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DOOM, are you excited?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by ADNCG, Apr 16, 2016.

  1. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

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    Nearly 9,000 reviews and a "Very Positive" rating. What a huge flip from the multiplayer beta experience.

    I wonder what some of the folks out there on Kotaku and other sites who stated in previous years that nobody wants to play a game "today" that is reminiscent of a 90s FPS with upgraded graphics... think about the reception so far? Sometimes you have to wonder how some of these people deep in the industry can be so out of touch and seemingly clueless. Although in fairness I suspect that it is these individuals own biases more than anything. It's just that when they write such things it seems more legit due to the website /company recognition.

    I really hope Doom 4 does well because if it does it may represent an extremely important moment in gaming history. One where (at least some) AAA games begin to focus more on gameplay and less on movies and such. It'll be interesting to see how it turns out.

    Figured it was only fair to share some review quotes for the single-player:

    "ID Software has created another instant FPS classic that will leave you wondering why they ever strayed from this formula to begin with. With insanely fast paced action, fluid gameplay and fantastic graphics, DOOM is a nightmare come to life in all the best ways."

    "Within the first few moments of beginning your DOOM capaign, you'll be thrust into action. Literally seconds after the opening begins, you'll be fragging demons like its 1993 again. No unecessarily legnthly cinematic cut scenes, just DOOM"

    "I'll make this short: DOOM is the best shooter since Half-Life 2. Is this true to the original? My personal answer to that is: Who gives a sh*t? I only care about if it's a good game or not, but if you really want to know, DOOM is as true to the original as it could be. You can clearly see the developer's love to the original in every detail of this game. Maybe DOOM means something else to you personally, but I think what DOOM really is about, that is what the developers nailed."

    "What’s in here is just as important as what’s not. There is no regenerating health, no iron sights, no limitation regarding how many weapons you can carry and no excessive amount of cutscenes. The new Doom drops you into the action and pretty much leaves you there for the entire duration of the game. However, the world has kept turning since 1993 and some adjustments are to be expected."

    "This game reminds me why I've been so cynical of many modern shooters, and reaffirmed that older ones in the 90s still have elements worth keeping now. Doom reminds me level design can still be a thing in AAA shooters, where instead of some expensive hi fidelity walkway with some cover spots and scripted sequences...you can have verticality, jump pads, portals, and multiple paths circulating around a combat arena where I weave my dance of death. Everything in the game has this aggressive rhythm, even down to the ways you regain health and ammo are you attacking in different ways vs. cowering for some regen."

    If I keep looking at it I may order it sooner rather than later just to reward them for doing something different. :)
     
    Last edited: May 17, 2016
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  2. BeefSupreme

    BeefSupreme

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    Hopefully the positive response to the single player content will make Bethesda rethink only releasing multiplayer DLC. Between this and Shadow Warrior 2, it should be a great year for the classic FPS. Ah, the pain of gaming on an old ass laptop...
     
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  3. darkhog

    darkhog

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    Well, you can always play original two games in the series (ZDoom, since it uses software renderer should have little to no problem with those, dunno if GZDoom would have issues with integrated GPUs) which are arguably better (no need for any kind of ammo for chainsaw, for example).
     
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  4. BeefSupreme

    BeefSupreme

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    For sure! My old wad files have probably gotten more use than any game I've bought in the last decade. Still, this current generation of games is leaving my 840m feeling a little long in the tooth.
     
  5. Player7

    Player7

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    I stopped caring about positive reviews a long time ago.. and put more interest on what the negative criticism is, while it might not stay it certainly does sway. Maybe when they get 100k reviews I might reconsider, good mods and maps.. nah scrap that they thought so sort of dumbed down map editor would be good enough. And for me multiplayer is what its about, the singleplayer is the cherry on top. So we shall see what they do on updates and addressing the criticism, but for me the art/level design style ain't really doom anyway, so make that 200k reviews before I care.

    Because 5star idiots buy S*** on daily basis and think its great.. 10k reviews for a game with a 9:1 pos:neg ratio still isn't going to convince me, when I've seen the videos, the gameplay and just on personal feeling towards it doesn't impress (like films the artists and vfx guys do an amazing job, and sometimes I'd rather just watch an hour documentary of their work than whatever S*** script that they had to work on). It's kinda like looking at Google Garbage's crap store and finding just about everything on its lame ass results page will require a ton of time going through every product page with a tooth pick to find out if its really worth trying because you simply cannot trust reviewers when its opened up to so many herp derpers with poor taste qualities and low threshold for good enough.

