That DOOM Feeling

[Pete The Padre]

Submerge said:

it's when you're in a dark corridor.... only 28% health, and a shotgun with a meager 3 shells left. It's been too quiet since you grabbed that keycard. All you can hear is the croaking of a couple of imps. Where are they? around the corner? behind the next door? behind YOU? Only way to find out is to take the next few steps forward.

That's Doom, to me. E1 all the way, man.

Now thats the best description i heard so faar, that is doom!

[Mogul]

I think I'm going to throw up. :(

[Inquisitor A]

Its the Anomaly...
After you defeat the two Hell Barons and step onto the teleporter just to get torn in half by a pack of Zombies and demons...then youre like "WTF just happened?"

The first time i played the Shareware version...its was love at first sight.

[Bashe]

The Doom feeling...

Playing with OPL music and a capped fps at a low resolution really gives me a Doom feeling.

[Peter Heinemann]

Because of its quality, Doom can still defend its throne against any other game.

Maybe it is because of the awesome textures and sprites. Doom looks like a "painting in motion", where other games look disturbingly "edgy", because they are made of polygons and either there are too less of them or the textures do not look too good on these 3D-structures. Personally, I like sprite based games like Doom more than those that employ polygons. I cannot explain why, but even though all today´s games engines are far more developed than what powers our game, Dooms engine simply makes the game looking great. People would think, it is a technically simple game, since it is from 1993, but I am sure, that when it comes to coding, Doom is not that simple made. It set standards when it came out...

The music, the sounds - simply awesome. Maybe the atmosphere of the game is that good, because all the arts that make the game (painting, music, sounds and level design were controlled and been put together in the right way. An impression of the spirit that powered the team at id can still be optained by playing Doom.

[Aleaver]

udderdude said:

Playing shareware DOOM, on a 486/early Pentium. That's the DOOM feeling. :P

Agreed there :P

[Bashe]

Also, playing with PC speaker (if I could ever get Vanilla to work) with Doom2 brings back "fond" memories of playing Doom2 at my friend's house when he didn't have speakers yet. :Þ

[Xanthier]

I still get that whenever I play a good WAD done in E1 style with E1 music.

[Shapeless]

it's all about episode 1. + kick ass monster designs :)

[Pete The Padre]

I just had a hodo holy experience


I was playing e1 as i always do, i just love it!
and i was walking a corridor with 13 health, one rocket, 5 shells
and one clip for the pistol, i havnt seen a monster for a while so im starting to get very suspicious about the whole idea, since i for some reason never played in this current difficulty lvl, so i didnt know what to expect...

anyway, i have this door infront of me and i think to myself, ok..there's gotta be enemy action behind this door, so this is where i have to go... so i brace myself, checking all my arms, saying a quick pray, and then i open the door and i rush in there!
....not a damn thing! no enemy what so ever...so im going insane here
cuz all i hear is snorling from some damn enemy somewhere, but i cant see shit...and then! as i am about to continue,....*BANG*
i recive a 12 gauge in the back! swearing and spitting i exit the game... sneaking backstabbing little bastards!

[VileSlay]

for me the doom feeling is the music an the sfx. each stage has the perfect soundtrack that at times dictates the motion. you hear the level start with slow eerie music and theres nothing around so you creep cautiously out of the starting position ready for the roar of an awakening monster. you see a zombie around the corner, but he doesn't see you yet. you take your shot and he goes down, but at the same time you hear the roars and screams of the others you just alerted to your precence. two things go thru your head 1)shit and 2)bring em on.

I've always had a thing for ep1m1's theme. theres this power metal band from finland called epiclore that did medley of doom music called "knee deep in the doom". you can
down load the mp3 from their site in the downloads section (duh).

after what sounds like a painful death for our hero they go into doom2 e1, which then goes in to the doom1 intermission music. then theres a nice breakdown that goes in to e1m1, and it always gives me a good chill when I hear it. they then change in to e1m4 and back to e1m1 and end it with the doom1 "bunny" epilouge. the whole thing has doom sound effects interspersed, some sounding really good, others not so good.

when ever I listen on my portable, I find myself kinda bopping my head so it looks like the doom running effect and wanting to circle strafe the people I'm passing on the street. is that a bad thing? like chilvence said in that eloquent post "RIP AND TEAR!"

