• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

DOOM (1993)

Guilty_AI

Member
Finally got around to playing the classic. Not the 100% vanilla experience however as i used the GZDoom mod (adds modern resolutions and mouse look).
It also added a jump button, which i was able to tell very cleary it wasn't in the original since it'd sometimes could be used to break the proper way to progress certain levels.

As its expected, one of the highlights of the game, to this day even, is the level design. Very fun to progress through and explore for secrets, as well as throwing traps at you occasionally.
Good enemy variety, each one with its own unique quirks requiring slightly different approaches and weapons to defeat.

Another point i find interesting is the "story". You can see the clear "reactionary" nature of it with its grimdark defeatism, a cultural aspect of the time.
Doom-Guy often gets regarded as a typical videogame badass, but events transpired don't really makes it feel much like a power fantasy.
Everything always go wrong, the end of the first act is you being killed going to hell, and even after fighting his way through hordes of monsters you don't make it in time and the earth was already doomed when you go back after defeating the boss, doom-guy's pet rabbit dead. The name "DOOM" now makes a lot more sense to me.

Its hard to say much when it practically the OG FPS (not counting wolfstein 3d). Most criticism i can make can be attributed to the technical limitations of the time or the fact it had practically no predecessors, like annoying enemies with hitscan shooting.

I still prefer some of the more recent retro-shooters over it (though it isn't really a fair comparison), in general however, with a mod to remove the most outdated aspects, game still holds up pretty well and plays better than many of its modern counterparts.
 
Last edited:

AX8

Banned
Have to try this again sometime, I tried it when I was younger and would get headaches/nausea when I would get lost and not know where to go next, didn't help everything looks the same.
 

Guilty_AI

Member
Have to try this again sometime, I tried it when I was younger and would get headaches/nausea when I would get lost and not know where to go next, didn't help everything looks the same.
Me too, i actually had it on Sega Saturn as a kid but never played through it for similar reasons.
I think the higher res/fov and mouse controls can help with those, though some of the dark rooms or rooms with flashing lights can still be upsetting to the eyesight.
 

Bakkus

Member
Just played this recently myself and I loved it towards the beginning. Got a bit repetitive towards the end and the level design of the last level is a pain. Still good, but you got to save scum if you don't wanna rip your hair out.
 

DukeNukem00

Banned
Can you guys imagine how astronomical this game's impact is ? There would be no Valve and Steam without it. There would be no Epic, no Unreal Engine, no Fortnite. And any of the gazzilions of forks that evolved along the years out of all of these. There would be no Call of Duty, no Halo, no Battlefield. Who knows when the FPS genre would have emerged and how it would have looked without Doom. There were first person games where you shoot since the 70s, before Doom. But there was no FPS genre. No blueprint. There was no concept of "lets make an fps". Mind blowing
 

nush

Gold Member
Can you guys imagine how astronomical this game's impact is ? There would be no Valve and Steam without it. There would be no Epic, no Unreal Engine, no Fortnite. And any of the gazzilions of forks that evolved along the years out of all of these. There would be no Call of Duty, no Halo, no Battlefield. Who knows when the FPS genre would have emerged and how it would have looked without Doom. There were first person games where you shoot since the 70s, before Doom. But there was no FPS genre. No blueprint. There was no concept of "lets make an fps". Mind blowing

I guess you don't know about Wolfenstein.
 

DukeNukem00

Banned
Of course i know about Wolf, but it was Doom that did everything. Probably because it came very quickly after Doom and did everything much better. The engine is a quantum leap over Wolf's one and the levels much more complex.
 

Aldynes

Member
I know it's a great game but it's quite repetitive, just wait after a week and you'll find yourself longing for something new in this game.

If only you could talk to these creatures, then perhaps you could try to make friends with them, form alliances... Now, that would be interesting.
 
Last edited:

TintoConCasera

I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
Oh cool! Another fellow GZDoom enjoyer.

