the first person shooter game thread (eew fps)

[Lander]

Didn't get round to playing it, but I remember thinking Prodeus' many-angle enemy sprites looked shockingly high-tech. Like, extra rotations for vertical viewpoints and such - really impressive.

[Lemnear]

CoD on the Wii was a superior experience to any FPS on a normal console (there were even some PS3 games with the Move controller, like Resistance 3).
Being able to aim like in a rail-shooter at any part of the screen without having to move the camera, but being able to move freely like in an FPS is priceless

Agreed. Once you get it dialed in, aiming on the Wii is precise.

It's a shame there weren't more high quality FPS releases on the Wii. I remember not liking the WW2 CoD. Is Black Ops better?

Surprisingly, Red Steel 2 manages to somehow combine swordplay and shooting/turning with the controller very well. It's too bad the devs couldn't marry their game engine, basic controls/mechanics, and art design to a compelling game. I can just waggle spam through the game and I don't remember very much, besides how much I liked the look and feel of the game. I still want to boot it up again, though. It's got style.

The Conduit games were a missed opportunity. Who thought crawling along hunting invisible bombs was a good idea?

I remember liking the Wii James Bond game and Metroid Prime games the best. The Metroid Prime games in particular feel natural with the wiimote. (Other M shall not be mentioned.) In fact, I'm not sure I want to go back to using a control stick for MP. I might skip the next one

I'm sure this has come up in the thread, but there's really nothing worse than aiming in the first person with a stick. It's inferior to a mouse and even the wiimote.

Everyone says that the mouse is the best thing for FPS, but in my opinion it depends on the game, things like Halo and Destiny are clearly designed for a normal pad and not for the mouse, also i hate the hysterical and spastic movements of the mouse in FPS
While the WiiMote (and as little and poorly used as it as, even the PS Move) were the best choice, basically a light-gun incorporated into a controller
Maybe that's why i like the first two Lost Planet so much too, even if they didn't have any motion controller, that aiming system was truly unique.

[Air Master Burst]

Anyone bitching about twin stick controllers clearly never suffered through fps games on N64 or Dreamcast.

Pro level play has repeatedly proven that mouse is the superior control option without aim assist.

[it290]

Didn't get round to playing it, but I remember thinking Prodeus' many-angle enemy sprites looked shockingly high-tech. Like, extra rotations for vertical viewpoints and such - really impressive.

Would recommend giving it a go if you're a boomer shooter fan. It plays very much like an amalgam of DOOM and Quake. I wouldn't put it at Dusk's level, but it's not far below, and the aesthetic does a lot for the game—the visual nail it, but so does the music, and game's shotgun is an all-timer.

[XoPachi]

For the last 15 years, I was so incredibly over zombie shit that wasn't Resident Evil so I just skipped everything. Now that it's taken a back seat these days, I finally got around to playing Left 4 Dead 2.
L4D's gameplay is so simple and stays replayable through subtle, tasteful randomization. It's also extremely pick up and play in nature. I don't need to get into it. I'm sure you all know this game better than me.

What IS interesting to me is how astoundingly hard Back 4 Blood missed the mark despite claiming it's a "successor". If I had to make a case against RPG elements being thrown into action games, this would be the first comparison I'd make.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Anyone bitching about twin stick controllers clearly never suffered through fps games on N64 or Dreamcast.

Pro level play has repeatedly proven that mouse is the superior control option without aim assist.

Descent is a game that, originally, doesn't allow flick aiming. I think some fanmade source ports allow you to spin 180 degrees on a dime with the mouse as a control option. It plays quite well when setup with twin stick controllers, and I think it's actually my preferred way to play it as well as Descent-likes such as Sublevel Zero. Something that's a strictly 2D environment with no or minimal up/down aim also works fine for a controller (something like Doom, Wolfenstein, and so on).

But for something like Quake, particularly in a PvP multiplayer setting, then yeah, mouse control is superior.

[Austin]

As an avid fan of real twin stick shooters, I don't follow.

