Doom Overrated?

[Taurus Daggerknight]

@RonnieJamesDiner summed it up pretty well there. There is a tendency among the Doom fandom- and really, ALL fandoms- to start creating a bubble in which the one game/ movie/ band is THE BE ALL AND END ALL of everything that was good. Thing is, Doom is an older game, and as such, it most certainly lacks a whole bunch of things that latter day games, or even mods, would bring to the table. 

 

This isn't to take away from the things that ARE awesome about Doom. The atmosphere and world remains awesome, and the base game play is still fun. Is it the single greatest FPS action out there though? Highly debatable as of 2020. We've had amazing games come out since classic Doom. Games which, while perhaps not perfect, added some pretty awesome stuff to the genre. 

 

Unreal's alien world and AI (not to mention use of color) were unique and interesting, as was its use of secondary fire modes. Half Life's grounded world WAS a breath of fresh air back in 98, as was its focus on more contemporary type weapons alongside the sci-fi stuff. HL 2's use of physics was novel. FEAR had an amazing combination of tactical and blitz paced gun play, with a near perfect balance between its level design and AI that led to amazing fire fights. And yes, even Call of Duty (1- 4 in particular) gave us different kinds of joys and systems that no, classic Doom did not have.  For that matter, even the Quake titles showed that there were grounds to improve the Doom formula in (real 3d worlds, higher focus on movement, smaller encounters that were faster paced and more deadly individually, etc).

 

In short; classic Doom remains a classic, and remains fun to play. But a large part of that is really down to the fact that it's been allowed to evolve, thanks to mods. When it comes down to vanilla Doom Vs. all the years after, however, there are definitely things that were brought to the table that, IMO, outclass it. So yeah... I feel like in a lot of ways it is overrated.

 

Importantly, however, I also feel like it SHOULD be overrated, if for no other reason than to remind people of the industry's history. WIth all of the above in mind about how FPS has come a long way, the fact remains that the lineage is clear, and I do believe that everyone, from hardcore gamers to industry initiates, should know the story and where the foundations for everything since came from.  

[Fonze]

For a response to the original OP: no Doom isn't overrated as there is endless custom content coming from people who've studied the source material for the last 25+ years, continuing to build upon existing knowledge and having learned a lot about even general game design through the lens of doom. Additionally, with the source code available we now have tons of amazing ports to choose from which carry the game far above its base vanilla form. Within custom mods/maps you'll find so many different things that so many people have built; doom has become an endless cornucopia of new and fresh content with a strong community keeping it going year after year, which is more than 99% of other games can claim. Mario Maker is probably one of the few modern games that can make a similar claim, but even that is doomed to failure when the servers the levels are hosted on eventually goes down (which is not a problem doom will ever have for many reasons) and there is less room for non-standard designs within Mario Maker vs doom, of course in large part due to all the advanced source ports available today.

 

To respond to the OP's moved goalposts: yes the base game is overrated in 2020 whenever it gets any recognition beyond being a museum piece to show the stepping stones for where modern gaming is today. There is no reason to play the iwads beyond as a study when endless custom content has surpassed their designs, which shouldnt be a surprise as all of doom's custom content was built on the backs of and foundation laid by the iwads.

[Deleted_Account]

Overrated? No way! Doom has rightfully earned it's place and recognition. It has stood the test of time. It emerged in 1993, and in 2020 the franchise is still alive and kicking. Speaking as a fan who played the game since it's debut, it makes me happy to see it moving forward.

[SlayerOGames666]

No. Just no. If you think DOOM is overrated, then TETRIS, Minecraft, etc, is overrated as well.

[SamuelMTEvander]

An interesting question. As an old-school Doom fan I'd sound biased if I said: "no, it's the other games that are overrated." It's a very subjective matter since there's lots of fun & flashy shooters out on the market that stand on their own merits and might even persuade people to think that those games are far better than the Doom games made in the 90s, but I'd like to bring up couple points why doom is not overrated but special to this day. There's lots of modern shooters or gears of war cover based shooters or open-world games with those mechanics. But I don't really see the OG Doom 1993 quite recreated to the same extent, even in its own franchise, which has rebooted itself twice now to capture what Id Software thinks fans would like about Doom. So let's go through those mechanics that still makes Doom special and not overrated:

 

- Lack Of Narration = Controversial, since Half-Life came out shortly to offer story and pacing, Doom1993 leaves it in the text crawl.

- Weapon Roles = Too many games put a lot of emphasis on attachments and upgrades, in Doom1993 the weapons are already powerful. 

- Power-Ups = This feature vanished & got replaced by things like perks & level-ups. But finding these in levels felt really rewarding.

- Movement = I can't think of too many games that let you sprint like a madman in perpetuity or find exploits such as straferunning or wallrunning. 

- Episodes = The game felt like an adventure without needing pacing or much of a story. The experience was in the levels & episodes.