    Or like morons who give 5star ratings on printers.. as far as I'm concerned all printers out there these days are S*** and only deserving on 1star because the entire mentality for that industry is built on ripping off consumers on ink supply and chipping cartridges to aid in this screwing of the consumer.

    In other news Unreal Tournament multiplayer and gfx is shaping is nicely.. really nice engine, amazing the kind of good S*** you can do with shaders and a built in material editor :p
     
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  6. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    There's still the possibility that they're right as far as mass market appeal goes. DOOM is the only big game in its niche that I'm aware of right now, so on top of being fairly unique among modern shooters it's got little competition, a strong existing brand and a cult following. If someone made a similar "old school" style game without those things then it might indeed flop like a dead fish.
     
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  7. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

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    Well now that is very true. The way people word this stuff they come across like literally "nobody" wants such a thing. lol

    It could be they are simply thinking of mass market potential. But really I don't even know what that means these days.

    I'm thinking the original Doom and Doom 2 each sold over 1 million copies way back then when games were not nearly as popular as they are today. In fact, the original Wolfenstein 3D I think I read sold a couple million copies as well and this was a time when the games were purchased via shareware. Something like $9 or $10 for Wolf and they were making $100k per day from that if I remember correctly.

    I just say that to kind of give some background to my thinking. Basically there are a lot of people in that target market alone. And I think the majority of them would have been happy with any modern game that brought them the same kind of gameplay experience as Doom / 90s FPS. And I am sure there will be people who never played Doom who will also buy Doom 4.

    I don't think the game is selling so much because it is Doom in name but more so because the devs actually delivered the experience these people wanted. We certainly witnessed the Doom name had virtually no positive effect on the multiplayer beta. I may be completely wrong but I think someone could have made the game and called it "Carnage Galore" or something like that and said "this game is the closest you can get to the 90s FPS experience" and with the same level of marketing it would be doing just as well. Again just my opinion.

    They seem to be marketing it hard. I don't know how many times I have seen the game advertised on tv now but it has been a lot and I don't want much tv.

    Games today are just different. It's hard to explain it really. There are some good modern Indie platformer games for example but they just don't feel the same as the tight non-floaty platformers of the 90s. And I think that is the kind of thing going on here. Not so much the Doom name but the game itself really seems different from the normal big budget releases based on what I have seen and read. And that combined with what appears to be a strong marketing campaign I think is what is driving the early success. Just my thoughts.

    I think this recent quote from a Steam review sums it up:
    By god they actually did it. They actually made a Doom game in the year of our lord 2016 that plays like a Doom game should. It's fast, it's violent, it's got exploration and secrets, it's everything Doom should be.

    I cannot recommend this hard enough.
     
    Last edited: May 18, 2016
  8. TwiiK

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    I get that people like the new Doom because it looks like a polished game, but I don't get those who compare it to the classic Doom games. I sort of knew that I wouldn't like the new Doom, but with Steam's refund system I feel like I can buy games as demos so I bought Doom (4!) and it only took me about an hour to tell that this was in no way similar to Doom. it reminded me much more of any other modern shooter, or in fact the Quake games. The Serious Sam games are probably the closest thing we have to the classic Doom games, and Serious Sam 3 was actually a pretty great game, at least in co-op (which Doom (4!) for some inexplicable reason doesn't have).

    First of all, graphics sells and in my opinion every AAA developer will focus almost entirely on making the most beautiful game they can, sacrificing everything else to achieve that. In Doom (4!)'s case that means having a lot less enemies on screen than in the older games. This was the case with the Quake games as well, so this is nothing new. Tons of enemies and weapons capable of effectively clearing tons of enemies were for me the key points of Doom 1 and 2 that no other shooter except for the Serious Sam games have been able to replicate, and in my opinion graphics are to blame for this. As a game developer I would in a heartbeat reduce the graphical fidelity of my game by half in order to have twice the amount of enemies on screen at once, but we're not going to see that in any game designed to sell millions of copies.

