what do you think about Doom's gameplay style

[GreenAnime]

Classic Doom, Doom Eternal, Ultrakill has a type of battle system that people call "push-forward combat". Kinda reminds me of Gungeon/Nuclear Throne, shooting hoards of enemies but in 3 dimensions and a limited fov. What are your thoughts on it? To me this was so overwhelming and hard to get into first but somehow it rekindled my joy of playing games. It's something new and fresh with a nice touch of difficulty.

[Monocled]

Wdym? Pretty much every singleplayer fps game has limited fov and hordes of enemies

Edited February 24 by Monocled

[Lucius Wooding]

How can a 30 year old game be called new and fresh? Doom was basically the most popular and mainstream game in the world for a few years. And 2016/Eternal are very limited in terms of their monster count as well. I'd hardly consider a dozen monsters "hordes".

[OniriA]

Doom got popular with zoomers since Eternal, so now Classic Doom has become "Fresh and new" aswell.

[Naarok0fkor]

It's like classic coke...

[dasho]

8 hours ago, GreenAnime said:

Kinda reminds me of Gungeon/Nuclear Throne, shooting hoards of enemies

 

 

There are probably older examples, but as they say there is nothing new under the sun. 

[Optimus]

Most remember Doom for run and gun. Rather than also level design, exploration and secrets. My thrill when playing oldschool FPS is to explore that hidden room, dark corner, other area I forgot, cautiously expecting something to jump at me, then find some obscure room that doesn't make any sense but makes me wonder what that all was. There was something in that. Now most people remember run and gun, rip and tear, must always arena, arena with monsters,. so a lot of modern indie FPS recreations are delivering something different.

 

Anyway, what was Doom all about was the qeustion?

[Xaser]

1 hour ago, Lucius Wooding said:

How can a 30 year old game be called new and fresh?

 

Doom-style shooters (a.k.a. "boomer shooters") are very very different than other types of shooters, and there was a period of 15-ish years (2003 to 2018) where virtually none were ever released. Someone who plays Doom for the first time without played seen any of its kin are indeed going to find it fresh.

 

Gonna link the usual Coelacanth: Lessons from Doom article, since it's dead-on in its summary of what makes the game unique from so-called "modern shooters" (i.e. Call of Duty and the like). The distinction may not be quite as obvious to newer gamers since we do have quite a few examples of the genre now, including the new Dooms (which are kinda half-boomershooter-half-not). The line has blurred, but that's a good thing since that means we're no longer in a drought. :P

[Doom-X-Machina]

The art of Doom's gameplay is a combination of breakneck speed, it's charming atmosphere and presentation and it's single biggest shining grace... simplicity.

[Maximum Matt]

9 hours ago, GreenAnime said:

a type of battle system that people call "push-forward combat".

I only kinda recently realised Old School Doom has this, in a way - after seeing the gameplay element in Doom 2016/Eternal of enemies dropping a ton of powerups after performing a "glory kill", thereby incentivising the player to rush the enemies, I realised that Doom '93 (heh) has this with the gunners that drop ammo - depending on how much ammo the map has readily available of course, sometimes you're forced to run into gunfire to pickup some scraps of ammo to take out the last bad guys.  And I'm pretty sure that was a conscious decision on Romero/Petersen/whoever's part.  

[Doom-X-Machina]

49 minutes ago, Xaser said:

Gonna link the usual Coelacanth: Lessons from Doom article

First time I've read that article. And agreed, dead-on.

[Chookum]

I'm happy for newer players to discover Doom and its player-extended content, it's like digging to bedrock.

 

I never really gave much thought as to why I keep playing (and playing with) Doom. The gameplay and why it works is discussed further up (And Coelacanth: Lessons from Doom hits it on the head), so I want to talk about another angle that keeps me returning to Doom:

 

I stay mentally locked in a shed with a 30 year old game because frankly the modern games experience is abusive and disrespectful of players and their time and I got sick of being on that treadmill and falling off it. Doom was always there on the rebound when a game-as-service product fell over and died unceremoniously, or made a breaking change that and invalidated my time, effort, and self-expression; or doesn't change meaningfully when it needs it most.

