The New DOOM Thread (2016)

[Excidium II]

Cool trickposting. Of course you couldn't fix serious sam just by changing level layout.

 

[shihonage]

Yeah I almost started my reply with "SS gameplay is geared toward arenas and changing level design would be insufficient", but decided nah, this must be an honest question - look, he even said I shouldn't use one-liners, and the above would be one.

EDIT:
But yes I still believe Serious Sam would be significantly more enjoyable even if the only thing that changed was the level structure (which includes removal of arenas).

As for the rest of that argument, Durandal clearly has not seen Doom2 campaign maps like "Downtown".

 

[Durandal]

Cool trickposting. Of course you couldn't fix serious sam just by changing level layout.

What would be wrong with the fundamental gameplay dynamic of Serious Sam then?
Should all enemies not mindlessly charge at you, and instead move around at a snails pace while throwing danmakus upon danmakus at you, which also would allow for more complex level layout since most enemies aren't constantly chasing your ass at 100km/h?

As for the rest of that argument, Durandal clearly has not seen Doom2 campaign maps like "Downtown".

Downtown was fairly crap, and spliced minor enemy encounters into single buildings while said buildings were separated by long streets with roaming enemies and demons on rooftops.
It was a shitty level for Doom standards, and I wouldn't imagine it being any better in Serious Sam either. Nor do I see what it has to do with anything.

 

[shihonage]

No, of course you "wouldn't". I am not wasting any more time on this.

 

[Edward The Mediocre]

I'm getting the vibe that you don't like shumps, or bullet hell games shihonage.

 

[Average Manatee]

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

Doom 3 is not that bad.

 

[Edward The Mediocre]

Come on man, you gotta be earnest about it. You can't half ass that shit.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

Can't say I am into what I've seen so far from the new Doom.

I will just stick to playing the originals - Doom, Doom II, Final Doom and Doom 64. They are some of my favorite games of all-time.

I don't like the level design of the new game, the overall philosophy change of the game, the art style or really anything I've seen of the game in videos.

It's just personal preference. I see the new Doom more as your typical modern FPS than a classic Doom game reimagined, but that's just me.

 

[Beastro]

codexes favorite teenager is back at it

That girl trims her eyebrows waaay too much.

 

[Metro]

Anyway, Serious Sam Series is good fun. Fuck the haters. And the ghetto bundle game devs. Level design is bad but it's not really about the level design just shooting a fuckton of stuff.

 

[sullynathan]

D44M is better than Serious Sam

 

[Excidium II]

The gunplay/feedback is better at least.

 

[BelisariuS.F]

The most surprising thing I keep learning from this thread is that Serious Sam has actual fans on the Codex.

If you do not understand something then you learn suprising things.

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.

This is as reasonable as saying "Doom has shit gameplay because it isn't a military simulation. In order to improve it you have to <insert description of Arma gameplay>.

 

[Excidium II]

0/10 imo

 

[shihonage]

Fuck the haters. And the ghetto bundle game devs.

What's a ghetto bundle

 

[BelisariuS.F]

something different

What's a ghetto bundle

Good question. Google wasn't particularly helpful.

 

[Excidium II]

He means bundle as game bundle. Ghetto as in ghetto ass shit.

 

[tormund]

I don't HATE Serious Sam. It is what it is, people love it for that and I enjoyed it for that for a time. It wasn't Doom nor Build engine game nor did it try to follow design philosophy of any of them. What I hate is that forever ignorant journos proclaimed it and Painkiller to be throwbacks to Doom and Quake, that new generation of gamers embraced them as THE definition of "old school" shooters, and that this image stuck to this day and influenced both players and designers. Today, when shooter proclaims to be "old school" or 90s inspired you can instantly guess that it is in fact Serious Sam and Painkiller inspired (Shadow Warrior reboot, new Doom...).

Now I'll be attacked by those who need those games to be "old school" because that became a badge of honor of FPS genre and it makes those who play those games feel better about themselves. Kind of like how everything needed to be a RPG years ago, because RPG was supposedly more sophisticated and intelligent that "mere" FPS or action game...

