Has Doom aged badly?

[geekmarine]

Doom was a solid game with excellent gameplay and creative aesthetics. When I think games that age badly, it's not that the technology has become obsolete - it's that flaws have become apparent that are impossible to overlook. Buggy gameplay, unfair challenges, etc., these are things that make games age badly in my opinion.

[june gloom]

Yeah, if Doom has a single lasting obvious flaw it's the level design. It's usually abstract and too often ugly in that abstractness. Even Wolfenstein 3D (and Spear of Destiny) sometimes made an attempt at constructing a realistic space.

But you know, that was an issue with FPS games for a while, at least until the late 1990s. Heretic had levels that occasionally sort of looked like something, but for the most part it was just as abstract and weird as Doom. Rise of the Triad I think was designed while Tom Hall was drunk off his ass. And let's all just forget about Hexen.

Of course even now games struggle to truly present a 1:1 depiction of a real-world structure. Too many assets required, and real-world structures aren't fun to play in. But there has to be a balance.

[Da Werecat]

You're making it sound like Hexen has bad levels.

I can't say that they're more abstract than Heretic's, btw.

[Jaxxoon R]

Surrealism has it's benefits. None of the early Sonic games have city levels that look like actual cities, even if there are buildings in the background (Who would build loop-de-loop roads?).

But you get the idea that it's an urban environment, and it's undoubtedly a very pretty environment. So it passes as a city, despite being warped through the series' art-deco-mobius-strip-tinted lens.

All city levels in Doom 2 are butt ugly and look barely anything like a city, though.

[snapshot]

You know it's a 90s game,and it was great for it's time,though i still don't why the developers were not able to Program some simple things like Jumping,Crouching,so that Maps will be fun to explore and game will have a better gameplay ...

[Guest Unregistered account]

DMGUYDZ64 said:

You know it's a 90s game,and it was great for it's time,though i still don't why the developers were not able to Program some simple things like Jumping,Crouching,so that Maps will be fun to explore and game will have a better gameplay ...

EVER PLAYED A SOURCE PORTAdding jumping/crouching will not give this game better gameplay. What are you thinking?

I only posted here because I wanted to finally have a chance to post here before it goes to Post Hell. Though now that it's gone over 2 pages, that doesn't seem likely.

[Doomkid]

DMGUYDZ64 said:

You know it's a 90s game,and it was great for it's time,though i still don't why the developers were not able to Program some simple things like Jumping,Crouching,so that Maps will be fun to explore and game will have a better gameplay ...

Carmack himself said he more or less didn't want to blow every last asset on Doom. Doom already added height variation, non orthogonal walls, full 8 angle sprite rotations, an exciting new arsenal and new enemies, etc etc. It was already leaps and bounds ahead of Wolf3D. If they used every single idea they'd ever had on Doom, there never would have been Quake, because all their innovative ideas would have been blown in one shot.

Not to mention, the game is still just as fun without crouching and jumping, since the game was designed around these limitations. There's never an area where you need to jump or crouch, except in custom WADs - for which we have ZDoom.

[snapshot]

Joe667 said:

EVER PLAYED A SOURCE PORTAdding jumping/crouching will not give this game better gameplay. What are you thinking?

I only posted here because I wanted to finally have a chance to post here before it goes to Post Hell. Though now that it's gone over 2 pages, that doesn't seem likely.

Imagine Classic DOOM having great levels where you have to crouch and jump to reach some far places and fighting monsters at same time to get some keys,find secrets ...etc

[june gloom]

And anyway System Shock had crouching -- and crawling. And leaning. And being generally very weird to control.

[Da Werecat]

DMGUYDZ64 said:

Imagine Classic DOOM having great levels where you have to crouch and jump to reach some far places and fighting monsters at same time to get some keys,find secrets ...etc

It's not necessary to imagine it, because we have enough more or less classic-looking levels that were made for source ports with jumping and crouching.

Guess what, simplicity has its benefits.

[Maes]

The AVGN had put it aptly in its Tiger Electronic Games episode: there's a difference between outdated and oldschool. Doom is oldschool: it's old, yeah, but it's something that you keep coming back to because it got it right, just like a vintage sports car that's still fun to drive and can still run fast.

Outdated on the other hand is something you don't want to go back to. For me, Wolf3D is borderline outdated: it just doesn't quite pass a certain threshold of combining good gameplay, good graphics, variety etc.

Before it, most polygonal 3D games, especially those that attempted a first-person view before Doom, are even worse. They were not "hot stuff" before Doom came out, and they were automatically all but forgotten once Doom came out.

For Doom vs its successors, it's a very different story: they haven't been able to "outdate" Doom because none really surpassed it in all departments at the same time. What other FPS has the same combination of good graphics, fast gameplay, nearly unlimited moddability, memorable sound and music and level design? Try as you might, there's always some tradeoff made -and the modern games seem to trade off nearly everything for graphics-.

To address the OP, I'd say that many Doom-contemporary FPS have aged badly for different reasons: some were based on an already outdated engine (Blake Stone Corridor 7, ROTT, and a few others based on the Wolf3D engine).

Even many post-Doom FPS have aged badly, despite being based on superior graphics engines, because other than that, they really didn't have anything special going for them, especially replay value, and their engines today look just as "bad" as Doom's.

[june gloom]

Half-Life. It pretty much hits all of those markers you mentioned.

