What was the reception of Final Doom back in 1996?

[Rudolph]

3 hours ago, LadyMistDragon said:

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.

While I learned to appreciate Memento Mori as basically Doom II's Thy Flesh Consumed, I was not impressed by some of the early levels. Take MAP01: The Teleporter, for example. What the fuck is that? It really feels like they took a random deathmatch map and placed a bunch of enemies without giving it much thought. In contrast, MAP01: System Control starts you off with a Berserk pack and let you punch your way through a good chunk of the map - which in hindsight is a much better way to introduce the power-up than Doom II and even Doom 1 did.

 

If anything, I find TNT Evilution to be more consistent than Doom II and as such I have played through it more times than the latter.

Edited May 24, 2022 by Rudolph

[Doomkid]

What’s wrong with map01 of MM? Feels like a perfectly passable starter map. Looks pretty cool for the time, has a decent challenge, cool MIDI gets me pumped to start the campaign. I don’t see anything wrong with it, honestly. System Control feels like Entryway’s reject cousin (though again it’s by no means a bad map).

[Rudolph]

The music is alright, but the map itself is rather underwhelming: little room to explore, no actual secret to discover, there is not much flow to the map itself and again it visually looks like a deathmatch map that has been slightly reworked to be less symmetrical.

 

True, System Control is similar to Entryway, although I would argue it is an improvement in terms of gameplay.

[Doomkid]

The funny thing is, the oldest known version of System Control comes from Dwango6.wad, meaning it was probably made first and foremost with DM in mind. It's a fine map, but with all the little cramped spaces I'd say MM 01 has superior flow, in the traditional sense of being easy to move around in.

 

Neither one is going to be winning awards - they're both just tiny opener maps after all, but my first reaction to TNT 01 was "Entryway again, eh?" whereas the cool scrolling pentagram and new textures in MM 01 just gripped me a lot more. Just different strokes I guess, I still think TNT (and System Control) is a fine wad with a fine opener.

[Alex S.]

My copy of Final Doom came from Signature Computers Plus! in North Hampton, NH, USA. It was a small town computer shop that built custom order PC rigs. I was there with my dad when he was picking up a computer he ordered for his work at the time. Over in the corner of the shop was a small standing wire shelf where they had a few games, some old copies of Windows etc. I took it home and loved it. I was a rural kid and didn't have more than dialup access to the Internet so I was not exposed to the mass opinions on games. I liked it at the time but it was a tad underwhelming. I just ignored that fact due to my love of Doom.

[zokum]

12 hours ago, Rudolph said:

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.

 

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.

I pretty much IS a stain on their history. Compared to Doom 2 and Quake, it's a pretty poor game. Let me quote the wikipedia article: "Reviewing the PC version in GameSpot, Jim Varner argued that Final Doom is a waste of money, since it is essentially just a new set of level maps for Doom, and there were already thousands of such maps available to download for free on the internet."

And that is why it really is a stain on their reputation as it had more or less 0 innovation. The authors who made Evilution mostly didn't know it was going to be a commercial release when they made their maps. Quality wise, it shows. It was a nice enough wad for a community project, but it wasn't a shining new game in the Doom saga that had taken ~2 years to develop. Plutonia has a better design philosophy, and is much more consistent. Final Doom just isn't worth the money it costs though.

Back in 1996, why shouldn't people expect this to be Doom 3? It was marketed as if it was. And it isn't okay to release a sub par game at full price because you're really working on another game.

Doom was innovative and a great game. Doom 2 wasn't quite as innovative, but it added a lot to the formula in the first game. Many new monsters, loads of new graphics and the engine was slightly improved with new fixes and additions backported to also be available in the first game. Final Doom had none of that. Game critics generally panned it.

For the compensating mappers, it was fairly random who made maps for Evilution. There are mappers who are known for having released only 1 or so map, the one in Final Doom. Other people made much better maps for free and never received any "compensation". I also don't think the people who made the tools they used to make Final Doom with got any money, as those were all more or less free tools. The people who made tools like BSP, Zennode, DETH and DEU are the ones who deserved compensation for their work, not the majority of the Final Doom mappers.

[ReaperAA]

11 hours ago, LadyMistDragon said:

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.

 

I would argue that Evilution, apart from the last 10 maps, is far more consistent than MM1 and also doesn't suffer from the "co-op first and sp being afterthought" problem (apart from map31, but that got fixed by anthology version)

 

Also I vastly prefer TNT's Map01 over MM1's Map01. Much better layout and combat, even if it does take inspiration from Entryway.

