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Drilbur

Your opinion on Doom 64?

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What is you opinion on Doom 64? I managed to get my N64 hooked up and started playing it a few days ago and I really enjoy it. I love the whole gothic atmosphere of the game, the darkness, the ambient soundtrack, the new monster & weapon redesigns [especially the plasma rifle], the new traps etc.

Judging from what I heard this game doesn't have the greatest reputation, however I'm not sure if this is from the Doom Community itself or because when the game was released it wasn't Goldeneye.

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Doom 64's reputation on release was somewhat sour for two major reasons.

1. It was extremely dark. I assume this was because the game was primarily tested on RGB monitors through debug kits, but Doom 64 is ridiculously dark on a basic CRT television (which probably 99% of Nintendo 64 owners were using back in 1997). The "moody" lighting of most of the levels probably did not help, and the Brightness slider needs to pretty much be set as high as it will go on a typical TV in order to be actually visible. These days, this isn't as much of a problem, since LCD televisions are closer to those RGB monitors in terms of contrast ratio and color profiles.

2. Even though it's all new, Doom 64 may have been seen as a "typical derivative" port. Missing monsters, weapons don't animate as much, everything still uses sprites instead of models, that sort of thing. In 1997, the 3D gaming "renaissance" was in full swing. The American gaming press was convinced that people would literally NOT buy a game if it were not fully 3D. This attitude actually managed to spread to the more ignorant portions of the gaming public, leading to less good - but fully 3D! - games like Tenka and Kileak. Nowadays, I imagine people are more willing to look past the technical drawbacks and appreciate Doom 64 for what it is, rather than wishing that it had full 3D models like other Nintendo 64 classics...like Aidyn Chronicles. *cough*

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I think it is a superb masterpiece in every possible way. The only thing that would make it better is MORE of it. They shoulda done the sequel >_<

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Respectfully, its the best 'modern' tribute to dooms classic gameplay you're gonna get. While including a new look, an ominous theme, all new maps, and even some scripted map actions, traps, and puzzles, they never really lost sight of being a Doom game. While the entire FPS genre was evolving with games like half life and golden eye, Doom64 holds its ground as a game where you blast away hordes of monsters with guns and endless supplies of in a linear sequence of levels divided by standard doom intermissions.

Some have complained that the levels are a bit flat and lacking in angles, but IMO that's not the part of the Doom engine that needed to be explored. It was the creepy music and the incredible colored light gradients that completely disguise the monotone texture set that were the points of interest, and both really made the game.

its a lot of fun, in a final: final doom sort of way that wraps up the whole doom plot with a game that stays true to its name.

theres a speed run of doom64 on YouTube and at the very end of the video the uploader reviewed it, saying at the time, the game he and everyone always wanted was golden eye, and that game was obviously sold out most of the time, and so he had to begrudgingly settle for doom64. After giving it a chance and an honest effort to enjoy it and grew to have a higher interest in it than the modern shooters that were populating the market.

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It's a better sequel than Final Doom, imo. And although none of the games are known for a story, the fact that it places Doomguy in Hell forever to eternally reign them in is a fairly badass way to go.

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It's a pretty good game, I like it. Somehow I was put off by the imps looking like their Doom 3 counterparts, though.

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I actually bought an N64 copy a few weeks ago and finally gave this game a try, but after five levels or so I wasn't really enjoying it.

It was a combination of the crappy N64 controls, the less energetic feel to the game, and the poor shooting animations.

I'll probably give Doom 64 EX a shot at some point though.

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Quasar said:

I think it is a superb masterpiece in every possible way. The only thing that would make it better is MORE of it. They shoulda done the sequel >_<

That's exactly what I think.

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Quasar said:

They shoulda done the sequel >_<

I think they'd be forced to make it fully 3D at that point. Hard to say what would come out of it. There'd be less enemies, most likely.

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Da Werecat said:

I think they'd be forced to make it fully 3D at that point. Hard to say what would come out of it. There'd be less enemies, most likely.

