My thoughts on Doom (2016)

[Foebane72]

I've nearly completed this game now after a long time playing it, with a huge interruption for a couple of weeks when my (then) underpowered PC stopped running it. But I'm back in it now, having gotten a GTX 960 which means my PC finally meets the minimum spec, aside from my Intel i3 processor (4150).

All I can say is, this game is extremely fun and playable, and whilst the enemies tend to come in waves once you wipe out those Gore Nests and the fighting areas are more like arenas, the gameplay is absolutely top-notch and the monsters are certainly no pushover.

And the monsters can chase you EVERYWHERE, there's no escape. They will climb if below you, or fly, or even jump. The Imps are keen to distance themselves from you so they can lob their extremely fast fireballs at you, and so many times I've found myself CHASING the Imps to put them down. I like the Glory Kill animations although they're not necessarily needed to get the magnetic health points lying around, and I thought I got stuck in a rut with my first encounter with the Pinkies until I remembered I could get ammo from chainsawing them.

And the visuals are just plain amazing, makes Doom 3 look positively primitive now. However, I liked the fact that Doom took many aspects from Doom 3, and improved upon them. The reflectivity of most of the surfaces is astounding, not to mention the texture detail, something badly missing from Doom 3. I'm eager to learn more about id Tech 6, even though Carmack had nothing whatsoever to do with it, so I hear.

As of now, I've just completed the battle with the three Hell Guards (the first was a nightmare, and one time I totally lost just when I thought I'd won) and I think I might complete the game tonight. I only hope my wireless mouse and keyboard don't play up mid-game.

[Foebane72]

After a long, hard slog this evening, I finally completed the last two levels, and may I say the Spider Mastermind battle was such an ordeal! I must've died eight or nine times, and that was even after getting hints and tips on how to beat the thing! I managed it just now, mainly down to luck and my wireless keyboard not acting up, but I think it was worth it, even though playing these games seems like hard work sometimes! I must be getting on at age 43, that must be it.

Even so, great game and worthy of the franchise, brings it back to its roots whilst updating the technology.

9/10

[Foebane72]

BTW, I played this game without anti-aliasing or motion blur, because I want it to look like a videogame.

[Deatheye]

Foebane72 said:

BTW, I played this game without anti-aliasing

ok

[MrGlide]

motion blur when not heavily used tones down screen tearing. I'm glad you enjoy the new doom =].

[Chezza]

Yeah it's a great game. It doesn't feel exactly like the classic Dooms but it works well. I prefer it.

The first Hell Guardian was probably the toughest Boss for me, even tougher than the Spider Mastermind lol.

[Chubzdoomer]

Foebane72 said:

BTW, I played this game without anti-aliasing or motion blur, because I want it to look like a videogame.

You do know anti-aliasing just removes jaggies, right?

Look at how much cleaner the screenshot on the far right looks versus the one on the far left with no AA:


Just making sure you understand what AA actually does! But hey, if you don't mind jaggies all over the screen, more power to you. :-P

[Foebane72]

chubz said:

You do know anti-aliasing just removes jaggies, right?

Look at how much cleaner the screenshot on the far right looks versus the one on the far left with no AA:
http://i.imgur.com/ATUDmWU.jpg

Just making sure you understand what AA actually does! But hey, if you don't mind jaggies all over the screen, more power to you. :-P

I always thought AA took a lot of GFX card resources, just to make the picture look smoother, but the last time I looked at such a setting was back in the days of Doom 3, when it was an issue. Maybe modern cards are far more efficient, I don't know. In any case, now I have a GTX 960, I'll probably tinker around with the settings to see what works best.

I've played modern Valve games that had motion blur, but that was subtle motion blur, not the horrible extreme mess that this seems to be. Yes, I know there are different levels of blur, but again, I thought it took a lot of resources to use, like tons of memory? Maybe I'm wrong.

[Orchid87]

Foebane72 said:

I always thought AA took a lot of GFX card resources, just to make the picture look smoother, but the last time I looked at such a setting was back in the days of Doom 3, when it was an issue. Maybe modern cards are far more efficient, I don't know. In any case, now I have a GTX 960, I'll probably tinker around with the settings to see what works best.

Older games like Doom 3 had only MSAA which took too much GPU resources. Modern games have post-processing AA, like FXAA or SMAA. Those are much faster. I have GTX 960 too (4 GB version) and Doom 2016 runs at 1080p@60fps at Ultra with the best AA setting (TSSAA). Truly an optimization achievement.

[MrGlide]

Foebane72 said:

I've played modern Valve games that had motion blur, but that was subtle motion blur, not the horrible extreme mess that this seems to be. Yes, I know there are different levels of blur, but again, I thought it took a lot of resources to use, like tons of memory? Maybe I'm wrong.

I'm running on a 60hz moniter right now and my graphics card is a gtx 660, motion blur doesn't suck up much frames at all, I put the motion blur quality to high and set the blur at medium. Occlusion will suck up alot of your frames, Light, shadow, partical quality all tack alot of the gpu's resources from what I'v seen. Motion Bur hasn't made much of a dent at all on my set up. I'v also started dropping my resolution scale quite a bit as it's majorly increased my display's response time.

[Deatheye]

motion blur is the first thing I turn off

[MusicallyInspired]

Once (if) VR becomes more commonplace we can do away with things like motion blur, depth of field, and lense flares because at that point we'll be emulating a human eye and not a camera lense, which is what graphics development has been leaning towards for the past 15 years.

[Plasma Gun]

Glad the GTX 960 worked out for you :-)

[Foebane72]

Plasma Gun said:

Glad the GTX 960 worked out for you :-)

Thanks for the recommendation! ;)

[Reisal]

No feedback on the multiplayer?

[Foebane72]

Glaice said:

No feedback on the multiplayer?

Haven't tried it yet.

As for Snapmap, I think that is an extremely basic and poor attempt at modding, based on what I've seen, not the fact I've tried it myself yet. The problem I have is that the only options for new map areas are all prefabs which are just joined together by the doorways, and all you do is add additional little bits. What about creating new prefabs? At least the previous id games let you get right down to the raw building blocks (or brushes) of level design, and this doesn't. At best, it's like trying to use an original Doom WAD editor and only being able to manipulate the "things", like decorations, items, monsters and player starts, but not being able to draw your own sectors or linedefs or even adjust and select textures. LAME.

[Foebane72]

I started the game again using the default graphics settings, including TSSAA and the default level of motion blur, and I noticed that first of all, the AA looks great and runs quite smoothly, and also that the motion blur was not as bad as I thought. I based my initial assessment of the blur on YouTube videos at 30fps - obviously it looks worse then, for some reason, or maybe these people have it set to maximum, but I didn't have such a problem with it.

[AndyW]

So I tried SP again today and have to admit that i dont like it, but i love the MP-Part... :D
SP is soo boring: Clean the room, walk around and search stuff... Nothing new!

[Foebane72]

During playing, more than once I noticed that I still had demons left to fight and then all of a sudden they disappeared. Why does the game do this? Is it a bug?

[Deatheye]

Foebane72 said:

During playing, more than once I noticed that I still had demons left to fight and then all of a sudden they disappeared. Why does the game do this? Is it a bug?

happened to me as well, was talking to a friend while 2 barons chased me and I didn't want to kill them because I thought there was a third one coming and I wanted to show him - so I just ran around and suddenly I reached the checkpoint and they were gone