Doom

https://www.reddit.com/r/Doom/comments/cjsdxe/time_for_some_smooth_jazz_caw_caw/

This. Is. GLORIOUS!

So catchy too.

(E 1 M 1 music in jazz style)

So, I've been perusing the Bethesda forums as of late, and someone managed to recreate the Doom Eternal experience as much as he could with actual monkey bars and a dash mechanic.

Check it out here!

So, what’s everybody’s thoughts about Doom 3?

That one is one of my favorite games. :)

Meh, Doom shouldn't be Survival Horror.

Doom 1 has some elements. Dark foreboding areas, dark general areas, spectres and slow mood of some levels.

It's Doom 2 that upped the ante a lot.

As for Doom 3... everything about it is fine except gameplay. I'm serious.

It feels conflicted, like it has an identity crisis over whether it wants to be a survival horror or Doom. It feels like so many half-baked ideas thrown at wall that just fell off, so much doesn't mesh together. It can't make up its mind over what it wants to be.

My points of contention: it fails as a survival horror shooter because there is no real sense of dread, helplessness or having to hide and being able to defeat few demons at most, alongside way too much ammo in every level, like I would hit shotgun shell limit by 1/3 of the game and unless you decide that every surface is some imaginary enemy you will be overstocked on ammo. I thought survival horror means you survive, not just win and come little off worse for wear or whatever. Doom 3 you play as a rookie marine with mysterious resistance to demonic possession and proceed to kick ass. At least Doom 1 can excuse the shenanigans when you die at the end of Episode 1!

It fails as a Doom shooter because it's too slow paced, your screen violently shakes whenever something even weakly hits you, level design has been simplified, meaning there are no alternate paths or key hunting or secret areas (there are some under the pipes or behind boxes/crates, I guess. Also present in id tech 4 games Quake IV and Prey (2006)), no branching paths, coming back to same area to open a new door (well it happens in Delta Labs iirc), there are way too few enemies on screen (classic Doom usually had dozens of enemies at screen at the same time) and enemies are stupid, way too flashy with their animations which are long and don't deal that much damage. It's also a pretty easy game, even on Nightmare. Classic Doom on Nightmare would kick your ass so much, even UV if you put Fast Monsters modifier on.

The shotgun itself is poorly balanced, it deals too much damage... if you're almost touching the enemy by how close you have to get up to them!

I think I summed up my issues. Again, everything else is fine, like the setting, art style (apart from redesigns like Cacodemon. Worst looking caco ever. Hell Knights are my absolute favorite and I'm glad Doom 2016 carried the design over (even if they made their skulls look like bleached phalluses. DOOM Eternal rectifies that greatly which I'm grateful for)), dialogue, the PD As and more.

Edited by Dhiruxide on Aug 17th 2019 at 6:50:16 PM

Like I said, Doom shouldn't be Survival Horror.

What about Doom 64? It's much more atmospherically darker than classic Doom and... it feels more Doom 3 than Doom 3 itself does.

It still carries over that Doom gameplay so it's not an actual horror game but aesthetically it comes close.

It's still a Doom shooter at heart though. Just with a coat of creepy paint.

Like how Chex Quest is still a Doom shooter at heart but with a layer of Chex over it.

Survival Horror kinda needs that Element of Helplessness or where you're clearly outmatched

Like Leon in RE 4 can pretty much clobber anything with a Knife and Kick but even he has opponents that are Fuck this I'm out which is what the later RE games do.

Doom... Never really has that 'unless you die and start one of those levels with just a pistol'

EVEN Bosses don't elicit an OH SHIT but more a FINALLY something that doesn't die in 2.3 seconds

Doom 64 has a great atmosphere

Doom 3 is exactly as described It Really doesn't know what it wants to be and because it doesn't commit to one or the other it does both rather poorly.

If I did Doom 3 I'd kinda go the Dead Space route

You're just a Tech and for most of the game you're struggling to survive slowly building up your abilities via better weapons and a better suit of combat armor but getting by on more crafty strats

Edited by FrozenWolf2 on Aug 17th 2019 at 11:56:02 AM

My own survival horror take at Doom 3 would be, you're still a space marine... but a rookie one, like the mc is. So you have a lot you have to learn and your inexperience painfully shows.

