Young Doomers: Why this game?

i have ps3s in a few rooms in my house and my favorite pastime is still doom/skulltag.

i remember telling one of my friends that i had started playing doom, he said "wait, thats the one where those weird sailors attack you right? i played it on a demo disk 5 years ago, the graphics were rubbish, there wasnt even textures on the floor."

i had to explain to him that those "sailors" were nazis and that the game he was thinking of was wolfenstein 3d. sadly, this took a very long time, till he decided to finally boot up his demo disk and play it.
...it was wolfenstein 3d alright.

There's alot of cool viewpoints in this thread. Everything eargosedown said is how I feel about Doom too!

I also think it's totally rad that a fair few not-so-frequent posters have contributed :)

Mattfrie1 said:

the newest system that I own is a PS2 and Gamecube.

I currently have a PS One plugged into my TV. I'm pretty sure my housemates have got more mileage out of my PS2 than I have!

I wouldn't even compare half-life and doom. Of course they are both FPS, but half-life has an entirely different focus than doom. It's all about intrigue, sneaking around, climbing through weird stuff, and maybe once in a while you have to blow up a crowd. However, doom is about slaughtering demons at lightning speed. I loved half-life for some of the tactical battles and mostly for the environments and exploratory element.

I continue to play doom way more, however, because it's a bit more open-ended. Easy mapping, and as someone said before, easy playing. I can fire up doom for five minutes if need be (and maybe complete a level or two!). Newer games take that long to load on my shit machine :P

I sort of grew up with doom - born in 88, played really old stuff even before I saw doom. I think I played it first in like 96, and completed the shareware version many times over. But I was too chicken to play doom2 and would just iddqd through everything...lol silly kids...

wtf is Half-life? must of come out around when Unreal was out or somethin cause ive never heard of it.. gonna try get ahold of a copy if ppl seem to think its so good.

David_Dweedle said:

wtf is Half-life?

I will assume you're being serious here, because that's an amazing question to ask.

Half-Life is a single player FPS released in 1998 that was developer Valve's first game. It features an engrossing and enjoyable sci-fi storyline, there is bit of dialog an interaction with NPCs but it's also a good shooter. The game has topped or starred in most "best game" lists since it was created, and was quite a phenomenon at the time.

The game also spawned myriad mods and expansions, you may have heard of the multiplayer-only terrorist-shooter mod Counter-Strike, which was so popular it ended up becoming its' own separate product. There are official expansions and sequels, such as Opposing Force and Blue Shift, though these don't really stick in my memory as being anything special. The franchise has continued with various Half-Life 2 releases though apparently these aren't as good as the original.

Either way, if you haven't played the original HL you're definitely missing out! Watch the intro video on YouTube and grab it for $9.99 on Steam.

Opposing Force was fun and had some tough new enemies. Blue Shift's levels few mediocre, but the upgraded models it gives to Half-Life and OpFor are worth installing. And moving on into Half-Life 2 territory, Portal (a stand-alone puzzle game using the Source engine) can be beaten quickly and doesn't have much replay value, but is amazing while it lasts.

I liked Portal, it was really funny the first time I heard all those jokes... Uhh I mean the first thousand times.

I believe I was introduced to the game in 1994 with a shareware version of Doom (1.8 on floppies). I had the disks around for a bit until I had 4MB of RAM on the 386 SX 25 Mhz computer. It played but I had the blue disk pause from time to time, which disappeared entirely on the 486DX 100 Mhz system.

The two other shooters I played around that time (1993-1995) was Blake Stone and Wolfenstein 3d shareware.

Oh, and I was born in 1982 so my first touch with Doom was when I was 12-13 years old.

ArmouredBlood said:
Also the fast-paced single player, very few games have the player speed be so high and have such a high emphasis on dodging attacks versus turtling in cover. I absolutely hate modern games that do that, turning battles into trench warfare. There's just something liberating about running everywhere ;)[/B]

Yeah, that works for me. I need to be able to run into a room full of big huge guys, run around them and pelt them with massive amounts of damage and -see- my ammo flying through the air at them while dodging their attacks flying back at me. I like to see my enemies and confront them head-on at full speed, not hide behind a desk and wait 'til it's safe to come out ... the quick pace is what keeps me coming back to Doom.

EDIT: If it's anything to the thread, I'm 19.

First video game I remember playing.

Hm, well I'm 15. I own an Xbox 360, but thats actually gathering dust because of Doom.

Well what first attracted me to Doom was the simplicity to make content for it. Literally it took me an hour to make my first map and although very, very bad (pretty sure i created a thread about it...), nonetheless i was damn proud, simply because I created a doom map . Not many kids or adults for that matter can really say they've created any content for any software or hardware at all.