    Secondly, all the weapons feel pathetic, just like in nearly every other modern shooter. It's as if ID completely forgot how to make a weapon that feels good. Some reviews I read said that the initial pistol was disappointing, but the shotgun was awesome. How? The shotgun feels like crap and unless you put it inside the demon you won't kill it in one shot. In Doom every weapon was designed such that you could use only that weapon for the entire game if you wished, and because of that every weapon felt great and much more realistic. The shotgun in Doom had a spread similar to that of a real shotgun and thus you could use it to take out enemies way in the distance. It could also kill 2-3-4 enemies in one well placed shot. But in Doom (4!) and any other modern game every weapon has to have downsides because the developers thinks trying to force you to constantly switch between all your weapons create better gameplay. Serious Sam 3 actually had some fairly lackluster weapons as well, but it had full mod support so I was able to fix them myself. And Serious Sam has always had the best implemented minigun of any shooter ever.

    The glory kill system is awful and the only thing you can do is turn off the stupid glowing prompts, it's still pretty much required to get health/ammo and complete the game. Not only do I hate being shoehorned into a form of gameplay I dislike, but I dislike how this makes the Doom guy feel like a juggernaut who can tear demons limb from limb with his fists when the direction I would take for such a game is that you're just a normal, squishy human who is able to even the odds through your superior arsenal of powerful weapons. I want to feel like a glass cannon.

    In my hour with the game I also managed to try Snapmap (which requires you to restart the game, brilliant programming there) and I quickly browsed through all the available options. It looked a lot like what you have in Little Big Planet or similar games, but compared to something like the editor in Warcraft and Starcraft the options available were lacking. And it was obviously made for consoles, the interface was dreadful. If I had been able to design my own weapons or tweak the values of existing weapons I might actually have considered keeping Doom (4!), but with no way to alter the core gameplay there's no way I'll stick around to play custom maps.

    These may seem like minor gripes, but for me the game failed in all the important areas and made me request a refund right away. It didn't help that the game ran really bad on my machine. Even on the lowest settings I was dropping into 30-ish fps on my machine which runs games like The Witcher 3, Battlefield 4 and Dying Light completely fine in 60+ fps. And Doom (4!) did not look good at all at low settings. :p

    I mentioned Quake and for me Doom (4!) feels almost exactly like Quake 2. Quake 2 retained all the "old-school" features of Doom that people are praising Doom (4!) for, but it had much less enemies on screen and pathetic weapons compared to Doom so it was a clear step in the wrong direction. This was obviously the case with Quake 1 as well, but Quake 2 was the biggest offender, and I feel that Doom (4!) looks a lot like Quake 2 aesthetically as well.

    Playing Doom (4!) just made me want to play Serious Sam 3 again, but apparently we're getting Serious Sam 4 so now I'm hyped for that. :p
     
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  9. N1warhead

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    I bought it, really didn't like it.

    The weapons really suck, I'm still trying to figure out how people get one shot kills with basic weapons and I have never once yet got a one shot kill except for demons and special weapons.

    But my biggest ultimate gripe is really, no freaking Death Match???

    The Single Player sucks like crap too, Doom 3 at least had a campaign that was at least kind of scary.

    All in all, just another modern shooter that tries to mimic old school game play and fails horribly at it.

    I'll still prefer Duke Nukem 3D and Doom any day to any modern shooter.
     
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  10. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    So, basically, no hordes of enemies chasing you around the level and no proper "boomstick"?

    Because I really liked original Doom I shotgun. It could kill enemies at 100..200m range, easily, and had a lot of punch close. You could easily clear the first episode using that shotgun alone (on later episodes you would run out of ammo at some point).
     
  11. N1warhead

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    @neginfinity - not sure if you're being sarcastic. But yeah, exactly haha. I love the old games and the way they played.
     
  12. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    I wasn't being sarcastic, that was a genuine question.
     
  13. N1warhead

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    Ahh okay haha, I just can't explain why I prefer the older games, like just every single thing about them (then) and (now), just seems right. The way the controls move, the way the guns work, the way the textures look, the A.I. the missions you do, just everything about them...

    Put a kid from today around 13, I bet they will complain about how there isn't instructions on how to beat the level aside from find the Blue, Red Keycards lol. ('I don't like this game, there isn't a GPS and marker on the screen that tells me where it is'). hahaha.
     
