Has Doom aged badly?

[Avoozl]

I remember looking into a list of games from some article and in the comments section someone mentioned Doom aging badly.

I mostly disagree with this since I feel Doom wasn't made poorly, its sprites and textures were pretty well crafted but I could understand the idea of how the distance fog with its non-filtered pixelation could look bad today's standards.

What are your thoughts on whether Doom has truly aged badly or not?

[Coraline]

Everyone who thinks it's aged or rags on it should answer a simple question:

Have you played Call of Duty 4 or above?

[Toxie Rocks]

Not to be rude, but doesn't this seem like the last place you should pose this question? Seems the people using this board are inclined to view Doom fondly and if they do think it's aged badly they have a strange choice of hobbies.

[Torturephile]

I was blown away by the graphics of Doom on the SNES in 2007. Then I played the PC version a year later. Shocked. I guess that's enough.

You could have posted this in the other thread if bumping is allowed.

[purist]

No, I don't think so but, as Toxie says, I'd be in the wrong place if I thought it had.

[GreyGhost]

A game that keeps appearing in "Greatest Game" lists 20 years on can't be aging all that badly, anyone who says otherwise probably can't see beyond the vanilla engine's lo-res graphics.

[Waffenak]

Again question like this emerges from plains of insolence and the answer is still solid NO

[Doomkid]

Doom is a time-resistant product.

When humanity is nearing it's end and we send 3 things in a capsule into space as our last hope that some intelligent species will find evidence we ever existed.. One of those things will be a Doom CD.

[MFG38]

Chu said:

Everyone who thinks it's aged or rags on it should answer a simple question:

Have you played Call of Duty 4 or above?

The difference is that Doom came out back in the '90s and it hasn't been essentially re-released every year with a new subtitle that tries to say something along the lines of "trust me, I'm not the same game as last time".

Of course Doom has survived this long thanks to the community that's built up around it, but it's still not exactly right to compare it to Call of Duty which is basically relevant only for a month or two after it's released and is then forgotten again. I hate to admit this, but theoretically Doom isn't even relevant in this day and age, especially in contrast to the mainstream that keeps kissing the ass of AAA titles. That doesn't mean that I think Doom has aged badly, though. I'd say Doom has aged better than most of its predecessors and even some of its more recent competitors.

[scifista42]

Waffenak said:

the answer is still solid NO

This. Period. At least speaking for myself. GreyGhost provided a good argument too.

Here are some recent big threads on this topic, where people wrote their reasons why:

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-general/69731-has-doom-become-boring/
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-general/69529-is-doom-still-relevant/

[Maes]

Needs moar BLOOM

[BaronOfStuff]

Yeah, it's aged so badly that we're all here 20 years later, still playing it and making new content that can be played with the vanilla engine.

[Koko Ricky]

What nay-sayers need to understand about older games is that strong art direction, clever design and tight gameplay does not age much. Some folks see giant pixels and limited palettes, then think, This sucks, this is old hat. It's a lousy form of reasoning.

[Maes]

If its name can be remembered and associated with the original meaning so easily even today, then it hasn't aged. On the other hand, if I mention e.g. Krazy Ivan? Can you tell me what this was without googling? ;-)

[BaronOfStuff]

I vaguely remember it being a PlayStation game. Other than that, nope!

[Hambourgeois]

Doom is probably the best looking 2.5d shooter (a case could be made for Heretic/Hexen) and it definitely looks way better than first gen 3d shooters. I even tried to play Quake 1 recently and found it too janky. For reference, Chocolate Doom is my source port of choice so I can deal with jank. First gen 3d shooters probably aged the worst imo.

Also, I think the size of the community for Doom relative to other, later shooters is pretty telling.

[Kontra Kommando]

I think Doom is appreciated by most people, much like the original super mario bros., paperboy, or tetris, are.

People are familiar with it, what it looks like, and how it plays. They are gaming experiences unique to themselves, and expect it to be that way. Thus they are on a different plane of appreciation compared to the big budget games of today, with photo-realistic graphics.

People that dismiss Doom for the graphics, and ancient game play mechanics just cannot appreciate the game for what it is.

I've said this before, its like comparing Giotto's gothic era frescoes to the advanced oil-paintings, with vanishing point perspective of the High Renaissance. Clearly, giotto's work is not as advanced, but it was the first of its kind, and the catalyst to later advancements. People who are cultured, and have genuine appreciation for art would acknowledge Giotto's work as forever viable. I think the same appreciation should be extend for Doom, in regards to video games; FPS in particular. By and large, I feel that is already the case in the gaming community, and popular culture.

