The Dean of Doom series (companion thread)

[AnonKaiju]

Doom 64 wad review is out

 

 

[Foxstiel]

wow i thought this was going to be a halloween episode

Edited June 3, 2022 by Foxstiel

[Cinnamon]

I was a bit apprehensive about a D64 review as it's the first DOOM game I (genuinely) played and also the first one I completed (on N64 and all...), but I didn't take issue with this one at all. Opinions and grades felt sufficiently justified. The only part I kinda/sorta disagree with is that I enjoy the techbase levels a whole lot more than Mr. Pain seemed to do, however I tend to enjoy techbase a bit too indiscriminately in general so that seems to be mostly down to difference in taste. Also I find D64 to be much more enjoyable without the Unmaker and I never used it very much because how hard it trivializes everything, so my experience has been quite different.

[TakenStew22]

To this day I still think Doom 64 has some of the best atmosphere I've ever seen in a horror game. Yes, some people might not consider it "true horror", but it's soundtrack and dark style surely makes it out to be, and I'm sure many people can agree with that.

 

I still do not agree with people saying the Doom franchise was always supposed to be horror, but Doom 64 nailed the balance of Doom 1 and 2's action with Doom 3's horror quite well. In fact back in the day I've previously called it the "true Doom 3".

Edited May 31, 2022 by TakenStew22

[LadyMistDragon]

Yep, @Immorpher will be showing up with a torch and pitchfork...and so will...no, I kid. I've played some D64 custom maps but only largely desire to play some of the megawads like beta 64, etc. I do think MtPain was overly harsh though.

Edited June 1, 2022 by LadyMistDragon

[Immorpher]

Just now, LadyMistDragon said:

Yep, @Immorpher will be showing up with a torch and pitchfork...and so will...no, I kid. I've played some D64 custom maps but only largely desire to play some of the megawads like beta 64, etc

Haha! Ya this came across my radar a few times today. I realize though we all grew up with different gaming influences, learned different gaming strategies, and want different things in gaming. It aint a gaming monoculture. So I can understand how Doom 64 isn't for a lot of people. I mean if I like it, knowing I aint a normal person, it can't be appealing for most people! ;) ;)

[ReaperAA]

While he might have been a bit too harsh, I do agree that Doom64 does have some issues that Doom 2 doesn't. The aesthetics and level design, while nice and atmospheric, do make the maps look samey and less memorable. I have played through the game 2 times and still many of the map blend together. That coupled with the overuse of hell knights and barons (seriously, why didn't the bring revenants instead of barons) make me bored much more quickly than Doom 2.

[SteelPH]

3 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

While he might have been a bit too harsh, I do agree that Doom64 does have some issues that Doom 2 doesn't. The aesthetics and level design, while nice and atmospheric, do make the maps look samey and less memorable. I have played through the game 2 times and still many of the map blend together. That coupled with the overuse of hell knights and barons (seriously, why didn't the bring revenants instead of barons) make me bored much more quickly than Doom 2.

Cart space limitations. The Baron doesn't actually have its own sprites, the game just applies a different palette to the Hell Knight's sprites.

[PsychEyeball]

Part of me laughed at The Spiral being one of his best rated maps of the WAD. The map is just a staircase!

 

I could understand not being a fan of the action that Doom 64 offers as it's a much slower game than Doom and Doom 2, but I feel that rating the whole level pack down because it's not as fast paced is kinda missing the point. It'd be like me dismissing all of Doom 2 because the levels looked boxy and ugly.

 

I grant that Doom 64's campaign suffers a bit from lack of variety, but I'll still take it over Doom and Doom 2 any day. What it lacks in variety, it makes up for its overall consistency and quality. The only real dud of the game would be Unholy Temple because of how much backtracking is necessary to beat it and that would be it for me in the bad levels department.

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

Seems like he would have a much better time playing pistol start. Sacrificing that rule was a bad idea, especially  somebody as invested in gameplay challenge as he is. 

[Pokemanic33]

When he first gave its grade my initial reaction was "wow, that's really low, but combat has always been his focus so that's to be expected." But I thought about it for a second and realized that basically the only comment he consistently heaped praise on the atmosphere and scripted sequences, so I find it hard to say he was being unfair. He just has different preferences and priorities. That said, I think it would have been wise to say as much outright in the review. Were it me, I would give the final grade and then follow it up with something to the effect of "it's really good at what it's trying to do, but it's just not for me and my grading system isn't built for this style of wad."

[Gibbon]

I didn't like it at all.  Without playing it how it was designed, on an N64, you cannot appreciate the pacing of the levels.  It is one thing to traverse each level slowly on a N64 game controller than zipping around on a mouse and keyboard at 60fps.

