I think something is trying to keep me away from Doom

[Stormwatch]

>calling Doomsday "jDOOM" in 2013

That's the engine. I'm talking about the jDoom Resource Pack (jDRP), that has all the cool 3D models and stuff.

[cstle]

why not use chocolate doom on a modern OS

that is sort of the point of chocolate doom

[null1024]

why not use chocolate doom on a modern OS

that is sort of the point of chocolate doom

Thanks for reminding me this exists, heh.

[Ed Oscuro]

>calling Doomsday "jDOOM" in 2013

That's the engine. I'm talking about the jDoom Resource Pack (jDRP), that has all the cool 3D models and stuff.

>ugly shit previously referred to

why not use chocolate doom on a modern OS

that is sort of the point of chocolate doom

PrBoom. It does have some crash bugs on my Windows 7 64-bit machine which I gotta report sometime, though.

[Edmond Dantes]

why not use chocolate doom on a modern OS

that is sort of the point of chocolate doom

Chocolate Doom is sugary sweet.

[null1024]

Biggest problem I've seen with Chocolate Doom -- I can't map movement to other buttons on a joypad [I want rotate left/right to be L1/R1 on my pad, this is a recurring problem].
Luckily, I have QJoyPad installed, so that's not an issue. Disable joypad in Chocolate Doom and map the keyboard to the buttons with QJoyPad.

I forgot how much fun Doom was, jeez. Also, the joy of infinite-height bullets.
They remind you of how much Doom is effectively 2D, haha.

[Edmond Dantes]

... I just now realized its kind of ironic that we're a forum of people who buy arcade PCBs just to have the original arcade experience, but its somehow weird to want to play either the original, vanilla Doom or else a source port that closely approximates it.

Although actually, it makes perfect sense. The PC gaming culture has always been about mods and porting and changing the game (which is how garbage like the original Quake can have a fanbase--that game is no fun at all without mods), whereas a console and arcade game is either good or bad and a good one don't need no fuckin' mods.

Now tell me:

Is this an argument for PC gaming, or against?

[Ed Oscuro]

Well, there's a difference between playing a game with a static top-down type view, which runs on a locked platform where any slowdown is there by design, and a FPS where increased resolutions can make it much easier to see what's going on, and where there always was a demand for faster framerates.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Quake brought very fast-paced deathmatch to the table (more 3D than Doom at that). I'm pretty sure nothing before was quite like it. Vertical rocket jumps and whatnot.
I don't like controlled slowdown in shmups. Breaks my willing suspension of disbelief. Even in Zanac Special Version, makes me feel the game tries to be old where it's uncalled for.
The only game where I (sort of) like low framerate is the original Silent Hill.

[SuperDeadite]

Doom must be played on Ultra-Violence or Nightmare ONLY. Anything below that and you aren't playing Doom. For those that claim "Doom isn't so intense" go beat Thy Flesh Consumed on UV. It's fucking awesome.

Also 360 Doom II's original episode "No Rest for the Living" is fantastic. Worth putting up with the 360's shit music and sound just to play it. To be fair it can't be played in vanilla doom, but damn it's a fantastic set of levels.

[Ed Oscuro]

For those that claim "Doom isn't so intense" go beat Thy Flesh Consumed on UV. It's fucking awesome.

Obviously not what's being referred to - they had a few years to push out a more intense episode than the original group. (Although my copy of DOOM was from the Ultimate DOOM pack, so I've always had it.) But this isn't what I was arguing at all.

What I was really talking about was the rather slow weapons holding up game flow - just the shotgun really, everything else fires quickly enough that it doesn't feel like you're waiting to unleash damage. (And also switching weapons is longer than I'd like, too.) But considering the shotgun is the staple weapon of DOOM...The new shotgun operation is, along with the useful default weapon, one of the most important changes in Brutal DOOM, as I said before.

(which is how garbage like the original Quake can have a fanbase--that game is no fun at all without mods)

Even on Nightmare, many levels aren't especially intense. But keep in mind that the game was designed to be just about playable with keyboard controls only - in fact the first game demo seems obviously played with a keyboard. And even considering this, there's still a lot of classic levels on show here.

