Why does everybody misinterpret what old school fps games like Doom are?

So perhaps some of you have noticed that Dusk's second episode has been out for a while and it's gotten lots of praise, and I can't for the life of me understand why. Don't get me wrong, we don't all have to like the same things, but one thing that REALLY bugs me is how everybody seems to be saying "OH THIS IS SO GREAT BECAUSE IT'S JUST LIKE DOOM AND QUAKE!!!!!"

Uhm, no. It really isn't.

It appears that most gamers who haven't spent a lot of time playing old games like Doom or Quake think the fallowing makes something an old school fps:

-Has horrible graphics

-Has you fighting a lot of stuff at once

-Makes you look for keycards

This is a MASSIVE simplification of what makes an old school fps an old school fps. Games like Doom and Quake are not as mindless as they are made out to be. Encounter designs in those games are often much smarter than just "spawn a bunch of monsters inside a room" (well unless you are playing Doom 3), and there were also sometimes puzzles (though one can debate how fun those were). But easily the biggest difference between old school and new school shooters is the open level design. Dusk has barely anything in common with games like Doom or Quake other than having low poly visuals. I bought it but refunded it after a couple of levels because of how dull the game was. The game's level design isn't anything like that of Doom or Quake at all, and is much more linear.

But even more troubling is that everybody appears to be giving this game a free pass by looking past all of it's design flaws for no reason other than that it's "old school". I have read youtube comments praising the game's "retro level design". Really? Are you fucking serious? Dusk has some of the ugliest level design I have seen in a long time. It literally looks like somebody fired up Radiant or Hammer for the first or second time and threw something together. The level design is not good at all and is easily vastly inferior to anything seen in old classics like Quake or Half-life. Or for that matter, even Doom. The models look far worse as well.

But it appears that this doesn't matter. Because you see, it's "suppose to look like that". What people can't wrap their head around is that Dusk looks worse even compared to the games it's trying to ape. If Dusk was released in the late 90's it would have ended up in bargain bins. 

Why do so many people think old school fps=Shit graphics and braindead gameplay? When was this misconception born?

I think you answered your own question. Most gamers these days haven't spent nearly as much time playing old school fps and so they only have a primitive understanding of them. And thanks to the Dunning Kruger effect, they think there's nothing more to them than that.

If Dusk is as bad as you say it is, then maybe it's just one bad game made by bad game designers? I thought Strafe was pretty cool, even if it lacked in the gameplay department.

Dusk is a lot more like Quake than it is Doom. It may have taken inspiration from Doom (and even some textures... I spotted some Doom 64-like texture work in there) but it's not like Doom. Needless to say, Dusk is still an awesome game and I haven't even played it myself yet. I am waiting for the full release to dive into it.

Misinterpretation or creative liberty? If only there was a way to tell.

33 minutes ago, Nevander said:

Dusk is a lot more like Quake than it is Doom. It may have taken inspiration from Doom (and even some textures... I spotted some Doom 64-like texture work in there) but it's not like Doom. Needless to say, Dusk is still an awesome game and I haven't even played it myself yet. I am waiting for the full release to dive into it.

I mean I don't think Dusk is a TERRIBLE game. It's just very mediocre. The game strikes me as an attemtp to cash in on people's nostalgia, and so far it looks like everybody is falling for it.

I won't claim that Dusk's gameplay is itself objectively bad, but you simply cannot debate that it's visual design is simply far worse than any of the games it's trying to emulate. Even Quake 1 had a lot better looking levels and models.

And consider the implications of a game like Dusk being successful. How long until we start seeing a huge flood of shitty Quake clones hitting the steam store all of whom are claiming to be "retro"? Just....ugh.

1 hour ago, hardcore_gamer said:

Dusk is a TERRIBLE game.

>:O
JK
I have the same problem with how people remember the 80s and 90s and how i look at it myself (I wasn't even born at that time but i grew up with snes and later nes games and i watched a lot of old shows and movies on tv so i kinda know a bit about it and kinda have some experience with that time period) with people always remembering the 80s being this cyberpunk (?) era full of neon and whatnot whereas for me it's this time period full of manly men,bright sunny days and happy families enjoying life.

3 hours ago, hardcore_gamer said:

-Has horrible graphics

Because old school apparently is the new excuse to not put effort in making the graphics worth looking at.

I haven't played it, but based of Gggmanlives reviews, the first episode IS kinda mediocre in terms of level design. Second episode is better.

Only 1 guy making the whole thing as well. This makes it seem like reviewing a doom/quake total conversion.

I'd say Dusk is definitely better than Strafe.

Not a huge fan of quake style graphics myself, Doom guy myself, just like them more cute. Dusk def has a more quake feel to them, since the enemies are bulky like in..quake or half-life.

Gameplay seems to be good, thats what matters.

lol

lol

Considering the words that the OP himself likes to use for graphics in old games like Doom and Quake, is it really such a surprise? Seems that for many people old = obsolete = ugly.

Just checked "Dusk" videos, got nothing to do with doom/quake

Doom/quake do not introduce new mechanics during the game like (Climb the walls) and that sort of stuff you have in Dusk.

ID Knew that run and gun and nevigate the level is all you need and there is no need to rely on stupid gimmicks.

(While Raven's software "Hexen" added more puzzles and hub-like structure exploration, It still maintained the core elements (Except the inventory system which was a mistake imho, Made things too easy on the hardest difficulty, since ammo/health weren't scarce.))