Gameplay was also a high for me. So simple that all you do is Use, Strafe, Move, Shoot, and occasionally sprint. This is all you need to play Doom, so it has tremendous pick up and play value. Of course this is important for younger users. I was immediately hooked...

Also, the graphics arent a problem at all for me. I have a graphics card that can barely run the original Counter Strike, let alone Counter Strike Source (which is my favorite when i palyed at a cyber cafe'). The graphics for some reason fit, and Im not bothered at all with them. Some of my friends have pulled the "LOL When was that made? 1990? i bet it looks like super mario lawlsz!11!" card on me, but with enough convincing, i've gotten them hooked too.

But when Doom 4 comes out, ack. Goodbye little remains of a life I have.

I'm 15 and I can remember playing both Wolfenstein-3d and Doom on the old PC back in about 96'. (Yes, I was 3 when I played Doom.) I can remember having a bunch of shovelware disks, and infact, the first time I played Perfect Dark, I liked it because it was "just like Doom!" I grew up with this game, and I can remember Doom Connector from around 03'-04'. Man, those were the days - I remember ZDaemon CTF 2 and playing a beta of Deus Vult. :P

I dont remember when I first played it or saw it, but my mum used to get paid to clean a friends house (mansion more like it), and I got to use their computer. I was introduced to both Command and Conquer, Duke Nukem 3D and Doom 2 from this computer, and although I couldnt play any of them well, I loved them all, and all of them have become absolute favourites for all time. I had to play Doom 2 with cheats, because I died on the lowest skill level...a lot. Ive never been able to play well with a keyboard, back then when I was really young or now, so thats the main reason for sucking at Doom and Duke. I even bought the Doom 2 prima strategy guide with pocket money just for playing it on that computer, and eventually beat all the levels (The challenge was using the keyboard to get to the end of the levels :p)

I never got to play it again on the PC for a very very long time. However, I did get Doom on the playstation, and this is probably the reason I still love the game and probably always will; I learnt how to play properly, and play well enough to conquer Ultra-Violence. Then I got Final Doom on PSX and started it on UV and slowly beat it too. The skills I learned from those two games stayed with me forever.

Eventually I found a used copy of Final Doom at a trade&exchange store for 10 bucks, just the CD in a jewel case really, and bought that, and was reintroduced to keyboard hell. Had to start again on the lower difficulties until I got JUST competent enough to surive skill 2 to the end of TNT, then found a copy of Collector's Edition for 20. Then I found a shovelware disc with editors, mnaps and so on, most of which didnt work, but it got me to look for more on the internet. Doom Legacy was found, "holy shit!" was said, and frustration was found in its bugs. Doomsday was jaw-dropping in both its looks, and how bad it lagged my computer on any "big" map. ZDoom finally answered my problems, running perfectly, and then I got a PC controller, letting me play like the PSX Doom. Ive been playing on and off since then. Now I play with GZDoom on my HDTV, with a 360 controller (Thanks to some members of this board suggesting XPadder) and several gbs worth of backlogged wads.

I also get every Doom related thing I can find for any platform I have, such as Doom on my 360 and GBA

I have been playing Doom for as long as I can remember and I still play it because of how mod-able it is. I have always been a modder at heart and I will try to find some way of altering the game, whether it be by cheats or creating levels and other mods. Tinkering with programming and building levels has always been fun for me as well so I think as long as there is a community for Doom, I will enjoy playing/creating stuff for it.

I've been into Doom since it came out (I was 8-ish) and have since been an addict. What amazes me most about it is the maps that people make, and the ones that I want to make whenever I get a chance. (I remember being in 6th grade drawing maps on paper and being asked what it was) good times...

I'd have to agree with most people here that Doom just doesn't fade half as fast as all those other games - in fact the older it gets, the more nostalgic it is, yet the gameplay is still better than most new games. But I'm sure no one knows or cares what I'm talking about here...**

What keeps me addicted Doom is being able to make maps for it - people have often suggested "you should try this (non-doom) game..." but of course, the superior gameplay inherent in Doom still beats a lot of newfangled games. Being able to make your own maps is even better than the original (well it depends who you ask, but...) and I've since become better at mapping - now I just need to get my laptop to run DB(2)...

Childhood certainly is the most obvious answer to this. I've been playing Doom for about twelve years, since I was 6 years old give or take. In fact, I played the Mac version of Wolf3D before even that. In terms of shooters, I didn't know anything else for a long time; among the first "modern" shooters I played were Quake II (much later than it was released), TimeSplitters 2 and the PS2 version of Half-Life.