As I've said elsewhere, there's a lot of high-quality challenging Quake level sets out there, so there's no need to suffer along with the base game. The weapons are fast enough that they really just overpower the default enemy set with ease, but just making spaces tighter or adding monsters can fix this. Adding monsters to DOOM just bogs things down, though on reflection I think that some ranged attacks in the Quake enemy set are hard to set up properly, whereas DOOM's enemies are much more flexibly deployed. Obviously, a lost soul getting stuck is much less beneficial than having a Fiend stopped in midair, and the Death Knight's ranged attack is kind of silly if it's attacking on the same plane as you.

[BIL]

Doom must be played on Ultra-Violence or Nightmare ONLY. Anything below that and you aren't playing Doom.

Agreed. I nearly barfed at the mention of playing on the lower two (three? whatever) difficulties a bit earlier.

For those that claim "Doom isn't so intense" go beat Thy Flesh Consumed on UV. It's fucking awesome.

Even more intense on Nightmare, though I prefer UV too. NM's respawning makes killing most enemies a waste of time and turns the game into a speedrun, something to do once for the sake of completion. Brutal DOOM's Black Metal difficulty is my favourite, though - basically Vanilla Nightmare sans respawns, and with BD's rabidly aggressive monster behaviour.

Thy Flesh Consumed is the best set of levels in the original trilogy, imo. Tight, complex and difficult stage design throughout (except for one minor mis-step, the relatively boring E4M4 "Unruly Evil," which feels like it should've traded places with the fiendish puzzle box of E4M1 "Hell Beneath" if anything). E4M2 "Perfect Hatred" and E4M6 "Against Thee Wickedly" in particular are absolutely stellar maps. Complicated, lengthy and fast-paced in a way that shames DOOM II's bloat.

[Edmond Dantes]

To be completely fair, I once marathoned through all four episodes of Quake in a day, and then immediately started on Scourge of Armagon (which I never finished), so I guess I can't say I hate the game. I also bought the Saturn port and actually enjoyed it a great deal.

But I dunno, sometimes I can get into Quake, sometimes I can't. The monsters are supposed to be lovecraftian horrors... I don't recall Lovecraft ever writing "and there was a pasty-white thing that shot lightning" or "there was a smaller pasty-white thing" or "there was a knight with a sword"... nor do I recall Lovecraft writing "everything was brown." (In fact... if the game were truly Lovecraftian, it would have some AWESOME landscapes. Remember "Polaris"?)

But mainly, my criticisms with Quake are the ones most people have:
1. Too many brown castles or otherwise colorless settings.
2. The weapons tend to all feel basic (a shotgun, a chaingun, a rocket launcher, and something that is still basically a chaingun)
3. Three of the weapons are just "more powerful" versions of other weapons.
4. The monsters feel kinda generic and dull.

To me, the only FPS that can compare to Doom are Heretic and Hexen (which I personally consider part of the Doom series, in all honesty). There's something about older FPS games that just holds me like nuthin' else. I do think though that it has something to do with how fast-paced they are and the amount of shit they throw at you.

I still don't know what you're talking about, Ed, when you say Doom is slow or that the weapons are slow or whatever. The switching animation honestly seems faster than most modern games (and besides, in Doom you don't have to reload), and yeah... There's tons of monsters. Seriously, tons.

By the way, this video speaks the truth

[Ed Oscuro]

t;dr version: Quake's enemies and weapons are fine. Quake's levels are often filled with sucky gameplay, agreed, but it's really a multiplayer game - and a damn good one too - and I really enjoyed it for the ambiance.

Quake's atmosphere is fine really; I always liked the detailed art. It's not all brown, either; there's quite a few levels later on that get away from the brown techbase/castle themes, like the blue areas, or that Nameless City. And how can you hate on a low-grav level like Ziggurat Vertigo? Or riding wind tunnels? Now, just refreshing my memory with a list of the levels (and some screenshots), yeah, I'll say there aren't many favorites here, and almost every screenshot reminds me of something or other I really dislike in each level. But I can't honestly say I have many favorite levels in the DOOM games, either. I think it typically took other developers to make good on iD's basic games with maps. There's some standout parts here and there, of course.