Edited May 25, 2022 by ReaperAA

[Doomkid]

2 hours ago, zokum said:

For the compensating mappers, it was fairly random who made maps for Evilution. There are mappers who are known for having released only 1 or so map, the one in Final Doom. Other people made much better maps for free and never received any "compensation". I also don't think the people who made the tools they used to make Final Doom with got any money, as those were all more or less free tools. The people who made tools like BSP, Zennode, DETH and DEU are the ones who deserved compensation for their work, not the majority of the Final Doom mappers.

I agree with most of this post, but for whatever it's worth, the "compensation" the mappers for Final Doom got was something like 50 bucks and a free grand slam at Denny's or some shit. Nothing to sneeze at of course, but nothing really worth mentioning either. Especially considering the truckloads of cash Final Doom has no doubt generated in total since 1996.

[zokum]

2 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

 

I would argue that Evilution, apart from the last 10 maps, is far more consistent than MM1 and also doesn't suffer from the "co-op first and sp being afterthought" problem (apart from map31, but that got fixed by anthology version)

 

Also I vastly prefer TNT's Map01 over MM1's Map01. Much better layout and combat, even if it does take inspiration from Entryway.

MM's coop first is a great feature IF you have access to playing coop with someone. It is a fun way to play the game and most doom maps aren't built for it. Many traps do not work, balance is bad, you can lock people out of areas (1 time teleports) or the map can end up being impossible to finish etc. Adding explicit advanced coop support allows for puzzles and gameplay that just isn't possible to do in single player. You can have sections where both players have to do something roughly at the same time, open up doors and triggers things for eachother etc etc.

[Rudolph]

9 hours ago, zokum said:

I pretty much IS a stain on their history.

No. It really feels like you are making a mountain out of a molehill here, trying your hardest to find reasons to be retroactively angry about a 15-year old map pack. I bought Final Doom for the same price as Doom II and you know what my reaction was? "Cool, more Doom!"

 

9 hours ago, zokum said:

Back in 1996, why shouldn't people expect this to be Doom 3?

Because people were expecting Quake.

 

And again, no, Final Doom was not marketed as "Doom III". Neither was The Masters Levels, Doom 64, Perdition's Gate or Hell to Pay.

Edited May 25, 2022 by Rudolph

[SuperPecanMan]

I grew up with DOOM, having played shareware DOOM in '93, DOOM2 in '95, Ultimate DOOM in '96 and Final DOOM in '97.

 

I was super excited when Final DOOM came out, mostly because I had played through DOOM2 and Ultimate DOOM a bunch and was itching for new content. Quake was useless to me as the family computer couldn't run it, so there was no such comparison for me, and I imagine this was true for many others. One of the first things I remember is the new exe for Final DOOM, it ran natively on Windows 95! And I could even run Ultimate DOOM and DOOM2 through doom95.exe! That alone was worth it to me, huge upgrade over the DOS executables. As far as issues with the game were concerned, I distinctly remember several of it's flaws, such as getting stuck on Pharaoh and Central Processing, and never getting too far in Plutonia without cheats. I also remember being disappointed in the lack of new enemies or weapons.

 

One thing to keep in mind, however, is that many games of the time billed themselves on how many hours of playtime you could get out of them. The term "Nintendo Hard" comes to mind, where developers would specifically make the games difficult enough that you couldn't beat them in a single rental cycle, earning more money for video stores.  So the main evaluator for ten-year-old me in game quality is "how long did I spend playing it", in which case Final DOOM, with its double content vs DOOM2 and significant difficulty spike, took way more time than DOOM2, which means I loved it.

 

One point to note: My father's line of work made him tech savvy, and he had properly discouraged me from participating in online discussions and downloading stuff, so I didn't get to experience what the community was outputting at the time. I imagine if I had played Memento Mori, Icarus, Hell Revealed, etc, I would have had a VERY different opinion of Final DOOM.

[zokum]

Doom had downloadable addon support built in and encouraged making and playing them. Nintendo games on carts didn’t. Id Even released their own compilation cd.

 

I prefer quality and innovation much more than amount.

 

A lot of the stuff you mention was free and not specific to Final Doom.

[Rudolph]

26 minutes ago, zokum said:

Nintendo games on carts didn’t.