[snapshot]

dethtoll said:

Half-Life. It pretty much hits all of those markers you mentioned.

Woah,.3. (Addicted to Half-Life) what can i say :D

[Maes]

Half Life was a great game in its own right, but it relied on a different kind of gameplay than Doom: cutscene-heavy, with fewer but harder monsters and a complex environment, which later became the norm for "modern" and "realistic" FPS games. Doom's run and gun horde-based gameplay remained unique (with only id's Quake and to a lesser extent Quake 2, following it).

[june gloom]

Half-Life was not cutscene heavy.

[snapshot]

Guess what i found !
http://web.archive.org/web/19990508124933/http://gameoftheyear.com/
This page should tell you about all features and differences between ID Tech 1 and GoldSRC Engine ...
http://web.archive.org/web/19991012153231/http://sierrastudios.com/games/half-life/overview.html

[Da Werecat]

Why would someone want to compare these engines?

[Maes]

dethtoll said:

Half-Life was not cutscene heavy.

When most of its novelty (and pre-release marketing point, flaunted by the devs themselves) was that its cutscenes were made by using the actual game's engine (at the time, that was a big deal)?

[Da Werecat]

I thought a cutscene is supposed to take your controls away, or at least significantly limit them. Half-Life features a lot of scripted events, but they don't break up the gameplay, with only a few exceptions.

[june gloom]

Half-Life is not cutscene heavy because it has no cutscenes.

[DaniJ]

I never played the original Half-Life. It looks pretty boring compared to the likes of DOOM, Duke 3D and Quake. From my perspective Half-Life occupies a halfway point between DOOM and System Shock, both I thoroughly enjoyed but for very different reasons. I can't see a middle ground between these two being better than either because the interesting mechanics of each are diametrically opposed. I'll probably play it one day, I guess.

[june gloom]

What the hell? None of those games are alike beyond the first person perspective. Doom is a fast-paced plot-free arcade shooter. Half-Life is a slower-paced shooter with an ongoing plot and story related to you by NPCs talking to you (but the game never ever takes control away from you -- when I first played, with no idea of what to expect, I thought the opening sequence in the tram was a cutscene... until I bumped the mouse.) System Shock is much more survival-oriented than either of the two with a plot related entirely through readables and messages sent to you, you never actually see a living person. It's probably closer to Resident Evil than anything else.

If Half-Life is anywhere on a spectrum, it's the opposite end from Doom with Quake 2 in the middle.

That's a really lame reason not to play one of the most influential games in existence. That's like not playing Doom because "it just feels like a middle point between Wolfenstein and Quake."

[DaniJ]

Well, my spectrum is purely about game mechanics. I have never and probably will never care about plot in a video game (thats not why I play video games). I was simply stating my opinion, nothing more.

[snapshot]

DaniJ said:

I never played the original Half-Life. It looks pretty boring compared to the likes of DOOM, Duke 3D and Quake. From my perspective Half-Life occupies a halfway point between DOOM and System Shock, both I thoroughly enjoyed but for very different reasons. I can't see a middle ground between these two being better than either because the interesting mechanics of each are diametrically opposed. I'll probably play it one day, I guess.

Well I Still remember Half-Life v1.0 ,it looked more like a Quake 2,Player movement is fast,Strafing rotates camera a little ..etc
EDIT : I've finished it's Single-Player Storyline for like 3-4 times,and never made a speedrun,Maybe because i'm enjoying it's cutscenes XD

[Maes]

Well, let's put it this way: find me a commercially released FPS that offers exactly what Doom offers, but done "better". The only thing that can even come close to that, are Doom source ports. Everything else might be better in specific departments, but not better as a complete drop-in replacement for Doom, regardless of how many of them had been touted as "The Doom Killer (TM)" at one time or the other.

[kristus]

Personally I've always been of the opinion that Half Life sucks ass. But that aside. While Doom's graphics has aged, it's art direction has stayed as strong as it ever were. It's game play has remained fresh and unique. I personally prefer the movement of the Quake games as I find that more engaging with it's modular speed through skill and practice.

Abstract level design is what makes Doom awesome. People talk about shit looking like something specific and I just fall asleep because I don't care about fighting in a city or a shopping mall or an apartment etc. I like how Doom allows me to use my imagination even in how I look at the world.

Anyway. Recent development in games has in my opinion shown that graphics is popular with some people, and game play is more important with a lot of other people. Sometimes these are the same people, just at different times of the day and mood for different things. Though most people will have a leaning towards either one or the other in what they prefer.

[Koko Ricky]

I've been recently playing through random maps from Doom 1 and 2, and I have to say that I still find the layouts in both games incredibly intriguing and a delight to explore. Even some of the more open maps in Inferno, the incredibly difficult openers in Thy Flesh Consumed, the cryptic brown cities and Wolf levels in Doom 2, are still a blast to play through.

[june gloom]

Y'all makin' the baby Jesus sad with yo Half-Life hate.

But you know what? It doesn't matter what anyone thinks about Half-Life. It's as influential and important as Doom ever was and denying that is like denying that Doom was ever more than a mildly-scary shooting game. For better or for worse, both those games are responsible for shaping the direction of FPS games for years to come. The only thing to ever come close to that influence was Halo.

[kristus]

Sure, it was influential. Still think it sucks.

[june gloom]

And it doesn't matter what you think. Aren't facts great?