What is the best idtech1 game?

I think all Idtech 1 games are great, but if I had to choose the best, I'd choose DooM 2. The gameplay, monster roster and weapons are best IMO.

2 hours ago, Ferk said:

Doesn't Strife have all of that and more?

Strife has hubs. It has conversations, which are nice but a lot more limited in what they can do than Hexen's ACS. It doesn't have polyobjects.

A lot of effects in Strife are hacked in quite clumsily. Don't get me wrong, when playing you don't notice; but when you're trying to make a mod for Strife, that's when you'll notice how fiddly and hacky the whole thing is. That's why there are less than half a dozen Strife mods out there.

2 hours ago, Ferk said:

Doesn't Strife have all of that and more?

Only the hub feature - no real scripting and no polyobjects. If you want everything you got to use a ZDoom compatible port - which would make

The Adventures of Square

the technical winner! :P

10 minutes ago, Gez said:

That's why there are less than half a dozen Strife mods out there.

Probably also has something to do with the game being almost totally unknown for the first 10 years or so.

Looks like I'm the only one voting for Doom (1993) so I'll add some explaining to that. I think it is the best game because:

• It had the most impact on people and the gaming scene. Because it was new and (at that time) high-tech, but also because it immersive and a perfect balance between challenging, beautiful and scary.
• It had (at that time, at least for me) an original story, but allowed you to dive right in (no need to read/watch an intro). While the story was not detailed and not forced upon you, it was there just enough to get an idea of what is going on.
• It is complete. The story has a beginning (Knee-deep in the dead) with a great transition to the next episode (E1M8), a followup (Shores of Hell) and an ending (Inferno). It has enough content, the content matches the story (the environment styles and details) and a satisfactory ending (with a teaser to the next story, Doom 2).

Ultimate Doom is good too, but to me is simply more of the same. Like WADs you can download. Nice for an additional bit of entertainment, but doesn't make the game itself better. Doom 2 is great, especially the new monsters are well done, but still Doom 1 had more impact to me.

IMHO the best looking is Hexen.

Swinging doors

Moving walls

Custom colourmap for swamp area

Animated skies

Fantasy atmosphere

Three player classes

Apeedrun friendliness

Cool music

Brutal monsters

And...

I like the voice of the guy who says something at the starts of the hubs

I wish if somebody made a crossover of Plutonia and Hexen

For a non-Doom game it'd have to be Hexen, by far the most atmospheric and moody out of all the games. I adore its aesthetic and soundscape so much.

2 hours ago, SilverMiner said:

IMHO the best looking is Hexen.

Swinging doors

Moving walls

Custom colourmap for swamp area

Animated skies

Fantasy atmosphere

Three player classes

Apeedrun friendliness

Cool music

Brutal monsters

 

And...

 

I like the voice of the guy who says something at the starts of the hubs

 

I wish if somebody made a crossover of Plutonia and Hexen

 

 

So, basically, a very very challenging edition of Eternal Doom with a lot of GZDoom stuff?
I think that Eternal Doom IV is something in that alley... but i don't remember :/

It was a toss-up between final doot and Doot twoot.

DooM II is most memorable for me (despite me playing DooM 1 for a long time before playing DooM II). It comes with some fantastic music, wonderful maps and introduces my 2nd favourite enemy, ARACHNOTRONS! :D

Buut DooM II also introduces some really silly level designs. Despite how much I like to defend Chasm... why was this made? It doesn't fit earth all that much in its design... Not to mention DooM II is solely responsible for PTSD: The enemy no. 1, 2 and 3.

Final DooM has some really nice concepts for maps and being that it still used the limited 128 visplane count, DAMN are these some well designed maps (mostly talking Plutonia but TNT has some good ones like Mill and River Styx).

But then Mount Pain (in the arse) happened... As well as Anti-Christ... *shudders*

Ultimately I went DooM II.

PS: I'm surprised people voted Strife. (joke).

I'd like to thank the all the folks in online twitter and forum polls for always confirming my opinion is right ;) I knew Doom II was winning before I even voted.

Joking aside, I think Doom II was the perfect balance of difficulty and level design, it's not crazy hard, and fair for the most part (outside of some of Sandy's shenanigans), it introduces the enemy roster we've all come to love, and it clearly shows how the guys had come to really know the games mechanics and how they translate to game play, and would clearly influence mappers design choices for years to come. The game was approachable by anyone, and stands the test of time. It was pure. As amazing as the first experience with the Doom shareware was to me as a kid, my first time with Doom II is still right at the top of my all time video game experiences, along with Golden Eye, Half Life, and Metroid Prime. 

