Doom Eternal: Reboot sequel is cluttered but we're only here for the rippin' and the tearin' Greetings, traveller, and welcome back to The Register Plays Games, our monthly gaming column. What a time to be childless, huh? You young, care-free things have stacks of box sets and video games to plough through while we're all stuck indoors fearing for our lives and those of our loved ones. Unfortunately, my lockdown has …
Start the game, spawn on the field, take a step, die because I stepped on a landmine.
Respawn, pick a different direction, take a step, die because a sniper is slaughtering anyone respawning there.
Respawn, duck, pick a different direction, take a step, get run over by a tank.
Respawn, duck, look around in a full 360, notice some good cover a bit off to one side, start to run for it, get turned into chunky salsa because the guy teaching me how to play the damned thing drops arty on my ass.
Respawn, dive to the side, roll up to a kne- die when the grenade someone threw at me lands at my feet.
Respawn, wait... wait... wait... nothing happens, take a step, oh look! another landmine.
*Sigh*
I suck so bad at FPS games that I shouldn't even be allowed to play them in the first place.
Anyone up for a game of NetHac-
*gets eaten by the dragon*
DAMN IT!
... which is why I don't do multi-player, unless it's co-op or player vs environment (PvE) rather than player vs player (PvP). getting killed within 5 seconds of starting by someone who's playing in adult diapers and an IV feed of caffiene who's doing it for the lulz because they are waiting for their ultra-super-mega hardcore raid to start makes me want to box the game back up and demand a refund.
To leave your own apartment on GTA, you must be on *PASSIVE MODE* and call your MOBILE OPERATIONS CENTER aka MOC, which can withstand 63 homing missiles shot by the god-damned "mk2 Oppressor" flying bike - which only carry 20 at a time.
And then get headshot by a sniper if you are not on passive, because armed vehicles don't allow passive mode after 30 seconds.
Then you boot the game in "invite only" mode, or the ever popular "public solo mode" where you freeze your gta5.exe process on memory for 15 seconds and it drops all the other players from your game.
"Then you boot the game in "invite only" mode, or the ever popular "public solo mode" where you freeze your gta5.exe process on memory for 15 seconds and it drops all the other players from your game."
NETSPLIT!! The same effect can be had on Xbox One by testing the network connection while the game is running :)
I enjoyed Wolfstein, Doom Classic and Duke Nukem, am re-enjoying Doom Classic on a Raspberry Pi, but don't much care for modern variants and their so-called improvements; skillz, jumping, crawling, strategy - Fuck that. Kill, kill, kill, blat, blat, blat!
Now that's what I call music. Respawn, repeat.
For me it's my version of beating the crap out of a punch bag. Everyone needs some light relief. Mindless, senseless violence, then back to the real world where things are a whole lot more complicated.
I was that sniper......
Stopped playing on line when the cost of the vital graphics card for the pc was more than the cost of a playstation...... Call of Duty upgrade to Modern Warefare I think was the final straw.
Just found that old pc in my garage - mobo dead with split 'tators......
ALGOL?, SNOBOL.. I remember the days when I was interning in !979. Main was Honeywell with 9 tape tape drives. I was on an emulator project to update am OS that was too old. Fun City. I worked for Honeywell Bull at that time. System admin was so impressed with me, he wanted me to go back to Sweden with him. Meet his daughter. Why didn't I go? I think he just loved my JCL and wanted to improve the gene pool. LOL Also I remember drum drives. Thats right, rotating satellite looking things in a sealed off room.
FPS? Yes I played my share. I remember one update that added splash damage to the mix so you could aim at walls across from the other player and get a kill with rockets My fav FPS was Falcon 4 with multiple screens. A monochrome monitor served as a radar screen, the other full screen display, flight FPS. Fun city if your dial up was any good. Lets not forget Mechwarrior...
I have originals and they play well in dosbox.
