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Dweller Dark

I need help choosing an FPS to play

Help me choose which classic FPS game/series to play  

50 members have voted

This poll is closed to new votes
  1. 1. What classic FPS game/series in my library should I play through?

    • Ultimate Doom (second playthrough) + Doom 2
      9
    • Heretic/Hexen + Hexen 2
      6
    • TNT Plutonia + TNT Evilution
      0
    • Doom 64
      5
    • Doom 3 + Resurrection of Evil
      1
    • Wolfenstein 3D + Spear of Destiny
      1
    • Quake 1 + Scourge of Armagon/DOPA
      6
    • Quake 2
      2
    • Quake 4
      1
    • Daikatana
      0
    • Half Life 1 + Opposing Force/Blue Shift
      4
    • Half Life 2 + Episodes 1 & 2
      1
    • Blood + Cryptic Passage
      8
    • Duke Nukem 3D
      6
    • Shadow Warrior + Wanton Destruction
      0

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  • Poll closed on 05/07/21 at 05:09 PM

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Why not play most or all on your list. It may take a while however you’ll experience it all eventually assuming you did this.

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Just now, Jacek Bourne said:

Why not play most or all on your list. It may take a while however you’ll experience it all eventually assuming you did this.

 

That's what I want to do, since I have this habit of barely playing the games I have, but also buying new games and then barely playing those too. So I end up with a backlog of games that I've hardly played, and a few that I have played more, but haven't fully completed. 

 

With the results of the poll and the suggestions, I'll at least have some games to start focusing on completing first. 

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Also, I did mention I had GZDoom to use for a sourceport, but should I use Eternity instead if only for playing it vanilla-ish?

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9 minutes ago, DavetheDoomguy said:

Also, I did mention I had GZDoom to use for a sourceport, but should I use Eternity instead if only for playing it vanilla-ish?

If you want a more vanilla-esque experience I would recommend Crispy Doom (or Chocolate Doom), but Eternity also work perfectly fine with the "-vanilla" parameter

Edited by Noiser

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3 minutes ago, Noiser said:

If you want a more vanilla-esque experience I would recommend Crispy Doom (or Chocolate Doom), but Eternity also work perfectly well with the "-vanilla" parameter

 

Is the "-vanilla" parameter referring to me wanting to play close to vanilla, or something regarding Eternity's settings? 

 

I've heard Eternity has a few modern features, but stays closer to the vanilla experience. Or is Crispy Doom and Chocolate Doom like that too?

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22 minutes ago, DavetheDoomguy said:

Also, I did mention I had GZDoom to use for a sourceport, but should I use Eternity instead if only for playing it vanilla-ish?

Personally I use GZDoom most of the time. I have a hard time going back to not using mouselook, and it has so many quality of life improvements that I don't really like playing without. 

 

I will use Chocolate Doom if I have to test something for Vanilla compatibility, but generally I just use GZDoom. Plus GZDoom's compatibility with .wads is unparalleled. But if want something as close to Vanilla as you can get, Chocolate or Crispy are your best bets.

 

As for Quake, I use Quakespasm. It doesn't change the graphics nearly as much as Darkplaces, and it feels very close to the original. It basically just provides some QOL improvements, adds smooth mouselook, and removes engine limitations that you used to have to manually allocate more RAM for in the DOS command line when launching the game. And yes, Dissolution of Eternity is well worth playing.

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Go in order: Wolf 3D/Spear of Destiny, then Doom/Doom II/Final Doom/Doom 64, then other Doom engine games (Heretic, Hexen, Strife), then explore Build land (Duke, Blood, Shadow Warrior), then move to true 3D with Quake, Quake II, Hexen II, and finally jump into the cinematic storytelling nonsense (Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Quake IV).

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10 minutes ago, Jello said:

Personally I use GZDoom most of the time. I have a hard time going back to not using mouselook, and it has so many quality of life improvements that I don't really like playing without.

