I’ve been looking at Vive Pro or Valve Index, but a complete set is crazy expensive, either way.
There’s no way I’m going to do that considering the amount of games I even want to play with it is very small.
I’d get way more from upgrading my CPU & GPU for the same price.
Doom Eternal is the opposite of a “classic FPS” in just about every way possible.
Sorry, what? Did you even play any classic FPS games?
The gun handling, the speed, the focus on constant movement vs. hiding behind “safe” covers, the focus on action instead of storytelling - all of this is pretty straight from the 90s / early 2000s.
Sure, it has fancy graphics, fancy death animations, a teeny tiny RPG touch via upgrades, and lots of other technical upgrades, but the core of this is more UT (for example) than it is any of last dozen CoD/GoW/etc. games.
Mechanically, nah. As you mentioned - RPG upgrades all over the place. Glory kills to replenish health, specific weapon kills to replenish armor and ammo. Platforming, and not Sin or Duke Nukem platforming, more like Super Mario platforming. It’s nothing like old school Doom.
So? You’d also upgrade in the old games.
There is no gameplay difference between picking up a new weapon and upgrading a weapon via whatever means.
The result is the same no matter what: Your available arsenal improves.
You could easily apply similar upgrading to Doom 1 or Doom 2 and it would not significantly alter the gameplay - other than making it much easier, that is, but easy or hard doesn’t change a game’s genre. That’s just the difficulty.
Same with the methods of replenishment. In the old games, you’d find health, armor and ammo packs.
Adding more methods of replenishment changes nothing about the type of gameplay - especially not if those methods are simply integrated in playing the game normally and not a weird addition on top.
This is true, actually.
It’s more like Quake or UT. Doom was way less… dynamic?
I can’t agree with this at all.
And what about it don’t you agree with?
That you’d find replenishments in the old games? I doubt it, that should be pretty clear.
Old doom games = classic FPS with in-mission refilling.
New doom games = classic FPS with in-mission refilling.
There’s no huge difference in how you play between those games. In the newer ones, you’ll go for melee more often for the reward. But to make up for that, you also find a lot fewer health packs lying around.
It’s not like you could suddenly be all careless* - play bad and you’ll die and can restart the level, just like in the old games. Play well and you won’t even need the replenishments, just like in the old games.
*Granted, Doom 2016 had too much refilling, making you entirely unstoppable by the end of the game even on the hardest difficulties. And that was a shame. From all I’ve seen, Doom Eternal is much better in this regard.
Considering you have to do this anyway on top of purchasing the headset, I’d say that’s the right choice. I have a Quest, but my ancient gaming PC cannot possibly run this game, so I’m sitting it out.
I’m not about to engage in a crazy back and forth over this. We disagree on how Doom Eternal shakes out mechanically as old school or not. Let’s leave it at that.
There is pretty much nothing in the moment-to-moment rhythm, overall pacing, and character/weapon progression of Doom Eternal that suggests classic first-person shooters. But otherwise, yeah, you’re shooting guns at stuff, so it’s got that connection to older games.
I think where you’re on particularly shaky ground is lumping in Doom Eternal with retro revival projects like Black Mesa and the Halo collection. Those are classic because they’re old and, frankly, kind of rote updates. Doom Eternal is a whole other design that owes more to the 2016 Doom than anything id made back in the day.
But this is mainly a semantic argument about what constitutes a classic FPS. In my book, Doom Eternal has way to much stuff that’s new and different to qualify. If you want an example of recent nods to classic FPS, you probably have to look to indie projects like Dusk, Ion Fury, Amid Evil, that sort of thing.
-Tom
Played through all of those, as well as Doom 2016. Well, I didn’t finish Amid Evil, guess I was a bit burnt out on the genre at that point… After playing Dusk and Ion Fury, that one just seemed lacking in atmosphere to me.
Either way, I would put all of them down in the same broad category, as - except for the progression - they all play quite similar.
Not identical, mind you, just like Duke Nukem didn’t play exactly like Doom didn’t play exactly like Blood didn’t play exactly like Quake …
But those games, including Doom 2016/Eternal, have way more in common with each other than what separates them. Otherwise people who liked one of them wouldn’t like the others - and I don’t know too many who’d fit that description.
And they are all clearly distinct from the much slower, cover-based shooters.
Which, other than the fact - as you pointed out - you’re shooting guns at stuff, really have little to nothing in common with classic FPS games. And I know a lot of people clearly prefer either the slower cover-shooters or the faster classic FPS games.
I think it’s pretty hard to compare Doom 2016 (and especially Eternal)'s focus on verticality and fast, fluid level traversal to any classic single player shooter. It’s almost a parkour game, and nothing from those 90s shooters felt like that. You mention Quake 3 Arena and Unreal Tournament, and I agree those are a closer match, but to say “hey, these single player shooters feel a lot like those classic multiplayer arena shooters” is not actually describing a throwback - that’s something single player games didn’t really do in the 90s.
