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Does anyone think that DOOM 64 sucks?


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10 minutes ago, Breeder said:

I believe some of the sprite choices were a major downgrade

The only ones I was really disappointed with at the time were the shotguns.  I wanted to see the pump and open/reload/close animations.

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19 minutes ago, Breeder said:

I believe some of the sprite choices were a major downgrade, but other than that I am rather fond of DOOM 64.

The only sprite change I didn't care for was the mancubus. See my avatar? No way that would happen in Doom 64. 

Edited by Job

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1 minute ago, Job said:

The only sprite change I didn't care for was the mancubus. See my avatar? No way that would happen in Doom 64. 

I dunno, it's happening in my head right now and it's rather hot.

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Doom64 is the 3rd Doom game and it is great just like the ones before it. To me, Final Doom doesn’t really count as it’s own thing - It’s a set of 64 maps for Doom2 that can be played independently. It’s more akin to DLC or an expansion. Doom64 was the first one that dared to be different and was truly it’s own beast.

 

I remember being annoyed in the 90’s that it looked so similar to oldschool Doom - my kid brain was like “how lazy, they didn’t change it enough compared to Doom 1 and 2 for a new, 3D console...”. I don’t hold that opinion now, I think it’s simply a fantastic sequel that gives me more of the game I love, with a new twist.

 

I “get” why people aren’t crazy about the actual Doom3, which is the fourth Doom game (this series has had a fucked naming convention after Doom2) but I never really grok why lovers of Doom1 and 2 sometimes hate 64. It’s so fundamentally similar in all the important ways, at least to me.

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I mean its a lot better than just being Yet another Ultimate Doom DLC like Doom 2 and Final Doom.

 

Doom 64 did it's own thing, giving a fresh new look and atmosphere. while still keeping the core gameplay intact.

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I think Doom 64 is pretty great, considering what it is. I would just like to get my hands on a real N64 cart of the game instead of Doom 64 EX with the roms. Cause isn't downloading a rom illegal?

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3 minutes ago, Skullhacker said:

I think Doom 64 is pretty great, considering what it is. I would just like to get my hands on a real N64 cart of the game instead of Doom 64 EX with the roms. Cause isn't downloading a rom illegal?

It is but who gives a fuck?

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22 minutes ago, MassiveEdgelord said:

It felt "slow".

That's interesting, 'cause to me, Doom is not supposed to be blazing fast.  Definitely not slow like some modern shooters, but not like you gave the Road Runner a shotgun and some speed, either.  I guess always preferred to take my time in the levels and approach combat carefully, rather opposite to what Doom 2016 did.  Doom 64 plays well to that style of playing, I think.

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10 hours ago, speed_your_feed said:

Now, to be honest, I hate DOOM 64...

I prefer to play the PSX version.

lol? Besides new graphics, PSX is very much like Doom 64 in atmosphere. Or rather Doom 64 is like PSX since it came after PSX if I remember right. I don't know how you can hate one but not the other. I would think hating 64/PSX and preferring PC Doom would make more sense.

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i liked  d64 d1 d2 ...d3 was ok ...but nothing that would make me always want to play it...same as d4... its a ymmv case as is everything in life

Edited by Hcoop111

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How come it seems like in the last few weeks, there's always one person that has to be contrarian in regards to at least one Doom-related thing?

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Quote

First warman, then Foebane, now this guy?

Jokes aside, Doom 64 is a pretty great game and it deserves to be.

 

Edited by TheNoob_Gamer

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4 hours ago, maxmanium said:

How come it seems like in the last few weeks, there's always one person that has to be contrarian in regards to at least one Doom-related thing?

Its Opposite Day atleast once a week.

Don't worry, when Doom Eternal gets released, there will be a thread saying: ''I don't like Eternal Doom'', confusing everyone that does not know the difference.

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So after seeing this thread I decided to give Doom64 EX a shot, since I've never really given D64 a fair shake. I'm 9 levels in, and... it's OK. Better than I thought it would be from just seeing videos etc., and definitely better than all the other "like the PC but worse" ports. I guess I can see why some people would like it, taken as its own game. That said it feels strictly worse than D1/D2 to me, and I'm not sure if I'm going to finish it.

 

Here's a bunch of observations/criticisms/thoughts about it so far, since some people seem to not get why one wouldn't like it if you like the other Doom games. I'll reiterate that this is purely subjective, I'm fine with people liking things I don't and vice-versa, and this isn't trying to convince any fans that D64 sucks or whatever. If you like it, that's great, you have another Doom game to play.

 

In no particular order:

 

  • The demons have this weird hybrid look of rough claymation/untextured 3D models that just doesn't work for me at all. I think it looks goofy, ugly, and amateurish. The low number of animation frames certainly don't help, and while I get that that's probably due to the limited hardware it was designed for, the end result is the same.

