Wraith wrote on Mar 4, 2011, 08:20:
Utter bilge. Doom and Quake were pure technical achievements. Nothing more. In gameplay they were as simplistic as Wolfenstein. Take away the technical genius of John Carmack and what do you have? Below-average games devoid of innovation.
Bilge? Regardless of how much you enjoyed the games surely you can't argue that they were hugely influential and had a large impact on PC gaming. It brought PC gaming to the mainstream and elevated it to an equal platform as consoles in terms of exposure and as a viable format to publish games on for those developers that were not doing so already.
As for being devoid of innovation, this was the early-mid 90's remember, what exactly did you expect? It was a pure run and gun action FPS. That's the way the game was intended to be. Were you PC gamer then? Surely Doom impressed you on some level? How's about their implementation of multi player as innovation? The word death-match is synonymous with FPS's now. We had never seen a game like it before.
Quake had potential they never exploited. They set up the Elder Gods mythos then did NOTHING with it. Oh look a creature - bang! Oh look a trap. Woe is me. Oh look a door. Guess I'd better open that.
Yeah Quake was more of a technical achievement. Which perhaps shouldn't be surprising when Carmack had more control and influence during it's development. And throughout Quake development Romero was already thinking about leaving the company. Of course this was partly his own fault as he spent more time massaging his ego than working on the game by this stage.
Romero gets shit for being a conceited air-head who can't deliver. The only 'game design' he ever did was level editing. Nothing more.
He did more with Doom than level editing. It was his vision and his ideas.
(I mean, seriously... Doom IV guys? Really? It's been 15 years. Let it go.)
Mario, Zelda, Need for Speed and a shed load more games would like a word with you there. Personally I'm quite excited at the thought of another game. Although if it's another Doom 3 it won't be anything special.
This comment was edited on Mar 14, 2011, 06:13.