Stale Meat

Don't know if anyone has 'called it' yet, but I swear to god I have a sinking feeling the Reclaimed Earth level could either end up being Doom Guys Original Hometown or the equivalent of his Hometown in the Eternal Equivalent of Earth. If "Crossing the Threshold" means he is revisiting this place in order to use the old portal from Doom II to get back into Hell for the Ultimate Showdown, I don't think my heart can handle that kind of callback.

Was really curious going into it how ID would end up portraying 'heaven' in the Doom Universe, and I can't say I am disappointed. The whole design motif of beautiful and smooth at first glance followed by an almost Giger-like organic technology architecture underneath does an amazing job at selling the duality of the Maykrs themselves. Honestly the only thing I thing ID missed the mark on was the chance to either fight the Maykr Angels themselves or at lease have had Maykr drones show up on a few more levels rather than being confined to this one level (and Slayer Gate). Something that can surely be visited upon in DLC I am sure. The music for Urdak especially deserves special props as well, definitely one of the most fitting ambient tracks to any level in the game period.

26 First run beat the game on UV, did a NM live run that got as far as when you first get the Crucible, followed by finishing Nightmare in general. And although it took me a few resets and a lot of practice runs in my normal Nightmare game, I have finally beaten the campaign on Ultra Nightmare.

Made it roughly 2/3rds through the game, and while I was prepared for it being really good I find myself thinking something I never though I would think... This may be the best Doom game ever released. Obviously I am only comparing the retail games themselves, and ignoring the custom content (or lack thereof) for this conclusion, but my god they managed to take everything good they did with 2016 and turned it up to 11. Weapon mods feel like they have been balanced to have both choices actually be viable enough to swap on the go, weapons themselves are really satisfying to use and swap on the fly with, the new enemies range from cool to VERY awesome while returning faces are made even meaner and more dangerous, the levels are both absolutely stunning and engaging to blast through, I really don't know what else to say really. Despite the meme of Doomslayer being super tough and unstoppable, the actual gameplay does a really good job of absolutely ripping you a new one at the start only to build you back up with getting the hang on the updated controls and player abilities. UV at the start of Eternal gives me the same vibes as Nightmare in 2016 in that the early levels will bust your balls until you get more weapons and gear, and once you do start getting more and more gear in Eternal it is just nothing but up. As far as the limiting of ammo goes, that is certainly gonna be a pretty big change that obviously won't vibe with everyone going into the game. From my personal preferences at least, I feel that being tighter on the ammo may have actually been the best thing they could do in going the direction of gun play they are after. For me, I actually really like the resource management and having to constantly balance my weapons ammo in the midst of a fight. Again early in the game it is gonna really suck, but once you get into the habit of using the fodder as walking pickups it makes keeping ammo much easier. Doubly so when you start getting more guns that you can use much more effectively and cheaply against certain enemies. The dynamic of having to keep all these factors in mind, combined with the urgency to keep moving and dashing through the air while needing to be able to scan and select targets to engage and avoid, makes a lot of the fights actually avoid the whole Power Fantasy angle only to replace it with a frantic urgency of always having to stay one step ahead and on top lest you get very very dead. Because of this the boss fights (Doomhunter, Marauder, ect.) and the more intense fights (ESPECIALLY THE SLAYER GATES) are hands down the most fun I have had in a retail Doom game yet. Bonus points for the game running and looking pretty sick on my machine despite me still boosting only a GTX 970 and i7-6700k.

The 'Quake is too brown" argument has always seemed a bit silly, at least to me. I can't imagine any significant number of people being put off by the color pallet alone, especially if those same people are fans of 90s shooters in general. The only other argument about a lack of personality I can think of is people moaning about it being another Id FPS, something I would think the folks of Doomworld would also disagree with. I personally love Quake and find the theme of Lovecraftian shooter to be pretty unique. I dare say I prefer that over the Space Marines fighting Alien Body Horror Cyborgs. The true 3D element for level designers to play with along with more dynamic scripting for level events also opened up a huge toolset the level designers could use to engage and test a player, whether it be floating platforms and multifloor elevators to basic spike traps and crushing walls.

I can't deny that there is a definite tonal shift in the newer Doom games, and not everyone is gonna be a fan of that. What I don't entirely understand is claiming that they are also designed with 'concessions to casuals', whatever that means. One of the biggest praises from D16 is how antithesis the core gameplay is compared to CoD or any other number of mainstream shooters. From every preview and footage shown this trend is only continuing with Eternal.

Considering that Slayer cosmetics are completely player controlled (and that the Unicorn outfit is an exclusive behind Twitch Prime) you shouldn't have to worry about anything like that ruining immersion outside of Battlemode. Now if silly meme-tier stuff in general is the issue, then I recommend completely avoiding the Slayer's Man-cave, as that could irreversibly ruin the entire game!

I will experiment with further optimization, currently looking at increasing mouse spin in the setting or something...

I linked it once and I will link it again, there is NO faster speedrun than this!

True, but it doesn't rule out Chex Quest 1 & 2 seeing a release...assuming they can get past the nightmarish copyright hurdle.

Midway through the first book, and I gotta say its good. Like really good.

Some time in 2003 me and my brothers were browsing in the local EB Games when I came across the promotional stand for Doom 3. Being 10 at the time, and having had no idea what Doom was, my first thought was that it was an Event Horizon-like game. My older brothers ended up getting the Doom Collectors Edition CDs and from there I would watch them play (I remember actually asking if the first Zombieman on E1M1 was a good guy or not) before giving it a spin myself... using IDDQD+IDKFA of course. After a while of mindlessly BFG Blasting monsters I eventually tried through the games on ITYTD, followed by bumping it up to HNTR, before finally getting skilled enough with arrow key movement and strafing to tackle UV.

It is certainly a nice combination of being really easy to get into while also having close to the sky's limit on what you can make, the incredibly vast amount of attractive and awesome user content already made, and the simple fact that Doom is all around a really fun game. You also have a whole range of personal motivators that can come into play such as finding it an enjoyable hobby for your free time or a preferred outlet of artistic expression. And while I don't know how true it is today, there was a time where making good quality & popular Doom maps opened doors into jobs within the gaming industry. At the very least you can still use Doom mapping and modding as a nice stepping stone into getting the skillset needed if you want to make a career in video games.

SR50 to my nearest hometown hellportal and speedrun through literal hell to cheese out the Icon of Sin with mouselook. Invasion ended, Hell wrecked, and if I am lucky also netting a world record that would make even ZeroMaster blush!

For me I am 90% sure it had to have been BF_THUD! which I ended up finding on one of those D!Zone disks circa 2005-6. My exposure to custom Doom levels originally came solely through a set of those disks (D!Zone 2,3, and Gold I believe) that I had ended up stumbling upon among my Dads collection of older computer things. So despite having been introduced to Doom around 2003 in the form of the Doom Collectors Edition I had ended up content with playing all the stuff included with that (Doom, Doom 2, Final Doom + some sick preview content for Doom 3) for about a year or so, followed by finding these shovelware disks filled with more levels than I knew what to do with. In hindsight a lot of the maps were garbage save a few goldies like Galaxia, UAC_DEAD and Artifact, but since I never figured out there was a lot more and a lot better levels online until 2007 at the earliest I ended up playing a good bit of garbage without a care. Even if it was an obvious deathmatch level void of monsters or a copy of E1M1 filled with explosive barrels and cyberdemons. BF_THUD! stood out especially though because of all the maps it had. Before finding it the closest I came to a megawad was maybe an episode replacement or two followed by trying to cram as many maps that went in sequential order into Doom95 to 'make' a linear megawad experience.