Also, I wouldn't call Duke 3d a clone. It brought a level of dimensionality that was sorely missing in the original Doom. You could actually jump! And rocket pack! and far better graphics. Not to detract from Doom at all. Still an all time classic!
And Blood. lol. Parental warning because of all the blood! Kill those occultists!
"Also, I wouldn't call Duke 3d a clone. It brought a level of dimensionality that was sorely missing in the original Doom"
Yup - and don't forget about the half-naked strippers in the nightclub...and if you found the right hidden section, Duke could be found singing "Born to be wild" with sound coing through the speakers...
Duke also spoke many humerous phrases at various times through the game, something that Doomguy didn't get to do properly.
Doom and Doom 2 on DOS. Great fun was had. I also liked the fact I could wander around and explore and look for hidden rooms. I also wrote numerous add-on levels for Doom 2 which my colleagues had fun playing.
Tried Doom 3 but it just seemed to be non-stop fighting while locked in a corridor or room, mainly with me getting killed a lot and having to redo again and again ad-nauseum. I miss the lack of a proper save feature and the chance to wander around without getting killed every ten seconds. I got bored with it in the end and abandoned the game. I gather that Doom Eternal is more of the same, so I won't be buying it.
I've taken a liking to games with more plot and the chance to explore; open world games like "The Outer Worlds" and "The Stranding". Still plenty of combat, but the games are more rounded and satisfying to play.
Oh my, it seems the comment section here is even more "seasoned" than I was already expecting! </oldmenjokes>
You're right with Doom 3, they did try to go a different direction with it into survival/horror. Still had some good mechanics tho, the touchscreens were a dream to use, showed us how "every game should do it" if you are going force players to interact with in-game computers.
But what's more interesting to me is the number of comments still praising 1 & 2! Yes they are the de-facto standard, but nostalgia is blinding at times. The way people talk here, you'd think they just played an original Doom session last week! I'm curious as to how many actually have it set up in any capacity, or actually played it within the past year. Especially-old games look terrible on an HD monitor, leaving you to go digging around storage to find your old "just for troubleshooting" low-res monitor, because it makes it look better (like how you remember). Slowly, some of the modern game advancements become apparent: tank controls! You can't even strafe, and suddenly the run-and-gun demon blasting "memory", you realize, was really more of a fantasy, of only your best-ever moments mashed together and viewed from a 10 ft. distance with only the rosiest of glasses.
I'm surprised there's not more stories like this. Nearly everyone I've talked to who has indeed ventured out to their storage, dusted off their old kit, and followed-through hooking it up and starting a game, has always said the same thing, "Don't do it!" I'm saying the same thing! These comments seem suspiciously rosy to me, but it's not a challenge, it's a warning, you'll ultimately regret ruining that perfect memory of "my favorite game ever." Facing reality ain't always fun.
INSTEAD, I recommend Doom 2016. It's truly back-to-basics of running n' gunning, shoot everything with big guns until it dies, and adds a literal 'rip and tear' mechanic that even the grouchiest of old farts will enjoy. The maps are large and bright, there are plenty of exploration items and secrets hidden everywhere. It'll be cheaper now that Doom Eternal has released, and while 2016 did add a few new mechanics, still has less mechanics than what they've added for Eternal. Ultimately the best thing about all Doom games is the modern mechanics they remove: no reloading, no 'sprinting' (you're always sprinting!), no aiming: just point & shoot, run, and keep shooting some more. The best accolade one could give is if the modern play-thru matches the nostalgic fantasy in your head, and with modern Doom, the answer for me is "close enough". In your head you like to think the original is better, but in reality you know if you actually tried to play that instead, it would make you miserable. Don't do that. Get a newer version of the game, and keep telling yourself "it's not as good as the first one, but gets the job done"! Trust me, it's always disappointing to find out the truth for sure. The modern games are pretty good, people.
I play both, along with Duke Nukem 3D and a few other games, quite regularly on DOSbox on my laptop.
