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Zulk RS

Has Doom become... Boring?

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We all know that Doom is a really fun game to play, even today! Hell, Doom-II is even my favorite game ever! But... Nowadays games are judged on factors like graphics, story, game-play, originality etc. By today's standards, Doom/Doom-II has:
BAD graphics, NO story, Uninteresting monsters and weapons (except a few.), and one-track game-play.
It does have: AWESOME game-play mechanics and AWESOME music.
So, what is it that makes Doom/Doom-II Insanely fun to play even today?

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I like looking at the diminished lighting.

Killing an imp with the shotgun and its death animation making it look like it's been blasted in the chest and face by all the pellets looks pretty good. It's satisfying. Demons with the SSG are the same way.

Good WADs have well paced combat that has you on the edge of your seat during its peaks, and stopping to stare at the maps during the valleys. There are plenty of WADs like that.

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Considering there's a consistent output of variants and reinventions of the Doom experience, I doubt boredom will sink it's claws into the Doom community. So nope.

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Zulk-RS said:

So, what is it that makes Doom/Doom-II Insanely fun to play even today?


Nostalgia plays a big factor. It's nearly impossible to get people who have never played Doom back in its time to play it now.

Apart from that, the features you mentioned (gameplay being the most important one).

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Doom has to be, without a doubt, one of the most dynamic and engaging games I have ever played. Never a dull moment if the map is even only half decent, and the mountains upon mountains of fan content function as a sort of eternal battery that keeps the game fresh for longer than I'll live. It's the definition of classic.

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I think Doom will mostly be boring to (1) people who have never been exposed to it and (2) people who have grown up to a steady diet of modern action games with cutting edge graphics, Hollywood-style voiceovers and orchestral soundtracks.

I was a bit like that, too. I started playing Doom at around 1996 or 1997, then "moved on". I thought Doom was old news, and the newest games are the best and most enjoyable games. People get hooked on games for various reasons, but mostly our first reaction is to eye candy, and in an age of instant gratification, if the graphics aren't up to the latest standards, most of us might think it's not worth it and not enjoyable (anymore).

I came back to Doom after somehow having found out about some good PWADs, and I thought it would be fun to play through a few of them at least once, because I remember Doom was fun to play. Then I saw some great speed runs, and I thought hey, it would be fun to try my hand at that, I also like the competition aspect. Then I got the idea of starting a speed running YouTube channel, because a few people seem to enjoy watching an interesting run (just like me). I took a two year break because life, but last year I became active again. And after more than a year of constantly playing and grinding Doom (some weeks are busy but most weeks I play at least once), I'm still not bored by a long shot. In fact, although I played most of the IWADs, I have only played a handful of the Cacowards and other well-known WADs, and I want to play them all. :)

So yeah in short, I got hooked again. But to become hooked, one first needs to bite the bait. My bait was '95/'96, YouTube was the fishing reel. There needs to be a reason for that first group to be interested at all.

So these days, you get a lot of high-quality indie games with retro graphics. They are quite popular, not because of the graphics, but because of superior gameplay. So I think if people can be convinced of the fact that graphics shouldn't be the sole judge of whether a game could be enjoyable then I can't see any reason why a new generation can't be hooked by Doom, once more. :)

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Patrol1985 said: It's nearly impossible to get people who have never played Doom back in its time to play it now.
________________________________________________________________________

Objection! I disagree with you here (though I do agree with what you said about nostalgia). I haven't really played that much Doom in the past. But I really got into it in 2014 at the age of 15. I played very (almost no time) playing Doom as a kid.

So yeah... It's indeed possible for people to get into it even if they didn't play it in it's time.

Edit: Oops! Someone already made my point (Kotzugi). Sorry for being redundant.

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I've never found Doom boring, not thanks to the 80 billion wads I can play for it that mix things up. Which I should be playing more.

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Zulk-RS said:

Edit: Oops! Someone already made my point (Kotzugi). Sorry for being redundant.

No problem. Actually, you made the case stronger. It would be nice to see a survey on another thread: if you're a regular Doomer, when did you first get introduced to the game, and/or when did you start playing more regularly? I do suspect that most people started in the 90s, but that some have started more recently, and you're a case in point. Some speed runners are also pretty young, which is great.