Make sure to disable jumping, crouching and vertical looking. Also remove any texture filtering of any kind, as it makes the game look like it's smeared on vaseline.

Hope you have tons of fun! I went on a DOOM binge some time ago, and had a very good time playing through the original episodes (always on Ultra Violence btw! Otherwise it'll be too easy), the DOOM II campaign, and some wads I tried during that time, like Eviternity or Ancient Aliens.

Make sure to checkout Sigil too once you have beaten Thy Flesh Consumed. It's kinda like an almost official 5th episode developed by Romero, and it features some really neat level design and two soundtracks, one of them being midi which really, really slaps.



I know it's a great game but it's quite repetitive, just wait after a week and you'll find yourself longing for something new in this game.

If only you could talk to these creatures, then perhaps you could try to make friends with them, form alliances... Now, that would be interesting.
Understand Captain America GIF
 
I couldn't play it again due to being a graphics whore, but I played it on PS1 when it came out. It was really atmospheric and scary.
 

DukeNukem00

Banned
I couldn't play it again due to being a graphics whore, but I played it on PS1 when it came out. It was really atmospheric and scary.

You should play it now, it looks quite good in modern sourceports. It's even with RTX now thanks to the recent mod. You haven't actually played Doom if you only did it on console. Missing and altered levels, missing enemies, changed ligthning, poor controls due to gamepads, missing music. This is the actual Doom right here.
 

Laptop1991

Member
I loved the game at the time, but i haven't played it since the 90's, i prefer Doom 3 and 2016 and all the later first person shooter's the game spawned, but playing Doom 93 for the first time was a wow moment, i had never played a 1st person shooter before. i was instantly hooked.
 

Guilty_AI

Member
Oh cool! Another fellow GZDoom enjoyer.

Make sure to disable jumping, crouching and vertical looking. Also remove any texture filtering of any kind, as it makes the game look like it's smeared on vaseline.

Hope you have tons of fun! I went on a DOOM binge some time ago, and had a very good time playing through the original episodes (always on Ultra Violence btw! Otherwise it'll be too easy), the DOOM II campaign, and some wads I tried during that time, like Eviternity or Ancient Aliens.

Make sure to checkout Sigil too once you have beaten Thy Flesh Consumed. It's kinda like an almost official 5th episode developed by Romero, and it features some really neat level design and two soundtracks, one of them being midi which really, really slaps.


Yeah the jumping became obvious to me it wasn't part of the original, it could be used to cheese deadly pools or even skip entire levels. SIgil looks cool, i'll check it out when i can.
 

deriks

4-Time GIF/Meme God
Nice that you liked. Now go for the second game and you will literally have a blast.

Did you played 2016 and/or Eternal? They are great evilutions of the original games
 

Guilty_AI

Member
Nice that you liked. Now go for the second game and you will literally have a blast.

Did you played 2016 and/or Eternal? They are great evilutions of the original games
Only 2016, i've avoided eternal since the game seemed a little too bloated. Instead of Doom, for the next shooters i'm planning to check out other classics like Herectic and Hexen, as well as some modern retro-fps.
 

amigastar

Member
its amazing how doom 1 and 2 still hold up today. i know its part nostalgia talking, but they really are still super fun to play, unlike other games from my childhood that i loved back then but didnt age well.
XCom Ufo Defense is another title that aged good.
But yeah Doom is really fantastic. I also love Brutal Doom 64.
 
Last edited:

DukeNukem00

Banned
its amazing how doom 1 and 2 still hold up today. i know its part nostalgia talking, but they really are still super fun to play, unlike other games from my childhood that i loved back then but didnt age well.


