What was the reception of Final Doom back in 1996?

[Doomlover77]

I love final Doom, had it for Christmas 1996. Spent that Christmas and new year 1997 playing it. Excellent game. Some HOM bugs spoilt the game though. Had a Venetian blind crash on level 30 Last Call on tnt.wad !!  There was HOMs on Plutonia m16 !
PC Gamer reviewed it and gave it 79%
Gamesmaster magazine also gave it a review in the 80s%. 

I found out that some wads don’t work well with final Doom I.e. island.wad used the old doom2 sky ! When I skipped levels the game crashed out with an unknown texture missing error. 

Edited May 26, 2022 by Doomlover77

[Ragu]

2 hours ago, ENEMY!!! said:

Not many of the old reviews from 1996 are around on the internet, but I found the following one from GameSpot which was quite typical:

https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/final-doom-review/1900-2558714/#comments-block-32375913

 

The PC Zone UK magazine with the Final Doom review is also up on the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/PC_Zone_42_September_1996/page/n71/mode/2up?q=final+doom

The other quote I vaguely remembered from the PC Zone UK review was, "Those people who still play Doom do so (a) in a vacuous attempt attempt to cling onto a utopian bygone era of gameplayer which never really existed, or (b) to play deathmatch."  I remember having felt a bit attacked by that as an old school Doomer in those days.  At 62%, though, the PC Zone review wasn't quite as negative as the GameSpot review (46%).

 

The assumption in the gaming media of the day that everyone could afford the extremely expensive upgrades required to play the latest games, and the way they turned down their noses at people stuck on older generation equipment was (and still is) pretty unpleasant! There was only one person I knew growing up who had a 3D accelerator prior to around '99, and several friends were still rocking Cyrix 5x86s (aka glorified high-clocked 486s) into the '00s.

The latest thing was more lucrative if you could see which way the winds were blowing, but there was still a niche that could be served profitably, as with stuff like Redneck Rampage which felt like it was on shelves forever. Id saw that, still focused their attention on Quake, but threw the low-end market a bone with Final Doom. Quite canny of them, really.

[Doomkid]

4 hours ago, ENEMY!!! said:

The other quote I vaguely remembered from the PC Zone UK review was, "Those people who still play Doom do so (a) in a vacuous attempt attempt to cling onto a utopian bygone era of gameplay which never really existed, or (b) to play deathmatch."  I remember having felt a bit attacked by that as an old school Doomer in those days.  At 62%, though, the PC Zone review wasn't quite as negative as the GameSpot review (46%).

Doom gameplay didn’t exist?! Man, those UK game reviewers of the 90s seriously have galaxy brains on a level that us normal humans can only dream of! I think it was another UK reviewer who lamented the lack of a social hierarchy with the demons and lack of ability to sit down for a spot of tea and a chat. Maybe all the UK reviewers of the era were drinking water heavily contaminated with lead or something. 

 

Then again, to rate Final Doom lower than a 50% you actually MUST be off your nut, so that GameSlop review proves it wasn’t limited to the UK. The whole thing about game journos being out of touch has probably just always been true, but like most old things, it’s hip to pretend it’s a product of this generation.
 

1 hour ago, Ragu said:

The assumption in the gaming media of the day that everyone could afford the extremely expensive upgrades required to play the latest games, and the way they turned down their noses at people stuck on older generation equipment was (and still is) pretty unpleasant!

They’re in it to sell the hottest new shit and shame you if you can’t afford it, such a gross practice. More people see through the ploy these days, but there’s still a rampant sense of “omg consume latest expensive version of anything I remotely like!!!” mentality in the realm of gaming. It (partially) poisoned my view of the whole hobby outside of Doom and other old stuff that’s not in the “hot and trendy” spotlight.

 

One of those shortsighted reviewers called clinging to Doom’s gameplay “vacuous” (after saying Doom’s gameplay never existed in the first place, so the person was clearly off their nut, but still.)