- Levels = Thankfully Doom2016 improved on this but Wolf3D&1993 really set the precedent on open-ended maze like dungeons in shooters!

 

There's lots of other things to point out but I think these features are very crucial aspects that got either changed or removed in games to this day for the better or worse depending on who you're asking. But these core things make me return to Doom along with the amount of sourceports & pwads internet has to offer. These days companies have made it part of their marketing to sell the next shiny game or DLC to make people spend their money on while Doom has all the wads & mods I need to last me a lifetime.

 

TL;DR It's not overrated, but a stroke of genius that still holds up well today! There's a reason to its success not only as an influence to the industry, but its design as a videogame!

Edited March 12, 2020 by SamuelMTEvander
typo and editing the text to be concise

[Phobus]

Of course it is! The game's shit. You can't even look up and down. Good thing the awesome community members from "way back when" made it better and now we get to stand on the shoulders of giants.

[unerxai]

Never heard someone say Doom is overrated. A few people say that without a source port Doom doesn't hold up these days, which is blasphemy of course.

[The Doommer]

2 minutes ago, Phobus said:

The game's shit.

I just hope you are sarcastic.

 

3 minutes ago, Phobus said:

You can't even look up and down.

Because it's one of the first FPS games maybe? So, yeah.

 

 

[Redneckerz]

8 minutes ago, The Doommer said:

I just hope you are sarcastic.

 

Because it's one of the first FPS games maybe? So, yeah.

 

 

Phobus definitely is sarcastic. Ive come to appreciate the subtle nuances of his jest.

[Doominator2]

You mean I cant jump? What a shit game.

[The Doommer]

9 minutes ago, Redneckerz said:

Phobus definitely is sarcastic.

Guessed so, but you know how sometimes people actually mean it

Edited March 11, 2020 by The Doommer

[NoXion]

20 minutes ago, Phobus said:

Of course it is! The game's shit. You can't even look up and down. Good thing the awesome community members from "way back when" made it better and now we get to stand on the shoulders of giants.

I've been playing it for years. Utter garbage. In fact I've been playing it fairly frequently since about 2012, just to confirm how trash it is.

[HorrorMovieRei]

Not every game that gets high praise is overrated. It's easy to think that in the age of paid reviews, but Doom and a lot of the titles mentioned as examples in this thread have earned their high status.

[Deleted_Account]

2 minutes ago, Doominator2 said:

You mean I cant jump? What a shit game.

You can't jump. You can't look up or down. No story! It's just the same thing over and over. Find keys and shoot monsters. That's what my circle of friends would always say about Doom. It's hard to believe. Growing up, I didn't know any other Doomers lol.

[Egg Boy]

Yeah, Doom fucking sucks lmao

[Deleted_Account]

18 minutes ago, Egg Boy said:

Yeah, Doom fucking sucks lmao

Absolute shiiiiit!

[nrofl]

wait lmao what is doom again????//??💯💯👌👌😂???😂😂💯👌 frfrfrfrfr totally forgot

[TheNoob_Gamer]

5 hours ago, The Icon of Sin said:

Is there something wrong with new people joining Doomworld

Other things have been answered already, so I hope to be the one to clear this up.

 

There isn't ANYTHING wrong with newbies joining Doomworld. In fact, this place is very friendly to those. 

If you want proofs, just look at your very first posts you've made in this forum. Join date don't matter as long as you aren't a troll ;)

6 hours ago, The Icon of Sin said:

What’s weird

There have been some people making stupid threads and/or answers in recent months; so apparently some are thinking you as one of them. 

 

Here's a protip: Edit the post in case your point wasn't clear enough.

Edited March 12, 2020 by TheNoob_Gamer

[Murdoch]

Is Doom overrated?

 

No. And I think to strip away what made it revolutionary is kind of missing the point of your own question.

 

I started playing The Ultimate Doom again recently for the first time in a long time. I am using GZDoom with a hi-res texture pack, beautiful Doom and Andrew Hushult's soundtrack. I am having an absolute blast. There is a simple purity to it that still gets to me over 25 years later. It took what Wolf3D started and perfected it. It single-handedly defined one of the most prolific genres of all time. How many other games can you point to where you can honestly say that without it, the gaming industry would be very, very different? It would not be a long list, and if you were to list them starting with the most important, Doom would be either at the top or pretty near to it. It is one of the few cases you can point to where even if you do not like the game for your own subjective reasons (which is perfectly fine), to say the game is overrated and unimportant in the development of games is objectively, demonstrably false.

[The Icon of Sin]

41 minutes ago, Murdoch said:

Is Doom overrated?

 

No. And I think to strip away what made it revolutionary is kind of missing the point of your own question.