Now that I've come to play more and more shooters released throughout the time between Wolf3D up to the present day, I feel I can objectively say that fundamentally, shooters haven't really progressed a lot in the past 17 years. Sure, graphic engines have evolved greatly; sure, the addition of scripted events, cinematics and NPCs, vehicles, and so on have spiced things up. But at the core, most games still have the same basic idea: Linear progression, run and shoot, run and shoot, drive and shoot, run and shoot.

And that's okay. Though I feel that the complete and utter simplicity of Doom and Wolfenstein are no longer enough to satisfy my tastes, it is a formula that works.

However, in the past three or four years, games have gone more and more from sheer simplicity to bogged down excess. Elements like regenerating health are tacked on to every title because it's the popular thing to do, and games become more cookie-cutter unoriginal and easy.

In this sense, one could argue FPS titles have begun to take steps backwards to appeal to more casual audiences (as most games have). And that's why Doom has remained a game that, while lately less frequently, is one I enjoy immensely.

The tried and true simplicity of the gameplay has not entirely kept my interest in more recent years, but it is a more than welcome retreat from the most recent titles which look and play more and more the same, each utilizing a formula which simply removes much of what made older shooters so much fun. It's a damn shame.

DooM was the first I ever played. I was 7 when I got it for my Super Nintendo back in 1996, and it blew me away on every level. No other game at the time had the combination of intense action and terrifying scares.

DooM was a huge part of my childhood that I have never forgotten and will never forget.

[story] Well, our family didn't have a decent computer for ages. I remember cheating on Commander Keen in... '98? When I was young, let's leave it at that. I do also remember my Dad having a grand old time playing Shareware Wolfenstein.

We ultimately got a better machine, and we convinced our dad to get the full version of Wolfenstein. I got reasonably good at it, too.

I'd heard only negative things about Doom in passing: It's an excessively violent game that only school shooters play, sort of thing. But once, when I was browsing for new Wolfenstein maps (the idea of fresh content for that game excited me), I found WolfenDoom. The screenshots looked great, but it also mentioned that you needed Doom 2 to run it. I swore pretty badly, but it convinced me to get the D1E1.

I played around, and loved it. I loved it. My little brothers enjoyed watching me play (I was 14, I think, so I was mature enough to play sans cheats), so one of them gave me half the fee for Doom 2, and we bought that. I still remember getting pwned on D2MAP02 on Difficulty 2... Good times.

On July 4th, 2008, I purchased Final Doom. Again, I was pwned because I was still struggling with Doom 95. A few months later, I found zDoom.

I was getting interested in making my own maps, so I quickly found Doom Builder. But, being the doom file noob that I was, I could never figure out how to set up the configuration. Consequently, I was stuck with shareware DeepSea (and hated every minute of it).

By the time I got Skulltag (for single-player purposes only), I was sufficiently skilled enough to work out how to mess with WADs in Windows Explorer. And so it progressed. I am now being pwned in Skulltag Hide and Seek mathces. [/story]

I love this game. Partially, because I already own it, and spending money on anything doesn't come easily to me. My only other games are Bioshock, Sim City 4, Sins of a Solar Empire, Stronghold Crusader (courtesy of a friend), and an old copy of Roller Coaster Tycoon 2.

Yup! Born in December '92, and half of my friends think that I'm crazy for playing such an 'ugly game' (though I have yet to show them Skulltag GL rendering). The fact that it might be fun never occurs to them. My other half kinda enjoys it, but not really because they're not mad gamers. Only one friend really got into it with me, when I still used zDaemon.

I'm a pretty late comer to DooM. I had been playing off and on for about 4 years, before I wanted to play networked with a friend. (Yup! The atmosphere prevented me from progressing beyond E1M5). After ensuring that we both had the same version of ZDoom, and much fooling around, we finally got it to work. And we got sucked in to this awesome world...

The first hurdle was E2M3. We spent over 47 minutes running around, opening doors, retracing steps, abusing each other. It was completed though.

Over the next few nights. We completed Classic DooM. And I remember the first thing my friend wrote (paraphrased):
"Doom is timeless. It's like we won't be here later, but this game will be..."

That about sums it up perfectly.

Anyway, another major plus is that since the source is open and free now, I can play it pretty much anywhere, including Arch Linux (my box), FreeBSD (a home server), Windows XP (at school), Windows Vista (friend's box).

I was three when I first played DOOM. I've been a fan ever since and would, without hesitation, call the original DOOMs (DOOM, DOOM II, Final DOOM, and the various commercial and free wads) my favorite games of all time.

I'd give up shiny graphics if I had the choice between today's new games and DOOM.

