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Riccardoman

Errant Signal - Doom (review?)

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I agree with some of the things he said, but not all. I think he was way off-base in saying that the weapons are more or less samey, and that none of them seem particularly better than others. I also didn't really agree with some of his comments on the level design, like Foundry feeling too vertical/open (He's literally the only person I've seen complain about that level).

I do agree, however, that many of the arena battles kind of blend together, and that some of the levels struggle to get the balance of exploration and arena battles quite right.

Very good video overall, though. Thanks for sharing!

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I can't argue with this guy. Very fair claims, not overly subjective.

He says some hard truths in regards to how bland Snap Map is, with user content always feeling like an incomplete repetitive game. Also how most monster encounters / weapons are samey. Epic, polished and high quality battles but it's essentially a 10 hour campaign with repetitive encounters. You don't get epic or many memorable moments like you would in Doom 2's Tricks and Traps.

I could imagine with monster corpses returning, significant additions to Snap Map and more memorable encounters Doom would breathe more life in years to come. We are all almost 100% certain more Single Player is coming and it's quite possible all these issues will be addressed.

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Sadly, persistent corpses in action games have been pretty much a thing of the past ever since ragdoll physics were invented. Some games, such as Dark Souls, cirvumvent the issue by de- and re-spawning dead enemies based on the sector of the map you're in, but usually there's simply a limit of how many corpses can be on the map at once. Especially in a game with a reasonably varied damage model for all enemy types, where you cannot just save the gore parameters for each individual corpse.

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Seeing DS dead corpses appearing from nothing with ragdoll is pretty funny.
A way to circumvent the performance issue in Doom would be to deactivate the physics proprieties once the corpse is settled on the ground

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I think his level design points are superb

He basically states that levels become too samey because there are no unique monster mixes, it's just a bunch of the monsters that you've already fought before. There are no levels that are filled with predominately 1 monster type

Although his points on foundry are dumb, I loved what he had to say about the later levels being too linear in that it's just walk to the next arena, that is one of my main problems with this game (the other being that the title screen isn't centered)

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Definitely have to agree on the later levels being too corridor-esque, esp. because they also actively prevent backtracking. This is an issue that had been around since the days of Half-Life, but in a DOOM game it does feel particularly egregious.

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I think the new Doom is more like Robotron, actually, because that game had arena levels that were just squares, where as 1993's Doom was more like Berzerk or Wizard of Wor or something with its maze walls.

It's probably hard or impossible to do as much with monster placement in Doom 2016 due to the "advanced AI" of the enemies, such as the imps and barons that constantly hound you. All the enemies get around pretty good though except maybe the laser blasting guy or the shield guys or other possessed humans (zombies). Maybe they could have done a little less arena design still, nonetheless, as some parts show, like I think on level 13 when you're approaching the final zone, I forget the moment, but you're hopping down different floating platforms and you can actually see the monsters way in the distance and they throw fireballs at you all the way up, which was cool, and made me think, wow that imp could really make a good outfielder with an arm like that.

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