Anyone who pre-ordered Doom Eternal also gets a free download of Doom 64, and there's an easter egg in Eternal where you can play the original 2 games similar to the vintge levels in the 2016 game.
> You're right with Doom 3, they did try to go a different direction with it into survival/horror. Still had some good mechanics tho, the touchscreens were a dream to use, showed us how "every game should do it" if you are going force players to interact with in-game computers.
If I remember correctly, someone actually released a mod which let you play the original Doom on the in-sceen monitors. But annoyingly, nothing's showing up when I search, other than a few people who remember the same thing.
> But what's more interesting to me is the number of comments still praising 1 & 2! Yes they are the de-facto standard, but nostalgia is blinding at times. The way people talk here, you'd think they just played an original Doom session last week! I'm curious as to how many actually have it set up in any capacity, or actually played it within the past year
I can't remember for certain when I last fired Doom up, but it was probably in the last 12 months. I've also been having a blast on Duke Nukem 3D, and I'm currently doing an extended playthrough of a heavily modded Fallout New Vegas, since it's a perfect timesink during these lockdown times.
I've also fairly recently fired up games like HL2, and after the recent article about Command and Conquer, that's on the list for a replay as well.
Though to be fair, I'm probably more of a retro-gamer than the average Reg reader ;)
> Slowly, some of the modern game advancements become apparent: tank controls! You can't even strafe, and suddenly the run-and-gun demon blasting "memory", you realize, was really more of a fantasy, of only your best-ever moments mashed together and viewed from a 10 ft. distance with only the rosiest of glasses.
Are you sure you're talking about Doom? Because you can strafe in Doom. In fact, it was safer to continually strafe, as (thanks to a relatively simple physics model and a bit of ol' Pythagoras's theorems), you travelled faster when moving diagonally. And while it was originally designed around keyboard-only control, it did offer mouselook, which pro-gamers swiftly migrated to.
To be fair, in many ways, video games have drastically improved over the years. Controls are more consistent, user interfaces are more intuitive and developers have generally learned a lot about which gameplay mechanisms are actually fun and how to balance gameplay.
But on the other hand, they've also had a lot more stuff bolted onto them, which can often result in an arguably worse gameplay experience. Microtransactions and DLC are two prime examples, but another facet is that games often feature more mechanisms than their older brethren, as well as more complicated gameplay. Jack of all trades, master of none.
E.g. Fallout 4 had a much heavier emphasis on crafting (and settlement creation) as compared to Fallout NV. And compare the gameplay and tech tree for Command and Conquer to more modern clickfest RTS games such as Starcraft II and the Dawn of War series.
Conversely, the original Doom focused on pure run-and-gun gameplay, and managed to pretty much perfectly accomplish this within the limits of the available technology of the time. Run, shoot, press buttons and take on hordes of enemies who could /mostly/ be taken out with a single shotgun blast if you were skillful enough.
Doom 3 was something of a step back from this, partly because iD was trying to make a more cinematic experience and also because 3D technology just wasn't up to the job of combining highly detailed environments with hordes of enemies. To be fair, it was atmospheric and a pretty impressive technical achievement, but it's like comparing the Alien and Aliens films; one's a thriller-horror while the other's an action movie.
Doom 2016? It was a welcome step back to the faster and more brutal gameplay of the original, but at least for me, I just couldn't get into it. Mostly because of the Glory Kill mechanism; having to stop moving to trigger a distinctly repetitive canned animation quickly got old.
So, yeah. There's a lot of games which are best left to gently decay amid the sands of time. Doom isn't one of them.
"I also wrote numerous add-on levels for Doom 2 which my colleagues had fun playing."
But did you release them into the wild, or keep them for your co-workers.
I still have maybe half a dozen CDROMs, (bought from Unica who I think was based in Stockport?) of shareware Doom WAD levels...some were pretty good and some were very simple....
There were even a few compy magazines from the time that "gave away" WADs on their cover mounted CDROMs.