Superhot and Arizona Sunshine have gameplay that is similar to a twin stick shooter when you akimbo two guns. There's others as well. I can't shoot in any direction playing Doom or any other standard first person game I can think of. The control scheme doesn't allow it.

I'm not shilling for VR, but that's really the only way to play a twin stick shooter in the first person.

Doom's basic mechanics feel more like the overhead sequences in Contra 3.

Define a "real" twin stick shooter? Is it the control method? Is it the chaotic nature of the gameplay? Must it have a top down view?

To me, the core of this shooting sub-genre is moving in any direction with one control element, aiming in any direction with another, and being able to do both at the same time. It doesn't matter if it's two joysticks, a keyboard and a mouse, switching shooting directions instantly (ala Robotron) versus rotating your aim along an invisible wheel (ala FPS titles or other more modernized twin stick shooters).

Honestly, Contra 3's top-down levels basically are twin stick shooters, heh. Sure, you don't have the flexibility of Robotron, but the concept is in the same ballpark.

And listen, if someone came up to me and was like, "Hey, what are your favorite twin stick shooters?", I wouldn't for a second put DOOM in the same conversation, as opposed to focusing on stuff like Robotron, Smash TV, Total Carnage, Nex Machina, etc. But I think it's still important to take note of similarities and where things evolved from over time. What genres and sub genres took influence or specific mechanics from others. And the fact is, a lot of our first-person and third-person action/shooters evolved from these examples in the past.

To add on to this, id never made a twin-stick shooter, and the closest thing to an arcade title they did before Doom was probaby Commander Keen, which isn't very arcadey at all..

The founding id software members made a ton of games on their own prior to their meetup, and a lot of games together under the Softdisk label. There's a bunch of more simplistic action/arcade style titles if you dig into their backlog.

Also I'm pretty sure Doom evolved from Wolfenstein 3D.

Indeed it did. And Wolfenstein 3D evolved from Catacomb 3D and Hovertank One. Catacomb 3D evolved from Catacomb, a top-down Gauntlet-style game. Etc., etc. Things don't just pop up out of nowhere in a vacuum. They evolve from many places and inspirations.

[orange808]

Yes. Top down and third person are my definition of twin stick.

Contra 3 overhead doesn't provide the ability to fire in any direction. It feels like driving a tank. In simple terms, Commando ain't Robotron. Contra 3 improved on Super C and made it better, but it's still not Smash TV. If a buffalo herd came after Billy, he couldn't handle it.

Top down view or VR are really the only way to significantly decouple the user viewport from the aiming mechanics. Top down is particularly effective because I can see everything from the third person--and look where I'm going and at what I'm shooting. In VR, I can point my controller and pivot naturally (and quickly) with tower sensors, but the frame rate, lack of peripheral vision, small physical play space, and movement controls still make it difficult.

[BIL]

Contra 3 overhead doesn't provide the ability to fire in any direction. It feels like driving a tank.

Fittingly enough, with those stages being pretty much Namco's Assault. Just streamlined for SFC pad, and tuned for a twitchier on-foot aesthetic, ofc. That game's ACA release has a simplified input method that's accordingly not unlike Contra III, though the titanic heft (and accordingly more deliberate enemy movement) remains.

I'd love to ask Nakazato and company if they were into Namco's game. I think they might've made a damn fine SFC interpretation/sequel; arcade-sim controls and all, considering Libble Rabble (and Super Smash TV)'s use of the face buttons as a surrogate Right Stick. (LR even has a cute bundled rubber overlay for the buttons, works great in STV too)

(this is reminding me of that Konami arcade proto, said to play like a knockoff of Assault sibling Metal Hawk, a brawny board still tricky to emulate to this day... dammit, can't find a link offhand. Haze was talking about it not long ago, I'll hunt it down so this fond tangent doesn't end on a clanger EDIT: aha, here it is)

re: id, I always find it jarring in hindsight that Wolf3D has fine-turning mouse controls - the manual even recommends them, and you can tell the demo players are using them - yet lacks dedicated [strafe left] and [strafe right] keys. Just an awkward "hold Shift to strafe." Total gamechanger, adding "," and "." to DOOM, easily reconfigged to the corresponding arrow keys. I'm cool with Commando/Kiki et al, but I get why some just can't condone their inability to train fire on a target while evading reprisals.