RE your point 2 and 3, about weapons - I'll say it again, I prefer Quake's instantaneous weapon switch speed, which frees you up to do a lot more strategy on the run. This is particularly important in DM. They've done some really clever things with the environment most people don't give them credit for - there's nothing like slapping on invincibility, and beating a bunch of other deathmatch players to the thunderbolt underwater, and then...hell, you can do it even if you don't have the Pentagram running. Never gets old. Also, bouncing grenades around corners is neat, and there's nothing like it in DOOM. However, I do feel that many of the maps and enemies weren't designed with the potential for grenade bouncing in mind, and exploiting this is an all-too-common experience of mine.

DOOM II: chainsaw/fists/berserk, pistol/chaingun, shotgun/super shotty, plasma, BFG, rockets.
Quake: shotgun/super shot, nailgun/super, grenades, rockets, thunderbolt, axe...oh, and quad damage. Not a huge difference in quantity; Quake's weapons still tick all the boxes and add a few new specialties.
And of course pretty much every Quake expansion adds rather different weapons - though most are riffs of some kind or other on the default weapons, some are very different - like the Stake Gun from Abyss of Pandemonium.

About the enemies, one could say that Quake's ranks aren't bloated with minor variations like DOOM has, although we all know that each DOOM enemy fits an important niche in level design. But almost all DOOM and DOOM II monsters can be fit into three simple categories, some straddling the last two: Hitscan ranged zombie, melee enemy, fireball-type enemy. Arachnotrons? Rapid-firing fireball enemy. Cyberdemon? Slow-firing explosive fireball enemy. Cacodemon and Barons / Knights? Same thing, but just regular fireballs, green fireballs. Imps? Fireballs AND melee! That's not to say they aren't an interesting lot, and Quake maybe could use something like the Predator-style pinky demons in a few places.

Quake enemies do fill most of these niches, but with considerably more complex behavior that just "stand in place and fire" or "run to melee and then stand in place and fire;" the Fiend is nastier than either variety of DOOM demon (especially if it jumps into lava, which cannot hurt it and which you cannot normally enter...). The Shambler is, yeah, close to a hitscan enemy, but has a ton of health and speed. Actually, it's kind of an odd enemy to deal with because it pretty much mandates corner abuse, which I don't especially enjoy. I do admire his blood-stained pelt. The "fireball" type enemies have unusual behavior compared to a fireball which travels straight for you; the ogres and zombies have attacks that are affected by gravity, the Enforcer's beams are faster than anything but a hitscan attack, and the lack of sheer numbers of enemies denying you room with fireball saturation is addressed by the Death Knight's fanning attack, and scrags make you feel like the Wicker Man until you pinpoint their location. Default Quake doesn't use every combination of enemy to perfect effect but it is a good stab at it.

DOOM II's Revenants are neat, but Quake's got Vores, whose homing attack is much more persistent. Lost Souls? Even the Pain Elemental is a chipping-away-at experience, and I prefer the all-out terror of dealing with a manic Spawn bouncing in your face like crazy. It's just a shame that they can glitch and get stuck in some places.

There also should be some interesting new types of enemies in various mods - like Nehahra, and the Dark Knights from Abyss of Pandemonium combine a Fiend, a fast knight, and a mini-Shambler. There's also some amusing thunderbolt-wielding enemies whose weapons have a maximum reach which can be exploited by the quick-thinking player - other players will die quickly.

Quake does arguably fall down completely with some enemies. The Knight? No challenge, just exists to fill out the weakness charts, and basically is a palette swap of the Death Knight minus an attack. Seems like a wasted opportunity. There's nothing in the game like an Arch-Vile, and the "bosses" are merely puzzles.

All this has to be tempered by the realization that they couldn't fill the screen with as many of these enemies as they could in DOOM, so if three or four knights running you down doesn't seem very scary, computers at the time couldn't really run much more.

I still don't know what you're talking about, Ed, when you say Doom is slow or that the weapons are slow or whatever.

Oh come on, I spelled it out in very simple English. This is just called you're being too lazy to read it. I didn't even take a lot of space to say it!

