Let's talk DOOM

[Edmond Dantes]

Sooo... not sure where this topic should be, because I wanna talk Doom in general, which of course started as a PC game but also got tons of console ports (and one console-exclusive installment, Doom 64), and now the modern games are on pretty much everything.

So, I'll let the mods decide the proper place.

.......................

So I somehow got bored of Minecraft and, also somehow, wound up wanting to go back to the best game ever made.... Outrun 2006! Okay no, of course I mean Doom.

I've never believed strongly in the concept of games "aging." I will say though, if Doom ages then its in the same way some wines do: it only gets better as it gets older. I remember thinking this during the Half-Life days when every FPS (including Doom 3, which I used to hate but may now be warming up to) was trying to be story-driven and cinematic. It always boggled me that people considered Halo action-packed when you only ever fought three enemies at a time from one direction when in Doom you could fight dozens from all over the place (if you have Final Doom, load up the map "Go 2 It" for an example of just how crazy it can get).

Sadly I never got to play most of the console ports. I recently was given the Playstation version and bought the Nintendo 64 one for myself a few years back since that one isn't a port, but an original game. Kinda wish I had gotten the two GBA ports when they were easy to find, but then... if I want portable doom I can always load it up on a laptop.

So...

What's your favorite Doom game? (This can include specific console versions)

If you use a Source Port to play on a modern PC, which one do you like best?

Are there any fan-made levels you'd recommend?

Out of personal curiosity, how well did Doom 3 translate to the original X-Box? (I never owned an X-Box)

[gbpxl]

Doom 3 did a lot of things right and a lot of things wrong. It's very hard to see anything because it is so dark. And also you can not hold a flashlight and gun at the same time which is kind of annoying. the stuff with the PDA is kind of annoying as well. besides that the controls and graphics are really good.

[Edmond Dantes]

Yeah I remember hating Doom 3 pretty much because of the flashlight issue, not helped by that the earlier Half-Life had already solved this issue with just a chest-mounted light you could activate with a keyboard button. I've heard some defend it as a design choice but... well... there's a reason some people prefer the BFG Edition of Doom 3 (which had a lot of changes, such as making the flashlight chest-mounted and actually brightening up the map in general).

I currently own both versions of Doom 3 but haven't played through either yet (truthfully I only bought BFG Edition for the new Doom II episode "No Rest for the Living")

[WelcomeToTheNextLevel]

I was always the most impressed by the SNES version. I know that as far as playing, there are far better choices such as PC, Jag, or PS1, but it's really cool how they could get DOOM on a 16-bit console. That's not the only game that showed the prowess of the SNES and its flexible, expandable hardware.

[Pr3tty F1y]

I was always the most impressed by the SNES version. I know that as far as playing, there are far better choices such as PC, Jag, or PS1, but it's really cool how they could get DOOM on a 16-bit console. That's not the only game that showed the prowess of the SNES and its flexible, expandable hardware.

I share this sentiment completely. SNES Doom is not the best version of Doom, but I love it and still come back to it routinely. It's just something about it running on a SNES that makes it better than it is.

[Bighab]

I played Doom for the first time in 97 on the 32X and loved it. The 3DO version was horrible IMO with the borders around the screen.

[Az]

I still play a couple levels of 32x Doom every now and then for a nostalgia kick. The instrumentation on the music is poor and it sucks that the enemies are always facing you, but it's was great port for the time.

I finally got a chance to play Doom 64, a game I've heard nothing but good things about over the years, and I find it totally unplayable. The thing is so dark all I can see is the HUD.

[Bighab]

I loved Doom 64 for being so dark. I need to fire it up again

[gbpxl]

unpopular opinion here but I cant go back to any pre-6th gen FPSs. they havent aged well at all IMO. I dont like the controls. Halo basically ruined all those old FPS for me.

[Edmond Dantes]

unpopular opinion here but I cant go back to any pre-6th gen FPSs. they havent aged well at all IMO. I dont like the controls. Halo basically ruined all those old FPS for me.

Ironically I had almost the opposite experience. I was all into stuff like HAlf-Life, but then Wal-Mart put out a ten dollar Doom collection and I bought it and was like "Seriously, why was I so willing to lower my standards?"

Sure HL had a narrative, but Doom had monsters from literally all sides (not just in front of you) the chance of enemies fighting each other as well as you, enemy counts well into the 200 and they weren't always just bullshit that teleports in when you hit a trigger and it wasn't just a lame arena where you survive until an arbitrary timer ticks down... it was a game about thinking on your feet, and each gun was different, and each monster was different and had something special. I literally go "Oh hell" when a Revenant or Arch-Vile shows up. Nothing in later FPSes did that to me.

Kinda similar to my experiences with Dragon Warrior actually, where I played it long after it was "dated" and I wound up instead feeling that it represented a fallen genre at a time when it was actually good.

Granted these days I am more forgiving of narrative-driven FPS.. I just wish more of them had a story worth hearing.

[Steve W]

Is there someplace where I can get an open source version of Doom? I have my original Macintosh versions of 1 and 2 but they're packed away in storage and I really don't want to go digging through loads of junk to get my originals to use with the free game engine that's available. Are there any stand-alone scenarios?

I played the Atari Jaguar version first, and I loved it. Now I have a hard time playing it, with how low rez it is. When I bought my first Mac, I also bought a copy of Marathon 2: Durandal. That one ruined me for pixelated console versions of Doom - Marathon 2 looked fantastic for its time. Once Bungie started developing Halo, they made the Marathon games open source. You can download modern versions of it with updated textures for all sorts of systems. I always hoped that the original Doom would be released that way.

[Edmond Dantes]

Is there someplace where I can get an open source version of Doom? I have my original Macintosh versions of 1 and 2 but they're packed away in storage and I really don't want to go digging through loads of junk to get my originals to use with the free game engine that's available. Are there any stand-alone scenarios?

All you need to use any of the source ports is just the WAD files from your original CDs.

Altho you could also get them on GOG, whose version is based on what was in the id Anthology (which contained minor patch fixes that for some reason aren't replicated in many other releases--mostly for bugs most people won't notice except for one secret level in one of the two Final Doom campaigns). I was able to get Doom 1, 2, and 3 recently for just eleven dollars (this includes Final Doom and, IIRC, the Master Levels for Doom 2). I should note when I say "eleven dollars" most of that price was because of Doom 3.... would probably be less than five bucks if you just got the first two for their WAD files.

Source ports will also work with the Shareware of episode 1 of original Doom, which of course you can just download.


I played the Atari Jaguar version first, and I loved it. Now I have a hard time playing it, with how low rez it is. When I bought my first Mac, I also bought a copy of Marathon 2: Durandal. That one ruined me for pixelated console versions of Doom - Marathon 2 looked fantastic for its time. Once Bungie started developing Halo, they made the Marathon games open source. You can download modern versions of it with updated textures for all sorts of systems. I always hoped that the original Doom would be released that way.

I still need to beat the first Marathon. It kinda astonished me that this sort of lovechild of Doom and System Shock somehow came out the same year as Doom itself. (Of course, being an MS-DOS/Windows guy I first played them via the freeware release).