The New DOOM Thread (2016)

[HoboForEternity]

flying wildhog has made alot of classic fast paced shooter before Bethesid soft did.

 

[Alienman]

I have noticed that many game journalists have a hard-on for Titanfall 2 for some reason. Is it that sweet EA money?

 

[dunno lah]

flying wildhog has made alot of "classic fast paced" shooter before Bethesid soft did.

FIX'D

 

[Azrael the cat]

I don't even like Doom too much but suggesting it's difficult to play is completely retarded.

Old games weren't really all that difficult. A few of them were, but most of them just had a normal level of challenge.

BTW, my 11 year old nephew just killed the Cyberdemon on his own. What an impossibly challenging enemy that they had to dumb him down in nuDoom, right?

There's an additional point that goes both ways, too. When Doom came out, we were all fucking awful noobs at FPS. Keyboard-only was the most popular (perhaps the only possible?) control during the original freeware (you got ep 1 free, then had to pay for the next 2/3 as shareware) period, and remained the norm for many players for at least the first 2 years (really, it wasn't until Doom 2-era that the play-quality got to a level where mouse-only couldn't keep up.

There was no vertical element, so you only needed to aim at the right horizontal area. There was no locational damage (and almost all modern shooters have some locational bonus, e.g. 'headshots'), so shooting anywhere in the region of the enemy would do, even with a non hitscan weapon.

Out of my friends, we started banning ourselves from from using the 'blue' weapons (BFG, that 'bfg ammo' 2nd last rifle) because they trivialised the game. Cyberdemon (way harder than ultimate ep3 enemy, though it clearly wasn't meant to be, and was still just a ultra-slow guy that fires rockets straight ahead, can see how they thought the hit-scan-using spider-demon would be more difficult) was 'kill with rocket launcher or GTFS, kill with chain-gun or lower for any actual respect'. And in the long term, we sucked at FPS. There was one guy that ended up playing decent clan-level Counterstrike plus his gf who ended up in the (for a time, anyway) best 'all-girl' CS team. Everyone else were crpg players, rts players (no hardcore/competitive scene then, just early/slow/simple games so no real micro skill involved) and other 'shit, I have no reflexes, I can't play these games' arcade refugees.

And I'd say that was pretty typical. No good FPS players existed, because there was no multiplayer FPS scene of note (yeah, Wolfenstein, but fucking nobody played that online at the time - just think of the modem speeds for that era and do the math). And the game was made for that skill level.

Which means, 'yes', it was harder in some unquantifiable 'generic difficulty' sense, in that it presented game mechanics that its audience was wholly unfamiliar with. But in terms of any direct comparison of FPSs, past and present, Doom 1 would have to be the front-runner for 'easiest FPS ever made'.

A lot of people forget this due to the highly skilled Doom multiplayer community, around the era of Quake and CS communities. But that was nothing to do with the game itself, other than the ultra-fast movement (i.e. something which made the game easier in single player, because you were so much faster than all of the enemies) speed, which Quake incorporated into its multiplayer far better. No, you had a bunch of ultra-skilled Doom players then because anyone still playing Doom multiplayer (with the mods by then adding verticality in shooting that was never in the original game - it was 2.5D posing as 3D) were the oldest and most experienced of FPS players, and were nearly 100% primarily Quake players who played Doom for the occasional change.

 

[tuluse]

Azrael the cat

You're wrong about a few things.

1) Mouse was totally optional for Doom. The manual suggests it, but many people played keyboard only, OR using joysticks which was super common and expected with PC gamers at the time.

2) Doom coined the term deathmatch, and I'm pretty sure Wolfenstein didn't have multiplayer

 

[Volrath]

The comments on that article make me want to kill myself. There is 0 hope for humanity left if that's the concensus.

 

[tormund]

Azrael, huge reason for there being so many skilled Doom players back then is the existence, and extreme popularity, of user made SP content that was much harder than any of the base games.

I have noticed that many game journalists have a hard-on for Titanfall 2 for some reason. Is it that sweet EA money?

I actually wonder if good old hipster mentality plays some role there. Game sold rather poorly and was ignored by most players, therefore they already treat is as some sort of underground, cult thing that is too good for the unwashed masses.

 

[Luzur]

Azrael, huge reason for there being so many skilled Doom players back then is the existence, and extreme popularity, of user made SP content that was much harder than any of the base games.