 

What’s actually vacuous though, is the ever-present greed-driven desire for MORE and BETTER that the industry so happily stokes, to the tune of $$$. Always MORE, always BETTER! Yes, yes, let the insatiable greed consume you! Old is BAD, old is POOR! All hail economos!

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

21 hours ago, ENEMY!!! said:

vacuous attempt attempt to cling onto a utopian bygone era

[25 years later]

[Kor]

I got Final Doom when it came out.  I was brand new to the Internet.  I knew little about the Internet and I didn't realize t there was an active Doom community at that point.  So I had never heard of TeamTNT.  At first I played Final Doom in Doom95, and I didn't see the ENDOOM screen after quitting the game, so I had no idea Id Software didn't create it.  Nevertheless, it felt different.  It didn't feel like an Id Software product, and that disappointed me, at least at first.  It wasn't until I played it in DOS mode that I learned it was created by TeamTNT and the Casali bros. 

 

Anyway, as I continued playing it, I impressed by it (especially the semi-truck trailers in map19).  Though I didn't, and still don't, care for maps 20, 21, and 27 of Evilution.  As for Plutonia, I remember how hard I found it, but I preferred its overall look to that of Evilution.

[Rudolph]

In many ways, Plutonia and to a lesser extent Thy Flesh Consumed were Doom's Super Mario Bros 2: The Lost Levels! :P

 

In fact, the first time I made it to E4M2, I immediately had flashbacks of Super Mario World's Special Zone as well as Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest's Lost World, in the sense that they were both considerably more difficult levels using previously seen assets.

[garu32]

Dunno, but is my favourite DOOM game by now.

[zokum]

There are two ways to review Final Doom. As a stand-alone game for people who do not have a copy of Doom / Doom 2. Then the product is a fairly decent product. Lots of content and decent graphics and music, but a bit dated compared to other 1996 games. Then it should probably score in the 80-90% range.

If you however review it as a product for those who already have Doom 2, then it's fairly crappy. It is more like a map pack than a new game, but priced like a full game. Doom 2 reused a lot of stuff from the first game, but added a ton of new monsters, a weapon, items, and concepts like fast doors, stairs, etc. Final Doom on the other hand adds 0 monsters, no item items etc. All it does is to provide two new episodes with some somewhat decent looking textures and a bit of music. A lot of maps reuse music from the previous games. This is a 40-50% scored game. Doom 2 did reuse a lot of Doom stuff, but it also added about as much content as was found in the first game.

If a developer today had released a full price sequel, where 80% of the content was from the previous game, it would not have gone down well with the gaming community. Especially since this was originally slated to be a free community created project. It's very close to what is sometimes referred to as an asset flip. A game with no real content and using free assets for the elements.

Final Doom also seems rather lackluster compared to Hexen when it comes to features and new things added. If Final Doom had used a mix of the Hexen and Doom engine, it could have been a much more interesting product. Hexen isn't a game I like, but it did try to bring something new.

If I owned Doom 2 and The Ultimate Doom back then, I'd rather buy Hexen than Final Doom. You can replace Final Doom with Memento Mori[ 2] and Hell Revealed and get much of the same experience, for free. There are many other high quality projects and single maps back then.

Edited May 23, 2022 by zokum

[zokum]

20 hours ago, Rudolph said:

In many ways, Plutonia and to a lesser extent Thy Flesh Consumed were Doom's Super Mario Bros 2: The Lost Levels! :P

 

In fact, the first time I made it to E4M2, I immediately had flashbacks of Super Mario World's Special Zone as well as Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest's Lost World, in the sense that they were both considerably more difficult levels using previously seen assets.

Thy Flesh Consumed costed nothing. The japanese SMB2 was a full-price game.

[brick]

2 hours ago, zokum said:

If a developer today had released a full price sequel, where 80% of the content was from the previous game, it would not have gone down well with the gaming community. Especially since this was originally slated to be a free community created project. It's very close to what is sometimes referred to as an asset flip. A game with no real content and using free assets for the elements.