[elic]

Pretty much in agreement with Mt Pain here. I played to about map10 or so on the switch version around when it came out and was not very impressed. Just found the levels to be really bland. I feel the atmosphere would have been a lot stronger if the monsters and everything were new to me, but being pretty familiar with Doom's combat the pretty standard monster placement wasn't really able to scare me or anything.

[Dusty_Rhodes]

9 hours ago, Gibbon said:

I didn't like it at all.  Without playing it how it was designed, on an N64, you cannot appreciate the pacing of the levels.  It is one thing to traverse each level slowly on a N64 game controller than zipping around on a mouse and keyboard at 60fps.

The new port is solid, so much so that I prefer to play it on my Xbox for the controller feel than on my PC. I disagree a little bit but I definitely get what you're saying.

[jazzmaster9]

It definitely was an okay watch even though i pretty much disagree with the final summary and scores.

Not every encounter needs to be Plutonia or hard to be good or not "boring", Not even adding the fact this was played in a way not indented, mouse and keyboard.

Edited June 2, 2022 by jazzmaster9

[baja blast rd.]

lol some of the replies to this episode on YT comments are trash. I see the Gamers(TM) came out in full force. Tried and true "raging at critic because they don't validate my opinion of precious thing I care about" discourse while having nothing of value to say. Zzz. 

[Gez]

Only some of the Youtube comments are trash? That's pretty good, then!

[elic]

IDK the vast majority of the comments on this one look pretty fair and respectful. Seems like mtpain attracts a pretty good crowd generally 

[hybridial]

I don't think he's entirely wrong about the levels being a bit too rote. I mean the main comparison I'd make with Doom 2 is, Doom 2 has a handful of poor levels worse than anything in Doom 64 (aside from Hectic but that's an easter egg secret so whatever) but Doom 2's strong levels are better than anything in Doom 64, and I really like some of Doom 2's maps.

 

I think however ignoring Doom 64's atmosphere and tone when grading is the wrong thing to do. That'd be like reviewing System Shock today and ignoring that game's presentation, it would be just kind of wrong to do that. Especially coming from someone who defends a lot of TNT Evilution (with credibility I do feel) using that aspect. 

[Egg Boy]

7 hours ago, baja blast rd. said:

lol some of the replies to this episode on YT comments are trash. I see the Gamers(TM) came out in full force. Tried and true "raging at critic because they don't validate my opinion of precious thing I care about" discourse while having nothing of value to say. Zzz. 

Haven’t seen too many of these trash comments so I’m gonna assume you gotta scroll down a bit to see them. I do think there’s nothing necessarily wrong with voicing your disagreement with any of his ratings as long as you’re explaining how and why your opinion differs (without being a tool). Good video, but I gotta say my opinion of doom 64 errs on a bit more positive.

[Faceman2000]

On 6/1/2022 at 10:28 AM, PsychEyeball said:

It'd be like me dismissing all of Doom 2 because the levels looked boxy and ugly.

I mean, that's pretty much how I remember his Doom 2 review going. . . 

[jazzmaster9]

interesting thought, that most of the levels i really loved in Doom 2 fail in comparison to maps to maps i loved in Doom 64. so Wasn't too sure about the Doom 2 having "better highs" when you have maps like In the Void, Unholy Temple and Watch your step compared to like Inmost Dens and maybe The Living End (which comes the closest)

Edited June 2, 2022 by jazzmaster9

[baja blast rd.]

14 hours ago, Processingcontrol said:

IDK the vast majority of the comments on this one look pretty fair and respectful. Seems like mtpain attracts a pretty good crowd generally 

Some of them being unusually awful doesn't conflict at all with "vast majority being fine"; and I usually go through the comments exactly because of the second sentence here, but there were an unusual number that rubbed me the wrong way this time and were in bad faith or were silly 'raging'. Either way, I am not talking about them anymore because I've already given them more thought than they deserve. 

 

...

 

Shifting subjects, "you played this M+KB" or "you played with carryovers rather than pistol starts" lines of thought are really odd to me.

 

I've played a good amount of both pistol starts and carryovers on a variety of wads (ranging from slaughtery ones to more attritive, sparsely populated wads), and good gameplay design is usually somewhat robust to those differences. Exceptions tend to be, like, really precisely balanced gameplay-oriented wads, which this is not...

 

Like, clearly one mode is usually going to be better than the other, but rarely to the point of one mode suffering a huge drop-off that breaks the experience. 

 

Besides, even more importantly, if a game, which can played with multiple settings -- and will be considering it has a big audience -- is so highly dependent on one particular configuration of play that a whole mode of playing that is actually supported by it is supposedly invalidated, then that doesn't sound like good design to me!

 

Notwithstanding that a) a lot of people who *like* D64 played with carryovers, and b) D64 specifically isn't designed around pistol starts, so that's not really a cop-out anyway. 