Irrelevant. By your reasoning so far, Doom 64 was a subpar product because it did not innovate much, played worse due to the Nintendo 64 control scheme and even dared to feature a smaller bestiary and a shorter campaign with smaller maps. Since it was marketed as essentially Doom III (not really, but according to you, every Doom title released after Doom II apparently had to be Doom III...) and it had to compete with games like Quake II, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter and GoldenEye 007, it should from now on be viewed as a stain on Id Software's reputation.

 

26 minutes ago, zokum said:

A lot of the stuff you mention was free and not specific to Final Doom.

The Master Levels, Hell To Pay and Perdition's Gate were all sold for money.

Edited May 25, 2022 by Rudolph

[LadyMistDragon]

18 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

 

I would argue that Evilution, apart from the last 10 maps, is far more consistent than MM1 and also doesn't suffer from the "co-op first and sp being afterthought" problem (apart from map31, but that got fixed by anthology version)

 

 

Evillution has the best maps almost without exception....but personally, there were far less sections in Memento Mori with long periods of boredom (the sole exception being Map 16: Stoned; the last Baron turret fight is among the stupidest shit ever) and also, there's a higher degree of visual coherency. Whereas in TNT, there seemed to be less professionalism in a number of aspects, which helped to produce a few truly ugly maps that did not speak to especially high standards. The greater amount of overall experience with mapping and the less-rushed timetable really show, I think. One day I could break down some maps from each to illustrate this, but that's better left for another thread.

 

Quote

Also I vastly prefer TNT's Map01 over MM1's Map01. Much better layout and combat, even if it does take inspiration from Entryway.

This I fully agree with. The Teleporter feels like an undercooked and overly difficult for a Map 01. Although their respective midi choices manage to make it a close call regardless,

 

[Ragu]

To talk about what should or shouldn't have been able to be monetized -- perhaps the people making the tools should have been compensated, but in the end, the license that Id provided the community gave them a lot of leeway to do whatever they wanted with derivative content, up to and including Maximum Doom (which was less than legit in other ways, but they were within their rights in rounding up piles of WADs off cdrom.com). That they allowed some creators -- and perhaps there were better creators, but these were the ones they chose -- to get some (probably not fully adequate) compensation and a published credit on a commercial video game, is kind of cool, and some were able to use it as a springboard to go on to bigger and better things.

 

I don't think it was a particularly great value in 1996 at full price, and in all honesty probably did deserve the middling to low ratings in magazines (not the pompous dismissal of its players, though). Its charms are best experienced with many more years of context and bundled for free with its preceding IWADs. Calling it a stain is a bit much, I doubt many people outside of the Doom community even think about or perhaps even know about Final Doom when considering classic Doom. It might be worth getting mad about if it was 1996 and you expected Doom 3 (in which case you should have probably read the box), but it was discounted and then bundled with the others within a fairly short time.

[Rudolph]

12 hours ago, Ragu said:

It might be worth getting mad about if it was 1996 and you expected Doom 3 (in which case you should have probably read the box)

Yeah, but even then, as I pointed out, people were hyped about Quake at the time - which Id Software could have easily marketed as the actual Doom 3.

 

I mean, why not? Both involve a space marine fighting against interdimensional invaders and their human minions. Just change the backstory slightly so that it takes place after Doom II, with a new otherwordly threat emerging in the wake of Hell's defeat and voilà!

[Alfonso]

You may not like it but it holds up better than Duke 3D, Quake and any other 1996 FPS game.

[Doomkid]

Duke 3D and Quake both hold up as classic games with fun gameplay, at least to me. I was never as big a fan of them as I was of Doom, but they bring plenty of their own charm (and features) to the table.

 

On 5/26/2022 at 12:27 AM, SuperPecanMan said:

I grew up with DOOM, having played shareware DOOM in '93, DOOM2 in '95, Ultimate DOOM in '96 and Final DOOM in '97.

 

I really enjoyed reading this. I first got Doom95 with Ultimate DOOM in 1999, but compared to shareware Doom (which I had since I was a toddler) and Doom 2 with the standard DOS executables, Doom95 felt like a BIG leap up with that 640x480 resolution, and simple loader where you could pick a PWAD. I honestly wish a new Doom launcher would come out that steals its exact interface/functionality!

 

I never had trouble running the DOS exes in Win95 / 98, but maybe just because the computer had enough grunt run both Windows and Doom at the same time without struggling. The average PC was running Doom very comfortably in 1999 after all, probably not as much in 1995..

