Doom reboot

[tacotiklah]

This looks so friggin' awesome. The amount of f**ked up ways to kill demons is over 9000 if the game is anything like that clip.

 

[Seybsnilksz]

Open beta starts on friday

 

[wankerness]

Nah, I'll agree with you. We were just thinking of it differently. "Nothing like it at the time" to me just meant how advanced one was. Wolfs mechanics were largely the same, but doom was just hella advanced in comparison, especially for being released at around the same time. Duke 3d was the next to up the genre, and that came out in 96 I think, which was several years later.

I feel the need to go back and play some wolfenstein, doom, heretic, Hexen and duke3d now.

I'm with you on this, the leap in technology from Wolfenstein to Doom was pretty incredible. From levels having to be on one level plane with uniform ceiling height/floor height to the insanity of levels like "Mt Erebus" (or especially "Tenements" or "Monster Condo" in Doom 2) was about the same leap in engine technology as Doom to Quake was. Doom is still incredibly playable and fast-paced, while wolfenstein is clunky as hell. Doom has strangely aged better than most of the early polygonal shooters.

I played through Heretic once, it was pretty good. It had a lot of cool environmental effects and I liked that it was like "Medieval Doom," but the level design wasn't nearly as good as that in Doom/Doom 2. Never could get into Hexen, the characters felt too limited. I played through Duke Nukem 3D a couple times and Shadow Warrior once, those were pretty good. Dark Forces was alright, if dated even at the time.

I can't even remember how far I got in Doom 3, I just didn't get into it. I was annoyed that it was claustrophobic and full of jump scares when my fondest memories of Doom were the huge levels with monsters pouring out of the walls and filling the rooms that made up the back half of Doom II and all of Final Doom. Even the muddy Doom 64 had better levels.

 

[asher]

It's funny to think of Dark Forces as being dated at launch, when I'm fairly sure it was the first of the 3D shooters to have overlapping verticality in its levels. DOOM added lifts and differing elevations and such, but none of its spaces occupy the same X and Y location while being at different elevation.

It's been so long since I've played any of it I don't remember if the level design capitalizes, though I'm sure the canyon level start (2 or 3?) was impressive at the time.

 

[QuantumCybin]

You can buy Dark Forces on Steam for like 5 bucks, comes with its own DOS emulator. Who else remembers the level with the rancor right at the beginning? That terrified me as a kid so much nostalgia

 

[Emperor Guillotine]

So...how's about that Schecter 9-string that was used on the soundtrack for the new Doom game?

 

[asher]

You can buy Dark Forces on Steam for like 5 bucks, comes with its own DOS emulator. Who else remembers the level with the rancor right at the beginning? That terrified me as a kid so much nostalgia

I started playing it a few summers ago and only got 4-5 levels in before I stopped (for whatever reason). Unfortunately it doesn't hi-res, so if you don't play it in tiny windowed mode, Imperial officers look like twitching pixelated turds...

 

[wankerness]

You can buy Dark Forces on Steam for like 5 bucks, comes with its own DOS emulator. Who else remembers the level with the rancor right at the beginning? That terrified me as a kid so much nostalgia

I don't remember that. You mean the one with the krayt dragons? Or was there actually one with a rancor?

Dark Forces was dated on launch cause of the graphics. They are technically more advanced than Duke Nukem 3D's, but the art design was so bad in comparison and Duke Nukem delighted in flinging tons of crazy colored stuff at the screen and having tons of environmental interaction, while IIRC dark forces was completely non-interactive when it came to destructible walls or scenery. Duke Nukem's build engine allowed for actually blasting holes in walls or being able to blow up buildings and have them come straight down and have a new surface at a different elevation and that kind of thing. DF's levels were complex and I think may have had polygonal elements, but the dudes all looked SO BAD! By that point we'd also had full polygonal shooters like Descent for a year and a half, and something with clunky sprites and very monotone environments just wasn't too interesting. The Mac version looked pretty good since it was more than double the resolution (I was part of the Mac master race at the time - we barely got any games, but the ports we got were always technically much better!), but the PC and PSX versions were prettay, prettay, prettay ugly.

 

[QuantumCybin]

I don't remember that. You mean the one with the krayt dragons? Or was there actually one with a rancor?

Dark Forces was dated on launch cause of the graphics. They are technically more advanced than Duke Nukem 3D's, but the art design was so bad in comparison and Duke Nukem delighted in flinging tons of crazy colored stuff at the screen and having tons of environmental interaction, while IIRC dark forces was completely non-interactive when it came to destructible walls or scenery. Duke Nukem's build engine allowed for actually blasting holes in walls or being able to blow up buildings and have them come straight down and have a new surface at a different elevation and that kind of thing. DF's levels were complex and I think may have had polygonal elements, but the dudes all looked SO BAD! By that point we'd also had full polygonal shooters like Descent for a year and a half, and something with clunky sprites and very monotone environments just wasn't too interesting. The Mac version looked pretty good since it was more than double the resolution (I was part of the Mac master race at the time - we barely got any games, but the ports we got were always technically much better!), but the PC and PSX versions were prettay, prettay, prettay ugly.