I think that I don't like Heretic's levels quite as much as I used to, but there's some really good stuff in there, and (like I said before) I really do like the subtle changes made to the weapons, and the weapon balance overall. Making powered-up versions of every weapon seems a bit over the top but that flexibility is nice.

__________

In other news, I finished up the last episode and a half of the game, starting from roughly map 11 through the finish at map 16. Overall I would have to stress - little real weapon variety, interesting but fiddly puzzles, a bug in the map viewer (the backspace-activated console is nicely done, though, and I didn't know about it until I went searching for any evidence of a secret level in the default episodes) that reveals secrets by mistake, the inability of navigating by enemies, some really obtuse jumping/running puzzle decisions, the game's propensity for trapping you in a corner without the ability to get an enemy off you before you lose 100 health and all your armor, dumb enemies with really dumb pathfinding even by Quake standards - these things are not signs of an excellent game.

I really didn't have any problem with environmental puzzles - that's almost shocking at anything less straightforward than DOOM or Quake for me, i.e. Hexen games! - and eventually I realized what they were doing with platforms and things. (Earlier, when I complained about the forced damage, I was wrong in that specific - the pedestal at that particular place can just be run over to, even if it looks like it requires you jump up it. However, there are plenty of places where the game forces you to run through mire and take unavoidable damage.)

I will say this - the maps get better as it goes along, and there are some interesting ideas on display. Unfortunately they didn't seem able to open up the levels, and pretty much every "trap" closing behind you with enemies is a death knell (you can't even run around them) - if you aren't like me and quickly retreat back through the door before it snaps shut, every time. Gameplay was a chore. It's definitely as brown as nasty as Quake, with few of Quake's nice artistic touches, but they managed to throw up a bunch of nice textures even in the final level. The last batch of enemies were look interesting - though half of them were overgrown rats, and the other half dudes who walked slowly while firing big laser cannons.

I was enjoying myself a bit despite over 95% of the encounters consisting of me either shooting a charging enemy repeatedly, retreating as necessary, or else popping out from behind a corner to take four to five potshots per enemy. The remaining percentage were the exceedingly rare times when I actually got trapped in a corner by enemies and had to plan ahead to unload damage. I played almost all of the game with just the default shotgun (normal difficulty), but switched to the double shotgun for the last couple levels, and I gave in and turned on teh chaetz for the final boss just to expedite matters and be done with it, and was quite amused by "CONAN KILLED PLAYER CONAN" messages when I triggered the BFG bomb cannon thing too close to the boss.

Also, did you know Shub Niggurath has a feisty little sister, and she sounds like an elephant? True story.

[BIL]

The Shambler's quasi-hitscan attack always annoyed me. They created this monstrous melee powerhouse and then... gave it a magical thunderbolt that forces you to run and hide or take guaranteed, instant damage. What the fuck? I totally get that the Fiend already fills the "melee pursuer" role (which makes the Knight an even shittier bit of dead wood), but how about giving the Shambler a range attack that discourages running and hiding? Say, I dunno, a ground tremoring attack that goes through cover but can be jumped over.

It's just a more boring Archvile, as it is. Archie's an interesting enemy since it's technically harmless unless it can complete its countdown with you in its sights, encouraging you to gamble on interrupting with a high-painchance attack like pointblank SSG (or killing it outright) at the risk of getting blown to smithereens. Its resurrecting capability adds further pressure to attack head-on. Want to fight Shammy like a man? Can't let you do that Dave!

Well, you can fight a Shambler toe-to-toe, but that's nearly as dull since it involves exploiting its overly-baitable melee attack. DOOM III's Hell Knight was a better take on the idea of a "holy shit" melee titan. Too bad that game shat the bed on a number of fronts, the Soul Cube making encounters with sturdy monsters desirable one of them.

And if Shammy hits the weights and lays off the pizza for a few months, he could even look as buff as the D3HK!

Now this is scary. Look closely enough and you can see Shammy has just bit some guy's fucking head clean off.

[Ed Oscuro]

Well, you can fight a Shambler toe-to-toe, but that's nearly as dull since it involves exploiting its overly-baitable melee attack.