  14. UnityMaru

    UnityMaru

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    I'll give it a shot but I doubt it'll be as any good as I was with Quake 3 Arena back in the day..
     
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  15. N1warhead

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    I miss some Quake 3 Arena.
    I find it hard to believe it could run on 64 megs of ram and 4 megs of video memory and 70 megs of HD space. That game didn't have really that bad of texture quality and had quite a bit of content, so I don't get it. A simple blank Unity build is like 30 megs LOL. (Not accurate of course) just a guess on size, I know it's not 2 megs lol.
     
  16. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    Well, there was that .kkreiger game game that had size of 64kilobytes and was a 3d first person shooter.
     
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  17. N1warhead

    N1warhead

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    @neginfinity - wow that's super small. I don't get how that's even possible. I mean isn't 3D rendering code be hundreds of kilobytes in just code?
     
  18. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

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    Really?! So it actually is no closer to the 90s FPS than something like Halo or COD? I'm surprised at that because the movement speed looks very good and the emphasis seems to be more on the gameplay than movies compared to other modern FPS games. And it appears to have the exploration / free roam along with secrets to find. It "sounds" more like a 90s FPS than a modern FPS at least. lol ;)

    Do you think maybe there are some differences and that is why there are so many reviews saying it IS Doom.... but maybe they just didn't go 90s FPS as much as you wanted? Like maybe if the graphics weren't so modern and ultra shiny that may have helped? Although I have no problem with that as long as they focus on the gameplay at least as much which it seems the singleplayer campaign does.
     
    Last edited: May 18, 2016
  19. N1warhead

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    The movement is close to the 90's FPS. Lacks one major difference, it has very very weak Air Control movement. Remember back then you could straff in the Air as if you were on the ground? Nope not in this game. The weapons suck like crap (At least Online they do). I still stick with the very first gun (Chain Gun). people must be cheating, because the guns I have tried using (Combat Shotgun) to the face takes me 3 shots, and they are constantly getting 1 shot kills. Either that or the hit boxes are quirked badly. I even shot a rocket launcher from at least 10 meters away and hit them directly on the face and they still take 3 more rockets to die. But yet with me, every single rocket kills me even from a meter away in one hit.

    But single player, haven't played it all as it got quite boring, but the free roam, it is kind of there, but not exactly. It's very limited to specific areas, if doors are locked, they are locked, there's still only A to B movement, but there might be an extra hallway that leads to no where. Or another hallway that leads to another door that goes to the same room as the other.
     
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  20. GarBenjamin

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    Ah okay. Yeah the multiplayer side didn't get good reviews. Mostly negative and about 12,000 of them.

    I never play the multiplayer in any game (except Diablo 2 and 3). For me the 90s FPS are all about the single player experience.
     
    Last edited: May 18, 2016
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  21. Martin_H

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    I still haven't played it myself but I've seen some more footage and a friend of mine who loves the retro-ish shooters like painkiller, the shadow warrior reboot or serious sam, seems to really love the new doom. And he hates almost every popular AAA franchise that comes out these days with very few exceptions like deadspace or wolfenstein. From what I have seen I wouldn't like the Doom 4 singleplayer, because it is so retro. I think it looks like they struck a good enough balance between staying retro and "modernizing". I was hating on the multiplayer because judging from the beta I think it is objectively bad. Without having played it myself, my impression from the singleplayer is that it is objectively good, but not my cup of tea. I didn't like any of the retro-ish modern shooters like painkiller, serious sam, etc.. The comment on "juggernaut vs glass cannon" is an understandable concern, but I think that's more of a personal preference. Only you can know if that would bother you.
     
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  22. Martin_H

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    P.S.: Just found this, no idea how accurate the quotes are, but the scores match the actual reviews.

     
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  23. Tanel

    Tanel

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    Yeah, that's how it seems to me too.

    The people not liking it seem to have a very specific idea about what Doom is for them and they want this game to be exactly that.
     
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  24. aer0ace

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    I agree. These guys are purists. For me, for example, I have a specific idea of what "Batman" is, and in some respects, some movie and animated renditions don't pull it off as well as others.
     
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  25. darkhog

    darkhog

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    You may like Xonotic then. It's just like Q3A but better.

    Most of it, believe it or not, was procedural generation (levels, monsters, even textures), although with constant "seed" (so it looked exactly the same each time you played). Also there was some insane compression going on, they've written their own packer (unfortunately many AV software detect .kkrieger and other soft compressed using this packer as viruses - false positives).
     
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  26. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    Procedural generation + exe was compressed on top of that. Most of the content in a game is data, not code, and to be more precise - texture data and sound data. The guys said that if it was traditional game, it would use 300 megabytes of data.

    IIRC kkrieger created node-based editor for their own system that could generate and perform operations on sound, meshes and textures. Operations like scale, invert colors, "fill with noise", etc. Imagine that you're working with photoshop and instead of saving image save list of operations performed to create the image. Roughly this.
    When the game starts, it recreates object in memory using the order of operations. That results in massive compression and longer loading times.

    "Fixed seed" approach (mentioned by darkhog) is also possible, but for different kind of tasks (like generation of universes). kkrieger wasn't random, it was procedural.

    Speaking of code, 3d rendering code can be tiny - several kilobytes. A lot of stuff in modern exes are overhead from OOP, libraries, frameworks and the like. If you apply extreme KISS approach, you can cut down code size to very small values, it'll be harder to maintain, though.
     
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  27. tiggus

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    For me it was always about the co-op. Lot of fond memories playing Doom with friends in the office. I remember at some point in 1995 they declared "Doom was installed on more PC's than Windows 95".
     
  28. angrypenguin

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    Yep, that's it. I remember a while later either they or another group making "Demoscene" stuff released a version of their tools for people to check out. They're probably still around if anyone cares to search for them.

    Also, later on, Spore used it to support gameplay mechanics.
     
  29. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    that could be it.
    https://github.com/farbrausch/fr_public

    Now, that's news for me. You sure spore didn't just write their own tech?
     
  30. angrypenguin

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    Sorry, sloppy use of language there. I meant Spore used the approach, not that particular implementation.
     
  31. GarBenjamin

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    @Arowx posted this in a different thread.



    This video makes it look not as good as I was thinking. I wonder if there is a way to turn off those annoying tips that pop up breaking the flow of the game?
     
  32. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    Looks very... boring and uninspired. I gotta say it does resemble boring parts of Doom 3 occasionally. And a doom guy of all people wouldn't need armor.

    Where did the the games with better dark atmosphere go, by the way?
    Surely there should be a better way to make a "demon" or a "hellspawn" than just a meatsack that explodes with blood and guts when shot.

    Quake 1 had that "other" atmosphere, Jericho, Mc Gee's alice (both of them), heretic, first dark souls, and original doom on occasion too.
     
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  33. GarBenjamin

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    I guess either modern FPS gamers get scared easily and these days perhaps that is a lawsuit so the devs try to keep everything bright and shiny or maybe these particular people that made this video didn't want to be frightened so increased the brightness/gamma setting. The other videos I've seen the game is not this bright.

    I was more disappointed seeing those tips pop up. I hate that. Playing a game and TIP!!! Close it out just start to get back into the game... TIP!!!! If they can be turned off that is great. I don't know why they have to try to dummy-proof games so much. Put in an Info/Instructions/Controls option that tells what each button/key does. If people can't be bothered to read it or can't read then let people figure it out themselves while playing. Of course, if they can be disabled then no problem.
     
    Last edited: May 19, 2016
  34. darkhog

    darkhog

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    I think that after I'm done with my current project, I'll create a game that is what this... abomination id released should have been and isn't Doom only in the name.
     
  35. Martin_H

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  36. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    Now... dooms single player looks fun to me. Might give it a pop. The mp seemed badly contrived though.
     
  37. Ony

    Ony

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    The key phrase in there is "in previous years". I don't think it's fair to point fingers at the ideas from previous years as if they were wrong. I don't believe they were wrong.

    History, fashion, and trends repeat in cycles. A few years ago people weren't ready for a return of the 90s style FPS, in the same way that nobody was ready for a return of mid-70s bell bottom pants in the 1980s. Those didn't come back in fashion until around 1996 (twenty years later) in the form of "boot cut" jeans, which soon morphed right back into the bell bottom style with large "flare" cuts. By around 2006 (midway point in the 20 year cycle) bell bottoms had once again lost their popularity, replaced with skinny jeans and tighter fits.