[Air Master Burst]

Honestly, Contra 3's top-down levels basically are twin stick shooters, heh. Sure, you don't have the flexibility of Robotron, but the concept is in the same ballpark.

Yes, and Mario 64 is just Sonic 3D Blast and Dark Souls is just Zelda. All subgenres are meaningless.

Define a "real" twin stick shooter? Is it the control method? Is it the chaotic nature of the gameplay? Must it have a top down view?

Yes; no; yes (although isometric is also acceptable).

The founding id software members made a ton of games on their own prior to their meetup, and a lot of games together under the Softdisk label. There's a bunch of more simplistic action/arcade style titles if you dig into their backlog.

None of them were twin-stick shooters or anything close, which I assume you're well aware of, or else you would've named them. The most arcadey game they ever did was probably either Dangerous Dave or Slordax, and neither of them were remotely close to a twin-stick shooter.

Indeed it did. And Wolfenstein 3D evolved from Catacomb 3D and Hovertank One. Catacomb 3D evolved from Catacomb, a top-down Gauntlet-style game.

None of those games even follow your own lax definition of twin-stick shooter, as you can't aim anywhere but forward.

[Marc]

Restarted Dusk, because default difficulty was just too mild for the vibe. I'm on the 4th of 5 now, and goddamn this is good. It just gets everything right, with some incredibly designed secrets. I enjoyed Ion Fury, but this is another level.

[Daytime Waitress]

Restarted Dusk, because default difficulty was just too mild for the vibe. I'm on the 4th of 5 now, and goddamn this is good. It just gets everything right, with some incredibly designed secrets. I enjoyed Ion Fury, but this is another level.

Good call on the difficulty switch up.
I Can Take It is a nice, cosy clear, but doesn't really bare teeth except at two points where enemy numbers are upped significantly.
And like you've realised, because it's well designed, the game is not gonna throw that at you until well after you've absolutely got the fundamentals down.
Cero Miedo is pretty consistently spicy, though.
And Duskmare is... its own thing.
OHK's are not how I personally want to play an FPS, but for people that like that sort of thing, that's the sort of thing those people like.

[Lander]

Well, max difficulty having some obnoxious gimmick is something of a boom shoot tradition at this point
One that haunts Romero's Doom mapping to this day, judging by Sigil's UV layouts!

Odd that Quake didn't do the same, now I think on it. Though Nightmare is its own strange thing in that game, since enemies like to spam attacks that make them stand still.

I recall putting together a fun little map hack showcase at one point, full of weird shit you can break the vanilla QuakeC code into doing with a bit of map editor abuse. A "Secure Qontain Protect" level, if you will
And one of the entries was an Ogre with even stupider grenade aggression and fire rate; incapable of movement, but quite able to flood the room with explosive death.
I should slap some textures on that and finish it up sometime, really - there's an elaborate visual gag stemming from the unholy union of Spawn AI and Ranger model ID in there that deserves to see the light of day.

[Daytime Waitress]

When I first got into PC gaming, Quake was the first thing I bought and I remember demo discs on magazines blowing my mind with mods and machinima that showcased creativity and general stupidity alike.
So you should absolutely post them

Despite being the first PC game I bought, I never actually ran through it completely, let alone on Nightmare, until the re-release adopted Copper's modifications.
The 50HP cap meant some spots were a bit peek-and-shoot, but it also added a great deal of tension and I felt the changes were for the better overall.
Having not completed it in vanilla, I'm probably not the best judge of that, but it held my attention through the campaign and both expansions (fuck that dragon, btw) for the first time in over two decades, so there's that.