LOL, I remember the first time I did that. "Holy shit, why is this working?" But even then the novelty wore off quickly...it's a shambling shame.

I wonder if this was Romero's doing. I think that Romero's ideas were what made Quake come alive, even so. Carmack and co. have been all too happy to just retreat into techbase / desert / hellcastle themed areas. Hope they'll change their minds on this for the upcoming whatever-it-is they're making.

I still want to know how the Abyss mappers expected you to beat four-five shamblers at once. Melee bait them ALL AT ONCE? You can only telefrag one or maybe two at a time...

DOOM III's Hell Knight was a better take on the idea of a "holy shit" melee titan. Too bad that game shat the bed on a number of fronts, the Soul Cube making encounters with sturdy monsters desirable one of them.

Hmm, don't remember anything about this.
Now this is scary. Look closely enough and you can see Shammy has just bit some guy's fucking head clean off. [/quote]
just reminds me that the "surprise" face is bugged in vanilla DOOM

So many interesting bits of old-fashioned DOOM are completely knocked over by the source ports...still, it's a good situation overall right now.

Hmm, I just remembered that my copy of Ultimate DOOM came in the Depths of DOOM package...I've been having a hankering on and off to try out some of those WADs again, especially the Memphis one, for some reason or other.

[BIL]

The Soul Cube loves Hell Knights and other big enemies, it eats their guts and gives you all their HP (works a charm on Revenants and Archviles too). Really dumb move from id, that weapon.

Then again DOOM III was all about setting up a menacing atmosphere, before undercutting it with stupidity. I really like that game's mood when it's not giving Dr. Robotnik (or was it Dr. Wiley?) center stage. Random bits like the one where you're in an air duct, and get sight of a gore-caked skeleton sat a bit further ahead, and it's yanked onto its side as a deranged tittering/sobbing echoes through the duct... those are cool! As is the establishment of a creeping psychosis epidemic and inexplicable industrial accidents in the base prior to the attack. Don't explain, just add monsters and STFU! But then, a flood of expositional diarrhoea struck it all down and ruined the party. The Pirates of The Caribbean-esque voiceover upon arriving in Hell makes me want to mute the speakers. Oh noes, my soul is going to burn in hell.

Resurrection of Evil was even worse with the upgrades each boss gave... how I wish those games had just been "survive a demon invasion with your shotgun and plasma rifle while coming across fucked up shit, EOS."

I still have my Depths of Doom box, haha. Lots of sentimental value in that monstrous thing. I remember visiting family in the states around '98 or so, and all those id CD-ROM big boxes were practically being given away new. Got Final DOOM, Wolf3D and Hexen Deathkings plus DOD in the same fell swoop. Since I'd been playing pirated copies for years beforehand, I never really stopped thinking those neat DOS prompt nag messages applied to me.

[Mortificator]

how I wish those games had just been "survive a demon invasion with your shotgun and plasma rifle while coming across fucked up shit, EOS."

Sounds good, but even the core weapons in Doom 3 were aggravating. The shotgun spits pellets all over the place without a coherent pattern, and the plasma rifle constantly blows smoke in your face while you fire. The only gun I genuinely enjoyed using with the expansion's double shotty.

I think that Romero's ideas were what made Quake come alive, even so. Carmack and co. have been all too happy to just retreat into techbase / desert / hellcastle themed areas.

idbehold Quake II's incredibly boring maps.

[BIL]

The conventional weapons are all relatively shit, but the only worth of these games is as horror action-adventures, so I don't mind the arsenal being a bit unreliable. I'd rather address grenades occupying their own slot, the lack of a quick melee attack and the absence of chest/head-mounted flashlights.

I'd have gotten rid of all non-literal monster closets as well, they're to the environment what Dr. Wiley is to the narrative.

[Ed Oscuro]

Then again DOOM III was all about setting up a menacing atmosphere, before undercutting it with stupidity. I really like that game's mood when it's not giving Dr. Robotnik (or was it Dr. Wiley?) center stage.

