Which is harder, Wolfenstein 3D or Doom?

[Dr.Ferret]

When I ask which is harder I’m asking which is harder between these 2 difficulties. I am death incarnate, and Ultra violence. I am thinking about doing a play through of both these classic series (wolfenstein 3D 2 is spear of destiny) And merging them into one series. 

[cambreaKer]

i'd choose wolf3d, either it's because almost every enemy is hitscan, or because i'm bad at the game.

[TheUltimateDoomer666]

Wolfenstein 3D is much harder.  The simple gameplay is pretty dated, with hitscan enemies (specifically, the Mutants) that can attack you the instant you press the space bar at a closed door.

Edited September 2, 2020 by TheUltimateDoomer666

[Midnight_00]

The Nocturnal episodes and Spear are definitely harder than Doom's official games. Most of the levels in the first three Wolf 3D episodes aren't actually that hard if you have the patience to hang back until you're sure there's no alerted enemies ahead.

[94's the best style]

These very classic fps games tend to be much more tricky than Doom, if only due to more limited tricks at your disposal. All weapons traditionally use the same ammo pool, so running out even momentarily is much more dangerous. Burst damage weapons are also almost nonexistent, which really adds to the threat of hitscanners, as you can't blast several with a shotgun, or catch them from behind the corner with explosives. Lack of vertical depth and only straight corners makes the maps a bit easier to get lost in, but it's usually not as bad as it might seem.

[Avoozl]

In Wolf 3D enemies can shoot through other enemies without hurting them or causing any kind of infighting.

[94's the best style]

  On 8/19/2020 at 10:12 AM, Avoozl said:

In Wolf 3D enemies can shoot through other enemies without hurting them or causing any kind of infighting.

Expand  

The unique way Wolf 3d does hitscan does offer some advantages to the player, at least in the Zdoom implementation of it.

 

  Quote

The attack is less likely to be successful at longer range.

The attack is less likely to be successful if the attacker is in front of the target, as the target will be able to "dodge" the incoming bullet.

The attack is less likely to be successful if the target is a player running.

Damage is decreased with range, too: halved at medium range, and halved again (so, quartered) at long range. This can result in 0 damage.

Expand  

from A_WolfAttack's page on Zdoom wiki.

Edited August 19, 2020 by 94's the best style

[amackert]

  On 8/19/2020 at 9:33 AM, TheUltimateDoomer666 said:

Wolfenstein 3D is much harder.  The simple gameplay is pretty dated, with hitscan enemies that attack you the instant you press the space bar at a closed door.

Expand  

 

Indeed, but it goes both ways--you can do the same. One of the many subtle tricks to being good at Wolfenstein 3D.

[Roofi]

I would say wold 3D mainly because of the clunky controls. Otherwise , I didn't play a lot to that game.

[D4NUK1]

Wold3D, all hitscan, and clunky strafing.

[Andromeda]

If you think the chaingunner is annoying, Wolfenstein 3D's mutant is easily 10x worse!

[Chip]

Wolf3D. The levels all look the same. 

[Lila Feuer]

Wolf is way harder, damage can scale as high as 80 which means you can be two-shotted if you're really unlucky, but then again damage is universal so use the pistol at point blank range if you're having ammo troubles with the automatic weapons and you can sometimes two-shot an SS!

[Nevander]

  On 8/19/2020 at 3:59 PM, Andromeda said:

If you think the chaingunner is annoying, Wolfenstein 3D's mutant is easily 10x worse!

Expand  

Fuck that guy. That is all.

[Aaron Blain]

I haven't played SoD in years, but once you get the hang of mouse movement, especially strafing in and out of cover rapidly with a mouse gesture, the 6 retail episodes are trivially easy. There are a handful of fights where there are so many enemies that even the chaingun can't kill them fast enough and they'll start to shoot through each other, so you need to fall back strategically, but that's it.

[NuMetalManiak]

Wolf3D because it's all hitscan, bosses can destroy you easily, you have mazes without a map, and having only one ammo pool makes conserving 99 bullets hard.

[cambreaKer]

  On 8/19/2020 at 5:40 PM, Nevander said:

Fuck that guy. That is all.

Expand  

mutants are the reason i lowered the difficulty from i am death incarnate to bring em on when i tried to play through episode 2

[seed]

Easily Wolf3D.

 

Hitscan only enemies, maps are all mazes, enemies have instant reactions, the player dies much easier, and the bosses are very deadly. The list goes on.

Edited August 19, 2020 by seed

[Lila Feuer]

Only the mutant has an instant reaction time, it's basically Wolf3D's cultist.

[Doom-X-Machina]

I find Wolfenstein 3D to be more difficult due to the lack of variance in architechture. A lot of the maps looks the same and without an automap it's very easy to get lost. Doom has a lot more memorable areas that can be used as navigation "checkpoints". The gameplay itself I don't find that much harder than Doom though.

[wheres the punk rock forum]

wolfenstein 3d's difficulty is more realistic, everyone has a gun and they're so aggressive they shoot you as soon as they see you. the only thing missing is they need to make you die in one hit! then it's fully realistic!

[Gunstar Green]

Wolf-3D definitely has more frequent deaths due to the crazy damage at close range and all enemies being hitscan. Death Incarnate can be pretty brutal especially in Episode 2.

 

Spear of Destiny is a pretty big difficulty spike over the original game. That one was made to be mean. 

Edited August 20, 2020 by Gunstar Green

[NoXion]

Wolf3D for sure. Hitscan hell.

[Final Verdict]

Definitely Wolf3D. Hitscan can catch you off guard fast and you can die a lot faster from hits. You even have to fight against the map itself as they're all maze-like with no real landmarks to navigate by.