And unlike in base game, you are not immune to demonic possession. How I'd work out the mechanics, no idea but you can fight back... to an extent. Demons would be very tough and just go back to Hell to regenerate or something. To make it more sitting-at-the-edge-of-your-seat scary and interesting and thrilling, these demons remember you if you offed them: they come back looking for revenge and are smarter and stronger. Using guns is possible but no Hyperspace Arsenal and guns aren't easy to use, and being a rookie that arrived on Mars not too long ago...yeah.

It would be more like laying down traps, playing tricks on demons and using every means of distraction as you're trying to get the hell out of Mars and alert the Earth military. Of course, I'd make it cruel and have Betruger's plan of using ships to transport demon army to Earth actually happen...

Dead Space method is something I wish I came up with first

Edited by Dhiruxide on Aug 17th 2019 at 7:10:01 PM

With Doom and Survival Horror, my understanding is that Doom 1 (which I should note I haven't actually played) did indeed have a lot of elements we'd associate with survival horror. Levels without a lot of ammo, spooky environments, that sort of thing.

Though, the horror elements run into a sort of Seinfeld Is Unfunny. The game encourages a lot more aggression and run-and-gun than most modern FPS games do (even the non-horror ones). So it makes more sense to abandon the survival elements and go straight-up action.

On a sidenote, the reason for the above is that Doom predates a certain issue a lot of shooter games in general have to overcome. Hitscan attacks and the like are not especially fair in general. FPS games typically have to give the player some form of forgiveness, since there's usually no good way to guarantee they won't ever get shot. Health regeneration in particular is a common one, however, it's one that incentives very cautious and slow play-styles.

It's only really Survival Horror up to the point you find the shotgun and no longer have to rely on your starting peashooter.

Doom II was even more generous since it gave you a chainsaw right at the very beginning provided you actually look behind you when you first start out.

Edited by M84 on Aug 18th 2019 at 1:04:29 AM

You want the worst case of hitscanners? Play Blood

Those cultists will fuck you up.

For Doom, the basic enemies are squishy so you can kill them easily. Then heavy chaingunners with 70 hp appear in Doom 2... but still ok. It's the Doomers who made maps with heavy dudes everywhere, at every corner and room and spam them to high heavens!

Anyway...I forgot one more point about Doom 3, it also fails as a horror game because it isn't scary. It over-relies on darkness and bad lighting to give that "afraid of the dark" nonsense and there are few sections where there is no lighting and you have to switch between flashlight and your gun. It might be scary at first (it was for me...back in 2004-2006) but it becomes so stupidly annoying. Another is...

Those goddamn monster closets. Cheap Jump Scares ahoy! No wonder why I think Five Nights At Freddy's is overrated as hell.

Also another thing on Doom 3... those scripted events sure are fun! Too bad they're just that, scripted events. I love it when I see imps Wall Crawl which they sadly can't ever do outside a cutscene or event.

you also find the Super Shotgun at second level, in a non-secret area too.

@G 2 Battle Convoy: aw shit, I forgot to check it. Yeah that's good, I remember seeing it before, or was it the other video? Either way, it's nice Snap Map for all its faults can do such neat things.

Edited by Dhiruxide on Aug 17th 2019 at 7:12:43 PM

Oh, back to my earlier point, Doom predates the problem because most of the enemies in it don't use guns. You can dodge most projectiles. That's part of why you can run so fast in doom, is because a big part of the game is dodging enemy attacks. In modern FPS games, running that fast doesn't provide much of a help (still can't dodge a bullet) and it's considered "unrealistic". They're technically right, for the record (even in slow FPS games you typically move at speeds that'd be pretty impressive in real life. It just doesn't feel fast), though of course there's a decent argument that it's an Acceptable Break from Reality. Though I would say those games typically have a problem that movement is boring rather than that it's slow, that's why it doesn't "feel" fast.