I thought it was fat Hannibal Lecter...hmm

Random bits like the one where you're in an air duct, and get sight of a gore-caked skeleton sat a bit further ahead, and it's yanked onto its side as a deranged tittering/sobbing echoes through the duct... those are cool!

They took my baby ): (ALSO the gameplay)

You know, for all the complaints one can make about the Quake gunplay and weaponset, DOOM III's seems even more stilted, even though there is (a little bit) more stuff to play with. That damn assault rifle. Grenades instead of a rocket launcher - kind of makes sense give the maps, but feels wrong all the same. Also the useless grabber gun (I like how they caught all sorts of shit at release for supposedly ripping off Valve...times definitely had changed).

Resurrection of Evil was even worse with the upgrades each boss gave... how I wish those games had just been "survive a demon invasion with your shotgun and plasma rifle while coming across fucked up shit, EOS."

We gotta have really basic platforming timing-style puzzles, that's what DOOM is all about. Remember those crusher ceilings from DOOM? Best part without a doubt.

EDIT: Seconding everything Mortificator has said here. The Quake II expansions might have had some reasonably interesting areas, I can't remember. All I can remember is that there's a laser fence at the beginning of one...wait, I remember. Yeah, the expansions weren't really great either.

EDIT:

What you think the fiend looks like -

What the fiend actually looks like -

here's a close relative

[Edmond Dantes]

I still don't know what you're talking about, Ed, when you say Doom is slow or that the weapons are slow or whatever.

Oh come on, I spelled it out in very simple English. This is just called you're being too lazy to read it. I didn't even take a lot of space to say it!

You did, its just I think we have different ideas of what "slow" means or what "tons of monsters" means.

I mean, I booted up a map just now and right off the bat... tons of Imps, tons of shotgun dudes, and before I knew it there was a mancubus and an arachnatron too... yes, this was a custom wad (one of the "Master Levels") but its not like situations like this don't appear in the core games.

As for the delay in weapon switching, I always thought of that as simply game balance, a mechanic that adds some (not much, but still) strategy to it. I also always thought that the shotgun's ability to one-shot-kill weak-to-medium enemies made up for its relative sloth (and it spreadfires, so its still good for crowd control).

I'll admit that I'm pretty much constantly half-asleep when I'm on the interwebs though, so maybe I do have a comprehension problem here and there. And everywhere.

[SuperDeadite]

I think the main issue with Quake I is that the first episode is by far the best part of the game. Episodes 2-4 just made the levels bigger and needlessly complicated. I remember having to constantly jack up my gamma so I could even see on some levels. Darkness used right is cool, but the later parts of Quake were way too much "where the fuck do I go?" Quake E1's boss fight blew me away the first time I saw it. I was so pumped for the next boss fight..... and then discovered there weren't any other bosses in the game. One of the biggest "gamer letdowns" of my life. Sure there is a "final boss" at the end of the game, but even that was quite lame, nothing on the Epsiode I boss.

Quake did give us the grenade launcher though, love that bouncy SFX.

Now Quake II single-player did a lot more for me. That one I played to death over and over, the cd-music certainly helped though...

[BIL]

Ohhh shit. Been too long. I forgot how good GLQuake is, was inspired to fire it up by this topic. I think I'll finally get around to playing Scourge of Armagon today.



DAY-TO-NAAA ♫



"BEHHHH [I never liked you anyway!]" "BRAWWWARARRR [Feeling's mutual, cocksucker!]"

What the fiend actually looks like

I prefer to think they're constantly being really surprised by something.

Quake E1's boss fight blew me away the first time I saw it. I was so pumped for the next boss fight..... and then discovered there weren't any other bosses in the game. One of the biggest "gamer letdowns" of my life.

Words after my own heart. That was such a downer after Wolf3D and DOOM's awesome boss rosters, and also the Chthon fight being a promising use of the 3D engine to do something more ambitious than "circle strafe and shoot." I remember clearing the shareware version on release weekend and assuming the retail bosses were gonna blow my mind.

[Obiwanshinobi]

The reason why there's so few bosses of note in first person shooters may be that the genre isn't even remotely popular with Japanese developers. Then again, 3D platformers are about just as "western" a genre, yet bosses in those games tend to be good (see I-Ninja).

