I have Doom on the PS4 (preordered) and may already be wishing I hadn't done so. I'm not a classic FPS shooter fan, although I've tried to engage with the older games as best I could....it's just not a style of play I dig much; without a sense of plot and purpose I find these games hollow experiences. I didn't really play a Quake or Doom I liked until Quake 4 and Doom 3. But, don't get me wrong....I totally understand where fans of the classics are coming from when they complain about the overly elaborate stories of those two titles (we're using the word elaborate very loosely here, admittedly) and the move away from insanely fast run-and-gun multiplayer combat. You know...the sort of combat perpetuated by Team Fortress 2, Unreal Tournament 3 and such, the sort of stuff that invented the idea that rocket jumping is a sensible course of action, and that dual-wielding rocket launchers sounds completely feasible.
Doom, the new reboot/remake/sequel (I can't say for sure which it is, as the game moves back to original 80's style Doom in terms of story depth) is all about creating a modern, graphically pleasant version of that style of game. It will not be for everyone, but if you happen to just want fast and crazy multiplayer and a singal player campaign that makes Painkiller look deep, then this might be your cup of tea.
I bet there are a lot of old Doom fans from the 80s who will get very nostalgic about this new edition (and just as many who will disparage any slight differences, as well). I just happen to be a guy who more or less despised most shooter titles like this until Half Life 2 changed everything and started to set a trend for meaningful (okay, more interesting?) story and game play.
I'll keep chugging along for a while, see if things change. This is definitely not a sequel to Doom 3 in any conventional sense, though....oh well. It is definitely a sequel to Doom 1 and 2 though. First hour of game play gets a B+ for controls and graphics, and a D- for holding interest, but hopefully that will change.....or, I guess I can just be reminded that it's not actually a smart idea to preorder games if I'm not totally sure of what I'll get.
I'm a big fan of the the original Doom and Quake games, but a lot of that enjoyment comes from my seeing them as spooky puzzle games (no interest in multiplayer). Doom 3 felt really claustrophobic and limited in environments/flavor to me (and barely more story than its predecessors).
ReplyDeleteIf the new doom can bring back that weird/dangerous maze play, I'll be happy... but I want story and character, well, I'm still waiting for something to dethrone Deus Ex for me.
Doom 3 didn't have a lot of story, relatively speaking, but it had some odd characters and lots of little plot bits left lying around. New Doom seems to have some nods to all this, but it's more "ignorable" than usual so I suppose that's what is making me think it's less story-driven. Your character spends a lot of time smashing things people are speaking from, for example. Either way, I've since grown to enjoy it for what it is (see later post).
DeleteOne little nitpick.
ReplyDelete90s. 1992 to be exact, when Apogee did alot of shareware. I remember being excited when in was 6 disks zipped. I was working at a in-house gaming company then. And we played the tar out of it.
Ah, 1992....I had a PC that croaked trying to run Eye of the Beholder. I ended up using it as a word processor to finish college and didn't actually purchase a new PC worth gaming with until 1999....
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