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DOOM


illdog
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Aaaand finished. Fuck me that was a LOT of fun. It became quite tough for me on the last level especially. There's absolutely no way I'd have got through that on an harder difficulty, I just haven't got the ability to be effective at FPS games.

 

Absolute rip-roaring ride from start to finish though. The music is something special in this game. And the pause loop kept reminding me of one of my favourite tunes from wrestling at the minute (from about 15 seconds in):

 

 

Anyway, great fun, happy I finally got my act together and gave it a decent go, rather than putting it 'next on the list' over and over again.

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  • 1 year later...

I picked this up on the Switch as it was on sale, more as a curiosity than anything. Firstly, Doom holds up really well, I know it's not exactly old, but I did wonder if it was more the surprise of it that was so great and the flaws might be more apparent now. I stand by that this is still not the version to get, it's half the framerate as the other console versions, sub HD most of the time (if not all the time), but it actually plays pretty well. So far I've not had too many instances of the framerate dropping, it's still 30fps at best, and there's loads of motion blur, which has a bit of a double edged effect. On one hand it makes the game look and feel smoother than it is, on the other, coupled with how brown and low res textures and pixels are, everything looks very mushy.

 

I remember watching my housemate play Wolfenstein on the PS4. He was playing on normal, he got to the fight prior to you getting planes, I was warning him that it was a nightmare of a fight but he breezed through it. On pc that's a difficult fight, strong enemies and numerous waves, on PS4 it was nothing. Doom reminds me of that, you barely take damage from incoming fire, and while enemies aren't dumb, they aren't quite falling over themselves to kill you either. Still though, it's pretty good, fully featured and all that

 

The biggest problem are the controls. I've been playing handheld, and there just isn't enough movement range in the Switch analogue sticks. It's fine for movement, but I've found I'm not aiming with the right stick as I should, instead I'm pointing in the general direction then using the movement stick to correct. I had more control docked using the PS4 controller, and I've not tried the motion control yet, I think that will help a lot tbf, works with Splatoon well

 

I've captured a video in an empty room, playing handheld, just to show how it looks. The video hitches on opening the door, I didn't notice that at the time so I wonder if that's just how it's captured

 

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If the motion controls are anything like Warframe, which is likely since they're both Panic Button, the controls will be awesome, and much better than other console versions. 

 

I thought about getting it myself in the sale but I decided I want it physical due to the file size.  I still need to get a proper sized SD card.  Even this 64g one I have is mostly full. 

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  • 9 months later...

Getting amped for Doom 2 I downloaded this last night from Gamepass and played through the first 2 levels. I haven’t played this game since it came out which I think might have been before I had my PS4 Pro but definitely before my TV so first off I was excited to see what it looks like now. The results seem pretty good but not blown away by it. I’m sure it’s sharper and brighter because of 4K and just on a newer TV but it doesn’t have HDR so, eh. Although I get this game was built before HDR would of been a thing games were doing (maybe?) but since they patched in a resolution boost the HDR would of been nice. 
 

I also really wanted to get in to all of Doom this time because people talk a lot about how much fun all the background story stuff is but I just couldn’t. I opened up the first codex entry which was about the pistol and before I got through the first sentence I was just like oh for the love of god I don’t care. 
 

Also not sure if it’s because I’m now on an Xbox pad and the last shooter I played was on a PS4 or because the last shooter I played was MW or the combination of all 3 but the aiming feels very slow to accelerate. I tried messing with the sensitivity options but still can’t get it to where I want it. Once the reticle is actually moving it’s very twitchy but the first second or half second or whatever of it getting going takes along time. 
 

It also continues to be very much a game of 2 halves. You have the shooting where it’s fast, agility based, constantly spinning and killing gun play. And then there’s the very slow, methodical searching in every corner secret hunt. Both styles made this then and makes it now feel like a game that has a very procedural pace to it where you do a bit of one, and then a lot of the other, then back to the first one, then back again. Kill a lot then walk around a lot. I’m not saying the two need to be mixed because how but it does highlight the very small game loop and lack of overall variety in the game. I mean I’ve just done level 2 and I’ve stopped to do my ironing. 

