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Games like DOOM

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buttspit said:

There's almost no hope for actual video gaming in my area. I only know of 2 or 3 people who can play a video game older than from 2005 without bitching and moaning about the graphics.


Unfortunately I think that applies to everywhere.

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yellowmadness54 said:

Every game now is exactly like the last. It sucks.


It's not like Doom 2 or Final Doom are that different to Doom 1.

Heretic is very similar to Doom...

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Vermil said:

It's not like Doom 2 or Final Doom are that different to Doom 1.

Heretic is very similar to Doom...


That was for their own time.

Every FPS now is the same exact formula. Go play Crysis 2, MW2, MW3, Black Ops, and show tell me these all dont feel exactly the same.

Doom 2 atleast had very different map design, and heretic feels nothing like doom minus controls.

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Phml said:

Somehow, I find SS3 got *closer* to Doom compared to the previous versions partly thanks to sprint. Much of the enemy cast in Serious Sam is mostly melee (bulls, kleers, kamikazes, and those monsters that used to have their faces on their belly in SS1 but now just look like weird gorillas), and being able to outrun them while backstrafing - and shooting at them - just made it a non-issue. In SS3 you can't just do that and it adds more importance to movement management, which has always been one of my favorite things in Doom.

...Then again I don't think you could outrun bulls or kleers in SS1 so maybe I'm completely off. It could be the level design rather than sprint, SS1 mostly had huge square-shaped room after huge square-shaped room.

The melee enemies in Serious Sam hardly cause you to do any real "movement management." The problem with them is that they are all faster than you are, and there's pretty much just one way to dodge each bulls, kleers and kamikazes: With bulls you jump-strafe, with kleers you strafe and with kamikazes you simply run away. And when you're safe you shoot at them hoping to kill them before they get you. This basically boils down to repeating one and the same set of actions every time a melee enemy gets too close, and the end result is boring repetition.

Contrast to Doom: Demons are slower than you are and the lost soul charge attack can be easily interrupted or dodged. You can even use it to cause infighting. Basically, the melee enemies in Doom give the player much more variety on how to fight them. If there was one thing that SS's melee enemies have better it's that they are more threatening. Still, Doom's melee enemies can pose significant threat when well used, especially thanks to demons' big hit boxes and speed which make them good at blocking the player. Of course, with the abysmal level design of Serious Sam games any smart use of enemy placement like that is out of question.


I've heard some people here praising Painkiller as a great Doom clone, so I bought it a while back on a Steam sale, and it's really nothing like Doom. The level design, if you can call it that, is abysmal: You walk into a room, doors close, kill lots of melee enemies, doors open, walk into a room, doors close, kill lots of melee enemies, so on and so on. The monster variety is superficial, since pretty much all enemies I've seen so far have been just different skins of melee enemies. There's been something like two kinds of ranged enemies one hour into the game, and those enemies appear very rarely. If you'd replace, say, the enemies in Sunder with 99 % demons and 1 % imps you'd get Painkiller, only with better level design.

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Why oh why has nobody mentioned KISS: Psycho Circus?

Return to Castle Wolfenstein resembles Doom gameplay when you fight non-human monsters or the big end boss where circle-strafing is essential.

Resident Evil (4) in fast motion. Enemies are slow and take a whoop-ton of damage, and have lengthy pain animations, in about the same balanced ratios as Doom. I suspect that if somebody increased its game speed by a factor of two, gave it FPS-like controls, and doubled the amount of available ammo, it would play much like Doom on easy.

I think that most early shooters were influenced directly by Doom, so are similar in terms of gameplay. I’m thinking Duke Nukem, Blood, Shadow Warrior, Quake, SiN, and so many others copied many elements like insane running speed and complex level design.

