Doom 1 Doesn't Hold Up Anymore

[Grazza]

Reflect on the fact that the default control set-up - that is, what you get if you delete the cfg entirely and then start the game - is actually mouse+ keyboard.

 

Vertical mouse movement isn't necessarily an inferior set-up at all. Many speedrunners use it to this day. I remember being surprised to learn that Adam Hegyi used it (and back then it had nothing to do with gliding), but it does give the player some extra fine-control. Used at a very low sensitivity and not as the primary way to move front and back, of course.

[Gunstar Green]

1 hour ago, Dark Pulse said:

id actually did recommend you learn how to use the mouse in the manual though, so saying it was "meant to be played" keyboard-only is a bit misleading. It's more like they had a crutch for keyboard-only players, but anyone who was half-competent with a mouse would be able to smoke them for the most part.

 

Tim Heydelaar (who was one of the guys behind Playstation Doom and Doom 64) actually just recounted a story of talking shit to the guys at id about how they'd destroy them at Deathmatch, and results went about as well as you could expect when Romero wielded a mouse. 

 

Yeah, I used to play with the Romero approved control method back in the day with comma and period for strafing and mouse for movement. It's not as comfortable as the modern WASD setup we've settled on today but it's functionally pretty similar.

[banjiepixel]

22 minutes ago, Grazza said:

Reflect on the fact that the default control set-up - that is, what you get if you delete the cfg entirely and then start the game - is actually mouse+ keyboard.

 

Defaults are not really intuitive and are clearly a compromise between being able to use keyboard only and keyboard and mouse with one default setup. It is still very different experience than using actual WASD-setup with mouse. And vertical mouse movement isn't necessarily inferior setup but it does make controls more complicated and that can be something that many people do not like, especially with people having been used to modern WASD-controls. Even the controller setup for modern console versions of Doom emulates WASD-setup and modern controller setups for FPS-games.

 

Original default setup is outdated but more modern setup also does change the gameplay to be easier (or atleast to be more accessible).

[Grazza]

WASD was developed by Doomers in 1994, and was widely known in the Doom community at the time, at least by 1995.

[yakfak]

not sure about this to be honest - to me, saying Doom 1 as a whole is or isn't immersive feels wrong. once you're at a given familiarity with a game and the graphics and mechanics stop being a surprise, the feelings elicited by the game rely on the designer's skill with level design. at that point some maps suck you in and some don't. i've been compelled to explore a Doom 1 map made as recently as 2018.

 

doom 3 has much more cinematic and convincing graphics and choreography than the original game but to me the levels themselves are totally bare of interest. so I find doom 1 on repeat plays has superior potential for immersion

[7hm]

My ten year old plays Doom with me.  He's generally ok with it all, but when the lights go out in the game, he gets seriously freaked out and we either have to stop or he waits for me to reach him in the level.  Barons scare the heck out of him. Spectres are near invisible in Crispy Doom.  They freak him out quite a bit too.

 

Game holds up as an immersive experience as much as it does an action experience.

 

That's not to say that Doom 3 wouldn't do even better as an immersive / horror experience though.

[Linguica]

10 hours ago, EtherBot said:

Doom has absolutely no immersion anymore, and that's a shame because for its time it must have been one of the most immersive games you could buy. It's an adventure lost to time. 

 

This is absolutely true, and it's also irrelevant. Doom was unlike anything anybody had ever seen in 1993 / 1994. But it's now <CURRENT_YEAR> so that doesn't matter anymore, really, and pining for the good old days isn't constructive.

[Dark Pulse]

3 minutes ago, Linguica said:

 

This is absolutely true, and it's also irrelevant. Doom was unlike anything anybody had ever seen in 1993 / 1994. But it's now <CURRENT_YEAR> so that doesn't matter anymore, really, and pining for the good old days isn't constructive.

As long as it's not 1999, I hope. Otherwise, uh, you may want to prepare for a shitstorm.

[mappr]

I miss that immersion I felt when playing Doom as a kid, though it's not really Doom's fault, with age I cannot immerse myself in any game today like I could years ago. It's a feeling I chase now in the mods I use, the environment I play in, and the substances I take to help aid the experience.

Sometimes for an evening I can almost reclaim that feeling. Almost.

[Mayomancer]

Well Doom 1 still gives me some spooks, and Doom 3 still scares the hell out of me, guess it's childhood trauma

[seed]

17 hours ago, EtherBot said:

Like I said in another comment, I'm not particularly afraid of Half-Life anymore but that game still has a tone that carries through it on repeat playthroughs even 20 years later. It hasn't managed to devolve purely into mechanics to the point that that's the only thing people remember about it.

