20th July 2004, 1:43 PM
Doom and Quake are praised because they helped the PC gaming industry and because they were novelties. Doom the first good-looking sort-of-3D game, Quake the first good-looking truly 3D FPS. The gameplay in both titles is extremely simple and mindless. If I want to play a mindless shooter I'll play Gradius or Gunstar Heroes, which do the mindless shooting thing much better than any of id's efforts. Id's games are praised first and foremost because of their technical feats; there is absolutely nothing unique or revolutionary about their games' gameplay. There's nothing an id software game does better (gameplay-wise) than shooters that came before them. Absolutely nothing. Just look at Doom 3 for example. You know people just want it because it looks pretty. The gameplay is just Doom but slower. That's it. Run through corridor, shoot poorly-designed monster. Rinse and repeat. There's nothing wrong with that, but there's also nothing spectacular about that. They get way too much praise than they deserve.