb shooter when in actuality the original remains one of the more thoughtful shooters made.

I'm really really happy with it! I had high expectations, and they were met. I love what they did with combat here, I really love how they brought back some oldschool fundamentals and style to the level design. And having a map and secrets, jumping and light platforming (like some 1996 FPS games I also love), and overall just a great style. And how DoomSlayer throws the moniter at the beginning and cool cut to the chase badassery. And overall aesthetic and audio excellence.

SnapMap was also a lot of fun, spent plenty of hours messing with that, another thing that's a fun step in a cool direction other devs aren't doing. The multiplayer could be better, and it took them a pretty long time to add free-for-all DM oddly enough, but I have had some fun with it.

For the next one would like levels to be less locked arenas and traveling to the next arena, mentioned in here etc, mixing it up and making that flow more variable where anything can happen anywhere in the cool expansive levels. Though these levels were cool all around. But yeah, this one hit the spot, and I hope id has the next one in the works as we speak.

It's funny because Doom 2016 is both a much better and more dynamic game, combat-wise, than Doom 1993, and also a much more limited one.

In terms of the main campaign, I think it's undeniable that in Doom 2016, moment-to-moment combat is much, MUCH better. The fact that enemies are generally faster, more aggressive, and are just about as mobile as the player means that the action is basically nonstop and the player is forced to constantly take the fight to the demons and doesn't have much of a chance to rest and regroup. Add into that the player's choice in weapon upgrades and combat runes, and there's much more variety and replayability to be had from the campaign levels.

At the same time, however, the Doom community has shown that it has near-infinite creativity in how to structure levels in such a way to reuse the classic monsters and their behaviors in new and interesting ways. In contrast, it's not clear how many more tricks are possibly up the sleeve of the Doom 2016 menagerie, and in any event, we're probably never going to find out, since custom maps are a no-go outside of the extremely limited Snapmap.

2 hours ago, Linguica said:

It's funny because Doom 2016 is both a much better and more dynamic game, combat-wise, than Doom 1993, and also a much more limited one.

 

In terms of the main campaign, I think it's undeniable that in Doom 2016, moment-to-moment combat is much, MUCH better. The fact that enemies are generally faster, more aggressive, and are just about as mobile as the player means that the action is basically nonstop and the player is forced to constantly take the fight to the demons and doesn't have much of a chance to rest and regroup. Add into that the player's choice in weapon upgrades and combat runes, and there's much more variety and replayability to be had from the campaign levels.

 

At the same time, however, the Doom community has shown that it has near-infinite creativity in how to structure levels in such a way to reuse the classic monsters and their behaviors in new and interesting ways. In contrast, it's not clear how many more tricks are possibly up the sleeve of the Doom 2016 menagerie, and in any event, we're probably never going to find out, since custom maps are a no-go outside of the extremely limited Snapmap.

The enemies in Doom 2016 are a lot more unpredictable and mobile but are placed in very predictable places, in very predictable combinations while the enemies in classic Doom move very slowly and predictably but are placed unpredictably by mappers. It's almost like Doom 2016 is in many ways the complete opposite of classic Doom but not in a negative way.

Regardless, the Doom 2016 imp is one of the best starter enemies I've seen in recent years. It's really easy to underestimate it and when you do, you will usually get a fireball in your face.

Despite its flaws the campaign was excellent, but they could've done more with the lore (without resorting to cutscenes) and the ending sequence was extremely dull for a game with such a strong opening. They should've really kept the deleted audio/text logs from UAC employees too since it'd have helped in making the environments feel less artificial at no cost. Some of the gameplay balance is kind of weird - your starting ammo count is pretty low and your starting weapon is a shotgun with pretty poor range, so you end up a fair bit of the game's initial levels resorting to glory kills which by themselves are fine but have some weird quirks - the annoying restoration of 50% of a monster's health if you don't kill them in time or a rare glitch where they won't die for a good while stunned, making you waste more ammo than necessary. Some enemies were lame too - the Revenant, one of Doom 2's most dangerous enemies, is an absolute joke during combat, and generally the game should punish the player a bit more for running in circles in the same direction. Most monsters have some attacks to keep this in check, but outside the Imp's charged fireball attack good luck noticing it . The level design starts out promising with the Foundry/Argent Facility levels, but soon after quickly settles into corridor-> battle arena with some minor branching paths for secrets despite the architecture and variety remaining extremely good.