[ExitPlanetDust]

While the WiiMote (and as little and poorly used as it as, even the PS Move) were the best choice, basically a light-gun incorporated into a controller

Ahh the Move. Your post reminds me of this guy’s hilarious Move attachment mod to dominate in the Socom beta.

[Lemnear]

While the WiiMote (and as little and poorly used as it as, even the PS Move) were the best choice, basically a light-gun incorporated into a controller

Ahh the Move. Your post reminds me of this guy’s hilarious Move attachment mod to dominate in the Socom beta.

Well after all it is better to aim like in Rail-Shooter rather than move the whole camera because the center of the camera is the weapon pointer.
If i had to imagine a Rail-Shooter aiming like a normal FPS it would seem silly.
It seems like we are stuck (for FPS) in the original Doom & Co. model even if there were alternative ways to aim (Lost Planet for example).

[Lander]

Despite being the first PC game I bought, I never actually ran through it completely, let alone on Nightmare, until the re-release adopted Copper's modifications.
The 50HP cap meant some spots were a bit peek-and-shoot, but it also added a great deal of tension and I felt the changes were for the better overall.
Having not completed it in vanilla, I'm probably not the best judge of that, but it held my attention through the campaign and both expansions (fuck that dragon, btw) for the first time in over two decades, so there's that.

OG Nightmare was a pretty fun experience when I did a similar full run; likely in part because Q3 retroactively changed the movement proposition forever, and projectile-happy baddies feed nicely into the turbo strafehop model.

Shame that Carmack's naive projective velocity optimization has fallen out of vogue, it was always fun to boot up an unrelated game and discover that the same old tricks still work. Especially Thief Gold - nothing quite so satisfying as doing huge ninja leaps between patches of plush carpet and snagging a key off Benny's belt in midair.

I give the dragon a couple of points for originality, since Armagon ended up being a stompy circle-strafe sponge, though it definitely had a Quake was not designed for this feel to it the little gun-stealing gremlins got most of my ire, since a missing rocket launcher is grounds to shit yourself!

It seems like we are stuck (for FPS) in the original Doom & Co. model even if there were alternative ways to aim (Lost Planet for example).

Unfortunately, yeah. There are occasional outliers like ReCore that embrace soft-lock and focus on movement, but the industry has glommed hard onto the local-minima solution.
Shame, since gyro controllers are a prime opportunity to reintroduce Wii-style detached aiming on top of traditional right stick rotation, but nobody is remotely interested in actually putting it in their game.

[Marc]

Restarted Dusk, because default difficulty was just too mild for the vibe. I'm on the 4th of 5 now, and goddamn this is good. It just gets everything right, with some incredibly designed secrets. I enjoyed Ion Fury, but this is another level.

Good call on the difficulty switch up.
I Can Take It is a nice, cosy clear, but doesn't really bare teeth except at two points where enemy numbers are upped significantly.
And like you've realised, because it's well designed, the game is not gonna throw that at you until well after you've absolutely got the fundamentals down.
Cero Miedo is pretty consistently spicy, though.
And Duskmare is... its own thing.
OHK's are not how I personally want to play an FPS, but for people that like that sort of thing, that's the sort of thing those people like.

On EP10 abd it just keeps getting better. There's been a couple of closets that are almost instant death if you're unaware, but I've gotten into the habit of autosaving after big encounters so never really lost much progress. Atmosphere is consistently incredible.

[Daytime Waitress]

Glad to hear you're loving it, Marc!
I don't mean to hype it too much for you (although your experience seems to match mine and Lander's expectations!), but that consistent atmosphere is about to explode off into a lot of weird and wonderful directions.

Despite being the first PC game I bought, I never actually ran through it completely, let alone on Nightmare, until the re-release adopted Copper's modifications.
The 50HP cap meant some spots were a bit peek-and-shoot, but it also added a great deal of tension and I felt the changes were for the better overall.
Having not completed it in vanilla, I'm probably not the best judge of that, but it held my attention through the campaign and both expansions (fuck that dragon, btw) for the first time in over two decades, so there's that.