Yeah, you grit your teeth, grinded, and got good, or forever vanished into the mists of time.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

I have noticed that many game journalists have a hard-on for Titanfall 2 for some reason. Is it that sweet EA money?

I actually wonder if good old hipster mentality plays some role there. Game sold rather poorly and was ignored by most players, therefore they already treat is as some sort of underground, cult thing that is too good for the unwashed masses.

I would say that this is reason:

 

[Alienman]

Azrael, huge reason for there being so many skilled Doom players back then is the existence, and extreme popularity, of user made SP content that was much harder than any of the base games.

I have noticed that many game journalists have a hard-on for Titanfall 2 for some reason. Is it that sweet EA money?

I actually wonder if good old hipster mentality plays some role there. Game sold rather poorly and was ignored by most players, therefore they already treat is as some sort of underground, cult thing that is too good for the unwashed masses.

Yeah I was thinking in those lines as well. Kinda weird, because even if it sold poorly say compared to Battlefield it is still a mainstream game everyone knows about.
Find it funny how everyone collectively all of sudden embrace this game like it's something magical that the mainstream plebs have missed

I get the same feeling with the new Doom.

 

[Riskbreaker]

Another Painkiller clone, small score-attack arena and yet another multiplayer shooter with yet another short cinematic campaign. Exactly the kind of "old school glory" one should expect from the "enlightened age of Firewatch, The Witness, and That Dragon, Cancer" (fucking hell, it really is pointless to parody these guys).

 

[DeepOcean]

I have noticed that many game journalists have a hard-on for Titanfall 2 for some reason. Is it that sweet EA money?

It has a single player campaign where you don't mass murder ruskies and mudslims, of course you mass murder robots and generic sci - fi space marines instead. Obviously, after this revolutionary change, they didn't want to go overboard and scare people with too much originality so the 4h long, linear maps, scripted scenes, easy difficulty and health regeneration remain.

 

[tormund]

The comments on that article make me want to kill myself. There is 0 hope for humanity left if that's the concensus.

I've always wondered why the people who complain about the lack of old-school shooters, don't just play Serious Sam, which is exactly that.

Then the new Doom (at least the demo) made me understand: Serious Sam was too old-school for its own good. It's so old-school in execution that it ends up only appealing to a niche. SS3 attempted to mix in some modern concepts, but its changes didn't come out very well imho. In the end, I prefer the old series for its undiluted take on shooting.

But Doom takes old ideas, and merely plates them with certain modern sensibilities, while mantaining the core old-school shooting intact. It's a much more palatable product for that. It's less a sequel to Doom, and more like a sequel to Brutal Doom.

I will pick it up soon (I'm planning it as my first purchase of 2017). I do wonder what's next for id. And also for Serious Sam 4, which should be coming at some point. Unless the success of The Talos Principle somehow changed Croteam's priorities.

 

[Belegarsson]

I have noticed that many game journalists have a hard-on for Titanfall 2 for some reason. Is it that sweet EA money?

It's on sale for 30 bucks now, if you remove the "all modern millitary shooters are shit" mentality then in my opinion, it's really worth the money.
Don't buy it solely for the campaign though, the story is crap, shooting sequences are nothing to write about, several creative levels here and there but the campaign alone isn't worth 30 bucks. Multiplayer is really fun though, wallrunning and bunnyhopping are easy but chaining them together t traverse through the map is really enjoyable and challenging (until you get shot mid-air by a turret). You can use grappling hook to sling 90 degree around buildings, phase shifting ("go to another dimension temporarily") to GTFO of tricky situations, stim gives temporary speed boost (really OP when combined with the EVA shotgun)... there are some really fun toys like a gravity star that suck people and projectiles into it, titans' kits are well designed and have more variety compared to the chasises in the first game, a knife that gives wallhack (lmfao) can instakill with a direct hit. Fighting titans surprisingly involves teamwork since most of the times you can't fight more than 1 enemy titan alone except when you have the core ready and they're all at low health. Of course there are some stinkers, most maps are pretty crap, pubstorm weapons like Volt, Devotion or Hemlock, fighting Tone (the titan that fires rockets and has a 40mm grenade launcher) is really boring and kinda frustrating at times because if you're locked on then he just needs to press Q and you can say goodbye to half of your hp bar, the A-Wall is really out of place for a game that heavily emphasizes on speed and mobility, and whoever decided to put pilot sentry gun in the game needs to be slapped for 10 straight days. At least the aimbot smart pistol is a boost instead of main weapon now.
I enjoy it more than Doom to be honest. I dumped that game after finishing the campaign, but I find myself keep coming back to Titanfall 2's multiplayer.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Azrael the cat

You're wrong about a few things.