I don't agree. Full price sequel was never that common to begin with, but what has become very common now is overpriced DLC selling for $20 and offering a tiny fraction of added content, and proportionally the content/price ratio is much lower with these. This is also completely dependent on what you define as "content" - your calculations only work if you completely ignore the maps themselves, and for some of us that is the content. The "free community project" aspect was something 99% of Doom players were completely unaware of, even if you look at this thread so many people who played it back then didn't even know who Team TNT were and thought Final Doom was made by id themselves. The asset flip comparison contradicts your own definition of the term - none of the assets were free or publicly available, they were all and still are property of id.

 

As for the comparison to Hexen, I don't like the "why buy X when you can buy Y" argument (note this is not the same as "X is better than Y"). Sure Hexen brings more to the table than FD. Also more than Heretic, and even than Doom 2. Why buy any of these, just buy Hexen. Actually why buy Hexen, Quake came out within the same year and brings more than any of the above combined. Sometimes more of a good thing is good in and of itself. We're still playing Doom even today, so many people still make content for it, vanilla compatibility is still a thing even though limits have been removed for literal decades, and I love it all, Remilia Scarlet's GZDoom wads that make my computer cry because of their high requirements, Doomkid's that still run on doom2.exe in DOSBox, wouldn't trade either for the other.

 

Ultimately it's up to what you want from it. I already had both Doom and Doom II (and Hexen) but was glad for more maps, more music, more textures. Not everything was of the best quality, but you could say the same about Doom and Doom II, and some of my favourite IWAD levels are still in TNT. Since you seem to value new content as something other than just maps, I can see FD being underwhelming, and if you're looking for new mechanics or enemies then it's absolutely not worth it. I just wouldn't go so far as calling it "crappy" because of that.

[Rudolph]

3 hours ago, zokum said:

Thy Flesh Consumed costed nothing. The japanese SMB2 was a full-price game.

I was not talking about the price.

[zokum]

2 hours ago, brick said:

I don't agree. Full price sequel was never that common to begin with, but what has become very common now is overpriced DLC selling for $20 and offering a tiny fraction of added content, and proportionally the content/price ratio is much lower with these. This is also completely dependent on what you define as "content" - your calculations only work if you completely ignore the maps themselves, and for some of us that is the content. The "free community project" aspect was something 99% of Doom players were completely unaware of, even if you look at this thread so many people who played it back then didn't even know who Team TNT were and thought Final Doom was made by id themselves. The asset flip comparison contradicts your own definition of the term - none of the assets were free or publicly available, they were all and still are property of id.

 

As for the comparison to Hexen, I don't like the "why buy X when you can buy Y" argument (note this is not the same as "X is better than Y"). Sure Hexen brings more to the table than FD. Also more than Heretic, and even than Doom 2. Why buy any of these, just buy Hexen. Actually why buy Hexen, Quake came out within the same year and brings more than any of the above combined. Sometimes more of a good thing is good in and of itself. We're still playing Doom even today, so many people still make content for it, vanilla compatibility is still a thing even though limits have been removed for literal decades, and I love it all, Remilia Scarlet's GZDoom wads that make my computer cry because of their high requirements, Doomkid's that still run on doom2.exe in DOSBox, wouldn't trade either for the other.

 

Ultimately it's up to what you want from it. I already had both Doom and Doom II (and Hexen) but was glad for more maps, more music, more textures. Not everything was of the best quality, but you could say the same about Doom and Doom II, and some of my favourite IWAD levels are still in TNT. Since you seem to value new content as something other than just maps, I can see FD being underwhelming, and if you're looking for new mechanics or enemies then it's absolutely not worth it. I just wouldn't go so far as calling it "crappy" because of that.

 

I did add the maps into the consideration. I did also include the sprites and sounds. Those are all the same. It is basically a pwad megawad.

Sequels back in the 90s rarely reused a ton of artwork as blatantly as Final Doom. Especially the AAA titles, which id software was at the time. You obviously didn't understand the asset flip comment. For Team TNT / id they could reuse all the assets from Doom 2 etc. They didn't have to pay a dime. When making an IWAD from a PWAD you need to include everything in the original, which is the majority of the Doom 2 stuff.