I'm like 95% positive there's a level with a rancor in the immediate beginning, because I have some pretty vivid memories of frantically asking my mom or dad to type in "laskip" to skip the current level. Yes, I remember really pointless sh!t lol. lalame was invincibility if I recall.

Also, prettay...prettay....prettay....do you like Curb your Enthusiasm? lol

 

[asher]

I feel like rancor was a thing and I have level 5 attached to it.

There are diagonas in the sewers in two, which creeped me out as a kid

 

[wankerness]

I'm like 95% positive there's a level with a rancor in the immediate beginning, because I have some pretty vivid memories of frantically asking my mom or dad to type in "laskip" to skip the current level. Yes, I remember really pointless sh!t lol. lalame was invincibility if I recall.

Also, prettay...prettay....prettay....do you like Curb your Enthusiasm? lol

I vaguely remember that now. Wasn't it like, below you and you were up on the walls around it? I guess I'll have to look it up. I tried replaying it recently and couldn't deal with the half resolution on PC, it looked SO bad. They need a zdoom equivalent for dark forces.

I wrote pretty, pretty and then immediately heard it in Larry David's voice, so I had to do the Curb reference

EDIT: Apparently there IS a zdoom equivalent called Dark XL.

 

[QuantumCybin]

I vaguely remember that now. Wasn't it like, below you and you were up on the walls around it? I guess I'll have to look it up. I tried replaying it recently and couldn't deal with the half resolution on PC, it looked SO bad. They need a zdoom equivalent for dark forces.

I wrote pretty, pretty and then immediately heard it in Larry David's voice, so I had to do the Curb reference

EDIT: Apparently there IS a zdoom equivalent called Dark XL.

If my memory is correct, the level starts and you're just spawned right in front of the rancor and it instantly starts chasing you. That's why back when I was like three years old, that level terrified me

 

[FILTHnFEAR]

If they do something fresh and innovating, this could be great. A big if. Doom 3 was pretty lame.

As an old school fan of the original, I pray it's done justice.

 

[bostjan]

I was a huge FPS nerd in the 90's.

Castle Wolfenstein came out in 1981. Wolfenstein 3D was a reboot of that game in 1992. The original Doom came out in 1993, and it was technologically quite ahead of W3D or Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold, which also came out in 1993. Heretic came out in 1994, which was way ahead of Doom in technological advancement (the gameplay incorporated several nifty interactions, such as flying, weapons that could interact with enemies in less straightforward ways, looking up and down, etc.), so the step from W3D to Doom was not a giant leap in comparison with other games spaced by similar amounts of time. Doom II: Hell on Earth was far more widespread than Doom, anyway, and that did not come out until 1994. Hexen: Beyond Heretic came out in 1995, featuring a new engine and better graphics than Doom. And then Quake came out in 1996.

I have no problem with them rebooting a game series. If they do a terrible job at it, for whatever reason, then it just means another .... game. They already rebooted Wolfenstein, and the result wasn't half bad. I still enjoy W3D and Doom II and Heretic.

I still enjoy playing some of the Heretic mods I made back in the mid-late 90's, back when mod'ing was really straightforward compared to now.

 

[thedonal]

There was a bit of Dark Forces that I really dug- shooting Stormtroopers down a a very Death-Staryy corridor, dodging their laser bolts and having those sounds and THAT music. I really vibed on it.

But yeah- it really did look way too spritey and blocky.

I quite liked Jedi Outcast, but remember it being really CPU hungry so I couldn't play it for years on my very budget and out of date computers. I do remember the cloaky, lightsaber proof dark troopers being a right bitch though.

I'm hoping the new Doom will be at least a decent size- so many FPS now are really launched for the multiplayer content and have fairly short solo campaigns (COD- I'm looking at you!!).

 

[Lorcan Ward]

Heretic

Hexen: Beyond Heretic

I boot those two games up every 2-3 years for a play through. I'm not overly fond of modern gaming but looking at the hell level preview in the new DOOM I think they could make an awesome Heretic/Hexen game.

 

[wankerness]

They COULD, but they don't. The only games I've played that even remotely felt like classic Doom in gameplay were the first two Serious Sams, and those obviously don't have remotely similar tones or level design. Everything else I've played has put way too much emphasis on HEADSHOTS and GRITTY REALISM and VOICEACTING and FACEMAPPING and other things that I don't care about. I just want to shoot hundreds of demons! I guess I'm in a minority and everyone else wants to just keep making further refinements of Goldeneye. Bleh. I HATE Halo and the COD games. The last shooter I really loved the gameplay on was Unreal Tournament 2004. That's not to say I haven't liked any shooters, I just always tended to enjoy them despite not really preferring their style of combat. Ex Bioshock, Bioshock Infinite, Dishonored, Bulletstorm, etc. Borderlands 1 was a step in the right direction, though they over-compensated with 2, which is balanced entirely around multiplayer.

 

[asher]

Oh god Serious Sam

So good.

 

[Ralyks]

Is the Doom Beta available on PS4? Because this game is looking so freakin' good.

Side note: We need a new Dark Forces game.

 

[Seybsnilksz]

Is the Doom Beta available on PS4?

Yes it is! Play it nao!