Thats because they were actually good. The games you think "havent aged well" were never good to begin with, but you probably didnt know better as a kid. I think we've all been in that situation. Doom didnt forged the FPS genre by being "good for its time". Check out these total conversions:

 
Seems counterintuitive that a first person shooter, one of the genres that evolved the most since its inception, is one of the better aged games, yet I find this to be true for the classic Doom formula. As a kid, I only had Doom 2, which I played all the time, finished it several times and I was thrilled to find the OG Doom, the Final Doom levels and tons of custom content in the early 2000's when I had proper access to the Internet. I juggled with 3D mods, adding a jump button and so on, but somehow the original version without jumps, without looking up or down and with hilariously low quality sprites at times still holds up brilliantly. The weapon balancing, the enemy designs, the maps, the atmosphere, the music - it just falls together so well.

Yet, funnily enough, I feel only a relatively small portion of the official Doom experience holds up in terms of map design. E1 of Doom 1993 is to this day unbeatable, but the rest of the episodes and Doom 2 feature a lot of gimmicky levels that really don't work well for repeated playthroughs. In fact, a lot of the better Doom content to this day has been done by fans via WADs, and my favourite ones are the ones that don't even add new enemies or weapons and just bring the OG Doom formula in slightly better studied levels.

Timeless game for me anyhow, up there with Super Mario Bros. 3 (which, funnily enough, also suffers from some late-game gimmicks), Tetris and Bejeweled.
 

nkarafo

Member
its amazing how doom 1 and 2 still hold up today.
That's because the game is still unbeaten in many areas.

Level design is great, especially the first episode of DOOM 1. This kind of level design has been dead since the late 90's so there aren't many modern shooters to compare.

The art/graphics/sound design is iconic. The game looks and sounds very nice, even when playing it in it's original/vanilla form.

Gameplay is almost perfect. Weapons and monsters are balanced, movement is smooth and addictive.

The music is also pretty catchy. Unlike the random noises of DOOM 2016/Eternal.
 

Kssio_Aug

Member
It's an amazing game! I also played it very late (past year), but I enjoyed it a lot! The version I played was the one on Game Pass for PC.
Since you liked it, I highly recommend you to try Doom II and Doom 64; they're also pretty fantastic. Doom II is my favorite.
 

Northeastmonk

Gold Member
I played DOOM via Shareware via AOL on my parent’s Packard Bell desktop. I was hooked. Growing up in a dysfunctional conservative family made it even better. I got my friends who lived down the street into it. They still remember the day I showed them DOOM. I don’t think the shooting genre would be the same without DOOM. I could play DOOM my whole life. It’s one of those games, like 2D Mario where it doesn’t really matter about the graphics. Shooters have tried to reach the levels of DOOM’s legacy since the beginning. Now a days a game is hyped for its launch and you see the sales decline significantly over the next couple months. The next game covers up the previous game’s hype. Not a lot of games leave a legacy behind.
 

nkarafo

Member
enemie numbers felt low. Maybe due to technical limitations..
I think it's because they went overboard with barons. They are used way too often in DOOM64. So they use less stronger enemies instead of more weaker ones.

Technically, DOOM64 is way more advanced than the original PC DOOM, with more complex levels, and runs at steady 30fps. It's superior to any other DOOM console port at the time.
 
Last edited:

TintoConCasera

I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
Hey Guilty_AI Guilty_AI , you ever played Quake?

After my DOOM binge I went with that one and man, id were still at the peak of their game with that one. Even if the game is a disjointed mess of ideas and concepts, they managed to pull off one of the best FPSs ever. Don't miss it!

Duke Nukem and Blood are also very cool, but I'd put those behind id Software games. Personal preference mostly, they are amazing games too.
 

Kev Kev

Member
Thats because they were actually good. The games you think "havent aged well" were never good to begin with, but you probably didnt know better as a kid. I think we've all been in that situation. Doom didnt forged the FPS genre by being "good for its time". Check out these total conversions:


From a critical point of view, sure, but 9 year old me was blown tf away by some video games that I find unplayable today.
 