Yes, maps are important, but there were thousands of maps in mid 1996. Final Doom didn't expand on the monsters, bosses, gameplay mechanics. If you already owned Doom 2, Final Doom was a big disappointment, it had hardly any new content. It is in its heart a PWAD slapped top of an IWAD.

Back in the 1990s these games cost a lot. Typically what would be like 60-70USD today. If you bought Final Doom it was really lousy value for money compared to just owning only Doom 2 and downloading one of the many free megawads. Reviewers also consider the cost of the product. If Final Doom was a 10USD product it would have been reviewed more favorably. If you own Doom 2, Final Doom is really lousy value for money compared to games like Hexen, Heretic, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, Shadow Warrior and so on and so on.

Almost no one makes Final Doom content. We all make Doom or Doom 2 content when we make vanilla stuff. There's a reason for that.

[Rudolph]

9 minutes ago, zokum said:

Almost no one makes Final Doom content. We all make Doom or Doom 2 content when we make vanilla stuff. There's a reason for that.

There are also relatively fewer Episode 4 replacement mapsets. That does not make Thy Flesh Consumed bad from a quality standpoint.

 

I could be wrong, but I do not believe Final Doom was ever marketed as anything more than a map pack.

Edited May 23, 2022 by Rudolph

[zokum]

1 minute ago, Rudolph said:

There are also relatively fewer Episode 4 replacement mapsets. That does not make Thy Flesh Consumed bad from a quality standpoint.

That makes no sense as that was a FREE product that added only maps and a new sky texture. There are many Doom map sets. The Flesh Consumed is not a stand-alone product.

[Rudolph]

Just now, zokum said:

That makes no sense as that was a FREE product that added only maps and a new sky texture.

So really, your whole issue with Final Doom is just the price, nothing more?

 

Because reading your previous posts, I cannot help but feel like you do not think much of the maps themselves.

[zokum]

Just now, Rudolph said:

So really, your whole issue with Final Doom is just the price, nothing more?

 

Because reading your previous posts, I cannot help but feel like you do not think much of the maps themselves.

The quality of the overall product, the price it cost and the lack of innovation. Doom 2 was a nice step up in complexity from Doom. Final Doom was just one episode with harder maps than previous games and one with run of the mill internet quality maps. Evilution would have been great as a free pwad. But as a paid product, it contains too little for it to be worth paying for. It's a very lousy sequel to Doom 2, which was a milestone in gaming. Doom 2 gave us revenants, arch-viles, SSG etc etc. Final Doom had some textures and a few decent maps and a lot of filler. Look at the quality of the titlepic in Doom and Doom 2. Compare it to the one in Plutonia or Evilution. It is a step down in quality.

[Rudolph]

@zokum But again, unless I am mistaken, Final Doom was marketed as just a map pack - not a sequel - and in that sense it absolutely delivered, as it came with 64 new Id Software-approved maps that expanded upon Doom II in terms of level design and also provided a greater challenge. By today's standards, sure, it looks iffy, but if you put it back in the context of an era when downloading content was nowhere near as intuitive as it is now, it is a honest deal, especially considering the fact that Team TNT got compensated for their efforts.

Edited May 23, 2022 by Rudolph

[zokum]

18 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

@zokum But again, unless I am mistaken, Final Doom was always marketed as just a map pack and in that sense it absolutely delivered, as it came with 64 new Id Software-approved maps that expanded upon Doom II in terms of level design and provided a greater challenge. You simply cannot legitimately call that a step down in quality.

 

By today's standards, sure, it looks iffy, but if you put it back in the context of an era when downloading content was nowhere near as intuitive as it is now, it is an honest deal, especially if Team TNT got properly compensated for their efforts.