    It generally takes around 20 years for styles and trends to reappear as something old made new again. And yup, bell bottom pants are once again making an appearance these days, like clockwork. The trend of skinnier, tighter pants has run its course, and people are now looking for an alternative.

    This cycle happens with music, film, books, diets, on and on. People get older, they have some money, they want the things they had when they were younger. Twenty years.

    I believe the same thing happens with games. Some style becomes popular, and then every other game does the same exact thing, then people get tired of it, and a new style takes over. We haven't had enough time to fully see if the twenty year trend applies to gaming, but if gaming is anything like fashion (and pretty much everything else) we'll soon be seeing a return of the shooty-shoot-shoot 90s style FPS games. We've already seen the return of early 90s style pixel games (which nobody wanted in the late 90s/early-2000s since it was all about 3D), and now we'll start seeing the return of mid-90s shooters. And then eventually people will tire of it, and... around and around we go.

    Doom came out in 1993. Here we are, a little over 20 years later, and boom, it returns to its fast-paced mid-90s roots and everyone cheers. Five years ago, I highly doubt people would have felt the same way.

    EDIT: In hind sight, maybe everyone is well aware of the twenty year cycle and how it plays out, and I'm just going way too far into it. I didn't get that impression from your post, but there you go. In the case that I'm just rehashing old boring news, don't mind me.
     
    Last edited: May 21, 2016
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  38. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    I know right? people remaked how trendy I looked but I was actually just shuffling along in my S***ty random nonsense that happened to be clean on that day, which looked like the 80s....
     
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  39. aer0ace

    aer0ace

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    I tend to think it has already started. Hmm, Pong 1972 - Flappy Bird 2013, well, that's 40 years. Essentially, I think the cycle here is the advent of mobile gaming. A new audience is discovering "Pong" type games all over again, so the cycle starts. Heh, actually, not to mention the trend of HD remakes around that time too (~2010-2013) which are still continuing today (Monkey Island, Age of Empires, Homeworld, Grim Fandango, Doom, yada), so there's a more blatant example.

    Although, I'm just an old fogey by today's gaming standards, I would still prefer those remakes to some of the new stuff that's getting shelled out today.

    EDIT:
    Oh, regarding remakes, how could I forget Call of Duty and Madden? ;)
     
    Last edited: May 21, 2016
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  40. Ony

    Ony

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    Spot on.
     
  41. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

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    @Ony that's a good point and something definitely worth mentioning. I'm aware of it in trends in general but had never really considered it from the angle of gaming. Probably because I keep hearing a lot about pushing forward to VR, even better graphics and better physics simulations and such. Of course, we know that VR stuff could be traced backwards to a trend that appears every so often. And graphics and physics focus has been around basically non-stop I think.

    You may well be very right. Maybe this does play a large part of it. The Kotaku article I read was actually talking about the coming Doom 4 game. It was a year or two ago.

    For me personally it is definitely about that part you mentioned where people get tired of so many of the same kind of games being made. Back when there were so many 2D platformers (and I really did enjoy them) it got to the point where I just got tired of them. Mainly because they all started to seem more or less the same. Same for the shmups. I used to really enjoy those until a flood of them came out that I played. It wasn't so much that I actually got tired of platformers or shmups in general. It was more that I got tired of the way they kept making them basically the same. The structure of the games. The same basic play mechanics and so forth. The only focus was on "more" and better graphics and similar stuff.

    And now I have that same feeling about modern games. When the first games came out with more of the movie-like experience I thought it was pretty cool. But what we've had is basically many years now of games being built with the same formula. I mean truly a person basically knows what to expect from nearly any modern AAA game or even game video they watch as far as the structure and experience provided. Because they (nearly) all follow the same basic structure and style. They all seem to strive to deliver some form of movie-like experience. And at this point my view is "okay enough already, been there... done that... over and over and over for the past many years".

    I think this is why pixel art 2D games became popular again. It was just something different. So I think we're basically saying the same thing. I just don't think it has to be this way. But maybe it does. :)
     
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  42. Martin_H

    Martin_H

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    Wasn't there a VR hype roughly 20 years ago that never took off?


    What were the trends between 1996 and 2000? I want to be prepared for the coming years!


    Maybe you should play Dayz online? It's pretty much the opposite of AAA shooter experiences as far as I can tell.
     