Actually you can use mouselook on Crispy and Eternity as well
 

19 minutes ago, DavetheDoomguy said:

Is the "-vanilla" parameter referring to me wanting to play close to vanilla, or something regarding Eternity's settings? 

Eternity settings. It's similar to how complevels work on PrBoom as far as I know

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1 minute ago, Noiser said:

Actually you can use mouselook on Crispy and Eternity as well
 

Eternity settings. It's similar to how complevels work on PrBoom as far as I know

 

I think I might go with Eternity since I can play it in 1920x1080, but what settings would I need to change for maximum vanilla-ness (apart from some of the controls)?

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15 hours ago, DavetheDoomguy said:

Hardly played Doom 2, though, beyond the first 2-3 levels.


Because of this, you must complete Doom2, or else your name and all posts will be removed from DW as if you never existed.

 

Once you're done with your duty as a citizen, I'd say go for Quake 1 next. I just find the maps to be so much fun to explore, and the rocket launcher and grenade launcher are miles ahead of doom's launcher in terms of pure juiciness. There's some annoying bits but most of it's quite enjoyable.

If you're weird like me and obsessed with swords+sorcery enough that you'll willingly subject yourself to the insane puzzles of Hexen, you could go for that instead, but it's not everyone's cup o tea

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I recommend Doom 2, Quake 1 and Half-Life, preferably in this order. "TNT Plutonia" isn't actually TNT, The Plutonia Experiment and TNT: Evilution are both part of the Final Doom expansion for Doom 2, but they are different projects made by (mostly) different people. They include some new textures, some new music (Plutonia has none, but the community made an excellent custom soundtrack, you can find it by searching for the Plutonia Midi Pack). Both are harder than Doom 2, with TNT being a bit harder, and Plutonia being much, much harder than both for a first time player. Plutonia is like a "graduation test", to see if you can handle the community-made megawads, which are usually much harder then even Plutonia (let's say that in terms of difficulty on a scale 1-10 Ultimate Doom is a 1, Doom 2 is a 2, TNT is 4, and Plutonia is 5-6).

I also recommend Heretic and Hexen, but with a * attached to it.

Heretic is very similar to Doom, it plays like Doom+ with some new features, but the balance and focus of the gameplay is different because of tankier enemies and higher enemy counts on average, it's much more about navigating around your enemies and slowly weakening them until you get a Tome of Power and blast through the remaining opposition rather than Doom's more straightforward combat.

Hexen is very different. Don't go into Hexen expecting a fast-paced fantasy shooter, because it is a game about exploration, solving puzzles, avoiding traps, enjoying the atmosphere while keeping a very, very close eye on your items and tasks. Most people get lost playing it. It has a limited bestiary that hits hard, and some enemies are tricky to deal with. Overall, it's got a much slower pace and is a very different type of game.

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1 minute ago, rzh said:

I recommend Doom 2, Quake 1 and Half-Life, preferably in this order. "TNT Plutonia" isn't actually TNT, The Plutonia Experiment and TNT: Evilution are both part of the Final Doom expansion for Doom 2, but they are different projects made by (mostly) different people. They include some new textures, some new music (Plutonia has none, but the community made an excellent custom soundtrack, you can find it by searching for the Plutonia Midi Pack). Both are harder than Doom 2, with TNT being a bit harder, and Plutonia being much, much harder than both for a first time player. Plutonia is like a "graduation test", to see if you can handle the community-made megawads, which are usually much harder then even Plutonia (let's say that in terms of difficulty on a scale 1-10 Ultimate Doom is a 1, Doom 2 is a 2, TNT is 4, and Plutonia is 5-6).

I also recommend Heretic and Hexen, but with a * attached to it.

Heretic is very similar to Doom, it plays like Doom+ with some new features, but the balance and focus of the gameplay is different because of tankier enemies and higher enemy counts on average, it's much more about navigating around your enemies and slowly weakening them until you get a Tome of Power and blast through the remaining opposition rather than Doom's more straightforward combat.

Hexen is very different. Don't go into Hexen expecting a fast-paced fantasy shooter, because it is a game about exploration, solving puzzles, avoiding traps, enjoying the atmosphere while keeping a very, very close eye on your items and tasks. Most people get lost playing it. It has a limited bestiary that hits hard, and some enemies are tricky to deal with. Overall, it's got a much slower pace and is a very different type of game.

 

I didn't know Plutonia was made by different people, but I do own the Doom Classic Collection, which contains Final Doom. Though I do plan to get through Doom and Doom 2 before going through Final Doom or the Heretic/Hexen games, whenever that may be.

 

But I'll probably go with whatever 3 options have the highest votes in the poll, though I'm thinking to choose by seniority regardless. Right now, Blood is the highest with Doom/Doom 2 and Duke right behind it, so I'd play Doom and Doom 2 first and then Duke and then Blood.

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Blood is a difficult game, I recommend playing on the third difficulty for the first playthrough, also be sure to use a sourceport with it, because the DOS version has a nasty bug that changes the difficulty when you load a save.

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Just now, rzh said:

Blood is a difficult game, I recommend playing on the third difficulty for the first playthrough, also be sure to use a sourceport with it, because the DOS version has a nasty bug that changes the difficulty when you load a save.

 

I've heard about that bug before, though since I'm gonna be using Raze to play Blood on, it probably won't be an issue. But I'll try to play on the third difficulty (from the top, I assume?), provided I don't have too much trouble with it.

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11 hours ago, DavetheDoomguy said:

 

I didn't know Plutonia was made by different people, but I do own the Doom Classic Collection, which contains Final Doom. Though I do plan to get through Doom and Doom 2 before going through Final Doom or the Heretic/Hexen games, whenever that may be.

 

But I'll probably go with whatever 3 options have the highest votes in the poll, though I'm thinking to choose by seniority regardless. Right now, Blood is the highest with Doom/Doom 2 and Duke right behind it, so I'd play Doom and Doom 2 first and then Duke and then Blood.

 

Looks like Doom 2 is currently highest

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Since enough people have voted and enough time has passed for people to vote, I've closed the poll. Doom/Doom 2 and Blood are among the top 3, while 3rd place is shared by Duke Nukem 3D, Heretic/Hexen, and Quake 1. 

 

Thank you for helping me decide, and for giving advice on things I was curious about. 

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1 hour ago, DavetheDoomguy said:

Since enough people have voted and enough time has passed for people to vote, I've closed the poll. Doom/Doom 2 and Blood are among the top 3, while 3rd place is shared by Duke Nukem 3D, Heretic/Hexen, and Quake 1. 

 

Thank you for helping me decide, and for giving advice on things I was curious about. 

Glad to help, hope you enjoy your journey down FPS history. I would recommend trying out the Catacombs series (using Arnos' fantastic CatacombsGL port), Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold, Rise of the Triad, and Chasm: The Rift at some point. I think all of them are worth playing. But it looks like you have enough on your plate at the moment. Catacombs is on sale on GOG for 50% off right now, 2.99, Blake Stone and ROTT are both 35% off, so 3.89 for them, and they routinely have sales anyway. You certainly don't need to jump on any of them at the moment, if you miss these sales, they'll probably have another one in a month or two.

 

Chasm is just kind of considered abandonware at this point, I don't think it's available... well... anywhere at this point. Aside from abandonware sites.

 

Happy gaming.

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32 minutes ago, Midnight_00 said:

I guess I'll add Star Wars Dark Forces and Outlaws as recommendations. Might want to wait for The Force Engine to play those though.

 

I've seen how janky those games can be, so I'll probably wait for the Force Engine to be released to get those. Kyle Katarn's a badass tho

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I recall Dark Forces as seeming both janky, and extremely well polished. The jumping certainly left a lot to be desired, what with death chasms all over the place, but for the most part it was really well made. It did kind of drag on at points, but well worth playing.  Except for the sewer level with the dianogas, that was just irritating. 

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