It was NOT marketed as a map pack as far as I can remember. It sure as hell wasn't priced as one. It is a stand-alone game. It competed with Quake and Duke Nukem 3D. This was in mid-1996. A lot of people were on the internet and BBSes. The stores were full of doom wad compilation cds. Getting maps for Doom wasn't hard. PC Gamer magazine had doom wads on the cover cds etc. Adding doom content was an easy way to fill up some remaining space on a cover CD. Stuff like this norwegian early 96 cover cd:

There is also a nice article about shovelware doom products on the wiki: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_compilations

Edited May 23, 2022 by zokum

[Mr. Freeze]

Final Doom is the real Doom 2 for me

[Rudolph]

52 minutes ago, zokum said:

It was NOT marketed as a map pack as far as I can remember. It sure as hell wasn't priced as one. It is a stand-alone game. It competed with Quake and Duke Nukem 3D.

But again, you talk about Final Doom as if it were marketed as essentially Doom III or something, which it was not.

 

And if the following scan is indeed authentic, then yes, Final Doom was explicitly advertized as a Doom II map pack:

 

 

It also was never meant to compete with Duke Nukem 3D, which coincidentally got its share of third-party map packs as well.

Edited May 23, 2022 by Rudolph

[Syn]

I'd much rather play Evilution than most of Doom, Doom II, and Plutonia. I would hope it was well received back then, I think it deserves it.

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

3 hours ago, zokum said:

It was NOT marketed as a map pack as far as I can remember. It sure as hell wasn't priced as one. It is a stand-alone game. It competed with Quake and Duke Nukem 3D. This was in mid-1996. A lot of people were on the internet and BBSes. The stores were full of doom wad compilation cds. Getting maps for Doom wasn't hard. PC Gamer magazine had doom wads on the cover cds etc. Adding doom content was an easy way to fill up some remaining space on a cover CD. Stuff like this norwegian early 96 cover cd:

There is also a nice article about shovelware doom products on the wiki: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_compilations

 

 

Note the lines (even on Rudolph's image) "This it it. The end. The final chapter of the DOOM series" as well as "the last of the legendary DOOM products". A casual fan could have easily taken such a quote as meaning nearly the same thing as "DOOM 3".

 

The Gamespot review mentioned everything you did, even Duke, so you weren't alone with your opinion:

https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/final-doom-review/1900-2558714/

Edited May 24, 2022 by TheMagicMushroomMan

[FistMarine]

On 5/14/2022 at 11:45 AM, zokum said:

It should be noted that Final Doom was released July 1996. The public beta of Quake, QTest was released February 1996. The first shareware version of Quake was released June 1996. The full game in August 1996.When it comes to gameplay and engine, Final Doom came out AFTER Quake. And it looked incredibly dated since everyone knew id had a more advanced engine fully working and playable.

Actually, Final Doom was released in June 1996 (just one week before the shareware version of Quake) and the full version of Quake was released in July 1996.

 

As for Final Doom, I haven't heard of it until around 2007-2008 when watching Doom videos on YouTube and seeing TNT and Plutonia mentioned at times (and got to experience them for first time in the early 2010s). Up until that point, I had only played the shareware version of Doom and the entire Doom 2 and was just discovering the modding community and being amazed at all the cool stuff being released. I haven't heard of the TNT controversy until like a decade ago, making me wonder how TNT would have been received if it was a free megawad (and same to Plutonia which was being worked on at that time). To me, TNT and Plutonia have been nothing special (just another Doom 2 megawad) and I have always been disappointed with all the Doom (and Heretic and Hexen) expansions that have added nothing new to the gameplay. No new weapons, monsters, items.

 

Doom 2 did an excellent job at bringing new stuff compared to the first Doom and I really enjoyed the mission packs for the Quake games, as well as Duke Nukem 3D: Atomic Edition, as they each provided new content compared to the base game, making the product worth the money spent. But then you look at Ultimate Doom, Master Levels and Final Doom (as well as Heretic SOTSR and Hexen Deathkings, if we include Heretic and Hexen into the discussion as well). They are just new levels. Even if most of these levels included are good, I just wanted some new stuff. I mean I find this pretty disappointing overall. Of all the Doom engine games, when they designed the expansions, they could have made a few new additions to the gameplay. In Heretic SOTSR, they could have borrowed some Hexen monsters (such as the Chaos Serpent) and in Hexen Deathkings, maybe a few Heretic monsters as well as a new class.

