@matrix @coolboymew but that iD is just a shell of what it once was, no carmack, no romero, no adrian, no mcgee, no sandy, no tom hall, no shawn green. Only Kevin Cloud remains from the original team.

It's safe to say that d44m and d55m were made my nu-iD or by Bethesda :todd: not by "iD"

@hj @matrix @coolboymew Sure, but there’s enough people there who get what iD was all about to create DOOM (2016). I’m on the fence about Eternal, but it’s clear that these are different things from the original. I still think they are worthy, though. Only they would have the balls to cancel a project mid-way to rework it in the face of everyone’s lost faith and then come back to spit in the fave of every multi-billion dollar FPS producer…and win.

@Calvin @matrix @coolboymew >Sure, but there’s enough people there who get what iD was all about to create DOOM (2016)

Didn't know iD was all about making the fanciest graphics with most boring gameplay in the series and forgettable level design.

I though iD was more about "carmack makes an incredible breakthrough, romero turns it into an idea of a game, and everyone works together to turn rough idea into fun game", this shit started to fell apart with quake and starting with quake 2 iD pretty much fell apart completely, they stopped making games and started making glorified tech demos instead. D44m (and by extensions d55m) are neither fun games nor glorified tech demo, it's a mediocre overhyped shiny shooter.

I played d44m, i barely have any memories about it, it's so forgettable and boring, I didn't feel the need to buy d55m given that it's more of the same except they made even more bad decisions and didn't listen to critique at all. I have more memories of Black Mesa Source, Dusk, Amid Evil and fucking Postal Brain Damaged Demo than I do of d44m.

@hj @matrix @coolboymew Hard disagree on the “fun” assessment, from my end. I really enjoyed 2016 and felt it was a very solid game, for the most part. The gameplay was a big positive, but I do agree with you on the levels. They weren’t very painful for me, but they definitely aren’t ingrained in my brain for any reason other than I played them multiple times (except for the Foundry; that one was pretty good).

My gripe with Eternal was that it was much more Arcade-y and completely undermined the badass tone of the previous one (and the levels are way more linear than 2016). The main plus is that it took notes from classic games (Solve-It-Or-Die puzzles, scary boss turns into new common enemy without lowering stats, hordes of enemies at once, etc.) and just cranked them up to eleven. There’s almost literally no lulls or rest points and it’s just one balls-to-the-wall challenge after another. Great way to fry your adrenals.

So, by your evaluation, iD basically made DooM and DooM II (and Wolfenstein) and then spiraled? No mention of Quake III Arena? 🤔

@Calvin @matrix @coolboymew you're forgetting commander keen. There are no games bearing Quake name except Quake :ranger:. Q3A is a glorified tech demo for good netcode and some mapping tricks (I like UT better). Attack on Strogg is a tech demo for shiny new lightning system and animations and such (both Half-life and Unreal better). Dumb 3 is a tech demo for shiny new renderer and stencil shadows (and also demonstration how incompetent romeroless id can be when it comes to shotguns). Q4 is just Attack on strogg 2, Rage is tech demo for shit textures.

I remember most levels in doom and doom 2, the fun I had and still have, the tricks, the cheats, the combat situations, the key hunt, the secrets, the bad levels, the bugs. All I remember about d44m: running around in circles to win, foundry level, same "glory kill" animation over and over again, the annoying unskippable PLOT, the monsters limit, the feeling "I wish I was playing serious sam instead".

>Solve-It-Or-Die puzzles
>cranked them up to eleven.

Mm yes, doom platforming, everyone's favorite. How about we also bring back the most awful things like TNT evolution map design, being unable to aim up and down and unable to jump?
@Calvin @coolboymew @matrix >hordes of enemies at once

~14 enemies at once ain't a horde

@hj @matrix @coolboymew I never played Commander Keen, so that’s probably why I forgot it.

I thought Q3A perfected the multiplayer formula quite a bit, but I’m open to hearing arguments for why Q1 is better without losing any of what 3 had. Actually, I’m more looking for the next successor. Quake Champions is honestly fun, but only because they preserved through the shitty decisions that Bethesda made (contract Saber to do the engine development and other core elements, set up a major promotional tournament with a $1m prize pot while the game was still in closed beta, etc.), but it’s not as accessible to the same degree as, say, OpenArena. But OA is old, quite simply, which limits what the community can do. I’m thinking maybe something based on Tesseract (a massive upgrade/overhaul to the Cube 2 engine).

