OldDoomer

If you look at my register date I only recently have joined in the forum discussions. However, I've been lurking Doomworld since around Y2K when /newstuff was just getting up and running. I actually contribute the relative loss of the "front page" and /newstuff to be one of the reasons I never actually joined the forums until recently, as I've discovered a lot more going on that I often simply never paid mind to. To elaborate on that, back in the day if I wanted to see what was going on with Doom all I had to do was check /newstuff and I could get the low-down on what was likely good to play just from the reviews. That's what I remember most about /newstuff. I didn't have to personally dive into the /idgames archive to look for WADs. Others had taken the time to do that, play through WADs, and could give their feedback. Did that limit my perspective on Doom in the past over two and a half decades? Sure, one could argue that. Myself as someone who has been incredibly casual with Doom since it's release and was into adulthood (ex: less time to dedicate to gaming) when /newstuff came along, it was an invaluable resource and I personally couldn't thank enough those that took time to review WADs. I personally was very sad to see the front page & /newstuff cease. Yet if I only had one real gripe against /newstuff, there was often this relative expanse in review length compared to how simply WADs could be reviewed. I actually found this rather strange, considering that WADs themselves since near the beginning of custom WADs has carried a mostly agreed-upon format for TXT files to accompany new WADs uploaded to the /idgames archives. I think /newstuff could have easily gotten along with a similar review style, or say some sort of more set concrete format. Reviews could really trailed at times, and many others were often very short snips or sentences. However a WAD that was say necessarily not that good could have really be critiqued very hard with more accompanying text by it's reviewer, while on the other hand a good WAD could have a reviewer that just said "Hey, this is great. Play it." Even in the /idgames archives you can find a similar spread of reviews, from one sentence to sometimes detailed analysis. I would think to those that ran /newstuff, there was quite a bit more going on that met the eye. You first have to have volunteers to actually play and review new material. It sounds simple enough but you really need people that can not only dedicate the time required but also explain what they played competently. I would also think another issue that could be brought up is relative skill level, especially as Doom got older. For example, most mappers that do not implement skill levels into their WADs for the most part build around Ultra-Violence, however did the reviewer - especially if they were relatively new to Doom - take this into account? It's one thing to play a WAD "made for Ultra-Violence" on I'm To Young to Die, and play the same WAD "made for Ultra-Violence" on Ultra-Violence. I would guess that a few years ago up until now there have been a lot of new players of Doom that weren't even born in the 1990s, whereas in 2000 probably everyone coming to Doomworld had plenty of gameplay time in Doom regardless of where the FPS genre was going during that point. The current issue I have with the sidebar and star system is it can pull file reviews from effectively the entire gambit of the /idgames archives, and it doesn't serve that feedback from relatively "new" material. As I type this reply there is even a review for Doomsday of UAC. I personally don't need to see a review for Doomsday of UAC; I remember playing it not long after it was uploaded back in the day. I truly don't know how effective someone reviewing say Doomsday of UAC, or Icarus, or Requiem, is in 2021. Much older levels have been critiqued inside & out and forwards & back.

Play how you want. Ultimately why worry about what others say? Mouse look was a thing when Doom originally was released... for left and right directions. Remember that Doom effectively is not a true 3D game, so in vanilla there would have been no need to look up or down. Your bullets would hit anything above or below you, and most chasms & pitfalls were a game of chance anyways the first time you played through them. Like Bauul said and what I agree with, as long as you're not utilizing any exploits by being able to freelook (and directly aim) up and down like in many source ports then there shouldn't be issues. Where looking up and down could be exploited is exactly as was said; being able to trigger shoot-able switches or walls by looking vertically and exploiting otherwise non-exploitable weaknesses of enemies such as the Icon of Sin. When source ports started to allow full freelook I played quite a bit with it and where authors explicitly say they want it utilized in their levels I follow their intention, but when I play any classic levels or WADs meant to mimic vanilla or classic gameplay I revert back to level horizontal mouse movement.