 

I think that's also because Doom's case is pretty different from Half-Life's. HL's action and combat was heavily interwined with the narrative and atmosphere, you honestly just can't have a HL game that would somehow bend towards either element, and HL2 clarified this. It's all of them working together, or nothing.

[Mordeth]

Back in the day, Doom was immersive by its '2.5D' level design alone, trapping the player in a 'real' explorable place with scary monsters and ambushes, traps and secret areas everywhere.  With Doom2, there was already a shift in emphasis to the 'mechanical action' of monster slaying.

 

If Doom lost its shine to you, it's because 3D architecture is done much more explicit in modern engines and because you know the mechanics of every vanilla monster and what to expect even from new monsters. People don't *respect* an Imp or Demon anymore. They hear an unseen Imp shooting its fireball from across the room, and already judge correctly when it will arrive at their current location and when they should strafe aside to let it pass by. The Imp reduced to a mechanic, instead of the largely unknown menace it used to be.

 

It's what I feel is missing in a lot of modern WADs: monsters are used to enable a certain type of (arena) combat, while forgetting to elicit an 'emotional response' in the player. Stupid vanilla example: mappers no longer make an early window to the exit room, showing a demon running around aimlessly. Because the player can just shoot the demon safely through said window, and that doesn't make good combat. But back in the day, your average player felt some trepidation at the prospect. Demons running towards you? You used to panic a bit, hoping your shotgun brought them down before they reached you and not knowing if you carried enough shotgun shells to kill them all. Nowadays, you know instinctively how much shells and how much time or room you need. The menace is largely gone.

 

While Doom3 tried to be an immersive horror game, it failed to do so effectively. Because its attempts at immersion was often done by taking the player out of the game (cutscenes, PDAs) and the horror / surprise elements made use of the same few techniques repeat ad nausea: porting enemies in, jumping imp behind door, monster closet opening behind you. When you take a single look at a room and already can guess how this is going to play out, it will lose any and all effect it would have otherwise and the game becomes just one big slugfest through endless repeats of the same scenarios.

[Job]

@Mordeth, you make a good, interesting point. I wonder if there was an option for a "monster RNG" in modern sourceports, would that, at least partially, remedy the issue you describe? Specifically, monsters of a specific type don't necessarily have static attributes. Some may be slower/stronger, faster/weaker (or any combination thereof), have more hit points or less, maybe even a greater reach for melee attacks, a narrower or wider range for projectile damage rolls, etc? In my opinion, that would help partially address the, um, complacency that we as seasoned Doomers experience playing our favorite game.

[Mordeth]

9 minutes ago, Job said:

Specifically, monsters of a specific type don't necessarily have static attributes. 

 

Doomers in general tend to hate vanilla-looking monsters that don't act vanilla. But some randomness would spice things up, like some Heretic / Hexen monsters do.

[OliveTree]

21 hours ago, Linguica said:

This is absolutely true, and it's also irrelevant. Doom was unlike anything anybody had ever seen in 1993 / 1994. But [...] pining for the good old days isn't constructive.

 

Re-reading my post, there is the obvious question of "who cares?" like "what's at stake?" and to me the answer is twofold. 1) I think people don't give Doom enough credit by saying it's nothing more than raw gameplay, and 2) Treating Doom like it's nothing more than raw gameplay makes Doom 3 seem like a worse sequel than, imo, it really is, because it changed that gameplay. What is NOT at stake here is the adventure lost to time itself. Standards change and that's natural, It's just that context is important and in a lot of ways Doom and Doom 3 are viewed almost devoid of any.

 

EDIT: This is unrelated, but I posted this exact post to reddit shortly after posting here, and so far the response over there is dramatically worse, it's sort of shocking. I don't have anything to comment on about that, I just think it's sort of interesting.

Edited January 23, 2019 by EtherBot

[[McD] James]

On 1/22/2019 at 10:58 AM, Nine Inch Heels said:

Contrary to what most people might expect frome me, I actually think doom3 is a decent game that is competent at what it does, and it's worth playing once or twice.

I wouldn't consider Doom 3 to be sequel that is faithful to the classic dooms, however, and the main reason is that the focus in D3 is almost entirely on atmosphere, while gameplay feels much more like an afterthought in many places. Classic doom on the other hand, in particular doom2, was much faster in many ways, not just sheer player movement.