1) Mouse was totally optional for Doom. The manual suggests it, but many people played keyboard only, OR using joysticks which was super common and expected with PC gamers at the time.

2) Doom coined the term deathmatch, and I'm pretty sure Wolfenstein didn't have multiplayer

Fuck -- actually meant keyboard only. Whole comment makes no sense as it is (will edit). Very much meant 'keyboard only' as a popular option, as an indicator of how easy the game is, and the lack of FPS fluency amongst the playerbase. I typed literally the opposite of what I meant

2. Re Wolfenstein, you're probably right. Doom was the first FPS multiplayre that I remember, and modems (brand spankin' 24K just purchased around the same time) were just hitting the point where you could have a good match vs your friends in the same city (where I was, anyway).

 

[Azrael the cat]

Azrael, huge reason for there being so many skilled Doom players back then is the existence, and extreme popularity, of user made SP content that was much harder than any of the base games.

True, but it's comparing apples and oranges (hate that metaphor, we compare them all the time, it's called having a currency, but I'll use it anyway) to compare difficulty of Doom SP mods vs base campaign of later games. You can make a really hard game of a base game where (a) the player movement is faster than that of all enemies and massively faster than most enemies), (b) enemies move towards you in predictable patterns (yes, Doom 2 shook this up, especially with the archville), (c) you can change weapons ultra-fast and hence can adjust to all ranges on the fly, and (d) there's no vertical aiming and no need or bonus for hitting precise points/headshots - usually by throwing in huge numbers of enemies, tricky levels with combos of teleports, resource shortages, platforming sections and traps/triggers that let said hordes of enemies loose on you at the worst possible time. And because there wasn't a lot of good FPS of the same style (SS and Dark Forces both had very distinct feel, not really trying to go for Doom's style) for a few years, people made the mods harder and harder to adapt to the increasing skills of the nascient FPS playerbase.

But you can do that to almost any game that allows similar moddability. It doesn't really set up a 'FPS were really hard back then, and now are much easier' - regenerating health and popamole made the genre boring, but it was always easy (and I'm not sure that I'd put CoD in the same genre as Doom anyway - I'd view FEAR and the like as a chain of games that derived from Doom, and CoD more of a 'cinematic whatever' branching of the genre). The massive speed advantage and lack of vertical aiming requirements are as distinct an 'easy mode' as regenerating health.

I'll readily accept that multiplayer is much less skill-based these days, and that the genre has been made a fuckload more boring.

 

[megidolaon]

Just bought it the other week on Steam sale. Wouldn't call it a proper Doom game going by the originals as the standard, but it's still fun imo, and not the utter disappointing snore-fest that Doom 3 was, thankfully.

Fuck Summoners, though.

 

[Akratus]

Haven't played this game, but I sure as heck downloaded the soundtrack:

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

So what is the general consensus of this title?
I just checked a Zero Punctuation video of Yathze's top 5 of 2016 and he declared Doom to be his number one.
Yathze is amusing but we definitely don't share taste in games as I honestly don't care about Undertale.

 

[Cadmus]

So what is the general consensus of this title?
I just checked a Zero Punctuation video of Yathze's top 5 of 2016 and he declared Doom to be his number one.
Yathze is amusing but we definitely don't share taste in games as I honestly don't care about Undertale.

yahtze is a retarded fuck.
the game is a chore to play and boring once you realize it's the same room stretched over 8 hours. Obtain for free to see this monument to mediocrity and then quit after 2 hours because it's not worth anyone's time.

 

[megidolaon]

Snapmap is designed in such a way that it's impossible to make interesting levels even if you tried. Connecting hallways to hallways to hallways, and then sometimes larger rooms... larger rooms that everyone else and their dog has in their levels too, because Bethesda thinks people who enjoy modding as a hobby are incapable of designing things on their own. Designing your own pieces is off-limits, is the biggest load of bullshit. Why couldn't they do what Doom 3 did? Sure it was hard to make levels as good as id's levels, but some people still had that ability, and when they did, it turned out good. If they were worried about too many aesthetically-sloppy levels, a ratings system like they have now could easily separate wheat from the shit. Instead, everything on Snapmap looks great but nothing is enjoyable to play. I was happy to free up precious 80GB from my SSD after I beat the game.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i've finally been able to make the demo work.
so... corridor, arena, corridor, arena, corridor, arena, corridor, arena... wtf is this shit? and having to press f all the time with little to no repercussions if you miss (like, completely miss, because it's still an attack move) is stupid.
i'm no big fan of brainless FPSs, but i finished quake 4 while i couldn't care to finish this demo. speaks volume.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