 

[Excidium II]

Exactly.

 

[Doktor Best]

New Doom is much closer to oldschool than Serious Sam. Its in fact a hybrid between those 2 design concepts.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

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 mentioned this in the "Research" thread, but Serious Sam seems to also be a case of "we slapped together some stuff and made a game, and since it's selling and people like it we see little reason to improve it".

The First Encounter was released primarily as a response to players noticing that the enemy count in FPS games had dropped sharply since Quake, and wanted a game where you could blast through hordes of monsters again. The game's engine was the first one to combine True 3D/polygons with hordes of monsters, and part of the method to do that was to spawn monsters out of thin air and then have their bodies evaporate. It wasn't perfect, but it was a solution. Also, with SSam easily being capable of having up to a thousand enemies in a level, it's logical that the weapon emphasis would be more akin to Doom rather than Quake or Half-Life, which might explain why they have almost no recoil.

The Second Encounter is both an attempt of cashing in on the success of the first game, and also a chance for Croteam to really show what they (and the engine) could do. As a result it has better level design, better monster variety and better pacing, making it the best SSam game out there...even to this day. SE is to FE what Doom 2 is to Doom 1, an improvement in every way.

Then Croteam tried to port the game series to the consoles. The console-exclusive Next Encounter and the abominable Serious Sam 2 are the results of that, and they're best not discussed any further.

Serious Sam 3 tried to return to the roots of the franchise, while also catering to players that have grown up playing games like CoD and Battlefield and that crap. Again, not exactly a successful idea, but it's fun and at least came out better than SSam2 did.

But to be honest, I don't think Serious Sam (anyone of them) has ever tried to be anything more than what it is: A fun shooter.

 

[Excidium II]

SE is to FE what Doom 2 is to Doom 1, an improvement in every way.

In what did Doom 2 improve Doom 1? Besides count of teleport traps and monster closets.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Serious Sam was basically a foreign indie game that wanted to be Doom but couldn't. Croteam obviously couldn't do stuff like level design so there's none in the game. At the time the game was heralded as a return to the classic formula, which aggravated my disappointment when i first tried it. Considering the lack of twitch based combat in modern shooters it might be "good for what it is" but you still have to put the game in the right context.

 

[Makabb]

The metacritic score is pretty high for this

 

[Durandal]

I don't HATE Serious Sam. It is what it is, people love it for that and I enjoyed it for that for a time. It wasn't Doom nor Build engine game nor did it try to follow design philosophy of any of them. What I hate is that forever ignorant journos proclaimed it and Painkiller to be throwbacks to Doom and Quake, that new generation of gamers embraced them as THE definition of "old school" shooters, and that this image stuck to this day and influenced both players and designers. Today, when shooter proclaims to be "old school" or 90s inspired you can instantly guess that it is in fact Serious Sam and Painkiller inspired (Shadow Warrior reboot, new Doom...).

Serious Sam is often called a first-person bullet hell (even though I think Marathon Phoenix on Total Carnage is more appropriate for that title), but in terms of different design philosophies, I can see where such a title would come from. It's kind of like how Batsugun was the essential prototype to bullet hell shooters in SHMUPs and created a new subgenre to games which usually had stage layouts and obstacles to maneuver through (as most modern SHMUPs are usually bullet hells), whereas Serious Sam would mostly focus on enemy amounts and composition like a bullet hell pattern (as most new 'old-school' shooters are usually a variant of Serious Sam).

I haven't seen any records of Croteam not being able to or just failing at Doom-style level design, if they wanted to make another Doom clone, then I don't see what'd be stopping them. The Talos Principle was an excellent puzzle game developed by veterans who mostly worked on shooters, so it's not like they are incapable of doing anything but Serious Sam. I think they just went with their own 'style', as cliché as that sounds, though it's not like we needed yet another Doom clone just because the originals were that good. It works, but I'd rather play something with its own separate feel and style like Blood, Unreal, and Marathon. (Yet unfortunately, we are saddled up with SS-clones).