Some of the WADs I released via a magazine. I've still got them backed up somewhere, around twenty or so if I remember correctly. Some fairly long and with unique challenges. The tricky bit was always ensuring that the player couldn't get stuck in a catch-22 situation where they were left alive but unable to complete the WAD, so if they fell and got trapped down a pit for example, it had to be radioactive so they died anyway.
Loved the first 2. Doom 3 was more Alien to the first 2's Aliens though, closer to horror/survival than the run and gun roots of the series.
Lots to like about Eternal for me, and lots to hate. It got a bit repetitive for me at times, massive arena fight then move on through some puzzles to the next massive arena fight. The puzzles were just annoying to me, rather than the old style Doom method of finding keys and switches to progress there were loads of jumping/platform style sections with really erratic mechanics (particularly the ones with the chain of circles to boost you the next platform in one level) so almost all of my extra life power ups were lost to repeated falls rather than combat.
Good array of weapons though, good level design, as always sterling work from Mick Gordon on the soundtrack (also did Doom 2016 and the recent Wolfenstein games among others) and some new twists on old enemies and bosses kept it mostly interesting. Might end up trying the Battlezone mode as well, purely because I don't have much else to do right now like everyone else.
It looks positively gorgeous, not going to say the contrary, but if I have to study a shooter in order to use all its functionalities, that is no longer a game for me.
Diablo III is my limit, where options are concerned. I know my favs and why I want them, and that's how I play.
This game sounds like a lot of trial and error and frustration before being able to breeze through the levels. With Wolfenstein it was press mouse button, shoot baddies. I like that.
This game sounds like it was made for all the FPS hardcore aficionados who have been playing nothing but for the past two decades and need something more to chew on.
So I'll leave this one to all the Master Sergeants out there.
I'm pretty much the same, but I'm at the final stage (I think) of the final boss (I think) and yes it's a bloody handful (skullful?) to keep track of all the resource management stuff when some arsehole Summoner is flooding the place until you find the git, but just whack it on easy and it's OK. Not easy, but OK.
I recently bought the new DOOM offering off of STEAM, NOT DOOM Eternal, just the basic version :o)
anyway, I USED to play this years back, was never much good, but it WAS great fun, hence buying the new version now
so far, I wake strapped to a table, struggle to get OFF table = first hour ffs
getting off table, moving around room, it is SO DAMN DARK HERE ffs :o)
I really need to go back into the settings and brighten it up a bit
so, am now off the table and moving round the room, find and kill first bad guys / demons = another hour
at present I am FIVE HOURS IN, I am STILL in the same GODDAMN ROOM
this is NOT how I remember it
although, if truth be told, it may well actually be exactly how it was way back when
conclusion = I REALLY suck at FPS :o)
When I decided to go completely solid-state and low-powered in my systems at home, I reached a point where I knew that gaming had to change too and couldn’t run anything overly graphically intensive. So started about looking for doom mods that could provide something new within this spec.
What I found was Brutal Doom, specifically this version (https://www.moddb.com/mods/recurring-nightmare/downloads/brutal-doom-hell-on-earth-starter-pack).
If you consider the inclusion of a rifle with scope, grenades and flamethrower, plus blast-mode on the plasma rifle, there’s enough variety there to compare to the new offerings.
Sergeant Mark IV also added a few new bosses, kick-arse metal soundtrack and the original pace of the game with puzzles and intrigue.
If you want something of a mish-mash of old vs new, I fully recommend this mod, it will breathe new life into the originals, without changing too much.
Yep, platforming was my only serious complaint with Doom Eternal. I just had to keep playing. After a few hours I learned the controls and could start enjoying the battles. Best part is there is no need to follow the story, kill anything that moves is still all that is needed.
