What did Doom and Duke Nukem do so right? I replayed them a few months ago and preferred them to most of the FPS that have come out in the last decade.
One of my favorite things about Doom was being able to use other WADs.
New maps and different weapons. M-16.WAD was my favorite.
I know what you mean. I am in that virtually non-gamer class of gamers who’s spent way too long finding one game he likes and then playing it until other gamers say things like “My god, that still runs?” My son, who is a far more advanced gamer, will sit in front of the 360 playing Duke 3D (and Doom, sometimes) for hours.
I think it’s the purity and simplicity. They’re not about sweat-drop graphics, or hyper-real physics or any of the things that games have added in the last decade. They’re the checkers and backgammon of gaming. Advanced enough that they play just like modern games - that is, they crossed the threshold from side-scrollers and static-screen games - but simple enough that even playing the same levels over and over continues to be amusing.
It’s a much more modern example, but about a year ago someone pointed me to Borderlands. I played it dry, moved on to B2, played it dry, moved on to TPS. I found the last one, with all its “borderlandsiness” turned up to 11, kind of a boring slog. Haven’t replayed it. B2 I played through several times before it kinda wore out. These days? Borderlands. B1. The original. It doesn’t have the “improvements” of the later games, but even on old, familiar missions there’s still something fresh and fun and entertaining about it. Like Duke, and Doom… it got it right.
I think the biggest part is that they didn’t take themselves too seriously. Chainsaws on a Martian base? Alien demons from another dimension? Nuclear-powered plasma guns that kill everything in the room except the wielder? Why not?
That’s good. It’s not hyper-realistic Vietnam/Gulf combat. It’s… a bit silly. (Which also applies to Borderlands’ loopy viewpoint and humor.)
“It’s a game, Coach. And games are supposed to be fun.”
If I remember correctly about Doom, it was hard, scary, took hours to finish a level and was immersive as anything I have played.
I’ll go with two, three and four. 
My ex wife and I played it over modems in AR and NH, then on the network at home.
The safest place was standing behind her, as she would begin firing and then aim.
It was one of the first games Mrs. B. ever played, and one of the first multiplayer ones any of us had played. (We used the house LAN.)
Not to say she was unskilled, but the two older kids and I would often spend several minutes following her through the map. The giggling could be heard from three of four locations in the house, with the fourth one shouting, “WHAT? WHAT?”
With Doom, you had the opportunity to play intelligently and get the monsters to kill each other.
The shotgun in Doom.
That is all I have to say. Shotgun.
Duke in Disneyland. The bestest fun I ever had.
It’s neck and neck between that and the Berserker Fists of Rage.
Nothing like seeing through bloodshot eyes as you pulverize an Imp into a fine pink mist with a single punch.
I just loved the sound of that pump action reload for the shotgun. It was just soooo badass!
Aside: The berserker rage actually lasted for the entire level, not just while the screen was red. There was no reason to limit the fun to just that half-minute or whatever it was.
I know that I prefer many of the older games for visual reasons alone. As they try to make things more and more realistic, I have an increasing amount of trouble seeing what’s there, distinguishing foreground from background, etc. My eyes are not the best, so maybe I should blame that, or maybe it’s just that I grew up on 8-bit systems with higher contrast than you get on modern ones. Whatever it is, I was recently watching a step-nephew play Halo 4 and all I could think of was how much fun Marathon was.
Windows users may not be familiar with Marathon, but for Mac users, it was bigger than Doom. And better, too, allowing such things as aiming guns up and down and not just side to side. I wasted many good hours on Marathon and if I wanted to play a first person shooter, I think I’d skip the modern options and just find a computer that could get Marathon working again.
It’s the pacing. Modern FPS mostly go for “realism”, where guns, both yours and those of bad guys, drop people in a few hits. So mostly you just cower behind cover and take twitchy pot shots. Also you can’t hold infinity bullets.
Doom & Duke Nuke (and Quake) were more about throwing whole balls of (fairly) harmless enemies at you all the time, and most shot stuff that you could dodge because they had a projectile speed instead of being hitscan (i.e. the game checks when you shoot wether you’re actually shooting at a Thing, then immediately resolves the effects). So you were constantly moving and constantly shooting, instead of crawling ahead and waiting for your bullet-attracting head to regenerate, or checking guns on the floor for handful of bullets.
I blame Counterstrike, personally.
But some modern FPSs still go the silly fun action route. Bulletstorm, *Serious Sam *come to mind.
It’s also the infinite adaptability. There is still a flourishing Doom community turning out fantastic levels. I started playing Doom and the Duke just after they both appeared and I still regularly play the new Doom mods that appear.
Classic Doom still rules (I wasn’t that into Doom 3 and later Id games).
What OS and support software do you use? I’ve not found any that support home network play. I have windows 7 now.
What was so good about Doom & Duke levels?
The basic mechanics were indeed good. It was like dancing a deadly bullet ballet.
I wish modern games had that. Maybe if AMD decides to reply to CUDA cores and PhysX.
And strippers! And flaming skulls to be möre mëtal!
The non-serious elements also allowed Doom & Duke to have very different enemies and weapons.
I had the same problem peering through the jungles of Far Cry 3 when I played it as a 30-year old whose visual problems are wholly fixed by eyeglasses.
A commentator called it Run & Gun vs stop & pop.
Some Doom-related videos which you may find interesting:
More about the aesthetics:
More about the gameplay:
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVFrAsxjxLs
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMdJhP9UWcE
I have been unable to find similar Duke Nukem-related videos and would love to find some.