OG Nightmare was a pretty fun experience when I did a similar full run; likely in part because Q3 retroactively changed the movement proposition forever, and projectile-happy baddies feed nicely into the turbo strafehop model.

I keep meaning to go back and give it a proper go, but every time I boot up Ironwail I keep falling back into A Million Other Quakemods instead.
Currently giving Meat Jam a look.
Bit unpolished, as with most community projects, but an earnest effort, and it's rad to see such a different texture pack in use.
Still not sure about the gameplay mods Quoth adds, but.

Shame that Carmack's naive projective velocity optimization has fallen out of vogue, it was always fun to boot up an unrelated game and discover that the same old tricks still work. Especially Thief Gold - nothing quite so satisfying as doing huge ninja leaps between patches of plush carpet and snagging a key off Benny's belt in midair.

Was exactly what drew me to Dusk in the first place

I give the dragon a couple of points for originality, since Armagon ended up being a stompy circle-strafe sponge, though it definitely had a Quake was not designed for this feel to it the little gun-stealing gremlins got most of my ire, since a missing rocket launcher is grounds to shit yourself!

Armageddon Outtahere was less a demonstration of circle-strafing capabilities, and more a test to see if you could stay awake while he hoovered your entire supply of rockets; so, yeah, fair fucks to the Dragon for not being that

And I absolutely, unironically adore the gremlins: talented jobbers who were let down by terrible booking.
If I ever break away from hamfistedly mapping for OG Doom and actually pick up Trenchbroom, I'm gonna have to dedicate a map to the little bastards!

[Lethe]

The problem I always have with unmodded Quake Nightmare is how much of a pain in the ass it makes Grunts. Of course it's not much of a problem in the OG campaign but when you get into custom maps any amount of careless shotgun spam becomes highly irritating, it's like nobody grew out of the Plutonia stereotype. I don't have an issue with the original Voreball speed, just gives you an excuse to exploit movement tech to escape. Then you have something like Arcane Dimensions which removes most hitscan (and gives you the triple shotty) and suddenly Nightmare is dead easy.

I recently played the Copper pseudo-duo Underdark Overbright and The Punishment Due, and they're both full of carefully budgeted arenas, lowering or raising walls to transform spaces, enemy teleporters and jump scripts, cyclical level design that turns into one massive arena with a final enemy flood... at one point I instinctively backed up into an alcove to find that the game had spawned a single Scrag directly above my head as if to taunt me for being so predictable. Comparatively speaking, this is staggeringly advanced design; in the Doom scene, such things are widely used enough to be a fundamental part of decent mapping, but Quake mapping has lagged behind on gameplay evolution to a remarkable degree. The architectural showcases were impressive and continue to be impressive, but I have vanishingly little care for actually playing them.

[Daytime Waitress]

I recently played the Copper pseudo-duo Underdark Overbright and The Punishment Due, and they're both full of carefully budgeted arenas, lowering or raising walls to transform spaces, enemy teleporters and jump scripts, cyclical level design that turns into one massive arena with a final enemy flood... at one point I instinctively backed up into an alcove to find that the game had spawned a single Scrag directly above my head as if to taunt me for being so predictable. Comparatively speaking, this is staggeringly advanced design; in the Doom scene, such things are widely used enough to be a fundamental part of decent mapping, but Quake mapping has lagged behind on gameplay evolution to a remarkable degree. The architectural showcases were impressive and continue to be impressive, but I have vanishingly little care for actually playing them.

I can't give you an easy answer as to why the Doom community has endured, and stretched every potential boundary, and the Quake equivalent hasn't produced as many Valiants or Sunlusts or Going Downs or Eviternities or I legitimately could keep this up all day.

But that capacity and willingness to explore the complexity of combat scenario construction was absolutely at the forefront of my mind when I recently played through HROT. Not only did I concolude that the game was pretty damn amazing without that complexity, it also gave me a better appreciation of said complexity where it does exist, especially in a hobbyist context.