I think the problem with Doom graphics has little to do with low-res textures. The big Doom issue is that its gameplay is essentially 2D. Height differences are sorts of fences. (BTW I really want to see a birds-eye-view-make of Doom, anyone care to help me out?) So people kinda feel like they’re playing Alien Shooter with blinders on. Because of this combat is clunky and feels simple, especially when you and the monsters are on different heights. Sprites are also awkward to shoot, especially around corners and when the monster is both behind a fence and higher than you.

Engine limitations can be extremely damaging. Big problems with early Grand Theft Auto games had to do with their engine, e.g. it’s very hard to estimate the height and slope of terrain, and you have a very limited field of vision. When you’re driving you can’t see two seconds ahead of you. You can shoot stuff offscreen. Sure you can role-play as Mr Magoo but even that gets old.

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Nick Perrin said:

But that would have nothing to do with the graphics, presumably. Which means the game mechanics are what deters you, rather than the visuals, which in gaming are likely to always be highly momentary and impermanent factors (which is why any game is stupid to lean on them).


To a degree the visuals are directly related to mechanics, though.

GoatLord said:

A friend of mine has repeatedly stated that a game's art direction can make up for a crude engine. There were lots of 2.5D shooters being released during the early and mid 90s, and while a number of them were as complex as Doom, if not more so, very few of them had such a solid, consistent and professional look to them.


That's a great point.

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Nomad said:

To a degree the visuals are directly related to mechanics, though.


Absolutely, and those who claim that the visuals play no part in the immersion/entertainment/any major part of the experience of a game are fooling themselves (after all, most games rely entirely on only two senses at this point, sight and sound). The point you next acknowledged, though, is the crux of this whole thing - aesthetics vs. graphics. Graphics being the technical limitations and "fidelity" that an engine can produce, aesthetics being the art direction, design, etc. Any game that succeeds in its aesthetics regardless of graphics has a chance at timeless visuals, visuals that do not detract from the gameplay in future years and add to it in the present.

This is why Wind Waker still feels visually "modern" in a sense, why Starcraft (1) is still visually engaging, etc. Any game that relies on pure spectacle of visuals alone will not deliver a similar experience in the future, which is why masturbatory graphics showcase games tend not to hold up.

In many much older cases of course, the graphics are so limited as to prevent anything beyond an abstract and basic visual presentation, like the original pong or early arcade games. No amount of intelligent art direction can make these games feel less "retro." Interestingly the retro game visual style has become its own genre of art design in gaming and now pop culture.

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The melee enemies in Serious Sam hardly cause you to do any real "movement management." The problem with them is that they are all faster than you are, and there's pretty much just one way to dodge each bulls, kleers and kamikazes: With bulls you jump-strafe, with kleers you strafe and with kamikazes you simply run away. And when you're safe you shoot at them hoping to kill them before they get you. This basically boils down to repeating one and the same set of actions every time a melee enemy gets too close, and the end result is boring repetition.


If you never manage your movement before enemies get too close, and if you somehow manage to only fight enemies few at a time and one kind at a time (although I'm not sure that happens much beyond the first three levels or so...) it can get a bit boring, yes.

I put that kind of behavior in the same boat I would ducking behind every door in Doom, though - trying to cram a particular, static and set in stone playstyle into the game no matter how poorly it may fit rather than trying to understand the game and adapt to it optimally.

The whole deal with enemies being faster than you (within their own constraints) means you don't get to rely on superior agility alone and need to play more tactically, to address the entire situation as soon as mobs spawn in. Target prioritisation is a constant concern between those melee types closing in and the various projectile-based ones gunning for you at the exact same time. Melee takedowns is another thing adding up to that, you get just the right amount of power for the risk involved and to optimize whether it's worth it at any given point adds another layer of complexity.

All of which assuming you want to play the game in a somewhat efficient and fun way, of course. It's not a hard game, and likely it's possible to beat every encounter in SS3 by just backstrafing all the time, or lowering the difficulty, or using saves, or playing coop, or discovering and exploiting certain tricks; much like you could do in Doom. Likely that would take you more time and be less satisfying.

Of course, with the abysmal level design of Serious Sam games any smart use of enemy placement like that is out of question.


