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+--- Thread: I recently played the original Doom again. (/showthread.php?tid=7014)
I recently played the original Doom again. - Dark Jaguar - 26th January 2017
I recall playing the original Doom and getting bored with it. I just wasn't very good at it, frankly, and gave up and cheated my way through both 1 and 2 (which are, basically, the same game). I've gone back to those games after being very surprised by Doom 4 and can report my opinion on it has entirely reversed. Firstly, I reconfigured the controls into something more modern and actually used a mouse to aim this time. Between my experience and the better controls, I've gone from barely surviving the lowest difficulty to generally trivializing Ultra-Violence (I still don't think I'm ready for Nightmare). When I'm not running through walls as an invincible god, I find I can actually appreciate the level design.
That's the crux of all this. I can now appreciate Doom (1 and 2) for it's level design, and it's that level design that kept me from getting bored through roughly 70 levels. A large part of this comes from treating the enemies as building blocks to make unique encounters across the whole game. When I move around an arena the way the designers intended me to (that is, without sucking), I can see how each one is intended to flow, and how to balance the threats and manage the large crowds. I also can appreciate Doom 4 for capturing this design so well. In spite of what others have complained about with Doom 4, it also became clear to me that Doom has ALWAYS had platforming elements, but they work pretty well. There's no jumping, but there is "vaulting" across gaps and working across very narrow paths, and a lot of it. Generally it's balanced pretty well and that leads to the design of level puzzles and secrets. With few exceptions, once I started learning the "language" of Doom's secrets, I started finding them far more easily and learned the "tells" the game uses to indicate them. There's only a few times when a secret came across as entirely too obscure for anyone to notice without randomly grunting into the walls. From using oddly lit patches on the ground to oddly textured walls to (my favorite) simply using the overall layout of an area to hint at a specific spot in it (sometimes literally forming arrows out of sections of the map pointing at one), the game has a very informed idea of how to make a secret.
It became clear that the designers really "got" level design. Much like Miyamoto and Zelda dungeons, this was a time when id too was coming up with a general design philosophy, and both Miyamoto and Romero came up with some of the same solutions. For example, the central "landmark" room is a modern staple of Zelda that started with Link to the Past and continues to this day. Doom too uses this same idea. I also really appreciate that if I can see a location, there's always a way to get there. Very little is purely "decorational" (aside from the occasional monster alcove that clearly has nothing in it worth reaching).
They also do a great job slowly ramping up difficulty and introducing concepts only to iterate further on them later in a level. Each level has a general "theme" with concepts you get taught and which later get taken to greater heights, such as one that starts out in a small room before "opening up" like an inverted Matryoshka doll into a much more massive level, with greater and greater numbers of enemies in each layer. The only exception to a general good flow from easier to harder levels is in the extra "bonus" episode in the first Doom, which unfortunately places it's two toughest levels at the very start (and they are ROUGH, especially the second level which dumps you into a massive room filled with cacodemons from the very start).
This game has earned my respect after years of me mocking it as a dumb shooter. If you never really got into it or grew out of it as a game that's "only interesting because it's gory", I'd give it another chance on it's own terms.
I recently played the original Doom again. - A Black Falcon - 9th February 2017
What do I think of Doom? Hmm... well, at the time of its release, I couldn't play it because our computer wasn't nearly good enough, and even if it was my parents would never have allowed me to play such a violent game then. I loved ID Software's earlier Commander Keen series of course, it's still my favorite PC platformer series ever, but I've never cared about Doom like I do Keen. Later on of course I knew that Doom was considered to be exceptional -- it finished near the top of most all "best PC games ever' lists, such as those in PC Gamer from when I read/subscribed to the magazine between '96 and '01 -- but I never did play much of it, maybe because my parents didn't want me playing shooters for years so I didn't play them much and even when I did try a few, I didn't like them nearly as much as other genres like strategy games or platformers a lot more. I did get the Doom-engine FPS Hexen in '96 or '97 (as a birthday gift from friends), and I somewhat liked it, but never got far into the game. And after that, while I did come to like some FPSes in the late '90s, an "old" game like Doom wasn't what I wanted to play, I wanted to play newer stuff like Jedi Knight! So yeah, I knew that Doom was very popular, but didn't get into it myself even though I think quite highly of ID/id Software.
Eventually, I did get The Ultimate Doom, as well as Doom 2 and Final Doom, for PC, as a digital download on Steam or what have you at some point. I still have not played more than a few levels of the game, though. What I did play, back sometime in the mid/late '00s (and I'm sure I posted about it at the time), is the SNES version of Doom, which, oddly enough, is the only version of Doom I've actually finished. While significantly downgraded it's actually a pretty good port, for the system, and I enjoyed it enough to beat the game. You're right, Doom has great level designs. But did I continue from there to play the PC games? Well, a few levels, but that's about it... I still haven't played much PC Doom. The games get hard after Doom 1! SNES Doom, which plays more slowly than the PC game, was easier... heh. But Final Doom on the PC, I gave up in the second or third level. As for Doom 2,. I'm not sure if I've ever actually gotten around to trying it... not that I've played most of the PC version of Doom 1 either, beyond the first episode.
