Single Most Iconic thing from Doom

[Pirx]

_bruce_ said:

Still love the HUD face today... so well drawn.

i miss it in modern games. yeah, it's very iconic to me.

let's see, if you let someone draw a scene from doom, i think most times you'd have that status bar face, a shotgun and some monsters.

[Retog]

Definitely the way it feels.

[Lila Feuer]

Modding aside, the fact I can keep coming back to this game and never tire of it, its like everything I love about my favorite genre rolled into one perfect package.

[traversd]

STARTAN3

[DoOmEr4LiFe]

In all honesty, I would have to say the level of violence, mixed in with blatant satanic imagery. It was, and thanks to mods like Brutal Doom still is the most violent game I have played with the only other contender being Mortal Kombat.

Edit: Of course, vanilla is pretty tame compared to today's games.

[Torturephile]

Gibbed monsters.

[GreyGhost]

I never thought of Doom as a one-trick pony, so I'm not going to limit myself to one feature.

Grazza said:

Infighting.

This

Fiend said:

Deathmatch.

This

And let's not forget DOS

[qoncept]

I'd say the most defining characteristic of Doom is dumb monsters, and lots of them. The monsters are either walking toward you or shooting. No hiding behind tables, no running away, no evading attacks.

And that's why Doom 3 wasn't Doom.

[david-arquette]

It's got to be the overall style of the game. Even if you're not that familiar with the game, you see someone playing and you just know it's Doom. No other game that I've played has that look and that atmosphere.

[Phobus]

The inimitable thing for me is the speed. The tempo of movement, attacks and action is something I've never seen done as well in another FPS, and the modern ones don't do it at all for the most part. The closest game I've seen for this sort of tempo was Midnight Club II, which is an arcade-y racing game. This is why Doom is something I can play 18+ years after release.

[GreyGhost]

qoncept said:

I'd say the most defining characteristic of Doom is dumb monsters, and lots of them. The monsters are either walking toward you or shooting. No hiding behind tables, no running away, no evading attacks.

Doom is a Gauntlet clone?

[Retog]

GreyGhost said:

Doom is a Gauntlet clone?

The DOOM monsters are not dumb. They are not the most intelligent but they are the best of any game.

[Maes]

The monsters in Doom are cheating bastards, because they always know where you are.

Then again, that's only a fair trade for the player's super-powers.

[glenzinho]

I put shotgun earlier on but after just playing Quake and Quake 2 for the first time just now I've come to the conclusion that it's the movement and general flow, whether you're speeding through or just taking it nice and slow.. there's nothing else like it. I can't believe how bad the movement is in the Quake games, and how awful the enemies are.. you don't even get the slightest feeling of reward when firing a weapon. I guess it's because of things like these that Doom will never be surpassed

[Retog]

qoncept said:

I'd say the most defining characteristic of Doom is dumb monsters, and lots of them. The monsters are either walking toward you or shooting. No hiding behind tables, no running away, no evading attacks.

And that's why Doom 3 wasn't Doom.

The DOOM monsters are not dumb. They are not the most intelligent but they are the best of any game.

[qoncept]

I didn't say the AI was bad. For the time, it is a very good AI model of monsters that are very dumb. They don't work together, they don't take cover, they accidentally hit each other and cause infighting. And that's what makes it Doom. Today, games are made harder by smarter enemies. Doom was made harder by adding more monsters.

Doom 3 couldn't even handle very many monsters on the screen when it was new. Not Doom.

[Gez]

The AI for enemies in more recent games isn't that much more advanced than in Doom, actually. Left to their own devices, they still behave as stupidly.

There's an illusion of AI that is created by level scripting. It's not the monster that decides to take cover; it's the level that tells the monster to take cover.

That's why modern games are so linear. If you could wander any way you want, it'd be too hard for the level designers to take every possible player action into account, and the level scripting wouldn't make monsters react correctly.

[Hellbent]

Adrian Carmack.

[Kira]

Gez said:

The AI for enemies in more recent games isn't that much more advanced than in Doom, actually. Left to their own devices, they still behave as stupidly.

There's an illusion of AI that is created by level scripting. It's not the monster that decides to take cover; it's the level that tells the monster to take cover.