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  43. Ony

    Ony

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    Haha yup, I remember going to CES Vegas in 1995 and the VR craze was just about on the verge of petering out (Virtual Boy may have fired the final bullet, haha). From 1990-1996 VR was the thing. And here we are, ~20 years later. Boom.

    Edit: Found some footage (in Spanish) from the '95 CES show. See if this looks familiar (skip to 5:50):

     
    Last edited: May 21, 2016
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  44. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

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    Thanks for suggesting this. Really I don't have much interest in FPS games. I do play Blake Stone, Duke Nukem and Catacombs from time to time and I might try the new Doom game not sure since it seems a lot closer to the modern clones than what I had first thought.

    I'd be more interested in seeing a list of recent AAA platformers, shmups and so forth. Kind of tired of seeing first person shooters and possibly even "first person" anything at this point. I really do wonder where are all of the other games, types and viewpoints? Okay, maybe a modern game like Prince of Persia: Sands of Time done in FP would be cool. But I think 3rd person would be better just to be something different.

    Interestingly, it seems Disney actually makes a good number of platformers but they seem to all be geared toward young children. At least they do different things than just knocking out generic FPS #1248 and counting. :)
     
    Last edited: May 21, 2016
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  45. Martin_H

    Martin_H

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    There are plenty of AAA third person games/franchises: Tomb Raider, The Last Of Us, Uncharted, infamous, GTA, God of War, Dead Space, Devil May Cry, Metal Gear Solid, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, Batman, Red Faction Guerilla, Just Cause, Assassins Creed, Gears of War, Red Dead Redemption... to name just a few (some are console exclusives). I don't know much about shmups or plattformers, because I don't enjoy them. Ori seems to be popular and Limbo was successful as far as I remember.
    To me it always felt harder to find AAA FPS than third person shooters, but that may be pure confirmation bias because I prefer the first person perspective. But maybe I misunderstood what you are looking for?
     
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  46. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

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    Yeah I get that. And always liked God of War, Devil May Cry and even Infamous (first one) games. But see to me the others are all basically the same damn things as the FP games just in 3rd person instead of 1st. Maybe it is just me but for me all of these modern games that I have seen and played feel basically the same, are presented basically the same, are structured basically the same. There is no real defining reason for me to play one over any other.

    Of course if they come out with a new God of War that is like the old PS2 and PS3 games I will probably grab it. Because that has (or at least had) a different feel to it. Now if they try to jack that up on the cinematic side (it already had plenty) and structure the experience the same as the other games and so forth then I probably won't grab it. I am just ready for something different. I'd like to actually be excited by a AAA game again. Be really looking forward to its release and not be disappointed because they ended up doing things basically the same flipping way all over again as any other AAA game.
     
    Last edited: May 21, 2016
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  47. Martin_H

    Martin_H

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    I see. To be honest I can't think of a single AAA game that isn't highly "formulaic". There are nuances between how bad it is, but AAA and "something really different" is almost a contradiction at this point. Spec Ops: the Line felt different enough for me, because of it's narrative elements and rather unusual setting. But the gameplay is about as typical AAA as it gets. I like to play some demos on PS3 from time to time to take a peek at some games. I tried the Killzone 3 singleplayer demo today and that had some of the most annoying pseudo military dudebro dialog that I've ever heard. I usually don't mind such things too much and I've played through many COD games, but this was a bit too much and I was kind of glad when the demo was over, felt like an absolute chore to play. Your AI companion even comments on almost every second kill you make, it's utterly rediculous. The Sniper Elite V2 demo was almost the opposite. A few sentences explaining who you need to kill and why, as a mission briefing, and that was it. Not a single word of scripted cheesy dialog. The leveldesign still was fairly linear, but it felt much more free in terms of how you approach engagements than typical cover based shooters. I also quite like the realistic bullet trajectories for sniping. You have to account for bullet drop and wind to land any longrange shots. That raises the skillceiling and makes it a lot more satisfying to me.
     
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  48. zenGarden

    zenGarden

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    Doom solo is good, it keeps the same fun as the first Doom games.
     
  49. Gigiwoo

    Gigiwoo

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    Another way to see it - if something was fun once, it can be fun again. This was from an Indie dev making very niche titles.

    Gigi.
     
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  50. tiggus

    tiggus

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    The chainsaw cracks me up
     
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