... but a bit cautious about Doom Eternal. Mostly because it looks like they've just added in fluff for the sake of it. Personally, Doom 2016 but with minor tweaks and the new setting/story would have sufficed for me. But - I'll reserve final judgement until I have played it. Waiting for sales, as I always do. :)
On the reminiscing front, I was an Amiga boy, and I can very clearly remember looking on with envy at friends playing Wolfenstein and, later, Doom - which absolutely blew my mind. It was Doom actually that pulled me away from buying an Amiga 1200 into the world of PCs. I have massively nostalgic memories of late nights playing that game, and how atmospheric it was. I'm not sure if it would feel like that today of course, but, still - nice memory.
I recently purchased second hand copies for the PS3 of Doom 3: BFG Edition and Wolfenstein: The New Order and while I used to be absolutely hopeless on a PC, I'm even more hopeless on a console :(
Strangely I'm even really disappointed by the graphics which are pretty good but I actually was hoping for equivalent of the 90's PC versions!
DooM 64 is good. Damnable hard end boss though.
DooM Eternal is not great. I will start by caveating that I loved DooM 2016 (or DooM 3 if you prefer) and loved it. I still occasionally replay it on arcade mode and even managed to finish it on Ultra Nightmare (permadeath - deletes your save game!).
DooM Eternal, though, to my mind, became very tedious, very quickly. The whole need to kill to get ammo, health etc means it is non stop slog with very little time to take a breath.
The parkour type levels just ruin the flow and add unnecessary complexity - there's an entire later level where you have to double-jump, then boost (and often then shoot or shoulder a target, or grab to hold) at that point, the thing you're holding starts to fall and you have almost no time to plan where to go next. Death becomes an inevitability).
Even the bosses become a combination of shoot the same area repeatedly or until something flashes then dash in and hit them.
It is also terribly easy to spend a long time scratching your head what you need to do to open a door or empty a pool or crash a statue and it stalls the
Beautiful graphics but really not great game play.
These comments are scaring me about Eternal. Original Portal is my limit for Platforming nonsense. Couldn't stand Portal 2 (or rather, I resorted to looking up solutions). If there is more of the same platforming nonsense rather than run-and-gun they have missed what Doom is.
I'll wait for it to appear on sale; and then, really I'd rather wait on a Linux release too (hah!)
Regarding the low ammo supply, I recall from a 1995 guide on how to make a good Doom.WAD, including the observation that making a player hurt for ammo completely is not fun. Making a particular type of ammo rare in certain areas is fun, for it requires improvisation where you can't use the ideal tool for the job all the time.
Bethesda obviously didn't read that guide if you have to fall back to hand-to-hand too much. On the plus side, Quest Markers while superficially "not doom", for those that remember Doom before memorising all of the maps; the horrible 90-minutes+ sessions looking for a switch with no enemies to deal with. Such circumstances usually resulted in typing in IDSPISPOPD, IDCLIP or maybe even IDCLEVxx. Doom E3M6 and E3M7 were specially bad for this - and almost all of Doom 2 past M8 or 9 ish. Hexen, with it's massive sprawling hubs was even worse in this regard.
A lot of reviews slated Doom3. Give it a go. Really, the only thing wrong with it is the sucky multiplayer, that a lot of reviewers hated on. The singleplayer campaign is very decent even if very linear.
ID used to also make a point of Linux releases of everything, as well as source code. Getting rather annoyed by Bethesda/ID's new policy of Windows only. The Doom 3 source is a work of art and a shining example of elegant coding practise. That a mere mortal like me can not only open it but read and understand significant chunks of it is a real achievement. Well worth learning from. I would hazard a guess with how glitchy Bethesda games are in general the more recent attempts are not nearly so elegant.
There is also the not so minor point, that any idiot 12 year old (myself included) could pick up Doom, a wad editor and dehacked to make their own content; arguably, more fun than the game itself. Shotguns with reload times faster than the chaingun. Or altering sprite sequences so that enemies transmogrify from one species to another on eliminating them. Let's be honest you could throw the dev tools out in the open for any title from the last 15 years and not be able to get started with such fun nearly so easily.
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