Doom 3 didn’t do much for me, either. But, does Q4 count, since it was Ravensoft? Rage had a lot of potential, but it just felt like it was half-finished. They had some good ideas and were heading in a decent direction, but they just didn’t do enough with it (as evidenced by the the VAs of Baird and Sam from Gears 3 voicing half the people in each town).

“Unskippable plot.” But…that was >1% of the game content. That was one of it’s selling points was the highly sparse amount of plot elements in the game, as well as the overt rejection of such nonsense right at the beginning with Doomdude chucking the terminal across the room. Guess it just was that painful for you that it stands out that much. :/

“Serious Sam.” I tried a bit of Serious Sam 3, but

@hj @coolboymew @matrix [Goddamn touchscreen] …anyway. Serious Sam 3 just seemed like an odd Painkiller type game. Is there a better one to start with?

“14 enemies at once ain’t a horde.” So picky.

@Calvin @matrix @coolboymew >“14 enemies at once ain’t a horde.” So picky.

not picky. I played Plutonia, I played Serious Sam. I played slaughtermaps for dooms. Horde ain't 12, 14 or even 20. It's when you lose count of enemies, when instead of dealing with each individual enemy you have "blobs" of enemies with some key more dangerous ones that you do count. See, in d44m you just making laps running in circles around small arena and dealing with each enemy, waiting and planning that when you kill another enemy next one will spawn, nearly the entirety of the game is like that. In doom and doom 2 it's more like assessing the combat situation, manipulating AI to your advantage, dealing with enemies in specific order.


>Is there a better one to start with?

First and especially Second Encounter. Doesn't matter whether HD or Classic, although I do recommend giving Classic a spin at least once - it has some nice tricks with gravity that didn't make it into HD. Also Serious Sam 2 if you skip all the cutscenes/play in coop. Serious Sam 3 is terrible and I'm really not interested in SS4. VR versions of TFE/TSE are great too btw.


> thought Q3A perfected the multiplayer formula quite a bit, but I’m open to hearing arguments for why Q1 is better without losing any of what 3 had.

out of all "Q" games, Q3A might be the best for multiplayer, but it looks like a refinement over multiplayer component of Q2 which is on itself a refinement over Quake which is in turn a massive step up from Doom's deathmatch scene. My vision is that any game is great with friends - as Big Moist himself said - even throwing shit is fun with friends, so let's measure it from point of an autist who plays single player even in multiplayer games. Quake has decent single-player campaign and incredible atmosphere, you could potentially play deathmatch with bots. Q2 is boring, you could play deathmatch with bots I guess. Q3A is just deathmatch - sure it has wider assortment of armaments and wider selection of characters, but it's still deathmatch only or deathmatch-primarily, best it had is CTF. It wasn't anything new since Quake, not even taking notes from multiplayer quake mods like team fortress. Compare it to UT99 which had deathmatch, ctf, domination, assault (objective-based mission gameplay).

>Actually, I’m more looking for the next successor

I can only personally recommend Splitgate, although it's more halo-like (i never played halo) and my only gripe with the game is its visual style (or lack of it).

I also heard good things about Xonotic but never played it myself.

And of course, Q3A is still there, much like QuakeWorld and Doom.

>“Unskippable plot.” But…that was >1% of the game content.

Do you ffffffucking remember when you had to listen to Mecha Sam Hyde's exposition in his office for like several minutes straight? Do you remember the whole exposition on ghostly dudes in hell or whatnot? Apparently people liked it so much the brought even more in d55m with capeshit-like cutscenes, the LORE, the "yeah it's still the doomguy from doom1", the mini-cutscenes that take control away from player to show that some door was opened from pressing a remote switch.

Don't get me wrong, d44m is not a bad game, it's a good game but imo it's not a great game. It's better than Duke Nukem Forever I give you that, 7-7.5 out of 10. But it's not game for me. I never had a thought that I should replay d44m again, meanwhile I'm in progress of replaying Dusk. And seeing how d55m is "d44m but more (of the bad stuff)" and "Low Ammo Simulator" I'm simply not interested in it.