 

Someone mentioned that Thy Flesh Consumed has been free. This is only partially true. Episode 4 is only released as a free upgrade patch for existing owners of the original registered Doom. But since I only had the shareware version as a kid (and I imagine many people also only had the shareware), this patch was pointless to me and I eventually got Ultimate Doom (with Doom Collector's Edition, then later after selling Doom CE, I got Book of Id from Id Anthology from eBay which was a far better product) which came with the rest 3 episodes, that's why I will always refer to Doom 1 as only the shareware episode and Ultimate Doom as the whole game.

 

As for why the reviews for Final Doom were harsh, this is because of the reasons most people have already mentioned in this topic. Final Doom came far too late, two months after the full version of Duke Nukem 3D came out and just a bit before Quake shareware version came out. Just look at Strife (demo version came in February 1996, full version came in April/May 1996), that poor game had no chance when compared to its competitors. Strife has always been an underrated gem to me, it was a pretty good game and should have been released earlier, maybe in late 1995.

 

Back to Final Doom, when compared to these, it just pales, despite the fact you are given two new Doom 2 games, which means 64 levels in total! If we include the fact that Perdition's Gate was supposed to be the third megawad of Final Doom, then FD would have been better received if we were given 3 new megawads. Maybe Hell to Pay could have also been included as well, making Final Doom a much more worthy purchase. Too bad that didn't happen.

 

I have read a couple of Final Doom reviews over the years. I disagree with the reviewers giving Final Doom a low score. Anything lower than 50% is dumb and the reviewer might as well hate Doom, no matter how outdated it seemed at that time. I haven't played TNT and Plutonia since like a decade ago, so I don't have them fresh in memory (I plan to replay them next month) but I recall TNT being a mixed bag (some maps had no place in a commercial product) and Plutonia being overall pretty good.

Edited May 24, 2022 by FistMarine

[zokum]

Thy Flesh Consumed cost nothing for those who already owned the game, so even if there isn't that much new content, it's still nice to get 9 more maps for free. If Final Doom had been free for those who owned Doom 2, it would have been considered a much better release and gotten great reviews. If it was free though, they would never have released it in form they did. Final Doom could have been a GOTY-style edition of Doom 2.

Sorry for getting the dates wrong! I remember them coming out about the same time. I checked, Final Doom came out 4 days before the Quake shareware. The shareware version was easily downloaded/shared while FD required you to go to a store to buy it. I thought I checked and saw July. Maybe that was the euro release?

To everyone in the gaming world, it was clear that id were working on Quake and judging by QTest, had something good coming. Final Doom was a foot note in comparison. Quake's shareware episode was decent enough, but the full game didn't bring that much new stuff to the table. The differences were much bigger in Doom, shareware VS registered. Quake lacked the cool new settings, polished artwork and bosses Doom that had. The end map is fairly boring and a gimmick fight. It would have been fine as a boss in episode 2 or 3, but not as the final boss.

[Rudolph]

3 hours ago, zokum said:

Final Doom was a foot note in comparison.

I would say deliberately so, as it was a third-party product. Incidentally, I would also argue that the same could be said about the Quake I and II expansions that actually added new enemies and weapons. After all, how many people outside of maybe die-hard fans actually know or remember them and what they brought to their respective base game?

 

Anyway, I know Final Doomer+ gave both Plutonia and Evilution unique weaponsets and the community gave Plutonia an original score, so a monster addon would be the next step to make Final Doom feel like Classic Doom III and IV!

Edited May 24, 2022 by Rudolph

[zokum]

57 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

I would say deliberately so, as it was a third-party product. Incidentally, I would also argue that the same could be said about the Quake I and II expansions that actually added new enemies and weapons. After all, how many people outside of maybe die-hard fans actually know or remember them and what they brought to their respective base game? 