 

Doom is 'pure' in the sense that it's just you, the action, the demons, and the world that iD built. The gameplay of the original might be crack, but the stuff the community puts out is pure cocaine - and we are all pinging. They have made new maps, added new weapons and monsters, new props and scenery, new map formats that push things even further. Developers can make whole games from scratch that use a modern iteration of the engine.

 

And best of all, if you can't find the Doom you want, you can make a Doom! It's your Doom in the end.

 

[Makros_the_Black]

It's enjoyable in that it's punishing in a way a lot of games then, and even now, aren't.

You can play the stand back game, but unless there is a good in fight between monsters going on, you're generally going to get punished for the stand off behaviour.   You're better off getting in there and blasting those demons to pieces!   Keeping you moving at a pace that other games don't quite match, even though they do a great job of keeping you active in their environments, Doom has always has this very slick flow to it's combat and movement.    You *don't* stop moving...

Think about 2016 and Eternal, the way you move about combat in todays awesome games.... that's very much how combat flowed in the classics 1 and 2.   On a less vertical plane, of course, but you have to constantly weave and dodge enemies and projectiles whilst getting in close and personal to do the best damage.   

Edited February 24 by Makros_the_Black

[Cutman 999]

Classic doom actually doesn't have that kind of "combat style". It can have, only if the enemy pool is mostly low tiers, but you can't just push through a batallion of revs and mancs the same way you can imps and zombies, heck there's even an enemy that entices you to take cover or else, you are gonna be almost dead.

 

Not even the damage values reflect that gameplay style, at least in ultrakill and doom eternal enemies drop health all the time and the attack potency of them is relatively minimal unless you massively fuck up or you are againts an specific one, in doom you only can cure yourself through medikits and powerups, meaning health is limited to what the designer puts in the level, not to count there's regular hits that can push some high damage thresholds, like the shotgunner's infamous max 45 damage.

 

And yes, In doom actually taking cover and not blasting a demon first is a viable strategy, since not doing that in certain situations is going to be a waste of resources or just waiting to die.

Edited February 24 by Cutman 999

[Maribo]

The true gift of Doom's gameplay style is that it does not have a single uniform one. It has 30 years worth of genres and subgenres branching out and interlacing in every way possible. Who, in 1993, could have imagined that there would be enough diversity in Doom mapping to write eleven whole chapters worth of analysis regarding its evolution. Maps constructed to be raw adrenaline rushes, popcorn combat, surreal horror nightmares, introspective platforming with zero monsters, puzzle-solving, glitch art, gimmicks relying on esoteric knowledge of bugs and glitches that no one knew existed, narrative-based walking simulators, autoscrolling racing maps, pure movement tests, skull-crushing challenge maps, grindmap meditation... There exists a map (probably more than one, actually) in this community where the underlying narrative is that you are killing not only the demons inhabiting the map, but the map itself. You are always "pushing forward" to the next thing, but the carrot dangling in front of you (or the fire burning behind you) can be anything from your imminent death from waking up a box of 900 revenants, to solving a chess puzzle.

[Sena]

I'd say one critical difference is that DE has dashes, airborne ledges to climb onto, Quake 3 style jumppads, and I only played Ultrakill for about an hour, but it has a slide option which increases speed and a combo meter. These games have deliberate abilities given to the player to encourage them to move quickly, whereas classic Doom doesn't, for the most part the game's pace is only as fast as you want it to be, maybe there are some people out there who prefer to play with autorun disabled, I wouldn't count it out.

Edited February 24 by Sena

[Li'l devil]

It's okay

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

I thought that the term "push-forward combat" was something that the Nu-Doom devs used to describe their style of combat, not the style of OG Doom. I think it's just a dumb term that they came up with to sound special and grab your attention. Many developers come up with these gimmick terms, they have to market their game. The Nu-Doom games revolve around arena fights where the player is locked into battle, so I think "push forward" is a bad way to describe anything in those games. There is too much weapon swapping, thinking about how to take out a certain enemy, managing resources, etc. for the games to have a truly aggressive flow in combat. The feeling of aggression is mostly an illusion brought on by the music, gore, glory kills, and all that stuff.