It's always interesting to see people play the ports for the first time. I bought the PS1 port not long after it released in 1995. I have to personally echo what Dark Pulse mentioned. The PS1 port of Doom is an enjoyable romp when played on Ultra-Violence as a lot of Doom II monsters appear very early on and their placement can play with your strategy some on how you would normally approach levels you would be familiar with from playing PC Doom. For example, playing PS1's Hangar on Ultra-Violence adds a Chain Gunner in the area behind the alcove of the computer room prior to the zig-zag and a Pain Elemental to the elevator secret. While the Pain Elemental is likely easily dispatched, encountering a Chain Gunner this early in the game gives you the chaingun in the Hangar as opposed to acquiring it through the outdoor secret in the next level. Coupling this with the abundance of former humans present mean you're likely to use the chaingun more early on, rather than if you were playing PC Doom where you would probably be using the shotgun acquired through the green armor alcove as it tends to be a fairly versatile weapon with enough ammunition replenished from Shotgunners. I'd even go as far as to say that once you have the control scheme down - the PS1's controls with a non-analog PS1 controller are a real pain - you may wish to reconsidering going back through the game on Ultra-Violence, where you will undoubtedly enjoy the port tens of times over. Something to immediately keep in mind as you play is that the port bases itself on the Atari Jaguar port, which itself is an interesting anecdote that you'll experience later on. Members like Dark Pulse can explain it in more detail that I won't give justice in trying, but there was a lot of reduction in what the PS1 port uses such as lacking many of the various textures and flats utilized. You've likely noticed that many of the early tech areas look, well... rather bare, compared to say if you were playing them on PC where they often carried more texture detail. This is going to continue through most of the entire game, and into the onslaught of hell and hell levels. The Jaguar port also only featured the first three episodes of Doom. Levels that would have been in Thy Flesh Consumed and Doom II did not have a Jaguar -equivalence. This means that while early levels will have very obvious changes from their PC counterparts the later levels were near taken from their PC counterparts (extremely large levels were simply omitted). On Ultra-Violence this can cause all sorts of issues with the game in the large levels, with everything from slowdown to soft locking and/or crashing the game. The password feature can be looked at in two ways. On one hand it can give you an unfair advantage as it rounds values up. An example is if you play on Ultra-Violence up to the first secret level the Military Base. Obtaining the rocket launcher, backpacks and single rockets does not give the player a number that results in an increment of five. If you then quit the game and enter the password the player is given a rocket ammo value that equals an increment of five (it's been a while, but I think it goes from 12 to 15 if you don't fire a single rocket prior to level 4). On the other hand it's values that you can easily change and you can have fun playing around with values to see what results. You can even go beyond the 200 health and armor limits of the game by entering in particular strings (it negates health and/or armor pick ups until they return to below 200, but still a weird anomaly). There are of course other little surprises you're going to come across, but it's best not spoil them. I felt the port really started to pick up after leaving what would have been PC Doom's first "episode", and has the relative advantage in that after you finish Phobos Anomaly you continue with your current weapons and pick-ups which further changes how to approach what would be the second "episode".

When Doom came out on the PSX there wasn't any support for the analog stick controls, so in retrospect when I go back to PSX Doom (I still have my original copy I bought new) the controls show some shortcomings. The PS1's d-pad (and arguably all PS console's d-pads) isn't really easy to flick or more dynamically move like a thumb stick would be as the d-pad would have been what you used to move both forward and side to side (along with strafe on the L1 and R1). Most modern console FPS games don't function with that control scheme as you would probably be using one to 'look' around and the other to move. Ideally it's nice to have two sets of thumb sticks or a thumb stick and a d-pad present so that you can move forward and backward with one and side to side with the other. Playing the PSX Doom on an actual PS1 with just one d-pad can be a bit of a shock for first time players that aren't used to that sort of control.

The PS3 version of BFG Edition was great just for the control alone. Playing a classic Doom port with a non-analog controller isn't fun. I pulled out the PS1 Doom a while back and immediately forgot it has no support for analog sticks, so performing some dodging maneuvers such as circle strafing is difficult. This was a issue with most circa console ports due to limited controls and likely affected how people approached Doom that didn't start on PC, as PC players can use a combination of the keyboard and mouse. The first Doom I played was the 32X port, and I can't imagine trying to play it on a Genesis six button pad with needing to actually hold down a button and us the D-pad to strafe. I also enjoyed that it can be played in a 4:3 viewing aspect, similar to if you use a modern source port on PC and change the aspect. I don't have a proper converter for all my older consoles so if I play a classic Doom port on one I'm at the mercy of horizontally stretched screens.

I'd say the PS1 port was the Doom game I played the most. I actually owned the 32X port prior (I never thought it was a bad as people make it out to be) and I didn't own a computer at home until very late 1996. However the day the PS1 port released I went to the store and bought it. Weirdly enough I didn't actually own a Playstation at that point. I bought the game first to have it, and then a week later got the Playstation. I nowadays play with GZdoom and a mouse, but getting into this groove was very difficult initially. I had mostly only played FPS games on consoles and didn't quite understand how to effectively utilize both a keyboard and mouse. Nowadays if I pop in the PS1 Doom for nostalgia it's the opposite; playing with a controller seems incredibly difficult and very limiting. I also managed to find someone with a copy of Doom and I owned a PS1 link cable, so we were able to link two PS1s together to play against one another. In hindsight the link cable was such a wasted purchase, but the PS1 Doom was the first time I had played a deathmatch against another player. I've not come across many individuals that actually utilized the PS1 link cable with Doom, so it's a nice memory.

I still have the long box PS1 release I bought new and play it periodically. Particularly to see how bad I can corrupt maps with lots of Lost Souls, as the maps can go haywire if you knock a glitched Lost Soul so far off the map it hits the boundaries. The corruption that ensues is hilarious.