Put simply, an awful lot of HROT is "dudes in a box". They're always in satisfying pick 'n mix handfuls: projectile lobbers, projectile lobbers with projectiles so fast they're glorified hitscanners, melee, and flyers - all requiring a different approach per individual, per squad. But despite being blessed with a huge and individuated roster filled with complimentary roles and mechanics, combat is only really exceptional on the rare occasions it's given space to breathe. It almost always boils down to either:

- incidental combat in small rooms, maybe a closet pops, but you're typically dealing with less than a half-dozen dudes or;
- huge, empty, telegraphed, empty, flat arenas (quite literally with the ep1/2 bosses)

Occasionally you'll have flashes of flair: the lead-up to episode one's boss has this pitched battle on the massive, brutalist steps of a mausoleum, a bit of verticality and terrain variation welcome against everything that's come before. Both this and the game's Endless (horde) mode demonstrate why the majority of the combat is in discrete, horizontal, manageable chunks: enemy pathfinding has a heck of a time keeping up with the more mobile player if the latter isn't boxed in.

And that's fine - the game really does use suspense of impending fights and claustrophobia well.

But those flashes of complexity that can be seen in any given PWAD or the marathon running battles of nu-Doom's jungle gym excess?
They are present in some of HROT's bigger battles, and especially Endless map01 (which staples together two familiar campaign environments); and makes you wonder what a sequel or something further from this designer might look like (would be a shame to code a whole custom engine just for one title...)

The levels are similarly feast/famine and spend a lot of time knocking between "cramped, 64-unit-wide, 90-degree corner corridors" and "wide open spaces with not a lot in them". As both an homage to pre-'98 Doomclones and a commentary on the austerity of the Eastern Bloc, these elements perversely work in the game's favour.
"Why is this building laid out like this?"
"Why is there nothing here?"
Because USSR.
Because pre-Half Life video game logic.
Chuck both elements in a paint tin loaded up with beige, shake it up, and pour the abstracted consistency out across three episodes.

The game is simultaneously dusty and grimy and embedded in the concrete brutalism of the not-too-distant history and an ethereal nightmarescape where you're not sure if any of the metal gratings will actually give you tetanus because none of this can be real and why is the skybox wheeling like that? A drab, Soviet-era fever dream where you're conscious of an entire city existing outside the boundary of the map, but you can't experience nor see it because you exist only within this pollonium-soaked diorama.

Spoiler

And it was coded by one dude on a custom engine and no way is he gonna blow his draw distance on that.

This extends to pickup placement, too - why is there an abundance of health pickups and ammo in this sector, but none later in the level when you need it? Because The Party willed it. As both a mode of expression and geopolitical critique and a way to handwave any criticisms of game balance against an independent developer, it's critically impregnable. Dude's a goddamned genius.

Similarly, while the game gets memed on because it took the "Quake is brown" meme and ran it into the ground, when it lightens up and does add splashed of muted, dulled colour, they stand out all the more.
And although everything is (conscientiously?) flat, I personally found the texture work, particularly the blending, to be exceptionally well done.
You gotta if you're gonna make congested, interminable sewer systems navigable in any way.

I think the level design or progression never irritated me because it adheres to the one area that I value in older FPSes and custom Doom maps alike: the levels never overstayed their welcome. Pretty much all of them will be completed 10-20 min tops, and subsequent runs can be brought down to a matter of minutes.

When it does get out of the sewers or the water treatment plants or the filtration facilities, and gives you a proper glimpse of the tainted, abstracted Soviet nightmarescape that Spytinhev has created, HROT shines all the brighter because it has so many ideas per minute.
Between the Build-esque interactables and agitprop strewn around, the world feels both hollow and lived-in all at once - kind of what one might imagine a Soviet-era hellscape might feel like after an apocalyptic catastrophe.