 

I think a good example of something that could be described as "push-forward combat" is the combat in a game like Bloodborne (or other souls games with a health-rallying system). In Bloodborne, if you get hit by an enemy, you have a brief moment to retaliate and regain your health. Outside of boss fights, you are never trapped in an arena. It encourages you to keep attacking even if you just got rekt, with no time to consider your choice. In Nu-Doom, being low on health means looking for a fodder enemy to kill, and if there are no fodder enemies, you find a good target and try to safely kill it without being hit. It's not as aggressive as it seems, you're just making choices that revolve around resource management and enemy weakness.

[Noiser]

Classic Doom totally have "push-forward combat", which is something in comparison to the realistic games from the 00's where you have to take cover to tactically kill or regenerate your health.

[Orchid87]

Why doesn't anyone mention 'dodging slow projectiles' aspect? It makes Doom gameplay more shmup-like and different from the majority of other first person shooter games including the 90's ones. The projectiles in Duke Nukem 3D are so fast that it's always better just to get into cover that try to quickstep dodge them. Even Quake is not quite there.

In Doom you may navigate around the barrages of imps, cacos and barons/hks fireballs. Then you have revenant heat seekers that you have to outmaneuver, mancubi triple attack that have to be dodged in a specific way and arachnotrons that you have to hitstun or their plasma will eat through your health quickly. Add the partial invis to the equation which makes it even more interesting. Other classics like Duke 3D and Blood basically have none of this.

[Lucius Wooding]

Classic Doom doesn't have """push forward combat""". A lot of the other examples being bandied around use health and ammo replenishment mechanics built around hunting down monsters. In other words, as long as you keep killing, you'll always have access to more resources. This is enforced by game mechanics, not by the mapper's choices on where to place resources. Killing monsters is usually incidental to progressing in the map or getting access to resources. Classic Doom doesn't really reward killing outside of hitscanners. You have to "push forward" to find weapons and resources, but this is much more about exploring and traversing the level and nothing to do with getting kills. Eternal doesn't make you retreat to where ammo and health are if you're in trouble, you just need to juggle whatever ability lets you burst open the nearest monster to get more. It keeps the pace going, I won't say it's invalid as a game mechanic, but it's totally different from classic Doom.

 

Consider a map like The Mucus Flow that constrains health and ammo in a more strict way than 99% of other maps out there. It does not encourage pushing forward and punishes you for spending resources, and even limits the number of trips to restock through the infinite chaingunner tower hazard needing the blur spheres. I'm not sure you could even create something comparable in 2016 or Eternal because a lot of the new mechanics would seem to let you brute force your way past the ammo starvation, even if it takes considerable patience. 

 

Limiting your resources in general is something Doom maps haven't always done consistently, but it's been a part of the formula. The first 3 maps of Inferno barely give you anything to work with, as well as E4M1 for example. E1 and most of Romero's maps tend to rely more on combat and never seem to lack ammo (outside of Sigil). Doom 2 also tended to drown the player in ammo, particularly shells and particularly on continuous runs. It seems that most modern games have largely abandoned the idea of running out of ammo and tend to be very forgiving. Classic Doom has always had fast paced gameplay, but what it also excels at is the ability to change gears depending on the situation. It's a mistake to dismiss the survival, dungeon crawl, slower paced aspects of it since well crafted maps can pull them off just as well as more slaughtery or run and gun sections.

[ReaperAA]

On 2/23/2024 at 9:47 PM, GreenAnime said:

Classic Doom, Doom Eternal, Ultrakill has a type of battle system that people call "push-forward combat".

 

I'll be honest, while Classic Doom is very much movement focused, I rarely ever found Doom's combat "push-forward", atleast never in the iwads.