Why DOOM II was/is the best game

[VBboy]

Ok, those who played Doom II know what I'm talking about.
It was the best game back then, and even now most games don't come close to it in many aspects.

1. It was spooky!
Monsters were scary, maps tricky and dark, sounds were chilling, etc. Most modern games have
some freaking vacuum-cleaner looking monsters that aren't fun to kill. Who wants to shoot at
a flying bunch of green and yellow polygons?!

2. There was a huge element of surprise.
You could walk into a room, and 20 Imps would jump you. You'd kill them and have 5% health left,
only to be faced by 15 Lost Souls as soon as you pick up a key. You never knew what to expect.

3. Levels were very dynamic and could change at any time.
Walls would go up and down, there were interesting elevators, and entire rooms could go under
that green radioactive goo. Modern games have true 3d environments, but they are still static
and mostly boring, although some are really beautiful (Unreal 2, for example)

4. Fighting 100 monsters at the same time is wicked fun!
You could be in the same room with 100 monsters, all moving and shooting at you, and the game
wouldn't slow down at all. It's more fun than facing someone one on one, like in modern games...

5. There were so many cool and totally different monsters!
Including the big one that gave birth to the Lost Souls (the flying skulls). In modern games, there
is a wimpy 10 or so monsters, with little variety between them. We want cool monsters!

6. There were tons of great add-on levels.
They even released CDs with hundreds of awesome levels. Not the pathetic 50-KB ones, but large ones,
total conversions, multi-map levels. Now, you have to pay $30 or so to get an add-on, like the
Medal of Honor expansion pack.

7. Easy to create levels for and hack (suggested by MercenaryForHire)
"I made a custom mod with 50+ weapons, including a flamethrower and nuke.
Damn, that was good fun!"
Exactly. I made a few levels myself, some for training purposes, some for multiplayer. Try designing
a map for Quake3, you might as well get a CAD/CAM job

Bottom line: I still think Doom II is the best game, especially if you run the OpenGL version!

Comments? Observations? Flame?

 

[BatmanNate]

To most of the combined elements of your list made the game extremely immersive, especially since it was of a genre that was not as heavily exploited as today.

 

[Descartes]

Games today have matured. Doom I/II took very little skill. You simply ran around and pushed the fire button as often as possible. Quake was the first game that took real skill.

I don't miss it.

 

[d33pt]

i played doom2 with my friend cooperatively over a modem...took us like two weeks to go thru it all...30 levels or something it was i believe

 

[CallTheFBI]

The Doom series was definately a classic but the genre has been improved upon greatly in my opinion.

 

[VBboy]

Originally posted by: Descartes
Games today have matured. Doom I/II took very little skill. You simply ran around and pushed the fire button as often as possible. Quake was the first game that took real skill.

I don't miss it.

Just try playing it on a higher difficulty. It took enormous skill! There were 32 levels of progressing difficulty and increasing number of monsters on each, and on the highest difficulty the game would take days to complete.

Moreover, add-on levels that were well designed presented even more challenge.

 

[Vic]

IIRC, no mouse freelook and no 3d hardware acceleration. Otherwise, cool game.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: d33pt
i played doom2 with my friend cooperatively over a modem...took us like two weeks to go thru it all...30 levels or something it was i believe

Let's add in:

Easy to create levels for and hack
I made a custom mod with 50+ weapons, including a flamethrower and nuke. Damn, that was good fun!

- M4H

 

[VBboy]

Originally posted by: Vic
IIRC, no mouse freelook and no 3d hardware acceleration. Otherwise, cool game.

There are many OpenGL modifications that you can run at up to 1600x1200 with jump/mouse feel/multichanel sounds and more.

 

[ElFenix]

eh, serious sam was fun. it was spooky. you could hear the damn monsters trying to sneak up on you, and then there'd be 1000 of them!

 

[Descartes]

Originally posted by: VBboy

Originally posted by: Descartes
Games today have matured. Doom I/II took very little skill. You simply ran around and pushed the fire button as often as possible. Quake was the first game that took real skill.

I don't miss it.

Just try playing it on a higher difficulty. It took enormous skill! There were 32 levels of progressing difficulty and increasing number of monsters on each, and on the highest difficulty the game would take days to complete.

Moreover, add-on levels that were well designed presented even more challenge.

The "difficulty" was increased by simply adding more foes. That hardly makes for a mature game. Quake and Quake 2 actually increased in difficulty not simply requiring you to push the fire button faster

 

[Electric Amish]

Warcraft II was better, IMO, but Doom II was the first one me and my friends played on the LAN.

amish

 

[OutHouse]

best weapon ever BFG, nuff said.

 

[skace]

I think you touched up a lot on the reasons Doom was cool, but let me elaborate a little bit on why I think so also.