Despite all that though, yes, you're right about the level designs; the original Doom's levels are great, and exploring them is pretty fun. Doom's levels have always been one of the most praised elements of the game, and it's true.
Even so though, Commander Keen 1 will always be my favorite id Software game, because it's amazing. :)
I recently played the original Doom again. - Dark Jaguar - 10th February 2017
Doom wasn't the first FPS I played. Lots of people will mention Wolfenstein, but that wasn't the first FPS either. Before that, the first I played was Catacomb 3D, where you were a wizard guy shooting spells, but even that isn't the first that company made. That goes to Hovertank 3D.
Doom was one that was born from experience though, and the level design finally matured by the time they got to that game.
I did play a lot of Apogee platformers back then too. I liked Commander Keen, and Monster Bash (Starring Johnny Dash), and Cosmo's Adventure. Heck, the DOS days were home to numerous gems like that, back in the wild west, the frontier days. But, I can't put Keen up on the same rank as Super Mario Bros 3.
I recently played the original Doom again. - A Black Falcon - 10th February 2017
Dark Jaguar Wrote:Doom wasn't the first FPS I played. Lots of people will mention Wolfenstein, but that wasn't the first FPS either. Before that, the first I played was Catacomb 3D, where you were a wizard guy shooting spells, but even that isn't the first that company made. That goes to Hovertank 3D.I'm not sure, but I'd guess that the first FPS I played was Wolfenstein 3D. I don't remember playing one before that. I also remember Ken's Labyrinth, but that game released after Wolf 3D, so I probably played it a bit later. Wolf 3D seemed pretty cool at first, but the game is so incredibly confusing thanks to everything looking the same and there not being a map that I've never even finished the shareware version, much less made any attempt at the retail one. I'm good at navigating with maps, but it's much harder without them!
Doom was one that was born from experience though, and the level design finally matured by the time they got to that game.
Quote:I did play a lot of Apogee platformers back then too. I liked Commander Keen, and Monster Bash (Starring Johnny Dash), and Cosmo's Adventure. Heck, the DOS days were home to numerous gems like that, back in the wild west, the frontier days. But, I can't put Keen up on the same rank as Super Mario Bros 3.I was a big Apogee fan in the early '90s for sure, of course! I cover my thoughts on all of the Apogee games you mention there in my PC Platformers thread though, so no need to repeat that here... but as for Keen v. classic Mario, I like Super Mario Bros. (1) and Super Mario World more than any Keen games, but I do like Keens 1 and 3 more than Mario 3. I like Mario 3 a lot, but I've never loved it quite as much as some, the levels are just too short! I actually like (US) Mario 2 slightly more than 3, and the first Mario the most (maybe for nostalgia reasons I admit), of the NES Mario games. As for Keen, I like the first trilogy the best there too, though Keens 4-6 are really great as well. I'm sure that I had the Keen games at home in the early '90s, but not the NES Mario games, is part of why I think of them so highly, but they're fantastic games... and it's not just nostalgia; as much as I like the two Mario Land games, which I also had in the early '90s, most of the Keen games are better. I really like how the Keen games play.
(On my game collection spreadsheet, where I put 'what I kind of think of the game at the moment I put a number by it' scores in one of the columns, SMB1 and SMW are both scored a 10, Keen 1 a 9.8, SMB2 and Keen 3 a 9.6, SMB3 a 9.5, and Keens 4 and 6 a 9.4 each. Oh, Yoshi's Island has a 9.2, as does Mario Land 2 and also Keens 2 and 5.)
I recently played the original Doom again. - Sacred Jellybean - 11th February 2017
I've always sucked at FPSs and this holds true to today. Well, okay, I was decent at Perfect Dark if I recall, but mostly I'm abysmal. Doom was no exception. With games like that and Duke Nukem, I pretty much always just put on cheat codes and tore my way through aliens. I watch in awe of people who do speedruns of Quake and the like. How do they do that?? My ex got me Wolfenstein New Order a couple Christmases ago, but it's predictably collecting dust. You're not gonna draw me in! I'll quit while I'm behind, specifically at the starting line, too shy to even put a toe ahead.
I know I mentioned Alien: Isolation in another post. That's an exception to the rule. I managed to stumble my way through that game, but it wasn't easy. Most of the gameplay is solving puzzles and being stealthy, so that helped. I didn't have to humiliate myself by screaming and firing a spray of bullets on three different walls without once hitting an enemy. At least, not every 10 seconds, like in a normal shooter.
I recently played the original Doom again. - Dark Jaguar - 12th February 2017
Haha, that's how I used to be myself. I think games like Perfect Dark prepared me for mouse aiming, because when I finally tried playing using that, I was shocked at how I was suddenly able to pull off those headshots. It was like I took off the weighted clothing and powered up to my true form.