 

I do like this game but there’s something about it that just fails to hold my interest for long periods of time. That was true in 2016 as well where as much I find it fun I also find it very easy to put down and walk away from. It’s not that I have anything very negative to say about the game but it just has never hit the high notes for me the same way it seems to do for everybody else. I hate saying it because I recognise this game is very well made, and I do find it fun, but only in short bursts. For long stretches of play the game runs out of tricks too fast and I find it kind of boring. And I wish I didn’t because rip and tear and all that. But I’m either too meathead for this game or not meathead enough, I dunno. 

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I literally just got off this same as you in anticipation for Eternal. The aiming is weird and I actually felt a bit sick while playing but I eventually adjusted.

 

From what I remember it's just way better in the hell sections of the game cause you have more tools, more verticality, the environments look like a metal album cover and the music is all orchestral satan shit.

 

Visually it's not much nowadays but I'm only playing on a 1080p monitor (but supersampled heavily so no jaggies)

 

edit, I'm playing on Superviolence difficulty now as well for a new challenge. Really looking forward to Eternal after seeing the GB gameplay of it, it looks a lot better

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I’ve just done the first Hell level and got back. Was thinking I was doing really well because I have 100% every level up until now, but then realised I had forgot to upgrade any weapons so I was sitting on nearly 40 upgrade tokens which unlocks the weapon mastery challenges. So basically wasted a bunch of time I could of been upgrading weapons as well. Whoops. 
 

A huge positive I will say about this game is it’s very memorable. A lot of the time when I play games, especially if I only play a game once, I only recall them like they were highlight reels, just remembering the bits that stood out. But playing this I’ve remembered nearly every combat encounter, every room, where all the secrets are, and I haven’t played the game in maybe 4 years. Feel like that’s a testament to just how well made this game is that it stuck with me so easily. 
 

Even not upgrading weapons, though, this game has been a bit of a push over. Maybe playing it on hard is the way to go to learn how to really love this game. 

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No! I missed my first secret in a level! It was on the Argent Tower (Destroyed) level and apparently the lever for the secret room is right at the beginning of the level. But also there is a point of no return at the beginning so I fluffed it. I think I did that on my initial play through as well
 

If any further evidence was needed that I never learn

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Managed to beat the 2 v 1 boss fight tonight so maybe 2 or 3 more levels left to go now.
 

I definitely don’t think I’ll be playing this again on a harder difficulty. I’m really, really bored with it. I’ve even been trying to pace myself and just do 1 level per night to stay interested but even that hasn’t really worked. I don’t know why this game doesn’t do it for me. It is made up of so many elements that I should be in too, and I think the game plays really well, but I still find it really monotonous.
 

Maybe the problem is that it’s too easy and I should try it on a harder difficulty because I don’t use strategy at all. Everything falls over to the combination of Super Shotgun, Rocket Launcher, Gauss Rifle and basically infinite grenades. It literally escalates in that order as well depending on the size or power of the enemy.
 

For all the variation and “thinking man’s shooter” this game is supposed to be it’s very brain dead for me. Nearly every fight is identical and I blast the shit out of everyone without ever even getting close to trying. 
 

The only thing that stops me from just destroying every single combat encounter are the level and weapon challenges. A lot of them are fairly simple and just require finding the right opportunity, some of them are kind of difficult or grindy but then there’s always a get out of jail free card in reloading a checkpoint. No matter what kind of challenge it is the game records your progress even if you die or reload. So if you have one say, kill 20 enemies using power ups. Just get the quad damage, kill as many as possible, reload and do exactly the same.

 

I’m not trying to complain about that, though. Yes it subtracts interest or stakes from even the challenge portion, but I’d rather have this option than the game be really strict and make me play the level again if I fucked one up. I think what I want is just more interesting combat challenges that weren’t difficult because they were strict but were just genuinely inventive ways of trying to play. 

 

Speaking of challenges, there is a funny Rune one where you have to reach maximum armour 12 times. And I had maximum while standing over a shit tonne of +5 armours and was like huh. So I just kept throwing grenades, losing 2 points of armour, picking up a +5 and the game counted it. That one I’m especially thankful for the cheese otherwise getting to max armour 12 times legitimately would be a right fucker. 
 

