The New DOOM Thread (2016)

[Cadmus]

Good video, agree with everything. SS is complete shit. Lazy, annoying, ugly and boring piece of shit.
:mrpresident: thumbs up for the best teenager.

 

[Quatlo]

retard playing ANY game on console

Did you come to that conclusion that someone playing the game so badly must've been playing it on console then? Because it's clearly played on PC.
Anyone who played Marathon is a bro to me, but there's criticizing a game and being unable to grasp the mechanics in the first place which then becomes your main point of critique. I may suck donkey balls at Alien Soldier, but when I play Alien Soldier I realize I fucking suck at it and could do better. He doesn't even prioritize Headless Kamikazes or pull out his revolvers to deal with them.

I was replying to that classic doom levels, but you managed to ninja reply faster than i did, hence to confusion. I fixed it. Sorry.

 

[dunno lah]

Worst think about original Serious Sams is that weapons felt like fucking waterguns. Utter lack of satisfying audiovisual feedback, which just sucked all the fun out of its action and further accented the tedium of it all.

That's why Will Rock was the only one of Sam's many offspring that I genuinely enjoyed: shooting was actually fun.

I don't have a major problem with SSam's guns from an audio standpoint. But the lack of recoil or kick, in its animations and mechanics, is what kills the fun of killing enemies. This applies especially to the rapid fire weapons.

 

[tormund]

Worst think about original Serious Sams is that weapons felt like fucking waterguns.

Yup. Calling SS's gunplay horrendous would be putting it lightly.

 

[Slimu]

Serious Sam the First Encounter and the Second Encounter were great. Killing tons of monsters was never that satisfying in a FPS. I still remember the hill from the video where the kamikaze and the kleer skeletons came at you. Too bad the rest of the SS games weren't so great. Will Rock is a pale clone, but the opening music rocked.

 

[Durandal]

Worst think about original Serious Sams is that weapons felt like fucking waterguns. Utter lack of satisfying audiovisual feedback, which just sucked all the fun out of its action and further accented the tedium of it all.

That's why Will Rock was the only one of Sam's many offspring that I genuinely enjoyed: shooting was actually fun.

I don't have a major problem with SSam's guns from an audio standpoint. But the lack of recoil or kick, in its animations and mechanics, is what kills the fun of killing enemies. This applies especially to the rapid fire weapons.

I think the HD and BFE somewhat fixed this with gratuitous amounts of gore. But yeah, the weapons should not feel as shitty as they do since you use them so often.

 

[Israfael]

It's fun that the same people who preach the 'objective' truth about nu-Doom and shit on Serious Sam are the same who praised Q2 to the skies in the 2012 thread, which i'm re-playing at the moment. I honestly don't understand how a person who likes maze-like levels with hundreds of enemies can tout tiny console-sized levels of Q2 with 20 enemies that very rarely go in triples (never more), super-obvious secrets and very shallow gameplay as a manifestation of huge PROGRESS in shooters. Mind that i played Q2 before Q1 when i was a kid and i thought it was fun (although somewhat laggy on P1-100 with no dedicated GPU)

 

[Riskbreaker]

You'd have to point out those of my comments in which I praised Quake 2, as I don't remember any of them. I had fun in Q2 "as a kid" too, but nowadays I recognize it as bland, slow, uninspired and downright boring game that it is. Several times did I try to replay it, but not once did I manage to stomach it for long.
You won't find any comment of mine on this forum in which Q2 is praised or in any way defended.

 

[dunno lah]

in b4 that newfag plant comes out to defend Q2.

 

[tormund]

Funniest thing is that not only did I not see people praising Quake 2 to the skies around here like Israfael claims, I saw surprising amount of dislike for it (people like DraQ come to mind)

 

[Astral Rag]

I'd much rather replay Q2 and its expansions than suffer through "Doom" or any other [current year] popamole FPS.