 

The M+KB complaint also doesn't really make any sense. "If you don't play with a control scheme you don't ever use, your review isn't valid!" Also D64 has pwads that most people play on PC. Do people who got into the pwads w/ M+KB have invalid opinions about the Doom 64 iwad experience unless they bought a controller for specifically their one playthrough of that one megawad before hopping back to playing pwads on the PC port.

 

Idk these angles just seem like the critical equivalent of putting fingers in ears and going "nanana I can't hear you" in response to the review. Like, there's room to disagree with what someone says -- I disagree with reviews on this channel too (and even disagreed with an entire episode!) -- but people have to get past the discrediting someone's take based on settings part (settings that a good portion of the audience will use, and that it's not even clear made a big difference for that review).

[jazzmaster9]

18 minutes ago, baja blast rd. said:

The M+KB complaint also doesn't really make any sense.

as someone who played both Doom 64 and D64EX this is a very Valid complaint.

 

It does very much make sense when you consider the game was not made with that in mind. the movement you get from an N64 controller is far slower than on mouse and keyboard and thus be harder, in the same way playing something like Hell Revealed or Deus Vult with a PS1 style controller will be harder than usual.

 

if your gonna complain about a game being too easy, maybe play they way it was intended. its not a hard concept to understand.

 

Im also just not a fan of this "its easy therefore its boring/bad" meme in general so thats where most of my issue is at.

Edited June 3, 2022 by jazzmaster9

[baja blast rd.]

34 minutes ago, jazzmaster9 said:

It does very much make sense when you consider the game was not made with that in mind. the movement you get from an N64 controller is far slower than on mouse and keyboard and thus be harder, in the same way playing something like Hell Revealed or Deus Vult with a PS1 style controler will be harder.

 

Again it's not clear yet that's an actual issue that made an actual difference in the review. In the counterfactual, I'm sure there would have been "You used a controller but you normally don't play wads on them, so that's clearly why you gave this a lower rating. SSGing all those barons would have been smoother if you could aim better! Shame you didn't play with your usual settings!" type comments from people who were disappointed about the C+ it (still) got. 

 

34 minutes ago, jazzmaster9 said:

Im also just not a fan of this "its easy therefore its boring/bad" meme in general so thats where most of my issue is at.

 

Again I'm not seeing where this actually exists and people are not just projecting or making lazy assumptions. 

 

The map overviews got into lots of complaints about the actual execution in maps. And at least one of the harder maps in the set got an F, and plenty of scorn was hitched to some more dangerous parts. Interpreting the opinion as "easy" rather than "dull / grindy / boring / badly executed" seems unjustified. 

 

edit: the Valedictorian was also just a 'C-' in difficulty

[jazzmaster9]

10 minutes ago, baja blast rd. said:

Interpreting the opinion as "easy" rather than "dull / grindy / boring / badly executed" seems unjustified. 

most the criticism i saw in the video was how the game was "a breeze" and "didn't have enough bite" 

most of the encounters in Doom 64 arent too different from some Doom 1 or 2 encounters, minus the revenants and archviles but those get a free pass.

 

But anyway Im not a fan of this episode and I'll just leave it at that.

Edited June 3, 2022 by jazzmaster9

[baja blast rd.]

It's probably worth thinking about how those are not fully entangled then.

 

Dull is a potential flavor of easy just like unfair is a potential flavor of hard. Doesn't mean that every easy wad is dull or every hard wad is unfair. Or that when someone doesn't vibe with an easy wad the solution would have been boosting the difficulty somehow. It's not obvious to me that SSGing a bunch of baron meat (as an example) would be improved by making the controls more clumsy.

 

Besides, though, this Intended Way stuff about games is kindergarten-tier discourse tbh. This part of the discussion should be overseen by a class that has the Delinquent as a TA. :P

[jazzmaster9]

4 minutes ago, baja blast rd. said:

It's probably worth thinking about how those are not fully entangled then.

Nah, like his opinion on Doom 64, my opinion about that episode won't really change.

 

atleast it did make me fire up Doom 64 again yesterday just to remind myself how good it is.

Edited June 3, 2022 by jazzmaster9

[TheLippyServer]

17 minutes ago, jazzmaster9 said:

most of the encounters in Doom 64 arent too different from some Doom 1 or 2 encounters, minus the revenants and archviles but those get a free pass.

You have actually seen his Doom and Doom 2 reviews right? You do realize that they got middling scores as well?

[baja blast rd.]

15 minutes ago, jazzmaster9 said:

my opinion about that episode won't really change

That's fine. It's not about whether you (or anyone) likes or dislikes the episode. Don't care about that. Also have a couple episodes I didn't like.

Just found some stated reasons here and there to be poor lol...that's it.