I've played doom since... forever (which is surprising because I was born in 1993). And slowly but surely I'm realizing why MANY modern games suck and why I keep on playing and modding doom. It's easy to mod, fun to play, and you can even do epic things with it without usage of a modern GL or whatever renderer.

Of course, there are still a few more modern games I like, but almost everything I play today was released within the timespan of 1993-2000 or so.

I've been watching these forums for a while, and I figured there was no better way to join in on the community than by starting here.

Anyways, I'm fifteen and started playing Doom only this summer when a friend let me install Doom from his Collector's Edition CD. I've been playing fairly regularly since then. I beat Ultimate Doom on Doom95 (E4, yeow.) before finding the Doom wiki on the internet. From there, I found source ports. Skulltag just about blew my mind; I had no idea Doom could be played the way it is through source ports. I'm about two thirds of the way through Doom 2 (can't bring myself to finish it, some of the levels are just a pain to play), am working on the first Community Chest, and am partially through Alien Vendetta with the Psychic mod.

Why did I install Doom? I can't say I grew up with Doom because I grew up with Crash Bandicoot and Spyro instead. I had always heard Doom was one of those good older titles, and I was looking into other old titles (NetHack, Elder Scrolls 2- Daggerfall, etc) at the time. Doom was just another opportunity to get in on some great gaming that wasn't going to present itself again in the future.

tl;dr-

Why do I still play Doom? It's fun. It doesn't get old. If it does, there's all kind of material made by the community to make it new again. Maybe one of these days I'll start modding Doom myself.

Doom was actually a game my brother had gotten me into (age seven or so). Since he really liked wolfenstein, he couldn't wait for doom (naturally he played it for a long time). I think the thing that basically stapled doom to me was the multiplayer. I had incredible amounts of fun playing deatmatches and cooperative runs with my brother as well as other friends every now and then (which usually ended up becoming a dm in the end anyway.) Everyone eventually trailed off of doom towards the more modern games...except for me, who secretly stuck to it.

I grew up on id games. I remember when I was 3 and I'd play Doom for the PC and Duke Nukem: Time to Kill for the PSX. I don't remember very much about playing Doom, except that I was afraid of I'm Too Young To Die mode without iddqd. Well... I couldn't play any game without cheats. It's not like I was bad at the game, I just wasn't confident. At all.

Then I got into Quake 2 (yeah, I've been a fan of id since I started playing games). I played that like mad. Then for some reason I started going from one random game to another, and I came back to Doom and Quake 2 a couple of times, but Quake disturbed me really bad one time to the point where I feared playing it (you know, the prison complex with the dudes saying "help" and "let me out" in that freaky monotone voice...).

Skip to now and I finally am back into playing Doom, as well as pretending I know how to make WADs for it. I don't know what triggered it, but for some reason, I just have been playing Doom daily, and I've been teaching myself Doom songs so I can cover them (although I only really know e1m4 and the Doom3 theme).

The reason I prefer it over things like Halo, Half Life 2, etc is because it doesn't get old. I bought Halo a while ago, and I'm having trouble playing a second time due to boredom. It doesn't help that none of the new games don't run on this computer due to a processor that's just not good enough.

It was my childhood also. I was born in December 1991, and started playing the game when I was 3. Since then, I've played through the PSX version of Doom well over 30 times, making it my most played game ever. :D

I grew up on it, but so did alot of people my age, and they have moved on to other games.

Interestingly enough, my reason to stick with doom, outside of the simplicity of making maps for it, is BECAUSE there are young* people on the newer FPS games. Because no port of Doom that I know of supports nor needs voice support, I can simply ignore them.

*By young I mean the whiny, arrogant, spoiled, punk-ass little shits that give "youth" and "parenting" bad names. (Ironically, there are "people" in their twenties and even thirties who still fit this demographic to a T). That said, a surprisingly decent amount of the younger people here are tolerable and in some cases, I daresay, mature.

(Is 20 now, but have had the same opinion on kids playing FPS since 15)

i'm, 14 I got into doom i think at the age of 10 or 12, i was looking for games and such on the web and found doom 1 shareware,i for get how i specifically first heard of doom.

Any way's when i first stated the gmae i was like wow this look's cool,
first two levels where ok.THEN when i started to get scary i remember trying to resist playing doom when my dad wasnt home.

when i first beat episode one i went wtf is going on what!
Then finally getting doom 1 and 2 i started playing doom 1 episode 2.
i looked at the levels and went what happened to the atmosphere it felt deluded unlike episode ones levels.(yeah why was the level design so different explain)

I currently play skulltag and stuff my pc doesn't run opengl which ticks me off but it does run half-life.

I love doom there was always a sense of mystery when you first played it.