 

  • The coloured lighting is really overdone, and washes out most textures, leading to a look that's both blandly monochrome and garishly overcoloured at the same time.

 

  • The level design is really closed in and boxy, far more than even Doom 1 was. There's very little verticality, compared to even things like E1M2. I guess this might change in later levels? There are some moments that break out of this which were refreshing to see, but makes me think that it wasn't done that way for hardware reasons at all which makes the boxyness even worse. Also Hexen 64 doesn't have this problem at all , so again, can't really blame the hardware on this one. [edit: I've played a bit more and this does seem to improve as the game goes on.]

 

  • A lot of the sound effects (e.g. fireball, pinky death) have this weird mid-range resonance going on that I think sounds really bad. One of the demon growl sounds is very similar to the D1/D2 humanoid grunt, which is a good sound but kind of weird for that purpose. Some of the demons sound constipated. Interestingly the shotgun and plasma rifle sounds which I hate seeing in normal wads (please stop using them kthx) work fine here; the shotgun clicks give you a good sense of how long until you can shoot again, which is missing from the gun animation, and the "echo" on the plasma rifle sound is a lot less prominent than on the PC.

 

  • There's a surprising amount of switch and timing puzzles. This isn't a complaint, I like Hexen 1/2 and Eternal Doom, I was just surprised by it.

 

  • It's been pretty easy overall, though Even Simpler was a pretty big jump in difficulty so that might change later. Anyhow that's not a complaint either, and I'm sure trying to play with the 3-handed N64 controller would make things a lot harder. But I do find the supposed "horror" vibe it's going for doesn't work so well when you're not really worried about getting killed. Interestingly one of the hardest parts so far was in MAP02, the crusher hallway to the red key, which I can't imagine would be easy to navigate with the N64 pad.

 

  • The music is a mixed bag but generally not very good. I listen to all sorts of experimental weirdo music so it's not like I have a problem with this style of music, or that I think Doom needs to be metal only, or whatever, I just think that within this style these aren't very good compositions for the most part. Also some of the tracks use sounds that one could easily confuse for enemy sounds if you are new to the game, which is IMO a very poor choice. There are a few tracks, the ones that have more strings and less effects, that are pretty good.

 

There's probably some things that I'm forgetting but that's more than enough to paint a picture of why I don't really like Doom 64.

Edited by plums

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On 3/10/2020 at 2:19 AM, Remilia Scarlet said:

The only ones I was really disappointed with at the time were the shotguns.  I wanted to see the pump and open/reload/close animations.

This is also a pet peeve of mine. But Doom 64 Retribution has alternate and smoother animations, among a lot of other things. For example, like @plums said, the enemy sprites in the original and in Doom 64 EX look like clay models with crappy bilinear. But with my GZDoom settings, they look better in Retribution.

 

So with these annoyances fixed, I *really* enjoyed Doom 64 for the first time ever very recently. It is great for fans of techbases :D

 

I am not a big fan of the N64 and PSX soundtracks except the EPIC main theme. There are probably a couple of tracks there that I like but generally it's low-effort ambient horror stuff. But it's just a ... background kinda thing. It is not actively cringe-inducing like half of the HacX songs!

 

23 hours ago, jazzmaster9 said:

its a lot better than just being Yet another Ultimate Doom DLC like Doom 2

How absolutely DARE you, sir? Doom 2 adds the SSG and new enemies, vanilla Doom 1 gets repetitive, lacks variety and Doom 2 improves the balance and depth overall. It is not just new maps...

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Doom 64 EX doesn't have point 3 filtering like the N64 version so the trilinear/bilinear does make the sprites look worse.

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1 hour ago, VGA said:

the enemy sprites in the original and in Doom 64 EX look like clay models with crappy bilinear.

The clay-look and filtering don't bother me, especially since I prefer filtering to the pixelated look.  But as Avoozl also mentioned, the filtering we get on our computers isn't exactly like what the N64 did.  Personally I'm glad about that, though.

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7 hours ago, Avoozl said:

Doom 64 EX doesn't have point 3 filtering like the N64 version so the trilinear/bilinear does make the sprites look worse.

 

The remaster will, though, so it will finally look like it did back in the day on the real hardware on PC.

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4 minutes ago, seed said:

 

The remaster will, though, so it will finally look like it did back in the day on the real hardware on PC.

Yes I am already aware, I was responding to the poster above me but I probably should've quoted him.

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On 3/10/2020 at 2:15 AM, Doomkid said:

I remember being annoyed in the 90’s that it looked so similar to oldschool Doom - my kid brain was like “how lazy, they didn’t change it enough compared to Doom 1 and 2 for a new, 3D console...”. I don’t hold that opinion now, I think it’s simply a fantastic sequel that gives me more of the game I love, with a new twist.