 

Sure, you can make the case and say that doom always was mostly about atmosphere, and therefore doom3 is much more of a spiritual successor than I would pesonally say it is (and I'm sure some folks might agree with you), but I don't think it's a hill worth dying on. Many of the gameplay choices in classic doom are so vastly different from doom3 that these games don't have much in common once you look past the general theme of "lone badass vs Hell". You can basically replace D3's theme with some abstract space theme like for example "Alien" or something similar, slap a different label on the box, and you'd have basically no common ground between the classics and D3 anymore, and that's a hill I'm ready to die on any day.

I've heard arguments regarding the gameplay that were along the lines of "they didn't have the means at the time, so of course a newer game is going to be different". I get that point of view, but it doesn't change that doom3 still feels sluggish by comparison and is much less "arcade-y" in my opinion.

 

 

I seem to be one of the few people who thought that the gunplay was decent enough, though I personally found the atmosphere to be sterile and boring. Most of the enjoyment I got out of playing Doom 3 BFG Edition was from playing STTP 3. None of the characters, dialogue or plot elements were compelling. I genuinely had a lot more fun playing through Daikatana than I did with my time spent with Doom 3 BFG Edition. Daikatana is undoubtedly a mess, but it at least it has a unique personality to call its own. Doom 3 completely lacks the beauty, oppressively haunting atmosphere and intellectual wit of System Shock 2. Doom 3 is in my mind the second most average video game that I've ever played, next only to Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle, which I played through via PS2 Sega Genesis compilation. On the whole, I don't really like or dislike Doom 3. It's just a random thing taking up space in the universe. The Dark Mod looks really good, from what I've seen.

 

Edited January 24, 2019 by Ajora

[[McD] James]

As I remember it, the shotgun was (as with everything else gameplay wise) adequately passable.

 

 

[DefilerPhil47]

On 1/22/2019 at 9:57 AM, EtherBot said:

 

But the thing is, people don't analyze Doom 3 either. Because Doom 3 is a sequel to Doom 1, which was obviously nothing more than a pure mechanical experience with good action and big mazes. So an analysis of Doom 3, likewise, starts and ends at "Added Flashlight" for good or ill. These games were shortchanged by history if you ask me. They're both seen as simple little nothing games, but in different ways, and both of those ways are equally untrue in my opinion. The conversation shouldn't end at "Doom 1 was just a gameplay game. And Doom 3 added a flashlight." There's so much more value to glean from these games, people have devoted their lives to them. And yet these two opinions seem to be held most strongly on places like here, perhaps to justify something, idk.

 

 

I will say that Noah Caldwell-Gervais did an excellent video analyzing Doom 3, which gave me a whole different appreciation for the game.  I'm with you on Doom 3, I thought it was a very organic progression of the Doom series.  When I first played Doom, I never thought it was a fast rocket shooting pulse pounding high speed action game that Quake is remembered as, so when Doom 3 was announced, not only was I beyond thrilled, but it looked incredible.  When it was finally released, it was an incredible experience for me, creeping through the halls blasting demons of hell, just as I did in Doom and Doom II.  I play Doom and Doom II fast now, but in the mid-90s, I did not and remembered it as such.

 

Anyway, here is the link to the video, hope you enjoy it.

 

 

[OliveTree]

hey quick amendment, sorry to bump my own thread, but I wanna say this isn't supposed to be a value judgment of any of the games. Not trying to knock doom 1 down a peg or give a defense of doom 3. I just want to take a critical look at how we talk about doom and why that's interesting.

[DoomGater]

On 1/22/2019 at 3:57 PM, EtherBot said:

Hey this is super long.

 

That's right. It's way to long.

[Hellbent]

Aren't the doom shareware demos played with a mouse? Fast, frantic gameplay with a mouse. From day 1 doom was meant to be played as it is today. We all just have this idea that it was "supposed" to be played with a keyboard because that's how we all played it originally (me included).

 

 

[snapshot]

Is Yahtzee still doing those stupid Zero Punctuation videos?

 

I played it with a mouse for the first time (that was offered in the settings by default, just had to change the sensitivity) and did not rush through the levels, took my time exploring and killing stuff.

[TakenStew22]

There are a few things wrong with this well-thought-out essay, but I'm gonna choose one for now because I'm lazy.

On 1/22/2019 at 10:57 AM, EtherBot said:

Doom lost it's tone, almost completely. Nobody is afraid of Doom anymore, and nobody feels like a badass when they play it, not really. You feel powerful because you've overcome a tremendous mechanical challenge and mastered a digital video game's systems. But it never really feels like the cards were stacked against you. You don't believe you're fighting a genuine sinister force that outnumbers you and would overpower any other mere human. You're fighting simple videogame monsters. Nothing special. Doom has absolutely no immersion anymore, and that's a shame because for its time it must have been one of the most immersive games you could buy. It's an adventure lost to time. 