And then there are the enemies I brought up at the top of this hagiography; a massive roster of around 50 abominations, each with their own distinct, if not overlapping roles and mechanics.
Practically every second level you'll have something introduced, given another level to see how they interact with familiar faces, and then - bam! - someone new comes along; and this is magnified by the subtle thematic shifts across each episode, with each chapter practically reskinning everything that has come before.

This is something that helps keep the game fresh in the face of - to be uncharitable - a lack of episodic distinctness. As a whole, the dreary, drab, muted palette DOES work wonders and as intended. But is this sewer or industrial corridor you're in beneath a castle, a power plant or a farm? It does tend to run together a bit too much.
Though that does, paradoxically, allow certain distinct sections to stand out: the hospital's textures may be the same as the butcher shop's... just cogitate on that for a bit... but it feels different enough.
The rustic castle that starts episode 2 is wide-open and has enough textural variation to make it feel different from the castle in ep 1. The Buildesque town that opens ep 3 feels fresh because of its extra attention to detailing.
Whilst evidently more common in the 2nd and 3rd episodes, these thematic excursions are standouts amidst and awful lot that runs togther - it just doesn't have the thematic variation and gradation of Dusk or even OG Doom.

So yeah, meeting new, consistently outlandish faces and turning them into raspberry jam via the SSG does a lot to keep gameplay feeling fresh.
Notice I said "consistently" and not "increasingly" - the first sub-boss is a mechanical gorilla with rocket launchers for arms, and it's only like the seventh enemy you meet.
And they're all unique enough to be memorable:

- the first grunt you encounter in the game will occasionally fail their initiative roll and spend the opening round of combat puking, through their gasmask, on their boots
- the shotgunners have a Quake zombie propensity to fake their own deaths;
- the mechanical turrets let out an exasperated and very human groan when destroyed;
- mounted units become regular enemies when their horses are sent to the red glue factory;
- Raiders of the Lost Ark boulders are now sentient because fuck you

It's this character than kept me playing until the end, and kinda missing this collection of goons once it was done.

Because despite that lack of sophistication when compared to other titles, Spytinhev is an absolute dab hand at using what he's got.
One of my favourite moments in the game is a long, slow descent into some rural catacombs - I was about halfway down before I realised that absolutely nothing had attacked me.
Tension, palpable.
Of course, retrieving the key at the bottom triggered a long, cacophonous fight back to the top of the stairs with a horde of brand new enemies, their capabilities as yet unknown.
The music shifted gear, the yipping klansmen came pouring out of the walls and I didn't give a damn about combat complexity because HOLY CHRIST I JUST TURNED THAT GUY INTO MIST RIGHT WHEN HE LEAPT AT ME!
Turns out Soviet anti-aircraft guns were just double-barreled shotties.

[Sima Tuna]

DOOM II modding endures because of the masterful set of toys that can be endlessly moved around within the sandbox to create thousands of new and unique scenarios. It's important when discussing the DOOM classic community to keep in mind we are largely talking about DOOM II modding, not DOOM 1 modding or DOOM II vanilla. DOOM 1 has the best level design of the vanilla games imo, but the toolset and enemy variety are limited. So they make for a less satisfying modded experience. There are fewer possible "oh shit" scenarios when limited to DOOM tools. No Pain Elementals. No Archviles. Etc. And no super shotgun. As much as people say super shotgun is overpowered, I think the balance is pretty perfect. The double shotgun feels great to use yes, but it also occupies the workhorse weapon position, which was somewhat unfilled in DOOM. DOOM 1 had the chaingun and the regular shotgun, but the former chewed through ammo and the latter was a little weak for larger enemies. You could chainsaw enemies up close, but not universally-it's a dangerous tactic when surrounded. Rockets were excellent at long range but suicidal up close. With the Super Shotgun, DOOM II introduced a general-purpose weapon. It deals enough damage, is efficient enough with ammo, effective enough at every range to be usable. That still doesn't make it the optimal weapon in every scenario, but it gives Doomguy a reliable fallback weapon when the game throws new situations at you.