That'd have been a real shame, since D64's graphics have aged more gracefully than many other N64 games.

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ChickenOrBeef said:

I actually bought an N64 copy a few weeks ago and finally gave this game a try, but after five levels or so I wasn't really enjoying it.

It was a combination of the crappy N64 controls, the less energetic feel to the game, and the poor shooting animations.

I'll probably give Doom 64 EX a shot at some point though.


You should give the EX a try. I'll admit I'm not a big fan of the N64 controller myself. For Doom 64 I simply use the D pad, no way can I play that game with that so called "joystick"

esselfortium said:

That'd have been a real shame, since D64's graphics have aged more gracefully than many other N64 games.


I'll admit, they have. Many N64 that I have been playing through are incredibly blurry and low res, and start to hurt my eyes after a few minutes. I was surprised at how sharp and crisp everything in Doom 64 was. Must be due to the modified Doom engine the game used.

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I still dont get why there are no reloading animations for the shotgun and the SSG, it's like they were focusing to hard to make it like Doom meets Quake, I mean the atmosphere already felt like Quake.

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Doominator2 said:

I still dont get why there are no reloading animations for the shotgun and the SSG

Pain in the ass to make?

Memory constraints?

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Yah, I'd have to go with memory constraints too. Although, and I don't know the 'sizes' of all of this, but I think DN3D still had its reload animations for the pistol and shotgun, and HeXen had sprites with full rotations, unlike the PSX version of HeXen (Also had less lag and 4 player splitscreen, I believe. PSX version had FMV cutscenes for whatever reason).

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Despite coming out years after the original games Doom 64 felt like a watered down version of those prior. Awkward controls, puzzles, really dark environments that did nothing to create a tense experience (unlike PSX Doom which did that perfectly.) Still, it's fun to play now and again.

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Da Werecat said:

- Why do you think this game is inferior?
- It has puzzles, FFS.


I'm not sure what part about puzzles belong in a hellish, fast paced intense action first person shooter series. God of War had the same problem. It's annoying.

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Da Werecat said:

Pain in the ass to make?


Doom64's monsters' sprites were taken from 3D models i believe right? Would that mean the weapons were too? I'd think it would be easier to get the weapon animations from a 3d model than to draw out with a image editing utility, or take photos of yourself holding a gun like the original Doom game did :W

the shotguns have frames of animation i think (not much but the graphics seem slightly different after firing, more than just offsets)

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Complex reloading for shotguns must involve hands. The 3D models of hands should be very good, because the sprites are relatively big, and their animations shouldn't suck. Seems like a lot of work to me.

Doom 64 has hands on the fist and pistol sprites, but I'm not sure if they were made of 3D models.

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Da Werecat said:

Pain in the ass to make?

Memory constraints?


I heard it was the same reason why the Arch Vile never made it in. Supposedly they take a lot of memory.

Come to think of it, none of the console versions of Doom have the Arch Vile.

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WildWeasel said:

Doom 64 is ridiculously dark on a basic CRT television (which probably 99% of Nintendo 64 owners were using back in 1997). The "moody" lighting of most of the levels probably did not help, and the Brightness slider needs to pretty much be set as high as it will go on a typical TV in order to be actually visible.

I think i must just be lucky - I first played the hard copy of Doom 64 less than a year ago on an old CRT, and I was blown away by how good it looked and how effective the lighting was. It felt like I had finally found the "real Doom 3" and since then I have a very high appreciation for the game, and actually kinda dislike the look on an LCD when compared to a CRT. Maybe my screen just happens to be extra bright though!

Goldeneye is a pain in the ass to play on real hardware. Talk about awkward controls, Doom 64 feels like a breeze in comparison. use the left D pad for movement and the right stick for aiming left and right, and you're all sweet.