Conversely, the best use of hit-scanners that I've encountered might be in Serious Sam. (The Second Encounter; I imagine that it was the same in the First, but I forget.)

That game has huge scorpion-folk with chainguns—but they give a very audible sound-cue before firing, and those chainguns take just a moment to spin up.

The result—for me, at least—is often a moment of panic when first I hear that warning "SCREE!", and a hasty scrambling for cover from the deadly storm of bullets that follows.

But they also have a brief cooldown between salvos—providing one with a moment to pop out of cover, whether to open fire, seek a better position, or simply flee.

Overall, I think that they work rather well! ^_^

As to Doom 3... It is, I think, the only Doom game that I've played from beginning to end (of the base game, at least; I don't think that I played the expansion(s)). It's been quite a while since last I played it, but I think that I recall that I had fun with it, at least.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Aug 17th 2019 at 1:13:23 PM

A fellow Serious Sam fan! I almost Squeed now. I actually used to be a massive fanboy of it last decade but this decade after Serious Sam 3 and Croteam taking such sweet time with Serious Sam 4 and... issues with Seriously! community, not much anymore. I'm a pure DOOM fanboy now but I'd give classic TFE and TSE a play anytime of the day.

Anyway, the thing with Arachnoids, both juvenile (yellow) and adult (red), is while I agree with what you said, there were times I couldn't pinpoint where they were firing from. If you're close and they let loose it can make your screen go very red from how much damage in short time you took. Standard hiding from hitscanners rule still applies despite audio cues and short wind-up time.

I always hated that section in Tower of Babel, in the gardens, last section, you fight bunch of them stationed on top of the walls with no way to hide from them. That was a cheap move.

As for Doom 3...again, everything else but gameplay is fine. Even atmosphere is good, despite devs at the time being oblivious as fuck how to do with ambient lighting. (this is why I believe Doom 3 should get the RTX treatment to see how the game would feel differently) I like the story even if it is the usual same, Dr. Betruger is one entertaining and creepy villain and voiced by the late great Philip L. Clarke (he pulls one mean villain voice flawlessly), and the UAC official, Elliot Swann is a rare case of a bureaucrat who is good and actually takes matters into his own hands when everything goes to shit. I really liked him.

The PD As, audio logs and text logs also provide a look into many employees lives and gripes, and those UAC tech videos are a nice touch too, like the Elemental Phase Deconstructor. I actually checked doomwiki.org and it mentioned problems with such method alongside others. Either way despite unrealistic things it's nice to watch videos how UAC gets things done in Doom 3.

Actually, the UAC in Doom 3 is for most part ok. It's Betruger who stirred up the shit.

Edited by Dhiruxide on Aug 17th 2019 at 1:29:46 PM

I still remember saying this a lot when I played Doom 3. XD ^_^;;

hears eerie sound
I don't like the sound of that.
demon shows up
Come to think of it, I don't like the looks of it either!

I'm glad! ^_^

Oof, I'm sorry to read that things went so sour!

I was never really a part of the fan-community, so I never encountered whatever issues may have cropped up there, I'm glad to say.

As to Serious Sam 3... given what I've previously said about glory kills, etc., you might guess that my interest in that game is minimal.

Especially with the sense of humour seeming to have headed towards Duke-Nukem-style vulgarity, if I recall correctly. (In the promotional material, at least.) One thing that I liked about The First- and Second- Encounters was that, while it had plenty of humour, it tended to not be that sort of humour—if I recall correctly, at least!

All of that seems like feature, not a bug, to me. :P

To my mind it adds some variety to the gameplay: fighting Arachnoids isn't always the same as fighting other foes. It's a matter of scrambling to find cover, of using their cooldowns, and sometimes of figuring out how to approach them.

I don't recall that bit offhand, but it sounds more like an issue of level-design—with how they used the Arachnoids—than a fundamental problem with those enemies, or with hitscanners in general.

Honestly, I'd say that the gameplay was fine, too. Not the best ever, but enjoyable. (And I'd say the same of the lighting, I think—but then, I recall that I actually liked the "gun or light, but not both" mechanic.)