TintoConCasera

I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
GZDOOM.
240fps on a fast monitor.
Native resolution.
Texture filtering disabled.
Sector Light mode: "Software"
Render mode: "DOOM Software renderer"
No jumping.
No mouselook, only use it to turn left/right.
Smooth weapons mod.
Software? Or True color software? I'm always torn between those two.
 

Guilty_AI

Member
Hey Guilty_AI Guilty_AI , you ever played Quake?
No, i always just kinda assumed they were multiplayer games for the longest time, though i was just mixing them up with Unreal Tournment. They're on my GOG wishlist and i'll get them once they go on sale. Before those though i'll probably go through Herectic and Hexen.

Duke Nukem and Blood are also very cool, but I'd put those behind id Software games. Personal preference mostly, they are amazing games too.
I did play Blood. Thought it was very cool but i think it suffers a case of 'going for too long'. The excess of enemies hitscan-shooting us was also far too annoying.
 

TintoConCasera

I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
No, i always just kinda assumed they were multiplayer games for the longest time, though i was just mixing them up with Unreal Tournment. They're on my GOG wishlist and i'll get them once they go on sale. Before those though i'll probably go through Herectic and Hexen.
Nah Quake was basically DOOM but with verticality, they didn't go full multiplayer up until Quake III.

Quake II is also singleplayer, but doesn't have anything to do with the first one in terms of atmosphere. In fact, I think it was going to be a new IP, but at the last moment they slapped the Quake brand into it because marketing. Still a cool game tho, but not as good as their previous titles imo. Soundtrack slaps tho.

Heretic is very cool too, basically medieval DOOM. Hexen though... Man I hate that game, it's like a metroidvania where you have to push 4 (or 8, or 16!) different switches in different locations just to open a door. Which door has just been opened you say? Haha good luck finding out. :')
Game's a marvel to look at tho, best use of the DOOM engine probably.
 

DukeNukem00

Banned
No, i always just kinda assumed they were multiplayer games for the longest time, though i was just mixing them up with Unreal Tournment. They're on my GOG wishlist and i'll get them once they go on sale. Before those though i'll probably go through Herectic and Hexen.




Hexen 2 and Heretic 2 in particular are amazing games. Heretic 2 is a 3rd person action game. Its so cool, that game is from 1998 and it has a movement set that outdoes a lot of games today. You can do sideflips, backflips, crouch rolls in every direction and if you have your main weapon on which is a staff and you sprint you do a vault flip. If you jump forward, sideways, backwards and you keep the key pressed he does an air flip and for a longer distance. The game is at the very start of 3rd person 3d gaming at it basically has the same PC controls we have today. One of my favourite games
 

Scotty W

Member
That’s good to hear, Guilty_AI Guilty_AI . Be sure to give Doom 2 a shot. I like it more because the levels are less mazey. Treat Doom 64 with suspicion; though it looks cool, imho, the level design is incredibly dated, relying heavily on annoying gimmicks that the mod scene left behind decades ago.

I have been playing Doom for about 20 years, and here are some of my favorite mods:

Alien Vendetta
Ancient Aliens
Deus Vult 2
Scythe 1 and 2
Valiant

But don’t just take my word for it. There is an infinite number of play worthy maps out there.

 

Guilty_AI

Member
That’s good to hear, Guilty_AI Guilty_AI . Be sure to give Doom 2 a shot. I like it more because the levels are less mazey. Treat Doom 64 with suspicion; though it looks cool, imho, the level design is incredibly dated, relying heavily on annoying gimmicks that the mod scene left behind decades ago.

I have been playing Doom for about 20 years, and here are some of my favorite mods:

Alien Vendetta
Ancient Aliens
Deus Vult 2
Scythe 1 and 2
Valiant

But don’t just take my word for it. There is an infinite number of play worthy maps out there.

One of the things that kickstarted me playing DOOM was this mod

 

TintoConCasera

I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife


Been meaning to try this one for a while. Never played Hocus Pocus but still, this wad looks soulful and fun.
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom