Gamer Plays Doom For the First Time 362
sfraggle writes "Kotaku has an interesting review of Doom (the original!) by Stephen Totilo, a gamer and FPS player who, until a few days ago, had gone through the game's 17-year history without playing it. He describes some of his first impressions, the surprises that he encountered, and how the game compares to modern FPSes. Quoting: 'Virtual shotgun armed, I was finally going to play Doom for real. A second later, I understood the allure the video game weapon has had. In Doom the shotgun feels mighty, at least partially I believe because they make first-timers like me wait for it. The creators make us sweat until we have it in hand. But once we have the shotgun, its big shots and its slow, fetishized reload are the floored-accelerator-pedal stuff of macho fantasy. The shotgun is, in all senses, instant puberty, which is to say, delicately, that to obtain it is to have the assumed added potency that a boy believes a man possesses vis a vis a world on which he'd like to have some impact. The shotgun is the punch in the face the once-scrawny boy on the beach gives the bully when he returns a muscled linebacker.'"
It's not as bad as it looks (Score:4, Informative)
Some of the writing is godawful:
Re:needs to try windoom or zdoom or other ports an (Score:1, Informative)
Here's a list of ports he should try:
Skulltag
ZDaemon
GZDoom
Doom Legacy
Doomsday
All of these ports are purist-compatible, but also have default features that new gamers expect, like freelooking. Personally, I recommend Skulltag. It's got all of the things you want for playing Doom, plus it's got kickass multiplayer and can play every game ever made that was based off of the Doom engine ;)
Re:in fact I wish I could find a way to (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Summary Follows: (Score:3, Informative)
Winds me up as much as noobs who think film started with Tarantino.
Re:Sounds pseudo-intellectual to me. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:needs to try windoom or zdoom or other ports an (Score:1, Informative)
Agreed, ZDoom provides a more solid experience and can still be configured to play just like the vanilla version. Chocolate Doom always works too. I find it funny that the guy didnt bump into Skulltag when looking for multiplayer. He wanted to try.... XBLA Doom II.... Blergh.
Re:obviously a pussy (Score:1, Informative)
Umm... no.
The alcove is there, but there's not a shotgun in it, just on the decent difficult levels there's shotgun dudes there who will either kill you or drop tasty shotguns for you, depending on your hastiness/marksmanship quotient.
If he played on ITYTD or HNTR, then there's no sergeants, hence no shotguns, in that alcove.
FWIW Doom can, in places, be a game of precision aiming -- the pistol and chaingun both hit dead-true the first shot, and have (practically?) infinite range, so by tapping fire repeatedly, one can snipe quite awesomely with the chaingun, at about 2/3 the full rate of fire, but every shot hits. Of course, the weapon sprites aren't lined up to the center of the screen (even when not bobbing), so I taped a carefully aligned thread to my monitor. Since the vertical autoaim (which it seems the n00b in the article didn't understand) only works when you're in line horizontally, a single vertical thread is precisely the right aiming aid -- and makes chaingun sniping insanely effective in deathmatches.
Re:mmmmm (Score:4, Informative)
Admitted, it's not an FPS but a first-person role playing game, but still - a game that really was years ahead of its time. And not only technologically.
Re:Sounds pseudo-intellectual to me. (Score:2, Informative)
Sounds pseudo-intellectual to me
You're unfamiliar with the new game journalism, eh?
Re:Nice (Score:3, Informative)
Just wait till you see Doom 2. 7x 720k floppy disks? No game after Doom come close in making a truly awesome rocket launcher, imo.
Re:Sounds pseudo-intellectual to me. (Score:2, Informative)
You would know. Their 'waifu' are those stupid lolicon pillows.
http://www.geekologie.com/2009/07/29/2D-love.jpg [geekologie.com]
Doom? Is that supposed the old stupid game with the rickroll boom box?!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aJjMOy-Ops [youtube.com]
and the blue tails runnin thru map01 firing shotguns since tails are foxes are the best, on the multiplayer geting a DOUBLE KILLS and role play with MAH BOIS etc.
http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Doom [encycloped...matica.com] http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/LINK_MAH_BOIIIII [encycloped...matica.com]
Doom's image has been tarnished plenty by these kinds of newbies these days. They no longer understand its contextual relevance and its significance.
http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Shit_Nobody_Cares_About [encycloped...matica.com]
Re:Did they use a Monster card? (Score:3, Informative)
3dfx is dead.
They've gone bankrupt since 2000 [wikipedia.org]
But I share your sentiments, once I got my Voodoo Banshee card and got some extra RAM in my Pentium I was king on earth.
Re:"The shotgun is mighty" (Score:3, Informative)
You mean GZdoom, not Zdoom - G is the one with 3d acceleration and OpenGL stuff.
Re:17 years? OMG!!! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:He didn't get the doom experience. (Score:1, Informative)
>Under no circumstances should you have an online map open in your browser like the reviewer
Not to mention that Doom, unlike many modern games, has a built in automap. Just hit TAB and you should be looking at a live map that shows everywhere you have explored so far. Some levels even provide a power up that gives you the entire map. If you really have to, cheats will also reveal the entire map. From my experience exploring the levels was half of the fun. (Very much like Ulitma Underworld)
Running Doom in a web browser of all things does it a great injustice for a variety of experience, interface, and technological reasons. How did this guy fail to find Zdoom or Skulltag? Heck, with Skulltag you can play multiplayer Doom for free with a variety of Doom mods!