 

I'm so lucky that my dad, who also worked with computers, didn't hesitate to let me download Doom wads and such. My parents would still buy me new games and consoles here and there for birthdays or Christmas, but they probably saved money over the years since my brother and I spent so much time playing on emulators/downloaded ROMs (and in my case, Doom wads). The internet just let you get so much content at a moment's notice! I dunno if my dad consciously realized that or if it was just a happy accident, but I'm thankful.

[zokum]

On 5/25/2022 at 6:02 PM, Rudolph said:

Irrelevant. By your reasoning so far, Doom 64 was a subpar product because it did not innovate much, played worse due to the Nintendo 64 control scheme and even dared to feature a smaller bestiary and a shorter campaign with smaller maps. Since it was marketed as essentially Doom III (not really, but according to you, every Doom title released after Doom II apparently had to be Doom III...) and it had to compete with games like Quake II, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter and GoldenEye 007, it should from now on be viewed as a stain on Id Software's reputation.

 

The Master Levels, Hell To Pay and Perdition's Gate were all sold for money.

No, Doom 64 was very innovative on that system. Most straight ports aren't all that innovative as games, since it is a port, but per system, it is innovative. It also added a lot of content not seen in other Doom games. They did that to avoid falling into the Final Doom trap of not providing much new content for a by then well-established game series. Final Doom on PC competed with a ton of games, including Doom 2. Doom 64 didn't have many similar games.

Final Doom on PC didn't have a new engine, it didn't add much new art, it was also quite underwhelming compared to the competing games. Id was known for being fairly innovative and have good quality art work. It had gone 2 years since their last Doom game and this was the Final one in the series. It failed to provide on both those fronts and the game play wasn't very different from what you could download for free. TNT is a decent enough quality for a free megawad. It really isn't commercial quality stuff by 1996 standards.

One of the strengths of Doom was the ability to modify the game with new graphics and maps, music etc built into the game. Doom 2 expanded greatly on the amount of content you had for making such new mods. Final Doom added very little to the pool. Had Final Doom added a new monster, boss or weapon, it would be considered the definitive version of the game engine, even if it came out a bit late.

It is a glorified map pack priced like a full game. Id didn't spend much time on it, they had a much bigger and better project they were working on, Quake. Quake was a bit of a development hell, so I think that hurt Final Doom as a project as well. At the time, id software wasn't operating very well.

Edited May 27, 2022 by zokum

[zokum]

Back in the 90s and in a way today, id had a formula of making a new cool engine, with a decent game and a sequel on roughly the same engine, with some additions and add loads of art, bells and whistles. They did this with the Keens, Wolfenstein 3D/SOD, Doom / Doom 2, Quake, Q2, Q3 etc. The only game where they didn't innovate or add a lot of new artwork was Final Doom. That is why I think it's a fairly lackluster release.

As a map pack at a reduced price, it would have been excellent. It was a decent expansion/addon/mission pack for Doom 2, but it's not nearly enough to be considered a proper full game in my opinion. Quake also had two mission packs, and these added many new weapons and cool features to the engine. As far as I remember those mission packs cost less than the original game but added way more content and story to the game compared to Final Doom.

Of the top of my head, the biggest innovation in those were rotating brushes. You could now have things like draw bridges, carousels, cogs that turn. The original game didn't have that. In the original game only 'models', not level geometry had that type of freedom.

I'd wish Final Doom had something like that, would have made it a much more solid release.

[Gez]

On mercredi 25 mai 2022 at 6:12 AM, zokum said:

I pretty much IS a stain on their history.

No.

 

Even if reviews back then were generally dismissive, along the line of "there's nothing new besides the levels and you can get plenty of those free from the Internet, for your money you'd better off getting Duke 3D or Quake"; that's not a stain on their history. When people talk about id Software, they don't say "remember how lazy Final Doom was?", they just don't talk about Final Doom at all. Unless they're turbonerds arguing on a Doom forum, of course. If people talk at all about Final Doom these days, it's usually along the lines of "man, Plutonia sure has a lot of chaingunners".

 

You want a stain on their history, you need something that people will bring up time and again to disparage them. Like say, how Romero has to deal with Daikatana's legacy.

 

31 minutes ago, zokum said:

Of the top of my head, the biggest innovation in those were rotating brushes. You could now have things like draw bridges, carousels, cogs that turn. The original game didn't have that. In the original game only 'models', not level geometry had that type of freedom.

