...letting that ball that shoots flaming skulls out of its mouth

It's called the Pain Elemental

...big tomatoes...

Cacodemon sir!

Just brushing up on my DOOM 101.
This comment was edited on May 24, 04:03.

Okay, I want someone to PROVE to me that DOOM I & II had "hordes of enemies" in numbers greater than two dozen or so on screen at once. Everyone keeps echoing each other about this, and the Serious Sam developers keep capitalizing off the DOOM name, but I suspect that everyone is just wrong about this. It is a collective error.

Granted, the original levels themselves didn't actually have more than about 20 or so enemies at any one point (unless you consider letting that ball that shoots flaming skulls out of its mouth run around for awhile). However, Doom and Doom 2 were also about the myriad of user made levels, some of which are still some of the best levels ever made, and there were levels amongst those that had literally hundreds of imps, big tomatoes etc coming at you at the same time

A friend and I used to coop a certain remake of the original Doom 1 maps with about 400 creatures per map (over direct modem connections no less, sure made our "pay per second" phone companies happy), and those maps even brought my excellent (at the time) 486dx2-66 to its knees.
Ah, but the sheer joy of standing there, watching some walls open, and seeing a massive horde of pinkies run at us, we kinda look at each other, stand back to back, and simultaneously start up those chainsaws.

God I loved Doom.

Creston

I know what you mean Domgrief. It's difficult to describe, but the spirit of doom is there in so many ways (although it lacks the demon underworld abience with a somewhat wierd ensemble of aliens, cyborgs and mutants). Lots of the creatures are very similar in thier attacks and to kill, the weapons pack a similar weight to the original doom, the find-button-to-open-door-and-unleash-more-aliens-style is there in abundance. Unevolved in many ways, I understand why some people don't like it, but the reptile-like base of my brain sometimes takes over and- what can you do?
Don't get me wrong. HL2 will be on my hard drive as soon as that bad boy comes out. It's raising the bar to be sure, looking very closely on how that one pans out.

Zar:

I think the parallel with Doom doesn't really have a great deal to do with thousands of enemies coming at you at once. Similarities are more like:

* Simple puzzles. Find stuff. Walk around. Shoot things

* No strategy, bosses excepted. Sure, there's a bit of a trick to knowing the right weapons for the right monsters, but you won't need a Prima strategy guide to finish it

* Run a mile, hit a button, and run back a mile to places you've previously cleared but have spawned more monsters

* Frequent occasions where you are struggling to cope with the number of enemies. Even with only a dozen or so at once, Doom was really good at this. Sam enemies are fairly tame by comparison, but make up for it in numbers

* Complete lack of emphasis on plot

Also the general feel of the game bears a resemblance to Doom 2. It's hard to describe the sort of absent-minded carnage mindframe that exists in Serious Sam, but if you said, "well, it plays kind of like DOOM," people will know what you're on about.

Serious Sam wasn't all about blowing lot's of stuff up.

It had the pacing and suspenseful moments of a good movie, something many games either don't bother with or simply fail at. They usually involve monsters spawning after obtaining a powerful item, or creepy ambience prior to a big battle. The occasional tongue-in-cheek humor was another rarity. There were even moments when I empathized with that flippant little computer in Sam's head.

The Second Encounter added several memorable setpieces. Such as that cylindrical room where the laws of physics need not apply and the large field of that last great battle which starts out bright and refreshing but darkens into thunder and lightning as monsters flood into it.

SS was DOOM liberated from id's techno-gothic restraints.

this game... bleh
i've got 2 words for you: ghost master
it's addictive, puzzling and fun! what more could you ask for?


"The" Dan
Intel 486SX, Trident video, 8MB RAM, 14" Generic Monitor, 100 MB HDD, Windows 3.11
http://www.ghostmastergame.com
"It's where it's at!" --Dantastic
This comment was edited on May 22, 18:16.

Never heard of them until today. I'm more your western europe kinda guy.

Finally! The true Quake II.

I liked Doom III the first time, when it was called Quake II.

Doom III is really Doom IV.

Doom = space marine vs. space monsters

Quake = space marine vs. gothic/fantasy monsters


Anyhoo, I'm glad to finally see the real Quake II.

Ihya, I'm just curious, do you work for People Can Fly?

Doom 2 Level 16 on nightmare was a classic for our LAN parties if we wanted a co-op high body count... There was a central building to defend and swarms of imps, cacodemons, revenants, and spectres outside. We're talking unending waves of them coming at you... Ahh, the scream of death as you forced them back, the piles of corpses, the accidental slaying of a buddy by a stray missile... fond memories. Even on normal there was a decent body count there.

There were one or two other levels like that. From my experience, nothing has come close to that sense of an entire army coming at you until SS came along. Makes me happy at least this style of gameplay hasn't been left behind totally.

The ones they show in this preview don't do the game any justice, but some of the high res shots i've seen elswhere really look fantastic. I like the horror theme, and I like the stylistic weapon models they are using. Plus no repeating textures is great. I use a great screen from this game as my desktop background just because it looks so cool. The only thing I think they are doing that I don't like is spawning enemies. Once I clear an area, I like it to stay clear, and a surprize attack from the rear of an area I've cleared does nothing for me except piss me off, lol..

Okay, I want someone to PROVE to me that DOOM I & II had "hordes of enemies" in numbers greater than two dozen or so on screen at once. Everyone keeps echoing each other about this, and the Serious Sam developers keep capitalizing off the DOOM name, but I suspect that everyone is just wrong about this. It is a collective error.

Every time I look, it seems to me that the original DOOM mostly had a handful of creatures in a room at any given time. Every once in a while there would be maybe 10 or 20 at once appear, but mostly it was a half-dozen at a time or something like that.

I could be wrong, but someone has to know. Help!



P.S.: I have nothing at all against Serious Sam fans, I just want the record set straight.
This comment was edited on May 22, 13:47.

looks cool

But very cool. It reminds of id Soft and Raven at work here. Doom - Heretic, Serious Sam - PainKiller, Just an odd observation. Still good fun

I missed this style of doom 2 gameplay until serious sam came along. When you don't want to think too hard, mowing down the hordes en masse is a great way to wind down.

There is more than one way to make a good fps.

You do, of course, realize there is more than one demographic for FPS's right?

-Alamar

"But sometimes you just want a shooter with some messy, old-school blood and brutality -- minus the characters who talk too much or the scripted events that get in the way of the killing."

Reading between the lines that translates too 'oh shit, HL2 looks fucking good we aint got a fucking chance'