[Inferno]

I get a good doom feeling when it's very simple. I'll play one of the first 3 eps. If i want to make it how I first played the game, I'll go without either no music, or music and sound. If i had the shareware installed, I can turn on the cheap soundblaster sfx with no music to make it really oldschool.

Btw Vileslay I took a look at epiclore's site to hear the song conglomeration, and I thought it was pretty neat hot they mixed theme music w/ monster sfx.

[Pete The Padre]

lol
i jst found an old demo cd called 3D action games or something,
and what is on there if not the doom demo! yay!
i gotta install it now! ;)

[DoOmEr4LiFe]

Heavy_Z said:

What makes Doom so good that there are mods for it to this day is that it is the only FPS to achieve a perfet balance opf weapons an enemies so that you can play it any way you want. If you are pissed you can take a run throu e1 and blow everything away with the shotgun. You can play the game strategically, taking careful perfection in the selection of every weapon you use to take down the demons. Beyond the perfection of gameplay Doom has something that no other FPS will ever pull off - The perfect plot. What better reason do you need to kill than the invading forces of hell? There is no human interaction. It's just you and the forces of hell. Every human down deep in their gut knows that they would fight given this situation. Other games try to create a scenario inwhich one would fight to the death, but there is no reason out there more compelling than the invasion of hell.

I think I agree the most with this one...

[HeXploiT]

POTGIESSER said:

It's cartoony as fuck.

The funny thing is i don't remember it like that. About once a year i fire it up and think to myself, "where the hell did all these chucky graphics come from?!".
I remember it as a smooth walk through hell with exquisite graphics.

[Regen]

The fall going into the holidays contributes a little to that for me (doom feeling) with the original's release and all (being december) i remember the winter of '93-'94 and it involved a lot of doom between me and my friends. i keep saying to myself im going to put together a dedicated dos machine for doom and dcc but never get around to it. though i did have one up and running at one time but it had my crappiest cd-rom drive that never worked right in the first place (i have a lot of doom related cd's) and i ended up harvesting the ram out of it for another computer. in the end i geuss doom95 is good enough and maybe far more convenient.

[Xanthier]

Jehar said:

I know what you mean. e2 and up just never quite matched e1, and I never really enjoy them, except in co op

thats sad, I enjoy it all. I played the shareware version so much, it's not all downhill from there.

[KwadDamyj]

E2M2.

'nuff said.

[TheDarkArchon]

Maybe it's because I was young at the time, but I always had a special place (No, it's NOT the bathroom or the bedroom) for E1M8. It ffelt very climatic. (The Bruiser Brothers and the music especially. Sign Of Evil is the best piece of Doom music IMO.)

[pritch]

The Doom feel, as udderdude said, is probably best attained by playing on period systems.

Modern ports have made Doom sustainable and limitless, but if you want that feeling you should run through E1 in 320x200 with the original .exe on an old PC running DOS or 3.1

Imagine it's 1993 again and how revolutionary the game is. How vast it seems, how detailed, how realistic. It's the first 3D game on the market that really convinces you you're there..

[Nikanoru]

pritch said:

The Doom feel, as udderdude said, is probably best attained by playing on period systems.

Modern ports have made Doom sustainable and limitless, but if you want that feeling you should run through E1 in 320x200 with the original .exe on an old PC running DOS or 3.1

Imagine it's 1993 again and how revolutionary the game is. How vast it seems, how detailed, how realistic. It's the first 3D game on the market that really convinces you you're there..

Yes. However, it's always a good idea to get accustomed to some earlier games first. Like, fully play through Wolfenstein. If you come straight from Doom 3 or Halflife 2 the harsh reality of Doom's age will hit you rather hard. But if you come from having gotten used to single-height floors and ceilings, levels built from cloned blocks, no ceiling and floor textures, relatively few enemies and weapons and unrealistic movement, Doom will feel like heaven. It won't look as "cartoony as fuck." ;)

[fraggle]

I believe that at least 50% of Doom's atmosphere comes from Bobby Prince's excellent soundtrack.

[Fredrik]

True of most really atmospheric games.