 

 

For me it was as if Doom64 was what Doom would have been, when the typical "gaming PC" in 93 would have had a Pentium CPU and a Voodoo card inside. The only thing i hated was not the fault of Midway, it was Nintendos fault. What complete idiot designed that standard gamepad? I mean, with only two grips, the trigger and the analog stick on one of them, it could have been the perfect pad for that type of games. But with the actual N64 pad you are never be able to use all buttons in a game comfortably.

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On 3/9/2020 at 6:54 PM, speed_your_feed said:

Now, to be honest, I hate DOOM 64. I think that Midway Games didn't need to change the whole story, the sprites AND the soundtrack. That soundtrack... for me is disappointing. Aubrey Hodges made the soundtrack more scary than metal. In some songs you can even hear babies crying! I expected the same game, just ported to the N64. I prefer to play the PSX version. Lemme know your opinion!

 

I don`t hate it, but I do not like it. At release time I thought it was such a meh game. Much years later I played it (and finished in one of those TC) and to be honest, I cannot see why is so appreciated. I mean, lot`s of people here seems to love it, and I truly I don't get it. Anyway, I am sticking with the original DooM...

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On 3/11/2020 at 5:06 AM, seed said:

The remaster will, though, so it will finally look like it did back in the day on the real hardware on PC.

It will? Nice. I really like the way stuff is filtered on the real N64.

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4 minutes ago, Nevander said:

It will? Nice. I really like the way stuff is filtered on the real N64.

 

Yes, NDS implemented a 3-point bilinear filter in the remaster. This was actually teased quite a while ago, you must have missed this tweet:

 

 

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23 minutes ago, Nevander said:

I really like the way stuff is filtered on the real N64.

 

I play D64 on the Project 64 emulator and I have the full screen resolution at 640x480 and its looks terrific on my laptop. I've saw videos on YT where people are playing D64EX and they have the filtering disabled and it just doesn't look right to me.

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5 minutes ago, Boaby Kenobi said:

I play D64 on the Project 64 emulator and I have the full screen resolution at 640x480 and its looks terrific on my laptop. I've saw videos on YT where people are playing D64EX and they have the filtering disabled and it just doesn't look right to me.

 

Well hardware filter is garbage so no wonder it looks worse - unless you used "terrific" in the other sense.

 

Similarly, D64 without filtering also looks really off to me as well, because its assets were quite clearly designed with it in mind, which leads to perceiving things as looking "wrong".

Edited by seed

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On mardi 10 mars 2020 at 7:49 PM, plums said:

The demons have this weird hybrid look of rough claymation/untextured 3D models that just doesn't work for me at all. I think it looks goofy, ugly, and amateurish. The low number of animation frames certainly don't help, and while I get that that's probably due to the limited hardware it was designed for, the end result is the same.

I was the same when I first discovered Doom 64 existed. But eventually they grew on me. I still prefer the original look, but I think they work fine. At least for most of them. Arachnotron, mancubus, and pain elemental still look ridiculous.

 

On mardi 10 mars 2020 at 7:49 PM, plums said:

The coloured lighting is really overdone, and washes out most textures, leading to a look that's both blandly monochrome and garishly overcoloured at the same time.

Rather than colored lighting, it'd be more accurate to speak of colorization. The textures were designed to be nearly monochrome and to get their hue from sector colors. This allowed them to get more texture variety with a smaller memory footprint. It's like, instead of having silver, green, brown, and orange versions of the STAR textures, you only have the silver one, and you get the rest by putting in wall colors. It's clever. But then it depends on the level designer not to overdo it with harsh saturated colors, of course.

 

On mardi 10 mars 2020 at 7:49 PM, plums said:

One of the demon growl sounds is very similar to the D1/D2 humanoid grunt, which is a good sound but kind of weird for that purpose.

Yeah I hate that one too.

 

 

On mercredi 11 mars 2020 at 8:35 PM, cybdmn said:

I mean, with only two grips, the trigger and the analog stick on one of them, it could have been the perfect pad for that type of games. But with the actual N64 pad you are never be able to use all buttons in a game comfortably.

They didn't think a game would need all the buttons, so they set about to create basically a "three-in-one" controller you would hold differently for different games depending on what control scheme made the most sense for them. And I can see how they thought it was a good idea, that is until Sony made the DualShock and showed you could implement the same concept with just one grip position instead of three, and that as a bonus it made all the buttons usable for all games.

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2 hours ago, Boaby Kenobi said:

I play D64 on the Project 64 emulator and I have the full screen resolution at 640x480 and its looks terrific on my laptop.

Just in case, that still does not emulate the actual filtering the N64 had, unless you are using that one software renderer plugin, but that's super slow.

 

(I'm saying this since you quoted the "I really like the way stuff is filtered on the real N64" post)

Edited by -TDRR-

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