[Gez]

Wolf 3D, for the reasons everyone listed: all enemies are hitscan, they can shoot through each other so you can't use the same crowd control techniques as in Doom, the maps are confusing mazes and you don't have an automap, the controls are clunkier, your maximum ammo capacity is 99, you have no armor system, you don't have a rocket launcher for killing several enemies at once or getting indirect kills...

Edited August 20, 2020 by Gez

[Maes]

Heh, if Wolf3D had an infighting system similar to Doom, it would be stupid easy. Just open each door, wait for it to close and let the baddies duke it out themselves :-)

Edited September 2, 2020 by Maes

[Dravencour]

Wolf 3D was a very tough game in its day on the highest difficulty. Nearly all of the major enemies were hitscanners (the only major exceptions were things like Guard Dogs, the Hitler Ghosts, and some bosses that used rocket launchers, when you didn't get to use one), you had to deal with clunky controls unless you used a mod (as I generally do), you had no armor (Doom was the first major game to really implement any kind of armor system), there was no infighting among the enemies and they could shoot through each other to get to you, and you had no map to speak of for the levels in general which were very mazelike in nature.

 

While Doom's levels were quite tough in its day on the highest difficulty, id made a fair number of improvements which made the game less of a headache.

[Maes]

Heh, described in this way, Wolf3D really sounds more like a primitive and unrefined (even by early 1990s) 2D shooter engine, than a commercial game. Which, if you think about it, isn't far from the truth. The amazing thing is that we all sat and played through level after level of that primitive, brutal hitscan action. If it wasn't for the novelty of the texture-mapped 3D viewpoint and the far superior gameplay speed compared to e.g. vehicular/tank combat games with a similar setup, I don't think anyone would have bothered.

 

Comparing Wolf3D to Doom is a bit like comparing a Pong clone to a modern Tennis simulator/arcade game...if you set the Pong clone to a high difficulty (e.g. high ball speed, small paddle size), sure, it will be quite harder -or even nearly impossible- to play, on pure, technical, raw gameplay technicalities alone. The difference being that once you get *any* half-refined alternative to it, you wouldn't bother with it again. And Doom was well beyond "half-refined" compared to Wolf3D.

Edited September 2, 2020 by Maes

[DNSKILL5]

It’s  without a doubt Wolfenstein 3D. Doom has more guns, which also means there are more enemy types that use other attacks different from the player, but with Wolfenstein 3D this isn’t the case.

Yes, there are 4 weapons in the game, but they ALL use the same RNG damage. The only true difference is their rates of fire, and of course the knife can only attack up-close. So you may see some people play where they are constantly switching guns in W3D. While there’s nothing wrong with that, the truth is... let’s say you get the SMG (MP-40). Instead of holding down fire, just tap the fire button. You’ll see that it is no different than the pistol when you shoot this way. The chaingun has the highest rate of fire, and when you fire this gun it always shoots 2 bullets simultaneously. So tapping it becomes a two round burst, which in most cases works better than one shot from the pistol on harder enemies. They also all use the same ammo. So the main thing the player needs to worry about is conserving ammo and controlling their rapid bursts of fire. 
 

Then, there’s the enemies. They have different hit points but it also works with RNG, since the guns inflict random damage. You’ll notice that 2-3 pistol (or any gun) shots can kill an SS guard but other times it takes more like 5-8 shots. This is how all the Wolf 3D guards are, including the mutant. So you can’t rely on one shot stops with the guns all the time, and sometimes when you think it would kill even the weakest guard, he just takes the hit and tries to return fire. 
 

Also, the enemies cannot fire at one another like they can in Doom, and since enemies only attack by facing the player, they will shoot through other enemies. So you can’t rely on enemies as cover like you could in Doom. 
 

The mutants are among the hardest enemies in an FPS. They have no “getting ready to aim” animation that you see the other guards do. They shoot instantly, and rapidly, and usually counterattack quickly whenever they take damage. They also make no sounds until they are killed, and their shots sound like the other pistol shots the guard use, so if you hear it from a distance you may not realize it was a mutant. They’re not used so much in the original game, but they’re more common in Spear of Destiny and user made level sets. 
 

The bosses, while they usually go down easier than the bosses in Doom, many of them have projectile attacks which are near instant-death attacks if you get hit by one. The ones with chainguns are very deadly if they corner the player, or worse, if they are at a long distance from the player. The chainguns the bosses use seem to have a lot better range than the chaingun the player uses. 
 

the enemy attacks also use RNG, so you can sometimes take a lot of hits and other times you’re killed point blank in a single shot. 
 

I could go on, but I would just make this post way longer than it already is. Basically, these are only some of the reasons I’d say Wolfenstein 3D on “I am Death Incarnate” is harder than Doom on “Ultra Violence” - because the RNG in Wolf 3D is a lot less predictable than it is in Doom, and the weapons only really give you different rates of fire whereas Doom gives you weapons that make easy work of the harder enemies. 

 

None of this is to say that UV is easy, far from it, but my choice goes to Wolf 3D. 

also, Wolf 3D had mouse support since the beginning (there’s even video from 92 showing Romero playing with a left handed mouse), but just like with Doom, there are people who believe just because they used keyboard only, that it also means the game was only intended to use that peripheral for play. 

 

Edited September 2, 2020 by Gerolf

[Coopersville]

I find Wolf3D to be very easy with anything besides keyboard controls. When it was released to Xbox Live Arcade, I got the achievement for completing all episodes on "I Am Death Incarnate" with few restarts, and most levels after Episode 2 were a blind run.