That's why modern games are so linear. If you could wander any way you want, it'd be too hard for the level designers to take every possible player action into account, and the level scripting wouldn't make monsters react correctly.

MOH Airborne was very unlinear and still soldiers were doing a pretty good job. A shame this game didn't have a great success. Pseudo-swarm AI could be good too, if not already used in FEAR and Far Cry.

[Phobus]

Gez said:

The AI for enemies in more recent games isn't that much more advanced than in Doom, actually. Left to their own devices, they still behave as stupidly.

Although many a Games Dev would love to get the AI in to do more clever things, the closest you get to something like "clever" enemies is games like Halo or FEAR, where they have a reasonable behaviour tree and a bit of knowledge of what's around the map in their vicinity. Unfortunately, the games designers always want to turn off the AI and just script in cover positions and "pop-out, fire, hide" style behaviour instead.

As I see it, if more FPS games used the same sorts of enemies as Doom, this'd be less of a trouble. As it is, you either get incredibly dumb swarming zombies or grenade-happy soldiers who are expected to take cover often with little else in the FPS genre (I don't count games like Skyrim here, as although they've got the right sort of cast, they don't have the gameplay). The way Doom's enemies work is like the "incredibly dumb swarming zombies", but with a lot of relatively slow projectile attacks, some flight and variations on speed. Hitscans and using weight of numbers to close for melee was much more the exception and this made mobility the main force for the player. Conversely, this is why just running into the middle of a room in games like CoD is a fantastic way to die quickly - the player isn't particularly fast and the enemies aren't intended to be dodged - more hidden from and picked off.

[DuckReconMajor]

Phobus said:

Conversely, this is why just running into the middle of a room in games like CoD is a fantastic way to die quickly - the player isn't particularly fast and the enemies aren't intended to be dodged - more hidden from and picked off.

The player is plenty fast and you're supposed to get through before they kill you. That's why the enemies respawn, so you don't hide behind a corner all day, but fuckers keep playing it wrong anyway and blame the game. Also that's why there' such strong autoaim, so you can worry more about the action instead of perfect aim (sound familiar?)

And okay I'm a hypocrite for saying "playing the game wrong" as I don't believe in the whole "play as the artist intended" crap, but I'm just saying this is why people aren't getting as much "actiony" gameplay out of it.

[Phobus]

In my experience, I can't just blaze through a room like I would in Doom if I wanted to get through to the next room. I have to hide, take advantageous shots to kill the "wave" currently in the room and then run through before it's respawned a re-established a status-quo. As I never play either CoD or Doom with autoaim (although the LDS-view centring on an enemy in CoD might count) I think the comparison I made is a fair one.

[_bruce_]

Hellbent said:

Adrian Carmack.

A man of honed skills and vivid imagination.
May he enjoy his millions.

[Pirx]

_bruce_ said:

A man of honed skills and vivid imagination.
May he enjoy his millions.

i wish he didn't leave id. he has a unique art style, something i enjoyed in doom and quake. it's what gives these games their twisted, demonic feel.

[Clonehunter]

I'm gonna go with what's been said already, like, Shotgun, Doomguy HUD Face, and Soundtrack.

[DuckReconMajor]

Phobus said:

In my experience, I can't just blaze through a room like I would in Doom if I wanted to get through to the next room. I have to hide, take advantageous shots to kill the "wave" currently in the room and then run through before it's respawned a re-established a status-quo. As I never play either CoD or Doom with autoaim (although the LDS-view centring on an enemy in CoD might count) I think the comparison I made is a fair one.

Well I was being a bit of a bastard, but really, a lot of times, especially in CoD4, I've tried to stand back and pick everyone off it just didn't work. Having to run out and push aggressively against enemies that indeed could kill you in several hits are some of my favorite moments playing games.

[TimeOfDeath]

When you give the strippers money and they flash their long dangling nipples at you.

[Dragonsbrethren]

Hundreds, nay thousands, of sector-based toilets in pwads.

[Belial]

Phobus said:

The inimitable thing for me is the speed. The tempo of movement, attacks and action is something I've never seen done as well in another FPS, and the modern ones don't do it at all for the most part.

Bulletstorm can be played pretty fast once you learn your way around the maps and start using the weapons respective skill shots effectively. Sliding and leashing enemies whenever possible speeds things up as well.

[DoomGater]

chainsaw!