 

[BelisariuS.F]

I've played through maybe 70% of D44m untill my willingness to play it more had dropped to zero. The game tries to mix traditional level design with arenas. It has already been established here that it doesn't succeed at the former, but how about the latter? At first it was kinda fun, but probably in large part it was because of the novelty factor. After I got most fo the weapons and seen most of the monsters my motivation to play it had been steadily sapped by several factors. Too many of the arenas were too small and constricted for my tastes and had obstacles, all of which constricted maneuvering and created segmented encounters, where instead of being able to see and consider all, or most, of the monsters (like you can in Serious Sam) you fight against just several of them at a time, while others are coming from behind some obstacle or you stumble upon them (once I was coming from behind some obstacle and I immediately got hit by this read wave fired by the Summoner who spawned close to me but where I wasn't able to see). That's not my kind of arena shooter (at least not in singleplayer). Smaller arenas mean that bigger and more dangerous monsters immediately take precedence over others, which later, when there is more of them, makes the gameplay more formulaic (in SS you can save bigger monsters for later and just dodge their projectiles). Getting item pickups from monsters means that you can ignore item placement. Shooting and killing monsters doesn't feel audiovisually satisfying in itself, so it doesn't save the game by itself.
The game tries to blend two types of shooters that require different kinds of freedom and it constrains both of them - freedom to explore the level and freedom of the arena. It may be fun if you just want to run and gun (which, it seems, is the case with the general audience), but it isn't good as a proper maze shooter and it isn't particularly good as a proper arena shooter. It seems that it's commercially successfull, so I hope that it will NOT become a template for those devs that decide to make a more oldschool shooter. Just pick a style and commit to it.

 

[shihonage]

The most surprising thing I keep learning from this thread is that Serious Sam has actual fans on the Codex. That series started off as a crude FPS parody slapped together from assets created by what appeared to be children, with less gameplay depth than Wolf3D. What happened to the series from then on, was akin to polishing a turd. Extensively.

 

[Darth Roxor]

The most surprising thing I keep learning from this thread is that Serious Sam has actual fans on the Codex. That series started off as a crude FPS parody slapped together from assets created by what appeared to be children, with less gameplay depth than Wolf3D. What happened to the series from then on, was akin to polishing a turd. Extensively.

try some harder i know you can

 

[Metro]

The most surprising thing I keep learning from this thread is that Serious Sam has actual fans on the Codex. That series started off as a crude FPS parody slapped together from assets created by what appeared to be children, with less gameplay depth than Wolf3D. What happened to the series from then on, was akin to polishing a turd. Extensively.

It's better than your shit game~

 

[Excidium II]

Monsterland is a way better shooter than Serious Sam.

 

[tormund]

Monsterland is a way better shooter than Serious Sam.

Not the best compliment you can give to a shooter... but for this price, that's more than enough.

 

[Dayyālu]

The most surprising thing I keep learning from this thread is that Serious Sam has actual fans on the Codex. That series started off as a crude FPS parody slapped together from assets created by what appeared to be children, with less gameplay depth than Wolf3D. What happened to the series from then on, was akin to polishing a turd. Extensively.

Quake 2 fan

Dislikes Serious Sam



This thread is a treasure of wonders, I say

Wonders

 

[Durandal]

The most surprising thing I keep learning from this thread is that Serious Sam has actual fans on the Codex. That series started off as a crude FPS parody slapped together from assets created by what appeared to be children, with less gameplay depth than Wolf3D. What happened to the series from then on, was akin to polishing a turd. Extensively.

I always wondered this, how would you design a level in Serious Sam that would be of higher quality than the original campaigns and fix the problem of 'shit level design'?

 

[Excidium II]

^
lol

 

[shihonage]

It's better than your shit game~

In terms of graphics, it is vastly superior, yes.

Quake 2 fan

Dislikes Serious Sam



This thread is a treasure of wonders, I say

Wonders

Quake 2 stuck to id-style gameplay conventions, which include making actual, y'know, levels.

 

[Quatlo]

Im currently waiting for some contrarian tryhard to defend Doom 3 and this thread will be complete.

 

[shihonage]

I always wondered this, how would you design a level in Serious Sam that would be of higher quality than the original campaigns and fix the problem of 'shit level design'?

