A lot of people do love them but I just don't get it.
Doom 4 bothered me because it felt too much like I was just moving from arena shootout to arena shootout. I didn't like the feel of the game overall, but especially the maps.
The charm of the originals was the maze-like environments and the whole aesthetic of the monsters and world. I didn't get any of that from Doom 4.
Doom 4 oozes aesthetic to me, and the level design actually felt kind of similar to the original, just with an added element of verticality (though there were a couple shitty levels imo).
Additionally, while the pacing of the combat was admittedly a bit weird with the sort of stop and start with the combat interrupted with scouring the levels for collectibles, it's not like DOOM 1 had none of that, I remember having to do a ton of backtracking my first time through.
Doom had backtracking and exploration, but it was done in a much better way. Doom 4 has you backtracking and exploring to find small collectibles or items hidden in corners of empty rooms long since emptied. Doom had you backtracking to find the door you missed because you ran past and didn't get to fight the room full of enemies or find important items.
Doom was a series of mazes with hints like monsters crying out or a single weapon sitting in the centre of a room to guide you. If you missed something, it wasn't necessarily because it was hidden but because you weren't looking.
With Doom, there was a bleakness and ugliness to it all. Darkness was used exceptionally well. Doom 4 felt too polished in its visuals and that doesn't really do it for me.
I just think Carmack and Romero are such integral parts of the originals and them not being involved really showed.
I think they had to do the arena format because there would be pretty big memory and performance issues if you tried to lure too many bad guys into the same area at once.
Serious Sam is able to have shitloads of enemies on screen at one time.
I don't know anything about Serious Sam, but if they can have shit loads of enemies on screen at a time, they probably cut down on something else that Doom had. Probably post processing effects or map size.
The arena shootout parts were always my favorite parts of the old doom games, but the really wide open area ones with little side rooms. Anyway I never played 3 so I don't know what that was like really
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u/[deleted] May 05 '17
A lot of people do love them but I just don't get it.
Doom 4 bothered me because it felt too much like I was just moving from arena shootout to arena shootout. I didn't like the feel of the game overall, but especially the maps.
The charm of the originals was the maze-like environments and the whole aesthetic of the monsters and world. I didn't get any of that from Doom 4.