But yeah. Will probably finish this tomorrow. For the record I do think this game is very good. But for me I just appreciate it more than I actively like it. I recognise the quality but it just doesn’t do much for me. I feel like I’m broken when I play Doom. 

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For me this isn't about strategy at all. It clicks with me I think in that it's like a very lite character action with guns. It's not like a Sekiro style game where you analyse the mobs and try to find the most effective strategy. It's more like playing with them. It digs into a very specific power fantasy which is less about being skillful and clever than it is about being sort of creative or at least varied in how you fuck fuckers up. 

 

So honestly if you put it on a harder difficulty you could probably play it the exact same way or something. I don't really remember how the base difficulty in it works. I do find myself thinking about certain properties of weapons when using them though. Like Gauss cannon not having splash damage, or rocket launcher having a remote detonate which does damage over time. Super shotgun being the default weapon because it's most powerful at close range in case you run into something. There's little micro optimisations like that. The one I don't get is the plasma gun. It just seems bad. Also I wish I could delete the pistol.

 

Doom Eternal might have a bit more here. Enemies have weak spots and you can use them as anchors to grab off of. 

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I like power fantasy first games, too, but I like it in games that make you earn it. This is fun in short bursts for sure. But there’s just not enough here to keep me going or really that interested. I’m not sure what you’re finding to “play with” in the game because I can’t think of a new strategy or cool way to kill these guys at all. Maybe higher difficulty puts the pressure on and forces that but on Normal I just don’t know what I would do differently. The only thing would be to purposefully not use the best guns but then I would still wreck shop but with less fun tools. 
 

It’s why I like the challenges and wish this part of the game was deeper. I need more specific goals than just win because when it is just win it’s so mindlessly 1 dimensional. 
 

But then maybe it’s just me that has changed as well. Like if this was a character action game in shooter form it would be PS2 God of War. And I fucking loved God of War but maybe I’m different now, I don’t know. 

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If you're playing it with a means to an end then for sure you will probably find yourself funnelled into a repetitive playstyle and not find a lot to enjoy here. 

 

IMO the reason I feel like it's a lite character action is the emphasis on movement and switching. At a higher difficulty it does force more variety, I think. Like how the glory kill system is how you heal yourself, so animation timings, setup of things like the chaingun or the cooldown on remote missiles/shotgun bomb, splash damage, accuracy and the range of the shotguns factor in a little in decision making. Some stuff is better far away, others up close. Some is better for single target and so on.

 

I can say that Ultraviolence does have challenge, at least imo. I find myself under some pressure anyway. I don't think this is some deep technical game but it is a glorious toybox to fuck around in imo. I have no idea what the challenges are about though as I don't do them or look for the secrets stuff. I mean I tried one and it was 'kill 15 things really quick like' and I wasn't into that sort of thing.

 

 

(man I love 60fps video capture)

 

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Your video is similar but different to how I play. I run around a lot too but I don’t switch weapons like that. I don’t really need to. I never use the chainsaw either because I never run low on ammo. I use a lot more grenades than you, though. Because so many enemies charge at the player in Doom one of my go to moves is move backwards, throw grenade on the ground, look up, watch enemy run over it. 

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Well the chainsaw also is an instant kill with iframes that you can use to get out of tight corners. I think I had 7 health there when I used it. It can also get you out of lengthy animations with weapons like super shotgun and gauss cannon

 

One thing I've being trying to do with shotgun switching which I don't know if it's a valid tactic or not, but I mainly use the vanilla shotgun for its grenade add-on, then during its cooldown I weave in the super shotgun, then go back to vanilla. I don't know how well the economics of timing work out for it but it might mean I spend more time with the higher damage output than I would otherwise, I think.

 

Spacing is also important as your rocket launcher is your best weapon. But you miss out on juicy health orbs if you spend too much time far away.

 

The one I struggle with is the machine gun with sticky rockets. I'm not sure yet the best place for that

 

You can absolutely get through all encounters without trying to find any optimisations like that but I think the point isn't just to 'win' but to go for efficiency. The reason efficiency is important is you become more of a glass cannon on higher difficulties, so you need to think more about DPS than just clearing. The longer an encounter goes on the more damage you will definitely take, so there is a soft timer behind every encounter. It's really not that unlike using certain weapons in a DMC-like game imo, where on higher difficulties the usefulness of some of their more unique properties can come more clear when relying on the same strat over and over starts to lose effectiveness or will prolong encounters

 

I'm still in the experimental phase with this game though. My UV playthrough was actually halfway through back in 2016 when I dropped it so I'm kind of re-learning a lot of stuff from scratch. Like when the feck do you use the plasma rifle. I've been using it to mow down fodder but I'm not sure where else is useful. I might try this on nightmare as well, but I really don't like the first few Mars levels so will have to see.