 

I started playing The Ultimate Doom again recently for the first time in a long time. I am using GZDoom with a hi-res texture pack, beautiful Doom and Andrew Hushult's soundtrack. I am having an absolute blast. There is a simple purity to it that still gets to me over 25 years later. It took what Wolf3D started and perfected it. It single-handedly defined one of the most prolific genres of all time. How many other games can you point to where you can honestly say that without it, the gaming industry would be very, very different? It would not be a long list, and if you were to list them starting with the most important, Doom would be either at the top or pretty near to it. It is one of the few cases you can point to where even if you do not like the game for your own subjective reasons (which is perfectly fine), to say the game is overrated and unimportant in the development of games is objectively, demonstrably false.

I like the game I was asking if other people thought it was overrated 

[Super Mighty G]

2 minutes ago, The Icon of Sin said:

I like the game I was asking if other people thought it was overrated 

But why? We wouldn't be here if we thought that. 

[The Icon of Sin]

3 hours ago, Super Mighty G said:

But why? We wouldn't be here if we thought that. 

I mean some people could. I really wanted to see people articulate why they love doom so much and why it still kicks ass.

Edited March 12, 2020 by The Icon of Sin

[phoo]

no

[Test Tickle]

Game fucking sucks (i died in level 5 playint on night mare)

[Lila Feuer]

It can't be overrated when it influenced so many shooters. That's like calling Half-Life overrated. You can not like something, but that doesn't make it overrated, that's not how that works.

E: I think Quake II is overrated though, because its hub system wasn't anything new (Hexen did it first) and the setting is pretty rudimentary (tech bases), if inspired (Strogg). It also goes from way too easy (default difficulties, power armor) to artificially hard (nightmare eliminates pain chance entirely and buffs everyone so your weapons suck). Overall, I'm not saying the game is bad, but defenders will defend it to the death for some reason.

Edited March 12, 2020 by Lila Feuer

[Avoozl]

I hardly think Quake 2 is overrated when people praise Quake 1 over it.

[MassiveEdgelord]

It's epic for the win.

[ReaperAA]

On 3/11/2020 at 11:30 PM, markanini said:

No, the issues are expressed openly by fans and causal players alike. I've seen other titles with a far smaller following of sycophants claiming their game is perfect, Doom is not one of those.

 

Your comment reminded me about the Marathon community. Some of them would do whatever it takes to downplay Doom. Almost every positive review I read about the Marathon games has to make Doom look inferior (some of them are likely Apple fans that do this in order to make PC gaming look inferior).

 

Sure Marathon games have certain things (mostly the plot and narration) that Doom doesn't, but Doom has much better combat and much better level design imho. It also doesn't help that Aleph One (the only source port for Marathon games) quite frankly sucks because the mouse movement is terrible and it is locked to 30fps with no animation interpolation.

EDIT August 2023: Over the last 3 years, Aleph One has definitely improved quite a bit. Interpolation exists now, there is an ingame FOV slider finally and the mouse movement, while not perfect, has definitely improved compared to when I tried it in 2019-2020.

Edited August 2, 2023 by ReaperAA

[Doomkid]

Absurd, sappy ramble:

 

I’m fully prepared to be called a nostalgia-blinded fanboy, but it’s only thanks to mods that other games even manage to touch the hem of Doom’s garment. What I mean by that is, other games needed mods to even come close to the greatness of vanilla Doom.

 

Once you pair Doom with community made content, it becomes an utterly untouchable juggernaut of fun that literally no other game has surpassed, in my experiences anyway.

 

Am I being hyperbolic? Maybe a little.. but this game touches my fucking soul, man. Only a small handful have ever managed that, and none so much as classic Doom - in fact it’s not even close.

 

I fully admit there are other fantastic games out there, made with the same degree of love and vision that went into the making of Doom, and those games may connect better with others. In my case though, the love for the game goes beyond just enjoying it and even beyond just being a damn-near-lifelong addiction - It’s at a point where I don’t know an appropriate word to describe how I feel about it.

 

I know it seems absurd to talk about a piece of art as if it had a lasting, profound effect on me and a hand in shaping who I am, but that’s just the facts. It influenced my music taste, my creative drive, and more obvious stuff like my ideas about what constitutes a good game. It’s also done a lot by proxy, such as connecting me in a very real way to people on multiple ends of the planet who I’ve considered close friends for many years. id can’t really take credit for all that, but it’s an inexorable link that I’ll always have with Doom.

 

Somehow, this spiel is related to the discussion of wether or not Doom is overrated. I’ll get back to you once I realise how..

 

Edited March 12, 2020 by Doomkid

[KickAss]

Hallo,

strange question :-/. I like both old games, DooM I + II, as they are since they are released. I love playing them with vanilla and modern sourceports, like chocolate-doom and gzdoom. For some people it's the holy gral of 3D games and the "mother" of all fps shooters ... and on the other hand there are people who dislike it, unbelievable but true.

MfG