It's not stellar, it's downright bad at times, but it's certainly better than before. I'd easily put a few specific encounters of SS3 above what can be found in most Doom PWADS.

That one level in desert starting right away with the mancs front, hitscanners/kamikazes coming from the sides, the devastator in the middle structure triggering more bulls/kleers with a chaingun spider sniping and those walls (and hence, cover) gradually crumbling down from rockets.

That slum fight filling up the car with monsters coming from all sides yet never unfair due to the amount of cover.

That second part (after the spot in open air with witches, up to the boss) in the final level with such a constant stream of enemies you have to manage not only each shot but each step if you don't want to end up backstrafing for minutes.

In any of these fights movement is somewhat more involved than in your average Doom map, so many mappers choosing to challenge the player through health and ammo scarcity rather than truly dangerous encounters to a character as fast and nimble as the doomguy.

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Pain Killer and Serious Sam (PK&SS) the two games you compare to Doom, are well suited to simple large arena-style mad design. These games are much harder to play on a shot-by-shot basis and foes are harder to keep track of. The main challenge of designing a map in PK&SS is regulating and fine-tuning how sentries and waves of chargers spawn, to deliver a satisfying challenge.

In Doom, on the other hand, monsters themselves are easy to deal with. The few monster types are instantly recognizable by the player, their AI is predictable, and some tactics are a sure-fire way to wipe everybody out. The primal rhythm of Doom is relaxed and consistent relative to PK&SS, and can be more smoothly maintained. The real enemy in Doom is architecture. Challenge starts to come from handling a horde of monsters in a confined environment, where things like dodging and provoking infighting can become impossible if you’re not careful. Pacing changes. For example, it’s easy to pump away at demons in a wide corridor with a dead end, but you may not maintain this before they corner and overwhelm you. Maps or their segments become sorts of puzzles, where the tide of battle slowly shifts. With Doom and unlike PK&SS, I feel that if you can beat a new level on your very first attempt, without saving/loading, then it’s too easy.

That’s why PK&SS seem to take a different approach and succeed despite having poor map design. Or did I get it all wrong?

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I'm interested in why there isn't really a modern equivalent of doom, however..

...considering that most home computers from the 90s would presumably struggle to run modern doom wads with their hundreds of enemies on screen all shooting you at once, and that even modern computers would struggle with that if it was given a 3d makeover, would it be fair to say that Doom has changed over the years into the modern equivalent of Doom?

Still it amazes me that no modern game has tried to fill that niche. Left 4 dead is the closest I have seen.

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Gatling said:

Pain Killer and Serious Sam (PK&SS) the two games you compare to Doom, are well suited to simple large arena-style mad design. These games are much harder to play on a shot-by-shot basis and foes are harder to keep track of.

This is pretty much false. There's nothing at all in either PK or SS that makes them more suitable for large arenas. It's simply a direction that the games' developers decided to take with their level design. From a game mechanic perspective, Doom is actually far more suitable for large arenas thanks to player movement speed and infighting (which adds more variety into huge, drawn out battles).

Gatling said:

The main challenge of designing a map in PK&SS is regulating and fine-tuning how sentries and waves of chargers spawn, to deliver a satisfying challenge.

There are no level design challenges in either of those games that differ from what challenges Doom may have (barring the obvious differences in technology). If you were to make a custom level in Serious Sam there would be no reason why you couldn't make a normal level in it, and as we well know there are far more insane levels made for Doom than there are for Serious Sam.

Gatling said:

In Doom, on the other hand, monsters themselves are easy to deal with. The few monster types are instantly recognizable by the player, their AI is predictable, and some tactics are a sure-fire way to wipe everybody out.

Same goes for Serious Sam. Doubly so for Pain Killer's hordes of slumbering and weak melee enemies.

