I just played Quake 2

[CorpseZeb]

(...) (lots of cuts).

Except Doom's levels were much more diverse and memorable.

Well, "diverse" and "memorable" are personal emotions, on the other hand "design" is more descriptive word. Q2 levels are widely considered as good one or very good one in the design department (considering the Q2 engine constriction).

Btw, If you are into in the mapping activity, even a little bit, feel free to recreate them in - for example - the hammer - and you'll see what I mean.

 

[Sceptic]

It did, as early as level 1. Ok, maybe not behind your back, but if you go to the first outdoor area in first map (the one with water) and clear the doorway ambush (I went through the breakable window and water to be precise), then backtrack for the flak jacket, and go to this area through the cracked floor then use the water path again, the enemies will have respawned.

I don't have time to properly participate but this is not true. Q2 NEVER respawns enemies. What it does is use specific one-time-only scripts to spawn new enemies when you complete specific objectives. Most of the time the new enemies actually come out from newly-opened doors or niches or walls or whatnot, they very rarely just appear out of nowhere.

In any case please do carry on, this is a great discussion you've got going.

 

[praetor]

Hell, even Quake - both are hi-tech + supernatural evil, except Doom's supernatural evil consists of somewhat corny demons from hell, while Quake's is more lovecraftian.

what the fuck?! have you ever read any Lovecraft? what enemy in Q1 looks like a lovecraftian creature? if it weren't for the final boss' name, nobody would've ever made that connection. Q1 is as "lovecraftian" as Call of Duty (yes, it's a hyperbole)

 

[commie]

I think that Gunship and Hind have aged pretty well.

Hind yes, and Gunship 2000(I assume you mean) still has fucking great game play even if it's simple. There's also LHX. I wish they made it exactly the same with new graphics, just like I wish they remade Their Finest Hour, SWOTL, Aces of Pacific, Europe, Commanche, Fighters' Anthology. Many of those didn't age well graphically such as F-19, Jetfighter, F-15 Strike Eagle.

Even those that are still somewhat playable, are pretty primitive and limited as sims and something that gives the appearance of real combat what with blocky squares and triangles as aircraft and ground units. Locations were also mostly flat with few units here and there, for the most part static. This is why they didn't age all that well. Only really from 1996 and particularly 1998 onwards when 3d acceleration became the norm did flight sims really start to become 'timeless'.

 

[DraQ]

I don't have time to properly participate but this is not true. Q2 NEVER respawns enemies. What it does is use specific one-time-only scripts to spawn new enemies when you complete specific objectives. Most of the time the new enemies actually come out from newly-opened doors or niches or walls or whatnot, they very rarely just appear out of nowhere.

Sorry, bad phrasing on my part. I know that Q2 never respawns existing enemies (which would invalidate the point of level kill ratio), but in this case it spawns a couple of guards in slightly different positions based on a script trigger and approaching from different direction can get them to "respawn" even though you've already minced "them" (those previous guards that looked exactly identical and were in the same place, that is).

Plus, letting an enemy "burst" through a wall behind you (trigger explodes a wall, enemy runs out and mauls you takes SSG in the face) isn't much different to spawning him in a corridor behind you (rationale being that he came from somewhere else) and then letting him run out at you.

In any case please do carry on, this is a great discussion you've got going.

P.S. Medics are cool, but would have been better with stronger weapon (then again, everything in Q2 is pathetic in terms of threat posed) and would work better if you couldn't gib enemies after killing them / could only gib them with explosions.

what the fuck?! have you ever read any Lovecraft? what enemy in Q1 looks like a lovecraftian creature? if it weren't for the final boss' name, nobody would've ever made that connection. Q1 is as "lovecraftian" as Call of Duty (yes, it's a hyperbole)

Easy now.

Inspiration is pretty obvious, even though popping horrors with a RL does lessen them a lot.

Anyway, it's still better than Dante fucking Aligheri running around hell with fucking scythe.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

"Lovecraftian" is extremely overused though. Fucking Reapers from ME are often described as such, even though they're essentially huge, dumb robots. A lot of decently smart people think Amnesia's plot is "Lovecraftian", and that's as straight-up classical gothic horror as possible without involving Dracula. I get that everyone likes Lovecraft (although I doubt a whole lot of people have actually read a lot of his stuff), but him and King don't exhaust the entire literary horror aesthetic.

 

[Cassidy]

Anyone who uses "lovecraftian" as a buzzword should be eaten by a shoggoth.

Quake and Doom have more to do with trash horror movies than with anything else.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I think that Gunship and Hind have aged pretty well.

Hind yes, and Gunship 2000(I assume you mean) still has fucking great game play even if it's simple. There's also LHX. I wish they made it exactly the same with new graphics, just like I wish they remade Their Finest Hour, SWOTL, Aces of Pacific, Europe, Commanche, Fighters' Anthology. Many of those didn't age well graphically such as F-19, Jetfighter, F-15 Strike Eagle.