I think the push-and-pull of enemy design and weapon balance is why DOOM II has remained an eternal game.

QUAKE is a good game but I do not think the balancing of weapons and enemies is as precise. QUAKE has some obnoxious-ass enemies who are very spongy.

[Lander]

Quake's definitely less finely-balanced than Doom ended up being; on top of chunky enemies (which body-block for a time on death, thus nerfing classic SSG street-sweepin') it also has a more busted ammo economy. The player is likely to be swimming in rockets for most of the game, thanks to the Ogre and his backpack drop, so it's a lot harder for a level designer to reason about or control what resources they'll have for a given encounter.

Plus, Doom's modding community went in a different direction with various extended source ports and standards that make bending the engine easier. Where Doom got easy declarative DECORATE, Hexen-derived ACS, and more modern scripting implementations, Quake has largely stuck to QuakeC. It's extensible enough, but with a higher barrier to entry both on the user side (because it's C...) and on the engine side, since it's hosted in a compiled DLL instead of a platform-agnostic WAD or BSP file.

Fun fact: It's also incapable of modeling Barrels o' Fun under default conditions. Since event triggers occur on the same frame in QC, attempting to detonate too many barrels at once will overflow the stack and crash the game! That pesky Carmack and his too-clever optimizations.

Though TrenchBroom might be the best level editor I've ever had the pleasure of using. Brushes kick the shit out of modern CSG / mesh based approaches too; so much faster and more fun than dicking about with scene trees and model formats.

[it290]

Playing through Cultic right now. I love this game—the movement feels sooo good and lobbing a stick of dynamite into a group of cultists and then blowing them up with a pistol shot is super satisfying.

[Blinge]

Been through Doom again recently. + the bonus episode
Ultra Violence all pistol starts. Had an absolute blast.

E4M2 Perfect hatred and the one with the fucking 4 way-teleport + cyber demon map took many attempts

[TransatlanticFoe]

That is bold. I love original Doom but Thy Fleshed Consumed is all over the place. I guess pistol only starts at least balance out the later missions after the absolute brutality of the first couple, but that first one especially is a baptism of fire. Loads of teleporting enemies, limited health restoration, a Baron at close quarters with limited weapons.... and a secret that simply unleashes a load of Barons with no reward, just to fuck you up if you trigger it!

[Sima Tuna]

It's impossible not to love DOOM and DOOM II's casual spitefulness, though. You in hell, motherfucker!

https://youtu.be/WZusf9_Bjx0

[XoPachi]

I'm playing Selaco and the only issue I'm having with this game is the combat density. Fights are not nearly as common as I'd hope playing this. I guess that's why a single battle with a mere 6-12 guys can drain you of half your resources from full stock.

The game is much more intent on making you explore and backtrack through areas for secrets.
But you'll be going through areas you already cleared and do not change. So it's just empty plodding about. Most secrets dont even trigger monster closets. I dont think any do actually. The down time vs the amount of the surprisingly involved, difficult fighting is lopsided to me. For a game built on DOOM DNA.

I'm surprised that it didn't opt for small random spawns between the scripted main battles. The way it frames enemies adapting to you (its really just typical new enemy introduction) I would think they would somewhat repopulate past areas with new baddies. Even Metroid Prime, an easy game that's literally exploration first, enemies respawn every few loading zones. So exploring retains a bit of danger.

Selaco has no tension in regards to exploring. So the choice comes down to "how much walking in silence do I feel like doing?" instead of "is the threat of possibly seeing Seigers and Enforcers worth returning to Pathfinder to see whats behind that L3 security door?" And you really need to do this to get those permanent upgrades and money to buy health kits/ammo.

[Sima Tuna]

So you're telling me it's much worse than the original FEAR, which didn't have any of those problems.

[guigui]

Just out on the NSW : S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Legends of the Zone Trilogy

I've always wanted to play the STALKER games, but never had the oppotrunity to do so (no PC gaming here). Did anyone tried those ports on the Nintendo console and give some feedback ?