Dusk seems more opened, While doom and quake had some levels with such element, it was never used to this extend, The reasons are simple :

1.)It was probably technical but

2.)It was more of a corridor shooter which is great if done right (I do not mean corridor shooter in a way that you only have 1 linear path 1cm in width that you can't even move left nor right, I mean multiple corridors with multiple paths), You get multiple paths but the monsters are blocking the path

And depends on how the sections you are traversing are built, The monsters you need to "negotiate" with, will have the proper combat mechanics

to pretty much prevent you from moving on without taking a lot of damage.

Also : Level design is king, Something i can't see in Dusk.

(Disclaimer: Haven't played Dusk, don't particularly intend to, so no idea if it applies in this case)

Regarding level design, I think dumbed-down, "go here and do this, Nimrod" levels are just what the majority of players are asking for (or seem to be asking for, as seen by devs) these days.  I've seen more than one "retro review" of Doom and the like where the response to the level designs has pretty much been "I'm lost in a maze".  Most of them don't even seem to realize there's an automap or if they do they just say "well this just proves the levels are unnavigable if it has this".

There's also the fact that people may be looking more at modern custom levels for Doom and Quake and forgetting that those design styles often deviate a lot from what the original levels the games were released with were like, too.

2 hours ago, hardcore_gamer said:

And consider the implications of a game like Dusk being successful. How long until we start seeing a huge flood of shitty Quake clones hitting the steam store all of whom are claiming to be "retro"? Just....ugh.

I think Wrack and ROTT '13 already popularized this trend. It's like those "retro" 2D platformers published by Devolver Digital and others that play nothing like the real classics.

There are far more games trying to emulate Quake than Doom. That and 3D Wolf clones using the Raycaster engine.

Long time lurker but had to register for this one - because this is a bit silly.

Dusk is genuine. Whatever flaws it might have (like disappointing monster animations compared to Quake) doesn't change that fact. I think people tend to forget that as they get experienced with fps's they also go into new releases with a preconceived bias - personally I had to get through well over half of the first episode before I realized how genuine Dusk actually is. Listening to people complain that Dusk isn't like 90s fps is exactly like listening to how people complained 'Quake isn't like Doom' back in the day.

There is a significant 'authenticity' to Dusk that simply isn't there in other "retro" games like the Strife/ROTT2013/etc. Dusk's design is miles better than any of those games. I'm very interested in hearing if anyone here actually played through both released episodes of Dusk and still think it isn't genuine - because that would frankly surprise me.

A few pointers on issues raised in this thread:

- Level design is very varied in this one. It starts out almost reminiscent of Lucasarts Outlaws in the way you have a open map with various houses and buildings to clear. By the second episode you're well into Quake land with complex surreal geometry and a emphasis on verticality. Some levels are very maze like and claustrophobic while others are very open and arena like - some either a mix of both or something in between. 

- It does not rely on any gimmicks. The climbing mechanic mentioned above is a re-spawning powerup found in certain levels. Hence it is no different than jumppads or teleporters in that they are a movement feature of the level itself rather than a feature of the gameplay loop.

5 hours ago, hardcore_gamer said:

Games like Doom and Quake are not as mindless as they are made out to be.

I thought Doom 2016 is a mindless shooter (not that this is a bad thing), granted it takes a little bit of effort to think of tactics in the fighting arenas the game is filled with and possibly little bit of extra effort to find optional secrets that most people are likely not going to bother with but it's pretty much an on-rails adventure compared to it's predecessors, it doesn't take so much thinking.

Modern FPS shooters have much more open area than 90s shooters. It is not like Doom or Quake. Most modern shooters focus on higher difficulty than those 90s shooters.

^ wat

25 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

Most modern shooters focus on higher difficulty than those 90s shooters.

Um, no.

Yes, there still are difficult games out there designed specifically to be so (Dark Souls and Stalker for instance), but if anything they're much easier overall than the old games, probably because gaming is much more mainstream/popular nowadays than it ever was back then, and many (or, well, the casuals anyway) are not interested in sweating while playing a game and not open to trial and error.

Youtube comments angered you? Why are you even reading youtube comments to begin with?

12 minutes ago, Pegg said:

Youtube comments angered you? Why are you even reading youtube comments to begin with?

Don't you think this thread is created just like a YT comment?

Anyway, the game seems fine. I may try it when it gets a discount or something. It has no point comparing everything.

It's a game made by a couple guys for fuck's sake. The graphics are inherently simple because the game needs to come out this decade, but they're antiquated because it's marketed towards mature FPS players such as myself. It's not like it's shoving the 90s gimmick in your face outside of the initial loading screen and some generously added flavour settings.  

I knew the game was legit when I fought a Scarecrow and it actually drew a bead on me before firing its pellets. They could have lazily made it a generic hitscan monster, but they made it fun to fight instead. The game feels to me like Blood 2 if it were done better, but apparently I must be imagining that. 

Quote

 

What people can't wrap their head around is that Dusk looks worse even compared to the games it's trying to ape. If Dusk was released in the late 90's it would have ended up in bargain bins. 

 

The lighting and physics alone would have probably fried my 4MB gpu. 

1 minute ago, Coopersville said:

The lighting and physics alone would have probably fried my 4MB gpu. 

It's not like the game author created the lightnings or the physics.

Why, what engine does it use?

Looks like Unity.

I'm surprised it isn't frying my 8GB gpu if that's the case. I am using the limited palette though. 

depends largely on the level of detail, not just the engine.