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Well, it certainly becomes more boring the more wads I play. Nowadays even a super high quality release isn't as exciting as shitty 1994 levels were when I just discovered pwads. I've really seen almost everything since then and now to truly impress me you need something godly. Also funny how when I just started playing "fair" it was super awesome to beat any map without saves, but nowadays I take it for granted, moreover, I want to trash any map that I can't beat in at least 3-4 tries.

TL/DR: remember the good old times?

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Obsidian said:

Considering there's a consistent output of variants and reinventions of the Doom experience, I doubt boredom will sink it's claws into the Doom community. So nope.


This. Doom will never be boring for me as long as Doomers keep putting out awesome wads for me to play.

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Memfis said:

Well, it certainly becomes more boring the more wads I play.

I agree that it gets boring if I ONLY play Doom. Too much of it in one session (especially watching) also gives me slight motion sickness (at least I feel a bit nauseous and I get a headache). I also play other games and have a social life, but nowadays if I stay away for too long (a few weeks), I always want to come back. I also spend at least as much time on the forums as in the game itself, so for me, there's also the community aspect that is attractive.

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I have found it tiring to go back to it that much anymore as I have felt like I've drained the life from it.

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When Doom starts appearing boring, then it's really time for a good night's sleep.

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What's with the thread title, by the way? This shows up pretty cynically in the forum list, at a glance.

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Patrol1985 said:

Nostalgia plays a big factor. It's nearly impossible to get people who have never played Doom back in its time to play it now.

Apart from that, the features you mentioned (gameplay being the most important one).


I agree, lose the nostalgic feeling and the game loses you.
Although, this would be the factor for people whom played doom or doom 2 in a time when they still where relevant.

The mindset of younger gamers could be the same as this... Doom is the game from their parents and something from a past they do not know...
and what did you do as a kid ?

You abandoned and rejected all the old crap from your parents because for the ''new generation'' it literraly sucked, sounded bad, looked bad,
and became irrelevant in their life. But doom has the luck that 2D sprites do not look as bad and degraded as realy old polygon based 3D,
add a filter and high resolutions and doom gets a complete graphical upgrade for those who do not like the pixel look.

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Doom am's great and no FPS from the last decade comes remotely close to what Doom does. It needs a proper comeback. :P

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sometimes, i think if i'm gonna grow tired of playing Doom because of how old it is and because of how well i know so many things about the game. but instead, it makes me appreciate the game more for what it is: a damn good, timeless shooter. also mods. all the mods, all the time.

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FireFish said:

I agree, lose the nostalgic feeling and the game loses you.

If that was the case, this forum would be populated solely by old farts.

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the game will never remain nostalgic for me again, as the only thing that could invoke the nostalgia was the soundcard of an old Windows 98 PC we had then. with that computer basically not starting anymore, there's no way for me to try and invoke any kind of nostalgia out of the game anymore. if only i knew what soundcard that thing used, though...

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^ Same here. Edit: (referring to the post above this as that post quickly sneaked itself in as I was typing). Anyway, to answer the thread's question; no it hasn't become boring. Of course, if user content was not being created as much then for me it would become a little boring, even so, there's loads of content out there for anyone (even some rumpy pumpy XXX wads for the pervs out there). More advanced capabilities for the more NS audience (thanks to ZDoom and derivatives). Not to mention that the ease of modding has become increasingly easier for people to create their own content so as I see it, the possibilities for Doom are almost endless.

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Doom's presentation, mechanics, pacing and design are all of an unusually high quality compared to other shooters from the early 90s (and even some from the late 90s). Its presentation is a fantastical, futuristic industrial/satanic hybrid. Its mechanics allow for extremely slick, ultra fast evasion tactics and overall maneuverability. Its pacing juxtaposes big with small, light with dark and atmosphere with action. Its design is somewhere between cartoonish, realistic and gritty, which strangely also describes the soundtrack. Anyone who understands the importance of different gaming elements and how they must harmonize for a game to work can see that Doom is a masterpiece of old school FPSing.

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Doom wads have become so diverse and rife with original ideas, that asking if it'll ever become boring is almost like saying "don't you every get tired of listening to music?"

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