But you can't please everyone, and some people's opinions are inferior, because they are based on ignorance.

[Aaron Blain]

Doom's visual design is decent, but it can be a really ugly game sometimes. It looks great compared to its first-person contemporaries, but people who enjoy, for example, classic Japanese games from those same years often find Doom unbearably hideous. The character animations are pretty bad overall, and some combinations of environments and textures are awful.

Heretic has a much more cohesive visual design, and Hexen is just beautiful. The enemies are better-drawn and animated, the color scheme is more cohesive, the textures gel better. I particularly like the increased use of irregularly-shaped sprite decorations to break up the visual angularity of the environments. I wish Doom had much more of this.

Modern Doom environments are beautiful, but those awkward characters still drag the game down visually.

I agree that the first-gen full-3d games aged the worst. Basically everything that followed on the heels of Quake is intolerable for me.

[Da Werecat]

Early full 3D is not for everyone. It's still admirable what they did with the limited resources they had. Full 3D is a functional upgrade rather than graphical, so it was important to go there.

Quake's visuals are still beautiful in a way, but it's harder to appreciate them for the majority of players.

[Kontra Kommando]

I find it weird that I prefer 3D character models from Playstation games, over other early 3D games from N64. As fun as Turok was, the graphics are totally dated. But you can still pick up a game like Metal Gear Solid or Tenchu, and tolerate its graphics more. You can even go as far as appreciating the grittiness of their graphics.

If you think about it, early Resident Evil games are the opposite of Doom in its execution of graphics. 3D characters in a 2D backgroud (visually) vs 2D characters in a 3D world. I think both were done well for its time, visually.

[Csonicgo]

Has it? No!

http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/doom

Here's the metacritic page for the 360 version. The PS3 version only had one review, but they were the same in a way - they noted how terrible the multiplayer lag could get - which isn't a criticism of Doom, but the ports.

No one is actively saying Doom is a bad game now, or have they ever. If any are, they have no real credibility - Because Doom made mainstream PC gaming a thing.

Those who say Doom sucks should be regarded in the same way as those who say the Beatles sucked.

[Doominator2]

Hectic said:

I was blown away by the graphics of Doom on the SNES in 2007. Then I played the PC version a year later. Shocked. I guess that's enough.

You could have posted this in the other thread if bumping is allowed.

Where you shocked because it looked good on a SNES or did you actually think the graphics where the best?

[SyntherAugustus]

Gameplay wise, it's still a very unique game (Go in maze and shoot monsters to find keycards with level editor). If there was finally a game that had that kind of gameplay in 2014 I'd go right for it.

[Captain Red]

After watching some people who cut there teeth on games newer then halo I'd say for pure mechanics it's aged wonderfully, but it's stock maps really do confuse newcomers to a degree that I'd call bad design.

[BaronOfStuff]

Captain Red said:

but it's stock maps really do confuse newcomers to a degree that I'd call bad design.

Only because they've only ever known "straight line with details at the side" map design.

[Captain Red]

No, The Pit is objectively a pretty bad map.

[Xaser]

[esselfortium]

Captain Red said:

No, The Pit is objectively a pretty bad map.

"Objectively" how? It's one of my favorites, at least.

[RUSH]

Doomkid said:

Doom is a time-resistant product.

When humanity is nearing it's end and we send 3 things in a capsule into space as our last hope that some intelligent species will find evidence we ever existed.. One of those things will be a Doom CD.

This. So much this.

[Doomkid]

Macblain said:

Doom's visual design is decent, but it can be a really ugly game sometimes. It looks great compared to its first-person contemporaries, but people who enjoy, for example, classic Japanese games from those same years often find Doom unbearably hideous. The character animations are pretty bad overall, and some combinations of environments and textures are awful.

Okay, in terms of environmental texturing, I mostly agree. We gotta remember though, Doom was meant to be a dirty, gritty, rusty world that has decayed. Honestly, "ugly" textures get that feel across wonderfully. Duke certainly took texturing in the right direction, even if it wasn't perfect.

The sprites on the other hand, I think they're beautifully done artwork, especially for their age. The sprite animations can be a tad jerky (SG and SSG come to mind) but you gotta remember, this game was designed for a 386. Look at some of the PC specs listed in the 1994/1995 WAD textfiles.. Shit's hilarious. There's no way there woulda been room for the extra sprite animations, not until a few years later anyway. The goal was always to have the game running on mainstream market PC's of the era.

I'm not saying parts of Doom aren't ugly - definitely not - I just think the "ugliness" is almost endearing. ;)