[Edmond Dantes]

The reason why there's so few bosses of note in first person shooters may be that the genre isn't even remotely popular with Japanese developers. Then again, 3D platformers are about just as "western" a genre, yet bosses in those games tend to be good (see I-Ninja).

Probably also why the FPS genre basically started sucking (I consider Half-Life 1 the last good FPS).

Any game genre, if it doesn't get expanded upon by Japanese developers, eventually goes to shit.

I remember having to constantly jack up my gamma so I could even see on some levels. Darkness used right is cool, but the later parts of Quake were way too much "where the fuck do I go?"

Thus beginning the descent into insanity that eventually led to the craptasm that was Doom 3.

Seriously, Half-Life was smart enough to give the player a flashlight mounted to their suit... but for Doom 3, you had to actually install a fan-mod for the same damn feature. What the hell was wrong with id?

Quake E1's boss fight blew me away the first time I saw it. I was so pumped for the next boss fight..... and then discovered there weren't any other bosses in the game. One of the biggest "gamer letdowns" of my life.

That was a letdown to me as well.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Probably also why the FPS genre basically started sucking (I consider Half-Life 1 the last good FPS).

Serious Sam is pretty good, as is XIII (PC versions). Project I.G.I. is... peculiar.

Any game genre, if it doesn't get expanded upon by Japanese developers, eventually goes to shit.

For my money arcade racing (at home) flourished precisely at the time when Japanese devs either lost interest, or just got left behind by foreigners. It's not a coincidence that OutRun 2006 had to be outsourced.

[Ed Oscuro]

What the hell was wrong with id?

To be fair they thought they were following what the people wanted, a lesson from Quake. It really was a final evolution of the trend towards ambience. There is some fun stuff in DOOM III along that route, but as BIL mentioned, it suffers from being shadowed by stupid storytelling and some poor gameplay design decisions, as usual.

Half-Life is probably, when I think about it, one of the first really replayable FPSes, as far as I'm concerned, although it sets something of a high-water mark. Since then, though, there's been HL2 - an even better game in almost every respect - Borderlands, and even Alien versus Predator (the 1999 PC version), to name a few that come to mind. And, for all the hate the series gets, Call of Duty 4 has plenty of great moments too, and the basic gunplay seems solid.

I've never had gamma or visibility problems with Quake 1, on any system, even at launch.

[Edmond Dantes]

... Okay, Doom 64 almost made me ragequit.

I got to Map08 "Final Outpost" and there's this room with a yellow key on a platform, and two switches. One lowers the platform, but there's a motion sensor near it that causes a cage to drop. The other switch raises the cage, but going near it also raises the platform.

Then I get on the internet and find out that the solution is actually to click on this weird-looking panel in the hall just outside. Not only is that an incredibly cheap and unfair solution, but I had actually tried to interact with that panel and it hadn't seemed to do anything.

Western designers: Don't do shit like this. If something is a puzzle piece, make it CLEAR that it's a puzzle piece. And if touching something caused something to happen, SAY SO.

*Sigh*

....

The main thing about the post-Half-Life generation is that... I liked the story-oriented paced-buildup model when Half-Life itself did it (yes I know Quake 2 and Unreal did it first, but who cares?). It was new, it was fresh, it was different, and it honestly evoked feelings of terror, it made me feel.

...But then every other FPS in the world was doing it. And a lot of times, it wasn't interesting, it was annoying. Like I just wanted to shoot monsters, not hear a goddamn story or talk to NPCs.

Not to mention, Half-Life (and yeah, Q2 and Unreal) gave rise to scripted events. And now, everything is about the script. In Doom, you could trick monsters into fighting each other to the death, and it was not only strategic, it was damn fun. In Half-Life and beyond? It won't happen unless the script says so. You have to shoot at everything. And let me be honest: shooting, in and of itself, is boring. Its when you can mix it up a bit that it gets fun.

And, of course, everything is about setpieces now. You know what? Fuck setpieces. Give me a well-designed map, a shotgun, and a ton of monsters to shoot.

I know I already linked to this video, but It's so true that it bears repeating.