I did like those, as I recall! It's a decent way to scatter some story around an FPS environment, I think.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Aug 19th 2019 at 9:37:21 PM

The thing is, even with executions in Serious Sam 3, it's so mechanically boring. You can just abuse it to erase an entire line of beheaded rocketeers or exploit it to get rid off numerous kleers. They took a way too serious approach (ironic given the name of the game ) and inserted a lot of swearing and... hear me out, I don't like how they altered the backstory as well. When Seriously! used to function before people made a discord server (there's one for almost everything under the sun) there was an extensive backstory which was... well written actually, for Serious Sam. It even showed Sam himself being so regretful and almost suicidal over what he has done. Come Serious Sam 3 and he's... uhh, typical gruff dude that doesn't react to end of the world too much. Gameplay stuff, it feels slower, there's less enemies, overuse of Real Is Brown (TFE had brown but it was bright and colorful with orange in as well and yellow!) and... okay this ain't Serious Sam thread but you get the idea. I feel they made such a step backwards after heavy backlash to Serious Sam II (I used to hate it so much but these days apart from horrible balancing it's a fun little title with colorful and awesome locations). I also saw Serious Sam 4 and... uhhh... meh.

Say, did you ever play a map for The Second Encounter called Military Decay by Unwary_Thief? It's awesome. It's 3 huge levels with nice level design and custom textures. I loved it.

My favorite tone of the game is in TFE and TSE, where the balance of humor and seriousness was on point. Serious Sam II swings too far in the former, Serious Sam 3 too far in the latter (with some humor).

Yeah on some of the areas and sections in the games, they're so... brutal from the usual pace where there are difficult encounters but can handle them. Like on Hard and Serious difficulty, there's the final section of an Aztec level where you're in a room that has bouncing pads. And you have to fight suicidal frogs and kamikazes as they also bounce around chasing you! It's so hard to aim.

Edited by Dhiruxide on Aug 19th 2019 at 2:17:59 PM

Ah, I'm sorry to read that the game itself suffered so! :/ I don't think that I looked too much into it, perhaps as a result of having been already turned away by the elements that I mentioned, so I had little impression of how it felt to play.

As to that map, I don't believe so! I honestly haven't played many maps or mods in general. I suppose that I tend to stick to the base game and official expansions for the most part, with occasional excursions into community-made stuff.

I did love the tone of The First- and Second- encounters: funny, but not particularly vulgar, and without being too wacky for the most part.

As to that Aztec level—hah, that I do remember! That was a tough room, as I recall! o_o

But as you say, this isn't the Serious Sam thread, so perhaps let's leave this little derail for now! ^^;

So, uh, I recently played through Resource Ops in Doom (2016)'s Arcade Mode. Racked up over a million points. I reckon, if I hadn't fooled around so much, I would have gotten a silver medal.

So what is the arcade mode like? I just know of the regular playthrough. And you get any cool cosmetic stuff in arcade mode unrelated to multiplayer?

I've got a five-minute clip of it, if you're interested, I just gotta upload it.

EDIT: Ahaha, here we go!

Edited by G2BattleConvoy on Aug 22nd 2019 at 8:49:01 PM

Yeah that would be pretty great after my official Nightmare playthrough. I'd not challenge anyone but myself tho lol :P

I gotta ask... before DOOM, was there any work, any piece of media depicting cybernetic demons? Demons that augment themselves with magic or manipulating flesh to fuse, or scientists augmenting demons and more. Warhammer 40k daemons are more like spirits who possess machines rather than augmenting themselves.

I can't think of any example predating DOOM, it's DOOM that really had mythical, supernatural demons fussed with scientific technology. Flesh and wires and stuff.

Cyberdemon being iconic, having exposed wires running vertically through his abdomen, metallic cybernetic leg and of course a rocket launcher Arm Cannon. There's also the Spider Mastermind. DOOM II carries it on with revenants and mancubi, then you have Icon Of Sin and many, many textures with wires going through skins or flesh or whatever.

Edited by Dhiruxide on Aug 23rd 2019 at 9:51:27 PM