22nd July 2004, 1:42 PM
Quote:It is a fact that Tom Hall and John Romero did most of the design for Doom, and they left. It's also a fact that no one who made any maps for Doom or Doom 2 is still with ID, nor have any of those people been there at the beginning of the Doom 3 project. Yes, the ID people know FPSes. But the people there are ones who were working on the Quake games mainly, not Doom... except for the Carmacks of course. Which is why the art style is similar.
There was a fairly recent interview up at ve3d where the id guys talked about how there was no major gap felt when Hall, McGee and Romero left and that id is still largely the same company as before. Tom Hall and John Romero did not do most of the design work for Doom, it was a group effort, and most of that group is still at id! Tom Hall wasn't even really a game designer, he was in charge of the business aspects of id. Romero did level design and a bit of programming, and McGee only made some levels. You greatly overestimate their contribution to id.
BTW that gamespy article is a complete farce.
Quote:So universal acclaim, continual appearances on all of the the best PC games ever lists (that magazines or major sites do), etc, etc... look, it's perfectly fine to say you dislike it, but trying to deny that it belongs on ANY best games lists or halls of fame? Huh? It's not even remotely sensible.
Halo was lauded as the best game of 2002 even though it was one of the most rushed and flawed games of that year, so excuse me if I don't give top ten lists that much credence. Top 10 PC lists are usually laughable because of the criteria they use to rank games. It's usually not about gameplay, but rather technical feats and influence. Doom is certainly an influential game, but if it were a console game first and console gamers were making a best-of list, it probably wouldn't make it since it could never, ever compare to truly great and timeless masterpieces like Pacman, Super Mario Bros., Zelda, Tetris, etc. That is the PC way. The most-anticipated FPS's are rarely ever the ones with the great and unique gameplay, they're almost always the ones that do something really well on a technical and/or presentation level. Why that is I'm not quite certain, though I do have my theories. Doom is nowhere near as good as any of Blizzard's games (even the older, less popular ones), yet many people still call Doom the best PC game ever. They just don't think about it, and using the excuse of "most people think this, so it must be true" is pretty sad, Brian.