The last "real" Doom imho. Although both Doom 2016 and the new Doom Eternal look and run amazingly well, the thing with weapon alternate firing modes and weapon mods are just not my cup of tea. I don't want a shotgun that fires grenades and has full auto modes and whatever the hell the other mods do. They lost a bit of the nostalgia with all those extras, or maybe I'm just getting too old (?).
This browser port runs really great, when the game came out it was one of those that made people have to completely migrate to the next generation of hardware.
I'm a huge DooM fan and have been playing since I downloaded the original off of a BBS back in the day and I have to, respectfully, disagree.
With DooM Eternal, there's actually a fully running port of DooM and DooM II inside the game and jumping into that after playing the main game for a while feels incredibly seamless. DooM (2016) and DooM Eternal feel like they took the scary shotgun ballet of the originals and added verticality and modern game mechanics to it. The only thing I think they missed an opportunity on are the dark levels that were in the originals. Not every level in the original games was a full speed dance with demons.
Of course, agree to disagree. But in particular, having to constantly perform glory kills and chainsaw attacks to get more than 5 bullets or having to snipe coordinates XY on enemy Z with alternate firing mode N to weaken him and only then succeed in taking them down is, in my opinion, not that "Doomy". But I get what you're saying, they can't just make the same game again of course. Also, these days expectations from new games are way bigger than they were back then. Still all great games.
I don't think that's a fair assessment. You don't have to constantly perform glory kills or chainsaw attacks and there's not a single instance in the game where you have to kill an enemy with an alternate firing mode to a specific region. I think you're exaggerating for effect, and that's fine, but I don't feel like you'd need to do that if your argument had any meat to it. You're right that it's not the same game (because that would be boring) but to say that it's not "Doomy" because of reasons that aren't even accurate makes your whole argument fall apart.
Case in point, there's already a pistol-only playthrough of DooM (2016) and I know people are already working on shotgun-only playthroughs of Eternal.
Ok, I was exaggerating a bit but as far as I remember, the game specifically breaks the flow to pause and show you a little instructional clip [0] [1] on how to better kill each enemy, so there's that. But hey, your point is made, I was just throwing my opinion out there, I don't think we need to continue nitpicking since tastes are tastes.
Ok. I just feel like "breaking the flow" is a lot different than having to use a specific secondary fire mode of a weapon at a specific location on an enemy and stuck out to me because, if that was an actual thing in the game, it would make the game unplayable and annoying to me.
DooM 2016 does not but Eternal shows you a codex entry the first time you encounter an enemy that highlights their weaknesses. None of them have to do with an alternate fire mode or anything else, so it's still an exaggeration, but it does tell you which weapons are particularly effective. Shields, for example, blow up if you use the plasma rifle.
Sure, you don't have to do any of those things, but you'll be seriously disadvantaged if you don't because the games are designed around these mechanics. Maybe it's exaggerated, but on the other hand, as a fan of both Doom and Doom 2016 it seems your response downplays the difference these mechanics and using them to your advantage makes, and I agree with GP that these are substantial differences that fundamentally make the games play differently.
Not in a bad way (well, mostly. I still loathe the weapon/armor/character upgrade part of the game). There's no real mowing or herding like in the more intense levels of Doom and Doom II, but instead we get really intense fights that are cool in a different sense.
> Sure, you don't have to do any of those things, but you'll be seriously disadvantaged if you don't because the games are designed around these mechanics.
That's not the case, though. You might be somewhat disadvantaged, but not seriously.
On my first playthrough on normal difficulty I essentially only used the Super Shotgun. I can't remember using the Chainsaw for ammo, but I did use the BFG a handful of times.
The developers have even said that a goal of theirs was to make this "playstyle" (using only the SS) less viable in Doom Eternal, because it was too simple and powerful. It might have been on a NoClip podcast, I can't remember OTOH.
I've not played Eternal yet, I'm waiting for updated nvidia drivers to hit my distributions repositories.
> That's not the case, though. You might be somewhat disadvantaged, but not seriously.
Well, that's not my experience. I initially hated the concept of glory kills, and especially the blinking effect on staggered monsters. Even just turning the blinking effect off made the game much harder in my experience. I had to learn how to appreciate the mechanic instead. Maybe you are just a much better player than I am and could cope better with the disadvantage.
I share similar feelings. I feel like Doom 2016 (and Eternal) are more of a sequel to Brutal Doom (a popular mod for original Doom games adding finishing moves, over the top weapons and over the top gore/violence effects).
I've always viewed original Doom as more of a survival horror. People laugh now, but Doom was a genuinely scary game back when it released. Gamers nowadays obviously won't be scared by it. They also might play on lower difficulty levels or with cheatcodes. So rather than "you are stuck here with the demons", most gamers will play it as "the demons are stuck here with you", and this is what Doom 2016 reflects.
I have to disagree. Anyone who played DooM and DooM II more than just a single time through the campaign is more likely to view the originals as bullet ballets rather than as survival horror. DooM levels that seemed "scary" were only scary because demons could jump out at you and give you a jump scare. Once you know where the monster closets are, it's not that scary anymore.
If you played the original's multiplayer at all, then you'll remember how quick and frenetic it was and how that changed the play style for the single player levels. The new games reflect that much better than Doom 3, imo.
Totally agree, the thing about Doom is the movement and the speed. I watched a few hours of Doom eternal and within 2 minutes of watching the physics, my only thought was "this is Quake".
Even on higher difficulty levels - I think except for the highest - the classics aren't hard. Modern games have more timing mechanics, more verticality, more methods of movement or control to master. I'd gather most middle of the road FPS players these days could breeze through the hardest modes of Doom and Doom 2.
I think they were difficult at the time because they were so novel. Modern games are novel in different ways and challenging in that novelty. Doom feels somewhat more "solved".
Essentially mouse aiming (meaning just rotating left-right in Doom) coupled with strafing breaks Doom 1 and 2. The enemies simply aren't designed to deal with a player that can seamlessly sidestep and precisely aim at the same time. If you were to play with keyboard only you might find the OG Doom quite a bit more challenging.
https://wasm.continuation-labs.com/d3demo/