I'd wish Final Doom had something like that, would have made it a much more solid release.

Getting polyobjects from Hexen could have done (part) of the trick. Though they're much more limited than moving brushes, of course; especially in Hexen with the BSP issues.

 

There's evidence that polyobjects were added to Hexen originally before the move to change the map format (hence the hack of using the angle to store the polyobject number, instead of the TID), so I'm sure it would have been technically feasible if the id guys had wanted to backport some of the innovations from Raven Software.

[zokum]

Well, it was the sequel to one of the best selling games ever, Doom 2. It wasn't very well received by the fans or the gaming press. I'd consider it a stain on an otherwise good track record. I think most people consider Doom 3 the sequel to Doom 2, not Final Doom :) Stain on a record isn't a very descriptive term, so we might mean different things by it.

 

Id could easily have backported some of the features, it is a good idea, but I suspect they were working on Quake and didn't really care much about Final Doom. Strife also had some cool stuff in it that could have made a Final Doom game more interesting.

Id could have hired the Hexen or Strife team to make Final Doom for them.

[Rudolph]

1 hour ago, zokum said:

Well, it was the sequel to one of the best selling games ever, Doom 2.

No, it was not a sequel. It was a map pack. Stop pretending otherwise.

 

5 hours ago, zokum said:

Doom 64 didn't have many similar games.

GoldenEye 007, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, Hexen 64, Duke Nukem 64...

Edited May 27, 2022 by Rudolph

[zokum]

1 hour ago, Rudolph said:

No, it was not a sequel. It was a map pack. Stop pretending otherwise.

 

GoldenEye 007, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, Hexen 64, Duke Nukem 64...

It was clearly a sequel as it was stand-alone. A map pack requires the original game. It was priced as a full price game. Let me quote the wikipedia article:

"Final Doom is a first-person shooter video game developed by TeamTNT, and Dario and Milo Casali, and was released by id Software and distributed by GT Interactive Software in 1996. It was released for MS-DOS and Macintosh computers, as well as for the PlayStation, although the latter featured a selection of levels from Final Doom and from Master Levels for Doom II."

If it had been marketed as a map pack, requiring the original game and being relatively cheap, I wouldn't consider it as big of a disappointment as it was. Master Levels was a map pack and marketed and priced as such. I don't think it's a very good product, but it comes with a load of user made content and exclusive levels and didn't cost that much. You could probably compile several really nice megawads from the user made maps found on that cd + the Master Levels.

Those games you mentioned are FPSes. The comparison I made was something like Doom 64 compared to Doom 2 or Doom. On the N64 there were no Doom games, so they released one. If the N64 had several already existing more faithful ports of Doom, that would be something different. For the N64 they understood that they had to bring something new and cool as Doom had been released on the SNES. A Doom 64 had to be more advanced and updated, which it was.

[Rudolph]

40 minutes ago, zokum said:

It was clearly a sequel as it was stand-alone.

No. Again, you are trying too hard to find reasons to be retroactively upset about Final Doom and make it sound worse than it really is.

 

It was a map pack, nothing more, nothing less. Overpriced? Maybe. However, being stand-alone is a plus, as it means you did not have to own Doom II to play the new mapsets; I remember for the longest time being unable to play Brood War because my StarCraft CD-ROM broke.

 

40 minutes ago, zokum said:

On the N64 there were no Doom games, so they released one.

Now, now, do no try to move the goalposts here: you complained that Final Doom had to compete with the likes of Quake and Duke Nukem 3D, and I brought up Doom 64, which also had to compete with non-Doom titles, including Duke Nukem 64. 

 

And no, if we analyze the game using your reasoning, Doom 64 was not really more advanced or updated: in many ways, it was a regression from Doom II: no multiplayer, smaller levels, shorter campaign, missing monsters, worse control scheme, less advanced graphics than the likes of GoldenEye 007 and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, darker visuals that made it harder to see on a television screen...

 

And I am saying that as someone who loves Doom 64!

Edited May 27, 2022 by Rudolph

[BGreener]

23 hours ago, Rudolph said:

I mean, why not? Both involve a space marine fighting against interdimensional invaders and their human minions. Just change the backstory slightly so that it takes place after Doom II, with a new otherwordly threat emerging in the wake of Hell's defeat and voilà!

You’d end up with more people like me: A proud facilitator of the “Quake 2 shouldn’t be called ‘Quake 2’” association, and someone who appreciates the differences in style, setting and tone between ‘Doom’ and ‘Quake’ reinforced by a title difference.

