Why is Doom still quite a disturbing experience?

[jimmymckooel]

I downloaded the doom games for Christmas and after this reading this thread I have to play them tonight.   It's a raw shooter which you have to play on at least ultra violence to get the best experience.  The gunplay is so basic, all you do is point the gun in the general direction of your target, you don;t need to look up or down.  It's the still the fastest shooter, you can't speed around maps like that in a COD, it's like a race course.  The animations of the guns, always looks thrilling the shotgun pumping, the chain gun spinning and when you pick up the gun that satisfying shi-ki sound.  The sound effects, you always knew who was behind the door because of each monsters signature sound effect.  The picture of yourself on the hud, who's eyes are always shifting and getting more bloody and looking like shit the more damage he takes.  I forget to mention the music, I miss 16 bit and 32 bit music.  It's a classic, no other game gives you so much to shoot, what the badguys lack in a.i. they make up for in numbers.  It's the first person equivalent of space invaders, so challenging on the harder settings, with the most iconic bad guys in a first person shooter.  My fave bad guys were the imps and the shot gun zombies, loved killing those guys and always a chainsaw for the demons.  18 years old too...man I'm getting old.

[Consignia]

It is using the same WAD files that are working in 2D on the DS version I'm running. I'm sure that headshots seem to waste enemies with less ammo (although it may just be my increased accuracy, generally).

Yeah, but the wads are just level design, and data and stuff. I gurantee the original was 2d planar, because that's how they got it to run efficiently on a 386. Later ports mess around with the engine to give an actual 3d engine. I remember years ago a Quake TC of Doom which used the doom wads but was actually running in 3d with the Quake engine. Doom's engine has been open source for a while so there has been loads of tunings of it.

[Phil_A]

It just occured to me the first time I ever installed Doom, it was from floppy disks. Blimey, were we ever so young, etc.

The ending of "Knee Deep In The Dead" sums up the whole Doom experience pretty well. You're completely trapped, alone, in the dark, surrounded by uncountable hoards of hellbeasts and the only thing you can do is keep shooting until you die. I'd actually played Quake first, and while that was scarier in some respects(particularly the sound design), there is something to be said for Doom's relentless never-ending carnage.

Did anyone ever play any of the Marathon games? The first was Mac only, but recent developments have allowed it to run on Windows via an engine. I managed to get it working, but found it much, much harder than Doom. You get much less ammo for one thing, so it's vitally important to conserve it for the right moments. I don't think I ever managed to get more than a tiny way into it.

The PS1 version of Hexen was a truly shoddy port in every respect. Painfully slow, and the textures were so low res you could barely make anything out. And it took up a whole fifteen slots on your memory card to save! Madness.

[glitch]

The original DOS version is definitely 2d. It didn't have mouselook or any of that gubbins. You must be playing a source port of some description where they add 3d elements. It does have some clever things to make it look 3d though.

2.5d ;)

[mikeyg27]

Did anyone ever play any of the Marathon games? The first was Mac only, but recent developments have allowed it to run on Windows via an engine. I managed to get it working, but found it much, much harder than Doom. You get much less ammo for one thing, so it's vitally important to conserve it for the right moments. I don't think I ever managed to get more than a tiny way into it.

Ah, Marathon - the closest thing to a trump card that a Mac gamer ever had. Getting the whole trilogy working on any main operating system is pretty easy these days thanks to Aleph One[nb]When Bungie went Judas and signed with Microsoft, they felt guilty and made the engine open source and released the data files, which was nice of them... the traitors.[/nb]. It suffers in comparisons to Doom because the level and character design simply isn't as strong and it's nowhere near as intense, but it's a very different experience. It's a lot slower and more sparse, although it does have a habit of unloading waves of Pfhor on you when you least expect it. It's the genre's evolutionary step that is most under-appreciated - it utilized mouselook, had a plot integrated into the gameplay via terminals, and cool secondary fire options, all things that would become popularized later. It is also pretty damn hard (Marathon 2 is slightly more forgiving, but Marathon Infinity is just insane).

[glitch]

Ah, Marathon - the closest thing to a trump card that a Mac gamer ever had. Getting the whole trilogy working on any main operating system is pretty easy these days thanks to Aleph One[nb]When Bungie went Judas and signed with Microsoft, they felt guilty and made the engine open source and released the data files, which was nice of them... the traitors.[/nb]. It suffers in comparisons to Doom because the level and character design simply isn't as strong and it's nowhere near as intense, but it's a very different experience. It's a lot slower and more sparse, although it does have a habit of unloading waves of Pfhor on you when you least expect it. It's the genre's evolutionary step that is most under-appreciated - it utilized mouselook, had a plot integrated into the gameplay via terminals, and cool secondary fire options, all things that would become popularized later. It is also pretty damn hard (Marathon 2 is slightly more forgiving, but Marathon Infinity is just insane).

Wasn't the "plot integrated into the gameplay via terminals" already done by System Shock?

[madhair60]

Wasn't the "plot integrated into the gameplay via terminals" already done by System Shock?

Both came out in '94.  Not sure which was first.

[Zetetic]

Either way, it doesn't seem likely that one copied the other. I'm not sure that the level or character design can be characterised as worse than Doom. It's punching in an entirely different direction (as mikey say, of course). You couldn't have the kind of abstraction and gameyness that Doom uses when you have, you know, a story. Perhaps it is simply worse as a shooter, at least if you mean 'Doom' by shooter...