Maybe d44m and d55m are great games... if you don't know better.
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@hj
@matrix @coolboymew

>So picky
Was being tongue-in-cheek, there.

I haven't played Plutonia, is I'll search that up.

>In doom and doom 2 it's more like assessing the combat situation, manipulating AI to your advantage, dealing with enemies in specific order.

Huh. That was my experience playing (2016).

>Serious Sam 3 is terrible
Oh, thank God, it's not just me. I was pretty hyped on it, seeing other people praising the series and I had in my Steam library, somehow, so I tried it out...and really couldn't find enjoyment in it. So, I'll check out the other two, then.

>out of all "Q" games, Q3A might be the best for multiplayer, but it looks like a refinement over multiplayer component of Q2 which is on itself a refinement over Quake which is in turn a massive step up from Doom's deathmatch scene.
Okay, cool. That's mainly what I was wondering.

>Splitgate, Halo, and Xonotic
I'll check out Splitgate. Halo is good, especially for story games and for something very original (especially for it's time). Really captures the sense of "alien" (strange/unearthly) and the Space Marine idea from a very industrial, military, and "guns & machines" perspective. Weapons and vehicles are pretty unique, still. May not be your cup of tea, since it is very narratively-driven and the gameplay is very slow, compared to other games. But, the plus side is the AI is pretty decent and the combat has a fair bit of variety, so you can definitely leverage strategy. It also is very genuinely immersive and doesn't try too hard. It's one of the few games that made me stop and enjoy and even analyze the scenery and environments when the combat was over (or before it began) without any prompting at all. Everyone has their favorite in the series and mine is the first, because of its unique feel (atmosphere, aesthetic, etc.). The second one is good, simply because of all the cool content and upgrades to the gameplay (it's also designed to allow you to break normal game boundaries and find secrets), but it loses a lot of that specialness. Halo 3 just...idk. Amazing promotional work (best I've seen, to date), but game didn't live up to it...at all.

Xonotic is pretty fun, I think. If it's the one I'm thinking of, it's like Quake, but with an extra mechanic (dash/boost/wall-jump) and no overt violence. Main thing I need is the feel of the mechanics and such. I've gotten so used to strafe jumping and how it feels that I feel sad when I don't have it. Lol That's why I want something based on the Tesseract engine, instead of just playing Cube 1 or 2 (who wouldn't want an arena FPS with a collaborative in-game map editor?).

>Hayden's office, ghost dudes
Didn't mind the ghost dudes, but the office scene did seem like a direct violation of their initial tone/promise, for sure. But, it still was so small, compared to almost every other game, at the time.

>Eternal's "story"
Hoooly shit, I hated it. It was so try-hard and attempted to "recapture" the favorite bits from the previous one. And it wasn't even that they violated the franchise, but that they violated IT'S OWN PREDECESSOR. The opening shouldn't have been trying to redo the first game's intro and the part where you hear the distress call (shouldn't have seen Doomguy's face) and the badass music gets you pumped...you should have went through that portal right into the action and fought through a [not horde] of demons to save the people on Earth. Why else would you have all that going on?

>Don't get me wrong, d44m is not a bad game, it's a good game but imo it's not a great game. It's better than Duke Nukem Forever I give you that, 7-7.5 out of 10. But it's not game for me.
That's fair. I think 2016 is a great game, because of the good that it *does* bring to the table and in sheer contrast to everything else coming out in the mainstream, as well as that it doesn't try to replace any of the top classics.

>Dusk.
Heard of it, but haven't played it, either.

>"Low Ammo Simulator"
Lol, true. Started it off on Nightmare and...yeah, that definitely makes things a lot harder and more annoying.

>Maybe d44m and d55m are great games... if you don't know better.
No need to be a faggot. :P You were being pretty diplomatic, until then, no need to ruin that. Lol

Good points made. And top-quality FPSes are hard to find, unless you're willing to compromise on things (like graphics, accessibility, or certain interpretations of "fun"). But, thankfully, they're still there.
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