 

That said, I can easily imagine another timeline where Quake’s rusted fantasy aesthetic and fitting cast of enemies wasn’t realized and was instead called “Doom 3 - D!”

 

Since it’s getting mentioned here by @zokumlately, I also want to throw in my hat about Doom 64 being named what it is and for not being called Doom 3.

[Rudolph]

22 minutes ago, BGrieber said:

You’d end up with more people like me: A proud facilitator of the “Quake 2 shouldn’t be called ‘Quake 2’” association, and someone who appreciates the differences in style, setting and tone between ‘Doom’ and ‘Quake’ reinforced by a title difference.

Yeah, we discussed that in another thread.

 

However, I do think that Id Software could have gotten away with selling Quake 1 as Doom 3, much more so than Quake II in regard to Quake 1. After all, its bestiary is very similar in nature to Doom's - human soldiers, monsters using human weaponry and undead/otherwordly creatures - and it shares Doom's Satanic aesthetics - pentagrams, crucified corpses, demonic statues, etc. - as well as its settings, i.e. techbases, dark castles and Thy Flesh Consumed-style wooden buildings.

 

Heck, Sandy Petersen is on record saying that the Fiend is how he would have done the Pinky! :P

Edited May 27, 2022 by Rudolph

[BGreener]

1 hour ago, Rudolph said:

However, I do think that Id Software could have gotten away with selling Quake 1 as Doom 3, much more so than Quake II in regard to Quake 1.

I’d go deeper: These could’ve just been a series of Wolfenstein games! The precedent for hellspawn, cyborgs, and undead soldiers is already there, and nazi’s giving teleportation a shot wouldn’t be a far stretch for its setting.

 

If I’m following things correctly, I also sympathize with @zokum’s perspective regarding Final Doom’s reception - and I’m someone who got into Doom through it. It’s a fair conclusion to arrive at if it wasn’t properly communicated that it was a standalone pair of expansion packs, and it also wasn’t appropriately priced.

[Rudolph]

4 minutes ago, BGrieber said:

I’d go deeper: These could’ve just been a series of Wolfenstein games! The precedent for hellspawn, cyborgs, and undead soldiers is already there, and nazi’s giving teleportation a shot wouldn’t be a far stretch for its setting.

Too bad, Doom Zero is already taken! :o

 

I reckon it would be easy to retcon the UAC teleporting technology as being inspired by Nazi experiments.

Edited May 27, 2022 by Rudolph

[Redneckerz]

On 5/25/2022 at 6:12 AM, zokum said:

I pretty much IS a stain on their history. Compared to Doom 2 and Quake, it's a pretty poor game.

Back in 1996, why shouldn't people expect this to be Doom 3? It was marketed as if it was. And it isn't okay to release a sub par game at full price because you're really working on another game.

I don't recall Final Doom being marketed as a Doom 3, that would be silly.

 

I do recall (Looking at the PSX walkthrough book from the 90s here, when these books were just amazing in depth, and Final Doom ended up on PlayStation (Contentwise not the same as Final Doom on PC, but still) that Final Doom was marketed as more of Doom and for Doom fanatics. Which, typically, would fit the bill. By 1996, you indeed had mapsets besting Final Doom. But for the Doom fan who was lesser informed, or just wanted more Doom, Final Doom was a serviceable release.

 

It would be unheard of in today's world, though.

 

7 hours ago, zokum said:

Well, it was the sequel to one of the best selling games ever, Doom 2.

It is a sequel only in virtue of timeline, being the next Doom product after Doom 2. But i've always considered Final Doom as a swansong game for the Doom engine - Despite the fact that Strife released in 1996, and HACX in 1997 (But which required the Doom2 IWAD at the time, despite being able to run fully standalone, as shown in the recent exe hacked version by OpenRift).

 

I think Final Doom was just a sideproject by id to give Doom fans some more Dooming in lieu of Quake. Given the wiki article alludes to the same sentiment, i suppose there is some truth to that sentiment.

 

Besides, you were getting 64 levels over two standalone campaigns. That's quite a lot of content for that time, despite that you could download quality full 32 map megawads already. For 1996, i can see the appeal in wanting a Final Doom, given the constraints of the era techwise.

 

Nowadays, you have standalone spinoffs that have less content than the game they spun off from, so Final Doom is an exception on that note.

Edited May 27, 2022 by Redneckerz