 

I wish people talked about that.

People still enjoy Doom as much as they did in 1993. It's not about immersion. A word that is being thrown around too much that it generally makes me cringe every time I hear it.

It's not about being scared. Most people I heard who said they were scared of Doom said they experienced it when they were only a child. If they were a teenager or an adult, would they be scared everytime a demon showed up? Probably not.

It's about having FUN. Doom even after all these years still has the best gameplay I had ever seen in a FPS. The guns, the demons, the level design, everything I can think of fits in so well and is why the game still holds up. Something I think alot of people can agree on with Doom 3 is that its gameplay was lacking in alot of areas. The screen would fuck around all over the place when you shot your weapon or were hit by an enemy. Not to mention the fact that most of the arenas in the game were very small and just not very fun to fight in. Was it scary? Sure. But nowhere near as fun as the other games in the series, atleast in my opinion.

 

I'm not trying to sound offensive, but I think you're just missing the point.

[Gunstar Green]

10 hours ago, TakenStew22 said:

People still enjoy Doom as much as they did in 1993. It's not about immersion. A word that is being thrown around too much that it generally makes me cringe every time I hear it.

 

I think people need to realize that while immersive experiences are great, a video game doesn't need to be an immersive experience to be great. Play any game enough and you'll start to see the seams and it won't be very immersive anymore. If a game is fun beyond that though, then it doesn't really matter.

[anotak]

On 1/22/2019 at 8:57 AM, EtherBot said:

I remember when I first played Doom 1. I played the shareware of it at my cousin's house. He had some source port or another, I'm not sure which, but only had his hands on the shareware wad. I must have been in middle school or something? I'll never forget a little moment in E1M3 where you go to grab a key next to a window into an adjacent room. As you get closer to the key, a pinky demon runs into the adjacent room, but can't hurt you. Holy shit. I was terrified of that thing when I first saw it. It took so many more hits than everything else, and gah look at it! It was weird as balls and had a flat man face on a strange fleshy apelike running stance which moved faster than any other enemy I'd seen so far. I dreaded the moment I'd have to actually fight it in combat, and when I did I nearly stopped playing the game.

so like, at the risk of talking about myself too much:

 

this feeling is a big part of what some of the "weirder" mapmakers like myself tried to recapture in our works. I've had my maps referred to as avant-garde or experimental, but really a big part of it was me trying to return to the old. But, as the saying goes: "you can't go home again". So I just realized that to return to the old I had to do something "new", because part of what made the old work was its new-ness.

 

I think some of the works of others out there that accomplish this like Maskim Xul or Northern Powerhouse do this for me too. Although I don't know if that was the intent.

[OliveTree]

2 hours ago, Gunstar Green said:

I think people need to realize that while immersive experiences are great, a video game doesn't need to be an immersive experience to be great. Play any game enough and you'll start to see the seams and it won't be very immersive anymore. If a game is fun beyond that though, then it doesn't really matter.

 

Hey I'm a little confused by my need to clarify this immediately after already clarifying it, but like I said I'm not trying to make a value judgment here. I'm not concerned with whether or not a game is immersive at all in terms of my liking it. I look for different things in different games. My point isn't that Doom 1 is bad now, or anything, but that through time it has lost something, and the fans reaction seems to be to pretend that something never existed in the first place.

[𝕲𝖗𝖊𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖎𝖌𝖊𝖗1]

I loved Doom, Doom II, and Doom 2016.

I never really cared for Doom3 -- while the graphics seemed cool at the time they feel too "plastic" to me now and I don't really like the pacing, the way being hurt messes with your aim, and the feel that it's more survivor-horror than arcade-shooter.

[pulkmees]

10 hours ago, EtherBot said:

Hey I'm a little confused by my need to clarify this immediately after already clarifying it, but like I said I'm not trying to make a value judgment here. I'm not concerned with whether or not a game is immersive at all in terms of my liking it. I look for different things in different games. My point isn't that Doom 1 is bad now, or anything, but that through time it has lost something, and the fans reaction seems to be to pretend that something never existed in the first place.

I'm pretty sure a lot of people just posted to the response of "doesn't hold up" no more. But then you go to say that it does hold up in the paragraphs.

That isn't even the main point of your argument. I guess it works to get people reading it, cause I did, but damn it took a lot text to get to it. Don't have a title like that if you don't even think that yourself. BUT..do use it if you want to get people interested I guess. :)

 

The point from what I gathered is that Doom is not scary any more and lost it's immersion. Enemies are reduced to mechanics. And that people should talk about that and/or that people should not pretend it wasn't scary in the first place.