And while I can understand your saying that generating resources from enemies is similar to the way old school FPS games did it, I don’t really agree. Maybe it’s more similar than regenerating health, but to learn a 90s FPS (or what Tom just referred to as a modern throwback FPS like Amid Evil or Ion Fury) was to learn the placement of pickups in the level, because you needed them to recharge and survive. Doom 2016 and Eternal are asking you to dynamically juggle enemies as resources, killing or keeping them alive situationally to your own advantage, which is a type of gameplay puzzle that’s pretty much entirely new to the genre.
I dunno. Again, I see some of your point, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near enough of a slam dunk to start “did you even play?”-ing people about disagreeing with it.
For me it’s not about how the game feels compared to classic shooters, it’s how the game makes me feel. And DOOM 2016 and Eternal both put me in the same frame of mind and and get my juices flowing exactly the same way DOOM, Duke3D, Quake 2, and other games used to in the 90s. Yes, the new games are much more, but it takes that much more now days to put me in that zone.
I end my modern DOOM sessions feeling much like I did back then, and that trumps any granular replication of gameplay long past.
That’s true, of course, but I didn’t say Doom 2016/Eternal was a throwback or exactly like the old games. In contrast to something like Ion Fury, it doesn’t even really try to go for the nostalgia.
But it is nonetheless within the same genre of classic or old-school FPS games - obviously with some additions, changes, or evolutions if you want to call it that. Its “parkour” elements (I like that!), for example, are a step up from the vertical movement of something like UT (which was very vertical), but by no means something that hasn’t been seen before.
It is possible that it is something that hasn’t been seen before so well executed and so fluid.
I get your point about enemies as resources in the new Dooms. It does make some sense, but never felt to me like that. I just played it like I played the old games, go in, go fast, don’t stop moving, jump around like crazy, kill everything that moves, relying almost exclusively on my reflexes.
With the only difference that now my kills give me some resources.
Dude, that’s like saying Skyrim is within the same genre of classic or old-school RPGs – obviously with some additions, changes, or evolutions if you want to call it that.
There’s a point where you’re using a term so broadly as to make it meaningless. By your rationale, Rage, Deus Ex: Humankind Whatever, Mirror’s Edge, and Overwatch are all classic or old-school FPS games.
Heh, here we are, arguing shooter semantics in an Alyx VR thread. Hopefully folks that want to talk about Alyx don’t mind because they’re in the other thread.
-Tom
I think the disconnect here is that the DOOMs went in an utterly different direction from other modern FPS games like Halo, CoD, Metro, Far Cry, etc. Their moment to moment gameplay feels completely different from those games as you’re forced to be aggressive at all times to succeed, rather than focusing on survival through careful avoidance and tactics. That doesn’t make DOOM gameplay retro so much as different.
It’s true that Wolf3D and the original DOOM games forced you to be aggressive, but that was because they were extremely simplistic games and there wasn’t anything else you could possibly do. You can’t duck behind cover in Wolf3d, there is no cover, you aren’t sneaking up on an enemy outpost and shooting the alarms before clearing it out, all you can do is move and shoot. Similarly very limited resource management, no character progression, etc.
Why you had to be aggressive in the original games is irrelevant. The fact is, you had to be.
Just as you have to be in Doom 2016/Eternal. And that is the core difference between those games and cover shooters.
Rage, possibly (I barely remember the game, tbh, it was so forgettable). The new Deus Ex games are prime examples of cover-based shooters (oh and they are also way more RPG hybrids).
Mirror’s Edge? lol…
Overwatch? That’s a multiplayer shooter with an extreme focus on working together as a team. And playing there like you would in Doom just gets everyone killed (on your team).
So, no, they are not all classic or old-school FPS games.
And Doom 2016/Eternal still are.
Also, “so broadly as to make it meaningless”?
That would be FPS. Or RPG. But even those still carry quite enough meaning to differentiate them from say, “puzzle games”.
Maybe you are irked by the name “classic” FPS? As Doom Eternal is indeed somewhat different from, say, Ion Fury. But how these FPS focus on constant movement, being aggressive and in the middle of the action at all times over hiding away and sneaking around is the same.
And it sure doesn’t look classic.
Doom Eternal is ‘old school’ in the sense that it focuses on fast, complex, brutal action over the plot, or having scripted set pieces.
But like Telefrog says, mechanically is very different from 90s FPS and it has tons of RPG progression.
I wouldn’t say I’m irked. I think my problem is that I’m attempting a conversation with someone too insistent on proving some point. :)
But you’re more than welcome to call Doom Eternal whatever you like. You can even call it a dessert topping if you like!
-Tom
Insistent on proving a point? In a discussion?! With arguments, even?!
Well, you really got me there. I don’t see the purpose of a discussion without trying to get results out of it.
But hey, it’s okay. I’m used to people bowing out of discussions once they run out of arguments or just tire of it (both of which is fine, btw.).
I just might! Might even leave out an s to confuse people.