I picked Ultimate Doom because it's the best overall, despite that Final Doom has better maps than the Ultimate Doom, why I put Ultimate Doom over Final Doom because some TNT maps were inconsistent while some maps in Plutonia were annoying and stale, after that Doom64 ,then I put Doom 2 after Doom64 because Doom 2 has some bad maps, also Doom2 hasn't aged well compared to the other three games, most of TNT maps has aged well while few others has aged, but at least the gameplay hasn't aged, Plutonia maps aged well in terms of visuals, but the maps in later levels starts to get boring and repetitive, Doom 64 has really some good graphics and a great BGM but I wasn't a fan of the monster sprites in this game, except the Cyberdemon and the Pain Elemental.

As for non Doom games, I pick Heretic at the top, then Hexen then Strife, I haven't played the other games, so I don't have much knowledge about these games.

Doom II All the way 

21 hours ago, P41R47 said:

So, basically, a very very challenging edition of Eternal Doom with a lot of GZDoom stuff?

Eternal Doom was more cryptic than anything in the entirety of Hexen.

Hexen was very cryptic... When I got to the first "now you must hit the second switch to activate this" I was frustrated.

I don't think anybody cares about HACX, maybe because it's no that good

5 minutes ago, nelguy said:

I don't think anybody cares about HACX, maybe because it's no that good

Hacx is more of a doom 2 tc than a game honestly.

1 minute ago, Danzer said:

Hacx is more of a doom 2 tc than a game honestly.

Yeah I know, but I still view it as a game, and the same thing for CQ3

25 minutes ago, nelguy said:

I don't think anybody cares about HACX, maybe because it's no that good

I like Hacx a lot. It's just not as influential as the other titles.

Hacx suffers from being obscure and having been rushed, so its quality is very uneven. And it's not like it was even the most innovative or influential TC, since things like Aliens TC and Batman Doom exist, too. Hacx just got to be its own IWAD thanks to a rerelease.

Went for Ultimate Doom. As nice as Doom II is especially for modding, in the end it's the first one that started it all and the shareware episode remains the iconic masterpiece which stands above everything. Also, Doom II level design often sucks. Super Shotgun is still nice to have, though.

If you are combining all id Tech 1 games into a poll, then you should add Harmony :P or REKKR.

 Freedoom.

Anyway my vote goes to Doom 64. It just got a very unsettling feel to it.

On 2/19/2020 at 11:55 AM, Asking4Id said:

Hexen was very cryptic... When I got to the first "now you must hit the second switch to activate this" I was frustrated.

If anything, seeing as I recently beaten it for the first time, I think Strife is infinitely more frustrating to navigate. It just doesn't have good maps a majority of the time.

2 minutes ago, Lila Feuer said:

Strife is infinitely more frustrating to navigate. It just doesn't have good maps a majority of the time.

Now, I totally agree with you, in fact I think Strife is the most boring game in the Doom engine

1 minute ago, nelguy said:

Now, I totally agree with you, in fact I think Strife is the most boring game in the Doom engine

I don't think it's boring but I don't really enjoy the gameplay, the weapons and enemies are all over the place in terms of effectiveness and it results in awkward fights. The narrative and voice acting is excellent. I think most of the music is weak though.

The first time I played Strife, the boring music and Ridiculously huge map made have a huge headache (that's why I hate Quake), and by the time I reached the second map, I literally never played the game since, but I totally get why a lot of people like it, because it's super appealing to have an RPG-type game, that is in first person, that is very appealing, but in my opinion is not very well executed.

I guess it does change the perception if you play Strife now vs back when it came out. The problem is that the timing of its release wasn't right, it was obscured by the dawn of fully 3D environments Quake brought.

I did play it back then and to me it was amazing to have a town hub with shops and meaningful connections between areas with very clear map themes, it made the objective more meaningful with a more clearly defined story, the combat wasn't too bad, and there was variety, I guess it's just that the combat wasn't really the spotlight as with previous games. In some (very few) sections you could (very poorly) sort of play safe and try and be stealthy. There was a sense of progression up until the very end, building up pieces of your weapon as you go through the story, and you had a few possible alternate endings with some twists. You could even go rogue and bring havoc to the town... depending when you do it, it could totally block your progress but it was nice they actually let you go postal. It might have a lot of hard-coded stuff but it had a lot of interesting new ideas never before done in an FPS.

Best gameplay: DOOM II

Best enemies: DOOM II

Best maps: DOOM II

Best nostalgia: DOOM II

Best campaign: DOOM II

Best game ever: DOOM II

@Doomkid Ever played DOOM II? I think you'd like it :P