Even those that are still somewhat playable, are pretty primitive and limited as sims and something that gives the appearance of real combat what with blocky squares and triangles as aircraft and ground units. Locations were also mostly flat with few units here and there, for the most part static. This is why they didn't age all that well. Only really from 1996 and particularly 1998 onwards when 3d acceleration became the norm did flight sims really start to become 'timeless'.

I meant the first Gunship. To me one of the appeals of Gunship are its graphics, especially on C64. The other is that I can play it in a relatively non-arcade flight mode without having to care about moving joystick with great precision.

 

[Oriental European]

Except Doom's levels were much more diverse and memorable.

Doom's battles were divers and memorable, not levels.

 

[commie]

I think that Gunship and Hind have aged pretty well.

Hind yes, and Gunship 2000(I assume you mean) still has fucking great game play even if it's simple. There's also LHX. I wish they made it exactly the same with new graphics, just like I wish they remade Their Finest Hour, SWOTL, Aces of Pacific, Europe, Commanche, Fighters' Anthology. Many of those didn't age well graphically such as F-19, Jetfighter, F-15 Strike Eagle.

Even those that are still somewhat playable, are pretty primitive and limited as sims and something that gives the appearance of real combat what with blocky squares and triangles as aircraft and ground units. Locations were also mostly flat with few units here and there, for the most part static. This is why they didn't age all that well. Only really from 1996 and particularly 1998 onwards when 3d acceleration became the norm did flight sims really start to become 'timeless'.

I meant the first Gunship. To me one of the appeals of Gunship are its graphics, especially on C64. The other is that I can play it in a relatively non-arcade flight mode without having to care about moving joystick with great precision.

Eh...I like my old games as much as the next man but you can't tell me that this has aged well:

Game play wise I don't doubt that it still can be fun. Shit I played the C64 version and loved it so much that I bought the far inferior Amstrad version for my computer and must have put in hundreds of hours into it back in the day. I would land, rearm, refuel until every single enemy on the map was gone(there was a bug in the Amstrad version where if you didn't leave at least one enemy alive it would crash the game). Still, you can't deny that it doesn't quite stack up to something from even a decade and a half ago, such as Apache Longbow which still looks and plays like a 'modern' game. That's what I meant by 'aged well' I guess. You really have to be really into the subject matter to overlook the limitations something that you don't need to do so much with adventure games or strategy titles or RPG's.

Having said all that it's heartening to see that there's someone else that can look past such primitiveness and enjoy himself with and ancient flight sim. Even in 1995 when I would fire up SWOTL, I had people laughing at how primitive it looked, yet sometimes now I take it up for a spin as I enjoy the campaigns and simple joy of flying.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Eh...I like my old games as much as the next man but you can't tell me that this has aged well:

I don't see anything on that screen that hasn't aged well. Lines are still lines, points are still points, rectangles are still rectangles - it's not like there was some great technological advance that makes modern points and lines look much better.
And c64 palette is still great.

Also, I started playing Gunship when Gunship was already "outdated" - in Arcades I would play games like Cadillacs & Dinosaurs, Mad Dog Mc Cree, Afterburner, Terminator 2, etc. They didn't make Gunship not age well.

Game play wise I don't doubt that it still can be fun. Shit I played the C64 version and loved it so much that I bought the far inferior Amstrad version for my computer and must have put in hundreds of hours into it back in the day. I would land, rearm, refuel until every single enemy on the map was gone(there was a bug in the Amstrad version where if you didn't leave at least one enemy alive it would crash the game). Still, you can't deny that it doesn't quite stack up to something from even a decade and a half ago, such as Apache Longbow which still looks and plays like a 'modern' game. That's what I meant by 'aged well' I guess. You really have to be really into the subject matter to overlook the limitations something that you don't need to do so much with adventure games or strategy titles or RPG's.

Apache Longbow has a completely different graphics style, though. It doesn't have point-infantry and pyramid hills, for example.
Similarly, in comparison to Apache Longbow, Enemy Engaged doesn't have untextured terrain and models with nice colours.

 

[DraQ]

"Lovecraftian" is extremely overused though. Fucking Reapers from ME are often described as such, even though they're essentially huge, dumb robots. A lot of decently smart people think Amnesia's plot is "Lovecraftian", and that's as straight-up classical gothic horror as possible without involving Dracula. I get that everyone likes Lovecraft (although I doubt a whole lot of people have actually read a lot of his stuff), but him and King don't exhaust the entire literary horror aesthetic.

Anyone who uses "lovecraftian" as a buzzword should be eaten by a shoggoth.

Quake and Doom have more to do with trash horror movies than with anything else.

Sorry, but the inspiration is evident even if butchery is as well.
Besides, it's not as if id were the only ones to butcher Lovecraft. Hell, the mythos were raped by no one other but the very person who coined the term "cthulhu mythos" - Derleth.