It's arguably a large part of the reason that Doom 3 took so much flak - it tried to integrate (indeed, extend - terminals and the like in Doom 3 are fucking joyous) all the tropes of story integration that shooters had developed in the intervening decade or so, with that same Doom-y feel. Not many people took well to the result. Although, I'd argue that Doom 3 is quite a disturbing experience. It manages the visuals well and has the same hostility as the original. It's only that after a while that hostility just seems ridiculous - why does every corner have a monster, who designed this bloody place? These questions are much harder to dismiss in '3' than in the originals where there was never a single moment where it seemed credible that you were in a story...

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Regarding the non-story, rather than it feeling like 'right we've got a mission to do to save x', Doom switches on without any background context, rather like a nightmare, and immediately presents you with enemies, giving you almost zero time to contextualise anything. In a modern game you'd more often than not have a practice level laden with all the various goodies in the game.

[mikeyg27]

It's arguably a large part of the reason that Doom 3 took so much flak - it tried to integrate (indeed, extend - terminals and the like in Doom 3 are fucking joyous) all the tropes of story integration that shooters had developed in the intervening decade or so, with that same Doom-y feel. Not many people took well to the result. Although, I'd argue that Doom 3 is quite a disturbing experience. It manages the visuals well and has the same hostility as the original. It's only that after a while that hostility just seems ridiculous - why does every corner have a monster, who designed this bloody place? These questions are much harder to dismiss in '3' than in the originals where there was never a single moment where it seemed credible that you were in a story...

I've just started making my way through Doom 3 after getting it in the Doom pack at Christmas. I really can't help but wonder how it would've fared[nb]although having said this I'm pretty sure it made id a shitload of money[/nb] had it not been part of the Doom franchise and instead been called something else. Would people have been so pissed off at it? Would it have induced such anger? I can't help but think it would've been accused of trying to be a darker Half-Life rip-off... which seems odd, all things considered.

[Brigadier Pompous]

what the badguys lack in a.i. they make up for in numbers.

This is one of the greatest strengths of Doom, the sheer numbers of badguys to kill. Then everything went fully 3d and you no longer had the processing power to chuck that many enemies on the screen, probably why I found quake to be a bit shit.

[mcbpete]

Although that flaw was then fixed by the oh-so-much-fun Serious Sam where you'd frequently have 100s of little buggers charging (and usually screaming) at you. I'd love someone to use the engine so you'd have the numbers like in Serious Sam but with the dark brooding atmosphere of Doom.

[AsparagusTrevor]

I'd say Painkiller kinda went that route, although it never quite reached the daft numbers of enemies that we got in Serious Sam.

[SetToStun]

Realms of the Haunting was a kind of halfy-halfy attempt, if I remember rightly - 3D environment but 2D sprites for the bad guys meant you could still have loads of them at once. It worked pretty well too, until I got trapped in the swimming pool maze (not its real name but that's what it seemed like) - I tried for hours to find a way out but not a hope. In the end I consulted a walkthrough which said, basically, "Good luck. The maze is ransomly generated for each attempt - there is no walkthrough for this section". I gave up there and then.

[mcbpete]

I'd say Painkiller kinda went that route, although it never quite reached the daft numbers of enemies that we got in Serious Sam.

I just wikipedia'd it and that actually looks spot on as being Doom meets Serious Sam. I'll definitely have to give that one a go...

[mikeyg27]

I just wikipedia'd it and that actually looks spot on as being Doom meets Serious Sam. I'll definitely have to give that one a go...

Lucky for you, it costs 4 dollars on GoG for the next 18 hours...

[mcbpete]

Nice, I can spare £2.50... just purchased !

[Capt.Midnight]

I too was completely obsessed with this game as a youth, still play Ultimate Doom today.  I think the Playstation iteration was the best version, the soundtrack (as mentioned before) was genuinely terrifying, long, drawn out, dischordant synths that really amplified the quiet spots in-between shooting.  When i went round to my mates, who had the PC version, the cheesy rock soundtrack completely broke the spell for me.

Also, i noticed the (then) PC version had a choppier frame rate and less smooth graphics, whereas in the PS version, the faster frame rate and the sense of running/floating at speed through the game really added to the experience feeling like a bad dream, something unreal, that you couldn't run fast enough to get away from due to the enormity and abstract nature of the levels.

I still today have a recurring nightmare when i'm actually in a giant doom level, and everywhere i run opens up a hidden area with tons of monsters, every move i make seems to trigger more of these areas until i'm quivering with fear, hiding in a small, barely concealed corner, hearing the roars of demons from every direction, awaiting my own death.  Thanks Doom.

[Zetetic]

I think the Playstation iteration was the best version

Must've been a pain to get other WADs working with that, although this probably wasn't such a concern in the early 90's.

[NoSleep]

I would say the choppier feeling on the PC would probably not exist if you tried out Doom on a PC now. The Mac version I'm running is the fastest smoothest version I've played, and it's a joy to play with mouse/keyboard instead of a console controller, as much as I liked the SNES/Jaguar/GBA & DS versions I've played.

[Zetetic]

I would say the choppier feeling on the PC would probably not exist if you tried out Doom on a PC now.

Nor if you tried it out on the vast majority of PCs at the time, I would have thought. Even taking into account the simplified maps and reduced texture sizes of the PS version it's surprising that it seemed to perform worse on someone's PC but it's not incredible I suppose, particularly if you ran PC version at a enlarged screen size. I've only had a problem getting Doom to run on some ancient  (~1992) educational machine that simply didn't have enough RAM for the task. In terms of processing power, even for the timem it seems that it wasn't massively demanding, but I'm willing to be corrected on this. (I've a few machines lying around that definitely pre-date its release by a number of years that more than capable of running it, but I appreciate that they would've been upgraded over time, and the better performing ones are more likely to have survived.)

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70fps - Pentium 100 (October 94)
35fps - Pentium 60 (March 93)