 

And that people haven't analyzed Doom 3 properly and that you actually kind of like Doom 3(even though you say you don't prefer it over Doom 1 and Doom 2, which is a...contradiction.

 

In response to the "people should talk about it not being scary any more" argument.

Why ? We can't go back in time. People have made wads, gameplay trends have changed, people are better at the game. If you're new and young and getting into the game, then it probably still is scary. Granted not for the realism reasons as you can play games that actually scare you now(not counting only jumpscares, but also atmosphere). If it scares you because you actually think that that pixel'y mess on your screen is actual blood guts, then I don't know what to tell you... .

 

If people do pretend that it wasn't scary, then so what ? Why do you care ? Who are these dumdums, who pretend it wasn't scary/immersive/[adjective] ?

What do you base this on ? I remember a thread being here, where people talked about the reason why Doom 1&2 were scary some time ago. So people did talk about it, but I don't remember anyone pretending it was never scary/immersive. I feel like the argument is always about people defining scariness in different ways.

 

I think your point should actually be guided towards mapmakers. I see a lot of maps made for the purpose of being a...map. It's taking the story is not important aspect a bit too far. What is the fun in completing your map if the only reason is just to be completed. Just kill all enemies, complete the gameplay. Aaaand repeat 31 times. It's too mechanical. You need some sort of nugget of...oo something happened here before I came in here.

Doom 1 still has that, although playing it again and again has obviously lost some of it's magic. Depends how much you have replayed it obviously

There are a lot of wads to play if you've exhausted the Iwads though.

 

You seem to like Doom 3 and/or dislike people not analyzing it properly. Again, I feel like you're talking to dumdums and giving them too much credit. Also check your thread titles.

 

I myself don't think there's much to be said about Doom 3. I have read and watched videos about it. They went with the scary aspect full on. But tempo was  slower and there were less enemies. Getting hit kicked your view. And it all took place in very similar looking space/industrial hallways. Now that last part would have been ok in Doom 1 and 2, but this game was made in a world where everyone had already played Doom 1 and Doom 2 and a bunch of other cool games.

AAAand Half-Life 2 came out the same time. In the end the scary aspect is the only thing still kind of going for it. It's harder to make maps for it. I don't know what else to say about it. What do you see it having that was so fun ?

[OliveTree]

1 hour ago, pulkmees said:

That isn't even the main point of your argument. I guess it works to get people reading it, cause I did, but damn it took a lot text to get to it. Don't have a title like that if you don't even think that yourself. BUT..do use it if you want to get people interested I guess. :)

1

It's a bait and switch -- or clickbait, if you want to be less generous -- but I did have a point behind it. I'm attempting to redefine Doom from how it's remember and shine a light on what was lost, or in other words, the "part that doesn't hold up anymore"

 

1 hour ago, pulkmees said:

And that people haven't analyzed Doom 3 properly and that you actually kind of like Doom 3(even though you say you don't prefer it over Doom 1 and Doom 2, which is a...contradiction.

1

Not a contradiction at all. I made it clear in my post that I think each Doom game is different and like them each for different reasons. I can like Doom 3 without "preferring" it over Doom 1 or 2 just like how you can like, say, sandwiches without "preferring" them to salads. Like I said earlier in the comments though I'm not concerned with how 'good' these games are at least for the purposes of this post.

 

2 hours ago, pulkmees said:

In response to the "people should talk about it not being scary any more" argument.

Why ? We can't go back in time. People have made wads, gameplay trends have changed, people are better at the game.

I'm not bothered by new players not being scared by doom. Standards change and that's natural. I wouldn't expect newcomers to be afraid of the original Dracula movie either, but the original Dracula movie is still remembered for being a horror movie, whereas its a really common sentiment in the Doom community that Doom is about action, action, action, and the atmosphere isn't particularly important to the brand.

[Gunstar Green]

14 hours ago, EtherBot said:

Hey I'm a little confused by my need to clarify this immediately after already clarifying it, but like I said I'm not trying to make a value judgment here. I'm not concerned with whether or not a game is immersive at all in terms of my liking it. I look for different things in different games. My point isn't that Doom 1 is bad now, or anything, but that through time it has lost something, and the fans reaction seems to be to pretend that something never existed in the first place.

 

I wasn't directing it at you specifically, just in general. I oftentimes hear arguments regarding why people can't get into golden age arcade games or other games that are based entirely around risk-reward mechanics instead of immersive simulation. I feel like there is a large portion of gamers that don't see the value in games as games, only in games as experiences. I'm not even calling this a negative, it just is what it is. Different people want different things out of their video games.