Gatling said:

The real enemy in Doom is architecture. Challenge starts to come from handling a horde of monsters in a confined environment, where things like dodging and provoking infighting can become impossible if you’re not careful. Pacing changes. For example, it’s easy to pump away at demons in a wide corridor with a dead end, but you may not maintain this before they corner and overwhelm you. Maps or their segments become sorts of puzzles, where the tide of battle slowly shifts.

This is true, and show's Doom's (and a lot of the custom wads') strength compared to pretty much any FPS game out there.

Gatling said:

That’s why PK&SS seem to take a different approach and succeed despite having poor map design.

They succeed simply because they're the only alternatives. If you look at the FPS games made these days, it's mostly CoD clones and rehashes of Serious Sam and Pain Killer. Would Serious Sam have become as big as did if there was a true Doom clone released at the same time? No one knows. But the fact that there was no Doom clone at that point in time, and still might not be (I haven't played Wrack yet so I can't comment on that), means that SS and PK get to monetize on all those FPS fans who are bored of CoD.

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Jodwin said:

This is pretty much false. There's nothing at all in either PK or SS that makes them more suitable for large arenas. It's simply a direction that the games' developers decided to take with their level design. From a game mechanic perspective, Doom is actually far more suitable for large arenas thanks to player movement speed and infighting (which adds more variety into huge, drawn out battles).


It’s not so much that PK&SS play particularly well in large arenas, it’s more that Doom plays poorly in large arenas (I use ‘arena’ interchangeably with ‘horrendous map design’ from earlier.) Given enough room, a player of intermediate skill can simply circle strafe, clumping enemies into packs so that no bullet is wasted and area of effect damage is maximized.

Jodwin said:

There are no level design challenges in either of those games that differ from what challenges Doom may have (barring the obvious differences in technology). If you were to make a custom level in Serious Sam there would be no reason why you couldn't make a normal level in it, and as we well know there are far more insane levels made for Doom than there are for Serious Sam.


Can you imagine entering a large long room in Doom with enemies starting to charge from the other side of the room? Maps like this are not made for Doom but are common in Serious Sam because they are capable of providing a challenge in Serious Sam but not Doom. Small variations in monster numbers which are negligible in Doom can make or break the intensity/fairness of a fight in Serious Sam.

Jodwin said:

Same goes for Serious Sam. Doubly so for Pain Killer's hordes of slumbering and weak melee enemies.


There are deeper tactics everywhere. Kamikazes can be killed so that they blow up nearby kamikazes and you can stun kamikazes to position them so that large chains would explode. Boars are best killed with a chainsaw as they charge past you or when they’re turning around (usually at a wall) after having charged. AI may be simple but fast, varied swarms develop into difficult patterns way more chaotic than Doom’s. You find yourself changing weapons and targets on the fly (and killing enemies when they’re 2 seconds away from you), whereas in Doom you either use one just one weapon on a group of enemies, or change them in an order you have mentally prepared earlier like rocket-to-chaingun. And of course, the importance of good aim is understated in Doom.

Jodwin said:

They succeed simply because they're the only alternatives. If you look at the FPS games made these days, it's mostly CoD clones and rehashes of Serious Sam and Pain Killer.


While you can clump Half Life and Bioshock with Call of Duty, I’m a sucker for a third category of FPS games that feature slow unfolding combat like Delta Force, Farcry, Swat, which are on one end of the FPS spectrum with Doom in the other and CoD in the middle.

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The Unreal series has always been a bit Doom-like. Not sure what the latest game in that lineage is, but there are some pretty 'modern' ones, I know that.

Captain Ventris said:

Boar? It's a Sirian Werebull, man. A SIRIAN WEREBULL

I've got to stop reading threads from the last post backwards...

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schwerpunk said:

The Unreal series


The last unreal game, unreal II from 2003, was not only not doom-like, it was un-unreal-like

...assuming we're talking about single-player gaming in this thread.

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Gatling said:

...assuming we're talking about single-player gaming in this thread.


Yes, we are talking about single-player.

The Unreal series did resemble doom/quake type deathmatch quite well but the single-player did not come close.

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