 

Anyway, I know Final Doomer+ gave both Plutonia and Evilution unique weaponsets and the community gave Plutonia an original score, so a monster addon would be the next step to make Final Doom feel like Classic Doom III and IV!

The Quake mission packs were ok, but single player wasn't what Quake will be remembered for. From a sales point of view, it would probably have sold more if they had released it with fewer single player maps, but more deathmatch maps and 1-2 duel maps. Hipdm1 wasn't an awesome map. If the mission packs had some maps ala q3dm6 and q2dm1 it would have sold a lot more as many more servers had hosted them and people had played them. Out of the original Quake maps only dm2,3,4,6 and e1m2 saw much competitive play. There was room for more maps.

Final Doom failed because it didn't give us what the players wanted. More monster types (especially more bosses) and weapons. Lack of maps to play was never a big problem with Doom in mid-1996. Why should one pay for Evilution when one can download Memento Mori 1 and 2?

[ENEMY!!!]

One of the ironies of this is that until very recently, I'd have said, "I never got into Quake singleplayer, I had a phase when I enjoyed Quake deathmatch around 1998-2001, but otherwise I found Quake rather boring and brown".  In the past year I've finally got into Quake, thanks to the Dimensions of the Machine campaign with the remaster, Arcane Dimensions and Ben "Makkon" Hale's textures.  I can honestly say that over the past year I've been enjoying Quake every bit as much as Doom.  However, for me it's very much a case of Quake complementing Doom, rather than replacing it (as was advocated by many of the reviews around 1996-1998).

 

Going back to Final Doom, in some ways one could see it as analogous to Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil.  RoE did add a couple of new weapons and monsters, but then you could argue that Plutonia established a new type of Doom gameplay (the "knockabout" style).  RoE probably got less criticism partly because the Doom 3 modding scene struggled due to the amount of time and effort it took to produce good Doom 3 maps, so there weren't that many similarly good user-created maps out there, whereas at the time Final Doom was released, there were already plenty of similarly high quality custom maps out there. 

 

But also, by the time RoE came out, the advancing technology was already running into diminishing returns and reviewers weren't as hostile towards retro gamers.  I think the PC Zone review still made one or two references to "flogging an (un)dead horse" and the like in its Resurrection of Evil review, but it was nothing compared to its Final Doom review.

Edited May 24, 2022 by ENEMY!!!

[Rudolph]

1 hour ago, zokum said:

Final Doom failed because it didn't give us what the players wanted.

You keep employing these dramatic terms - "step down in quality", "competing against" and now "failed" - to make it sound like Final Doom is a stain on Id Software's reputation as well as a scandalous betrayal of the community or something when in reality, the whole project was more or less an afterthought designed to promote fan creations and compensate the mappers for their efforts.

 

And again, if the scan provided earlier is any indication, it was sold as additional episodes and nothing more. If you bought it expecting it to be Doom III, that is on you, not Id Software - which had its hands full with Quake.

 

1 hour ago, zokum said:

Why should one pay for Evilution when one can download Memento Mori 1 and 2?

Why not both, especially if in the former case's, mappers got compensated for their efforts?

 

Also, I have only discovered Memento Mori recently and so far I much prefer Final Doom.

Edited May 24, 2022 by Rudolph

[LadyMistDragon]

2 hours ago, Rudolph said:

 

Also, I have only discovered Memento Mori recently and so far I much prefer Final Doom.

Although Memento Mori is actually more consistent than Evilution, not to mention having a better grasp on the combat. Plutonia is probably better than either of those admittedly.

[BGreener]

On 5/13/2022 at 11:40 AM, Endless said:

I'd love to read from any Doom veteran here that actually got to enjoy the game during it's initial release, or at least close to it.

 

I’m here to be a terrible sample case because I was barely old enough to know any better, just that it was the first thing that ever got me into Doom. I have little to no experience how it was received by others back then. I only remember going through some PC Gamer (I think) magazines in the library, seeing lots of buzz around Quake and Diablo but not much about Final Doom.