Remove the arena mechanic. Never lock rooms and never endlessly spawn shit around the player, unless it's a boss level, or a rare occasion where you feel like being an ass (I actually regret putting a couple of those into Monsterland).

Make a level with maze-like architecture that actually leads you somewhere, which creates a limited illusion of freedom by leading you into areas you can only partially access until you have a key or pressed a trigger, but still there's something to interact with, even if it's just fighting or a new door to open.

Strategically place monsters around the maze, depending on their attacks, strengths, the effect you want them to have on how the scene plays out, and overall difficulty balance of the level. Same goes for health packs, ammo, and weapons.

Try and be fair, i.e. if there's a deadly surprise (new monster or difficulty spike), try to hint at it first, via variety of foreshadowing means, such as a sound cue, an intimidating structure, a long corridor with no monsters, etc...

...which partially blends into the next point:

Reward the player for being a little bit clever, for taking your hints properly and/or exploring. Proper placement of health packs and such is part of this - don't run the player into a wall without having given him a chance to prepare. If he explored, he knows where to run if there's trouble.

That's off the top of my head.

 

[Excidium II]

Can write an algorithm that generates better levels than SS.

 

[Durandal]

I always wondered this, how would you design a level in Serious Sam that would be of higher quality than the original campaigns and fix the problem of 'shit level design'?

Remove the arena mechanic. Never lock rooms and never endlessly spawn shit around the player, unless it's a boss level, or a rare occasion where you feel like being an ass (I actually regret putting a couple of those into Monsterland).

Make a level with maze-like architecture that actually leads you somewhere, which creates a limited illusion of freedom by leading you into areas you can only partially access until you have a key or pressed a trigger, but still there's something to interact with, even if it's just fighting or a new door to open.

Strategically place monsters around the maze, depending on their attacks, strengths, the effect you want them to have on how the scene plays out, and overall difficulty balance of the level. Same goes for health packs, ammo, and weapons.

Try and be fair, i.e. if there's a deadly surprise (new monster or difficulty spike), try to hint at it first, via variety of foreshadowing means, such as a sound cue, an intimidating structure, a long corridor with no monsters, etc...

...which partially blends into the next point:

Reward the player for being a little bit clever, for taking your hints properly and/or exploring. Proper placement of health packs and such is part of this - don't run the player into a wall without having given him a chance to prepare. If he explored, he knows where to run if there's trouble.

That's off the top of my head.

I don't disagree with you here, the problem is whether this would actually work for the gameplay and enemies of Serious Sam. Those are design principles which are true and proven for games like Doom and Quake, while Serious Sam is clearly designed around said arena combat. You don't design levels for Sonic the Hedgehog like you would for Super Mario Bros either. I doubt recreating a level from Doom in the Serious Engine with the enemies, weapons and gameplay of Serious Sam would actually work out as well. Typical maze-like levels cannot hold a Serious amount of enemies without increasing the level size and freedom for the player to move around, to the point where you may not even bother with limited layout in the first place if you want loadsofenemies.
You could go with more compact level design and less enemies, even though the arsenal with weapons like the Cannonball Launcher and Serious Bomb scream to be used when facing hordes of enemies. Then you'd usually end up with the smaller temple levels in SS which do not really display the game's true potential. The enemies themselves are also not much of a threat on their own and become more dangerous when used in conjunction with others. There's no space to limit you from being cornered or being pinned down, and there's no hitscan enemies (save for the fucking scorpions which shouldn't even be in the game to begin with) to force you back into breaking the line of sight.
Unless your solution is to change the gameplay where you don't have to deal with a zillion enemies at a time, that's just kind of self-defeating. A level where you just move forwards and gib a Gnaar with your coach shotgun every once in a while is obviously shit, so obviously one can do better than that. It's possible to execute the most blandest of concepts and still make it feel good, so even big open levels with hundreds of enemies of different enemy types can be better than the other. I'm not talking about level design in general here. Would you think that designing levels for Serious Sam with the mindset of Quake level design would be better than the original campaigns?