 

There's a bit here where they talk about their combat loop at GDC

 

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That’s the thing, in Normal mode I don’t think I could be more efficient in killing everyone. Funny you should say about the machine gun rocket launcher add on because when paired with the rune that gives you infinite ammo it annihilates everything. You just stand on one side of the room and move left and right dodging projectiles and decimate everything. Even Pinky’s, who IMO are the most annoying enemy in the game, are dead before they’ve even reached you. 
 

But without infinite ammo the gun chews up so much ammo so fast it is not very good. 
 

This morning I done the second to last level and am currently on the final one and the fights have been significantly harder, but because it really just becomes enemy spam. Like I don’t think they’re particularly good combat encounters because it’s just everyone everywhere. When I’m backing up I’m running into enemies from behind (Literally have got stuck on Imps several times), or I’m fighting one guy and a Pinky just charges in from nowhere or a Hell Knight lands and does his AoE stomp out of nowhere. It’s still not that hard. The penultimate level was difficult because there were still combat and weapon challenges I was trying to do, so I died a few times before saying fuck it and just mowed everybody down. But now all that’s done and I’m just infinite ammo Gauss Rifle everyone it’s just become annoying. It’s like being surrounded by flies and my guns are me waving my hand at them. 
 

I don’t know. It’s just not for me, I think.

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Finished the game today and got all 1000 points. Yikes, Ultra Nightmare Mode or whatever is rough going. I think it may have taken me 5 or 6 tries to get through that first level. It’s actually not that difficult, it’s just such a high wire act because if you die than back to the beginning with you and as mentioned previously the first few levels in Doom are not that interesting at all. 
 

I busted through the snap map stuff for those points in about 30 minutes. Snap Map isn’t for me but it’s way, way better than it was when I tried it in 2016. I played the most popular level and it was “remakes” of, what I’m guessing, are the first 3 levels of Classic Doom, but it had this really great intro where you are in this bedroom and you have to get the disc of the shelf, put in the PC, hit buttons to load it up. But you do it all by punching everything so using the limitations to still capture the humour this game has. Really impressive stuff. When I did it originally it was just a bunch of horde mode type maps that were really dull. 
 

And then the multiplayer. You only have to get to level 5, which thankfully I did in two matches and man it’s boring. Also easy? I was playing with people who had prestiged multiple times and I whooped their ass. Just goes to show how little skill or anything there is to it. Just point the rocket launcher and shoot. Yawn.

 

I did notice that all of the multiplayer expansions are now free. I guess that is good but even for free and additional points I don’t want to play any more of it all. 1000 points is a nice clean, round number for me. 

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I watched this speedrun in it’s entirety this morning and it’s incredible

 

 

 

This is why I am still comfortable saying how much I respect and admire this game even if I don’t love it. Because as much as I can’t get this^ out of this game clearly it can be done and it’s amazing to watch. What I was so impressed by was not just the knowledge, skill and execution - which is insanely amazing on it’s own. But the way the person combines challenges in ways, that seem simple when I see it,  but never thought to do by myself. Like combining the Plasma Bomb challenge with the double kill Super Shotgun challenge, or combining the blood fuelled challenge with the BFG. Add to the fact just how well designed this playthrough is where every major combat encounter is entirely controlled. Knowing where to stand, how to make enemies spawn at particular locations, shooting rockets in to the distance at things the person can’t even see and watching the counters go up. 
 

There is some slight bullshit in it that I didn’t really understand. Like using equipment 30 times, I think he is animation cancelling to do it because he completes that in about 5 seconds. Also because he is playing on PC he is managing to get really fast momentum out of jumps that I don’t think you would be able to do on console.

 

But regardless, a very brilliant speedrun. So much to learn just by watching the guy do it. 

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