I expect the lore thing being something they wanted to do more with but couldn't due to time issues and still figuring things out, so the sequel will probably significantly expand on that. The level design could go either way, I'm expecting a few more interconnected levels like Foundry/Argent Facility, but I'd wager the sequel will still have a couple of corridor->arena ones since they're "easier" and cheaper to make. Dealing with all the monster triggers, AI roaming and spawning/despawning in those two levels must've been a huge pain in the ass.

Multiplayer was pretty average. I sunk maybe a dozen hours in it and it can get pretty frantic during combat with someone else, but the weapons being loadouts ruins it. I'm assuming this will get a complete overhaul in the sequel considering how widely panned it was and how much it contributed to the negative PR in the months leading to release.

Snapmap was and still is a mixed bag. It's probably one of the best and easiest to use tools for player content creation in an AAA game, especially since those who have something like this don't tend to bother with any sort of SP component and are for MP map creation only (like Halo). However, the loading times for it got worse and worse with each update and nowadays to get into it you're looking at around 5 minutes worth of loading screens, which kills any desire I have for playing any 10 minute map people make no matter how great and creative it is. The gameplay in it is an unholy mix of SP and MP behaviour so you have strange things such as backwards/strafing player speed being slower than going forward, weapons that share ammo counts in SP being separate (shotgun and super shotgun for example), weapon behaviour being different (the Gauss Cannon only having like 4 shots) and some enemy oversights like the Pinkie not having any front armour (though I think that was fixed?). It's pretty obvious, especially during release with the two weapon limit and overt-MP UI, that Snapmap, despite being content creation oriented, was sorta supposed to be the game's co-op mode before they decided to bolt SP aspects on top of it with the updates since that's what everyone liked about the game overall. They never really got around to adding the Arch-vile Summoner despite there being sound clips for using it in Snapmap in the game files, and iirc there are some modules introduced in the final update that can be connected to pieces that don't exist, but despite this it seems they've already dropped support and left it as is unless id shows something at Quakecon. If I had to guess I assume the next game's Snapmap will go all in with SP content creation, I'm curious whether they'll keep the modules around or go with something more complex but less limiting for level creation.

However, like I said at the beginning, the game was still good enough that I sunk 250+ hours into it and still play it. So Doom 2016 + already good + sequel with 2.5 or 3 years development = Even better Doom. Doom is good and will be good.

5 hours ago, MrSkeltal said:

They should've really kept the deleted audio/text logs from UAC employees too since it'd have helped in making the environments feel less artificial at no cost.

There were logs in earlier versions of Doom 2016? Is this info from the leaked alpha, or from some developer interview?

People found them in the multiplayer alpha leak, here they are.

That's an interesting find, thanks! Why didn't they include those logs in the game? It would have added much more depth. Seems like they catered solely to the "I just wanna shoot" players.

In one of the interviews they did, Hugo Martin talks about how they originally had audio logs and more hologram recording and so forth, but over the course of development they decided it didn't add enough to the game experience and it would be better without it.

I'm glad they cut these out as I think that was the most boring thing about Doom 3 as it slowed the pace of the game to a standstill as you often HAD to endure audio logs in order to get locker codes.

Actually most times the audio logs and PDA messages in Doom 3 were purely optional. There were maybe 2 or 3 instances were you had to find a crucial door code in the mails. All the other stuff was up to you and could be easily ignored, including the weapon lockers.

Doom 2016 often feels kind of shallow without that extra layer of story.