In doom, 90% of the enemies fired projectiles. Projectiles are a lot easier to dodge than instant hit (usually bullets) weapons. So in Doom, you could run into a room and physically dodge an enemies attacks and feel like you were out-smarting the enemy. Where as, in most FPS games these days, you have to depend on a lot of duck and cover, as most AI snipers (or even pistol users) will take you down pretty fast in the open. To make up for the fact that most enemies used projectiles, they would add A LOT of enemies. So instead of dodging one projectile, you are now dodging 6-7 from different directions. Also, to keep you on your toes, you had the chaingun guys who would lock onto you pretty quickly, but took a few seconds to spin up and the revenants who auto hit you if you were in range and threw you several feet as well (I think). This meant you had to prioritize enemies by who you could dodge and who you couldn't. To top it off, most areas of doom had very little places you could actually hide from enemy attacks -- making the now very common tactic of pop and shoot, basically useless. I think the guys that made Serious Sam realized this same situation and tried to duplicate it. Unfortunatly, they went somewhat overboard and created a whole new game -- where every single room you entered basically had you backpedalling frantically trying to kill 900 guys. I think Doom had a balance, most games went one direction and Serious Sam went the far other direction.

You also mentioned dynamic levels and I think that was important too. It wasn't just that Doom had weird dynamic levels, but they were somewhat illogical, IE: you stood on a floor light, shot a wall, and the floor light became a lift that brought you up to a new area. These very odd dynamic areas, very seldom exist now because people criticized level designs not being realistic / etc. Doom basically had levels based more on rat trap type mazes instead of logical buildings / rooms.

Then, there is a biggy which you didn't touch upon: Competitive FPS gaming. Quake changed everything. Now you have to expect people to bunny hop through a level, or rocket jump off a wall to cheat an area. People will try anything, which wasn't really the mindframe back in doom. Especially since in Doom you couldn't aim up / down.

 

[VBboy]

Originally posted by: skace
I think you touched up a lot on the reasons Doom was cool, but let me elaborate a little bit on why I think so also.

In doom, 90% of the enemies fired projectiles. Projectiles are a lot easier to dodge than instant hit (usually bullets) weapons. So in Doom, you could run into a room and physically...

All good points (didn't quote all to minimize bandwidth
But don't forget that you could have modem multiplayer game, with 9600 bps serving up a perfectly steady connection. Now, you need Cable for reliable multiplayer. As for the looking up and down, it was somewhat compensated for by having auto-aim work up and down.

Oh yeah, and death sequences were awesome It wasn't just fall-jerk-jerk-die. Monsters would melt or fall apart as chunks of meat, in a very disturbing but pleasing manner

 

[notfred]

Reasons it sucked:
1) It was nothing but a Doom I expansion level pack and a super shotgun.
2) It was absolutely impossible to beat without cheating.

 

[VBboy]

Originally posted by: notfred
Reasons it sucked:
1) It was nothing but a Doom I expansion level pack and a super shotgun.
2) It was absolutely impossible to beat without cheating.

1). Kinda true, but more monsters and levels.
2). I beat it on Medium (Hurt me Plenty or something like that) in just one week. Later on, I played it on the next difficulty, and now I can play on max. with fast-moving monsters.

I do have to cheat in Unreal 2 because you run out of ammo and health in like 10 seconds

 

[notfred]

Originally posted by: VBboy

Originally posted by: notfred
Reasons it sucked:
1) It was nothing but a Doom I expansion level pack and a super shotgun.
2) It was absolutely impossible to beat without cheating.

1). Kinda true, but more monsters and levels.
2). I beat it on Medium (Hurt me Plenty or something like that) in just one week. Later on, I played it on the next difficulty, and now I can play on max. with fast-moving monsters.

I do have to cheat in Unreal 2 because you run out of ammo and health in like 10 seconds

You realize that beating it includes finisheing level 30, right?

 

[Analog]

Doom / Doom II was the best game. I Loved it.

 

[brtspears2]

Auto Aim... and I think everyone has the hardware to play it these days.

 

[Jmmsbnd007]

Originally posted by: notfred

Originally posted by: VBboy

Originally posted by: notfred
Reasons it sucked:
1) It was nothing but a Doom I expansion level pack and a super shotgun.
2) It was absolutely impossible to beat without cheating.

1). Kinda true, but more monsters and levels.
2). I beat it on Medium (Hurt me Plenty or something like that) in just one week. Later on, I played it on the next difficulty, and now I can play on max. with fast-moving monsters.

I do have to cheat in Unreal 2 because you run out of ammo and health in like 10 seconds

You realize that beating it includes finisheing level 30, right?

I've beaten all 32 levels on Ultra-Violence. I once tried nightmare, I died sooo fast. It's a huge, impossible step up.

 

[VBboy]

Originally posted by: notfred
You realize that beating it includes finisheing level 30, right?

LOL, yeah, I just remembered. It was pretty hard, but if you could shoot well you'd make it. You have like 3 minutes before the level fills with all kinds of nasty creatures.

 

[Triumph]

Actually, Doom 2 was a pretty bad sequel. All they did was add a couple monsters, a couple weapons, and more levels. It was more of an expansion pack than anything; no jump in graphics the way there was from Q1-Q2-Q3, and other games of the like.

 

[Schadenfreude]

Like someone else said, try Serious Sam I/II. Better than Doom!

 

[VBboy]

Originally posted by: Jehovah
Like someone else said, try Serious Sam I/II. Better than Doom!

I played it, but it was too cheerful and bright for me. Outstanding graphics and sounds, but just too colorful and outdoorish I like them dark basements of Doom II..