Snapmap is designed in such a way that it's impossible to make interesting levels even if you tried. Connecting hallways to hallways to hallways, and then sometimes larger rooms... larger rooms that everyone else and their dog has in their levels too, because Bethesda thinks people who enjoy modding as a hobby are incapable of designing things on their own. Designing your own pieces is off-limits, is the biggest load of bullshit.

Kind of fitting for a large group of people who really don't want to do anything of its own, next to rebooted franchises made easy and accessible we now have modding for everyone who wants it to be easy and accessible to the point that barely any form of creativity is required.

 

[LESS T_T]

New DOOM's SnapMap developer Escalation Studios has acquired by Zenimax: https://bethesda.net/en/article/2IG...lation-studios-joins-the-zenimax-media-family

Escalation Studios Joins the ZeniMax Media Family

ZeniMax Media Inc. – parent company to Bethesda Softworks –announced today that it has acquired Escalation Studios, located in Dallas, Texas. Founded in 2007 by industry veterans Tom Mustaine and Marc Tardif, Escalation’s team has helped build and support some of the biggest franchises in the industry – including id Software’s award-winning first-person shooter, DOOM, which launched in 2016.

“We have continually been impressed with the team at Escalation that Tom and Marc have assembled,” said Todd Vaughn, Vice President of Development at Bethesda. “Their commitment to quality and innovation has made significant contributions to the projects we’ve worked on together, and we’re excited to have them join ZeniMax.”

Escalation is currently working on a number of projects with studios throughout the ZeniMax family and will continue to contribute its talents across PC, console, mobile and VR titles going forward.

"ZeniMax Media’s studios are responsible for some of the most iconic games in our industry," said Marc Tardif, Co-Managing Director of Escalation Studios. "Becoming a part of this amazing family of developers is an honor for everyone at our studio."

"We are proud of the incredible team that has helped make Escalation such a success," added Tom Mustaine Co-Managing Director of Escalation Studios. "We can't wait to see what the studio is capable of with the support of such a great company as ZeniMax."

 

[LESS T_T]

If you flinched the first time you saw a ravenous Pinky Demon charging at you in last year’s critically acclaimed DOOM, wait till you get up close and even more personal with rampaging demons in DOOM: VFR. Featured at Bethesda’s E3 2017 Showcase, DOOM: VFR is a new virtual reality game from legendary developer id Software, coming this year to PlayStation VR and VIVE platforms.

In DOOM: VFR, the demons from Hell have wiped out everyone inside the UAC’s Martian research facility – except you. As the last known human survivor, you have to restore operational stability and stop the demonic invasion. There’s only one catch: you’re about to be slaughtered yourself. But thanks to a top-secret UAC research program, your consciousness has been transferred to an artificial intelligence matrix. Along with all kinds classic DOOM weaponry, you’ll be armed with the ability to Teleport and Jet-Strafe so you can move fast in combat and quickly close the distance between you and the demons, then blow them to bloody bits with your Tele-frag ability. As an A.I. operative, you can also transfer your consciousness to UAC devices and robots to solve puzzles and gain access to new areas (including two never-before-seen sections of the UAC Martian Research Facility).

“Developing a DOOM game specifically for virtual reality has provided an exciting opportunity to not only surround players with the world of DOOM like never before, but also let them experience and explore the UAC and Hell in new ways, playing as new characters with totally unique tools and abilities,” says Robert Duffy, CTO at id Software.

“Since the hallmark of any DOOM game is combat, we’ve made it our top priority to ensure moving, shooting and killing demons with overwhelming force in virtual reality is as brutal and rewarding as it is in the DOOM experience that fans have been enjoying for the past year,” adds DOOM Game Director Marty Stratton.

With brutal combat from the studio that pioneered the first-person shooter genre as well as modern VR, DOOM: VFR brings id Software’s trademark carnage to a standalone VR game. See Mars and Hell from a new perspective, and lay waste to an army of demonic foes in a definitive adventure custom built for PlayStation VR and VIVE.