EDIT: Wait a tic, you're telling me the shotgun could animate fully on the SNES, but it couldn't on the N64? I have serious doubts of that, I'm positive it was so the game felt like Quake, and nothing more, other than perhaps a drop of laziness. IIRC, Hexen and Duke3D on N64 stil had full weapon animations, though I could be mistaken.

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My opinion? well... I love Doom 64!
It was a different Doom experience for me. First of all, Doom 1, Doom 2 or any other classic Doom never scared me as Doom 64 did... in the first look! I love the music, the maps, the tension that I had almost all the time when playing it... pretty cool.

Some of it's tracks still put me on nerves when listening.

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If I recall correctly Doom 64 didn't use the biggest memory size cartridge the Nintendo 64 had available.

I remember Doom 64's was 96 megabits and the biggest size was around 312 megabits, I guess it was the higher cost for more memory which prevented them from wanting to use a larger size, a shame because they might have not had to cut certain monsters from the game otherwise.

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I think doom 64 is a great game. I liked everything about it and felt like it should have been final doom or doom 3. It's too bad that things had to be cut out due to memory issues.

Which reminds me, just how much space on the cartridge was used just for the music alone? Surely, some of the tracks could have been trimmed down to have more space on the cartridge? I mean the music for the first level was almost 17 minutes long. Some other tracks are close to that length as well.

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Larzuk said:

I mean the music for the first level was almost 17 minutes long. Some other tracks are close to that length as well.

Almost no games on the Nintendo 64 use streamed, wave-based music. Most games use a tracked or sequenced music format, using instrument samples and playing them back at different frequencies. Since this takes quite a lot less data than, say, an MP3 file would (and is far less taxing on the CPU and SPU - bearing in mind that the Nintendo 64 didn't really even have a dedicated SPU), it's entirely possible that the cartridge could contain music tracks in excess of several minutes long each.

For an even more extreme example of a similar principle at work, fire up the Sega Genesis game Red Zone and put on the track called "Spinner." That thing goes on for almost nine minutes before it needs to loop over.

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Doom 64 felt like a beautiful bastard child of Doom and Quake. Stayed with the classic gameplay, took a lot of influence from the mood and atmosphere of Doom PSX, and stuck in sadistic, punishing traps. The game loved to see you writhe.

Aubrey Hodges did a damn fine job keeping you on your toes with the ambient music/sound effects. Map20's track always gets me with the goddamn high pitched sound effect that starts playing halfway through.

Oh and the Cyberdemon is far more intimidating than the original games, having the ability to lead shots.

Overall, I don't have many bad things to say about it. Doom64 is quite solid.

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Loved Doom 64. I've been a big advocate of it. This is probably why I loved Doom 3, with the darker atmosphere and slower pace. It feels less like an arcade shooter and more like a horror game, considering the time it was made of course. Anyone who hasn't played it, I highly recommend you get the EX and play it. Don't get the TC. While it has some interesting new levels, they also changed too much of the original game in my opinion, like some of the secret levels which were some of my favorites. I played it back when it came out on a N64 and a CRT tv and I never through it was too dark. Turn your lights off scaredy cats and you'll be able to see just fine.

D64 took that loneliness and cranked it up a notch to me. There's a room in Dark Citadel with some spectres and hell knights in it where you can look outside and see the black space sky with the milky way running through it. That visual combined with the music in that level really drove home that feeling of being a lone space marine stranded halfway across the solar system battling through a horde of demons from hell. This is why I love space horror. You can't just run next door and call for help!

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Is it just me, or did the Chain gun get a big buff in the game? Like a big increase to its fire rate. I find myself using it very often, unlike the PC Doom.

I love how the screen shakes when you use it, very satisfying.

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With Doom64EX being a thing, now I think of Doom 64 as a real Doom 3. It may be missing some monsters or themes due to the constraints of the N64, but it feels much more like Doom proper. However, I never did like it with an N64 controller. I can play almost any game with a controller, but not Doom. The way I play Doom just does not work with any sort of controller, but even moreso with the silly N64 controller. I didn't have the highest opinion of it until recently because of that limitation.

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