Doomguy can outrun a rocket, carry 100(!) rockets, yet never quite mastered the esoteric art of jumping… *
*doomguy can jump in modern sourceports such as Zdoom.
Serious Sam is almost too pure in that regard. The first time you see 40+ enemies sprinting towards you on the horizon, it’s pretty spectacular. An hour or two of circle-strafing later it can become a chore. It’s the FPS equivalent of “bullet hell”.
Just a warning to anyone wanting to pick up Serious Sam based on this thread. I like the game, but it’s exhausting. Pacing-wise, I’d put Doom, Rise of the Triad and Duke Nukem in the same bucket, but not Serious Sam.
Forgive me, but that sounds serious.
I agree, and I think it’s also harmed by having fairly monotonous settings. The ancient egyptian stuff is cool the first time you see it, but by the time you reach your 20th egyptian tomb the luster has worn off. Serious Sam 3 started off in a bunch of grey grey grey destroyed modern buildings, which was even worse.
Dunno about that. I mean, Doom was level after level of destroyed futuristic Mars base. I don’t remember anything really special about the level design or aesthetic there.
Some of the user wads had intricate maps.
If a game were to be set on a Mars base today, I bet everything would be gray, apart from the pinkish sky in the background. And the game would be either fast or slow-paced.
Doom levels were much more varied than that. Every colour of the spectrum is (brightly) represented among the basic tiles, and levels would switch from quiet, almost lonely sections, to large open sections that break up any feeling of claustrophobia, to intense battles. And plenty of little tricks and surprises.
It’s only reading this thread though I started thinking about this stuff. It seems Doom really was one of those games that was much better than it needed to be.
I wasn’t arguing Doom vs "Realistic"BrownGreyShooter#37 there, just Doom vs. Serious Sam, which has similar sorts of things going on in the level design.
Do I understand correctly that Serious Sam tends to have wide open spaces more often than non-wide open spaces? It’s difficult to vary the layout of a meadow but a building or a plane of Hell can have considerably more variety in layout.
Also, having played Serious Sam a bit and looking at gameplay videos, the movement, interior areas and the general feel remind me much more of Quake than Doom. As much as I love Doom & Duke Nukem, I could never get into Quake or Unreal. The aesthetics, mechanics, feel, graphics, weapons, enemies and levels never appealed to me like Doom & Duke did. I suspect I’m not alone n having that strong preference but I can’t quite put my finger on why.
The only thing I can really add to this is “For the same reason Minecraft beats out every LEGO game ever made, and, in fact, all of them put together.”
If you’ll pardon the pun.
Are you thinking of the original Doom, or Doom 3? Because only the latter takes place on Mars, and yes, Doom 3 is pretty damn monotonous.
The original though had lots of different locales… the first episode was mostly techbase, the second episode was “hellish” techbase (start to see marble, blood, etc. creep in), the third episode was entirely hell - both the fire and brimstone, as well as lots of flesh and blood and marble castles. Serious Sam is literally nothing but egyptian ruins/temples.
Doom I and II both started off on Mars bases, too. Or rather, bases on the two moons of Mars.
I don’t know if it’s been mentioned yet: One of the things Doom did quite well was texture the environment in a halfway abstract way. You could get a sense that something was a warehouse or a military base or a fort or a laboratory but it was largely left to you imagination. Any insights as to how they did that?
In addition, doing it that way meant less furniture and props which meant the rooms and corridors could be largely empty, allowing for free maneuvering.
Doom, as envisioned by Tom Hall, was going to be much more ‘realistic’. Stuff like having full barracks, furniture, etc. For example, in an alpha screenshot, you can see office chairs. Unfortunately his layouts tended to be pretty boring to manuever through - lots of hallways. He ended up having disagreements with the rest of id (he envisioned a grand game full of puzzles, character abilities, storyline, etc, and didn’t like that it turned out as a “raw shooter”) and ended up parting ways.
John Romero ended up doing all of the first episode, and his designs tended to be somewhat abstract - he definitely put a lot of onus on gameplay, but with interesting design rules like “create recognizable landmarks”, “if the player can see outside they should be able to reach it”, and “make the levels flow so the player will revisit areas multiple times”. That, combined with the moon base theme, helped keep things in a nice balance between realistic and abstract and having at least some sense of place. Sandy Petersen joined and did all of the levels for episodes 2 and 3, often using Tom Hall’s old levels and tweaking them accordingly. Petersen wasn’t always meticulous about using textures in a pleasing way but his levels have some pretty great gameplay.