Or should we also claim that Diablo has nothing in common with judeochristian mythology, because in judeochristian mythology you can't just walk into hell and brain Satan with a huge axe?

Doom's battles were divers and memorable, not levels.

If so, sorry, but I don't think I remember any.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Sorry, but the inspiration is evident even if butchery is as well.
Besides, it's not as if id were the only ones to butcher Lovecraft. Hell, the mythos were raped by no one other but the very person who coined the term "cthulhu mythos" - Derleth.

Or should we also claim that Diablo has nothing in common with judeochristian mythology, because in judeochristian mythology you can't just walk into hell and brain Satan with a huge axe?

"Judeochristian mythology" is an extremely broad topic, composed of a huge amount of works, themes and archetypes, spanning over 2000 years of real-world history. Lovecraft is one author, not even particularly prolific, who stands out because of a specific set of themes and narrative devices he employed, and in many ways strongly influenced by his peers. There is a major difference. Not everything has to be fucking Lovecraftian, seriously. And especially not those retarded "Cthulhu mythos" writers, who think a plot revolving around a bunch of scientists staging fake oil drills in order to kill old gods sleeping underground with nukes, is an awesome idea. I am not even joking. I can even dig up that one if you're interested.

 

[Sceptic]

I am not even joking. I can even dig up that one if you're interested.

The urge to ask you to do so is irresistible, even if I know I'll poke my brains out after reading it.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

I am not even joking. I can even dig up that one if you're interested.

The urge to ask you to do so is irresistible, even if I know I'll poke my brains out after reading it.

PROCEED AT YOUR OWN PERIL, MY BROTHERS.

 

[DraQ]

Wasn't Lumleyrape just a continuation of Derlethrape, though?

 

[Lyric Suite]

It isn't though, that's the problem.

Actually, it was. That's precisely the problem. Mindless killing? In my shooter? No wai!!!1

 

[Cassidy]

Sorry, but the inspiration is evident even if butchery is as well.

Demons with exposed guts and cybernetic enhancements coupled with zombies have everything to do with the theme a work of fiction where the horrors are mostly powered by organic or organic-looking, when not straight beyond the universe technology in contrast to the human industrial and mechanical technologies of its time. Specially the kind that SHOW UP STRAIGHT TO YOUR FACE without any kind of build up and can be killed given enough bullets.

By this logic Thief is far more Lovecraftian: Not only the horror in it isn't showed instantly but instead gradually built up, but it also packs a medieval/victorian hybrid setting that fits it much better and even has a Cthulhu statue in a lost city devastated by a mysterious cataclysm Garrett mutters "creepy" about FFS! And not forgetting that you can't really defeat the main villain with a straight up fight and that the protagonist pays a price for his victory while not ultimately "saving the world" or gaining any real reward for it.

 

[DraQ]

Sorry, but the inspiration is evident even if butchery is as well.

Demons with exposed guts and cybernetic enhancements

I was speaking of Q1, not Doom.

 

[Lord Rocket]

It isn't though, that's the problem.

Actually, it was. That's precisely the problem. Mindless killing? In my shooter? No wai!!!1

What the fuck are you talking about? As far as I'm concerned, Doom is the best game ever made. I play bullet hell shmups. I fucking love mindless killing. If there was a MindlessKillingCodex I'd post way more there than I do here.
What I don't like is stuff that's boring, and Quake 2 is boring. I've elaborated on this in this thread before, and DraQ (although I don't agree with everything he says) brings up a couple more points that I missed, such as long 'I'm going to shoot you now' animations (ie. FIND COVER OR YOUR MOLE WILL BE POPPED signals) and the fact that the preponderance of hitscanners leads to proto-popamole gameplay. If you think shooting boring enemies with boring weapons while hidden behind a wall is fun then more power to you, I guess.

stuff

Yeah look, no. Some vague similarities in the level design aside (and frankly you're stretching it there; Q2 is very square compared to Doom, probably because of the whole realism thing, and the locations are usually pretty small and linear; I didn't get lost at all during my recent playthrough. Which would be the first time I've touched the game since 2000, so, you know), the gameplay is entirely different, and, yes, it's popamole. This is closely related to the enemy design - in Doom, only three (comparatively; I'm inclined to think the CG'er had a little too much health given their potential damage output, but whatever) weak enemies used hitscan attacks. In Q2, hitscanning is the order of the day and was frequently an enemy's only effective attack - consider the gunners (?) and their shit GL attack, which basically never hit you - and isn't even z-aware if I recall correctly. I guess D1 and Q2 are similar in the sense that the enemies don't really require different tactics to kill, but D2 really upped the ante in that regard (and even includes some different AI routines for the AV and Revenant). Overall, though, Q2 is about cover and Doom is about dodging. Couldn't be more different at their cores.
As for the weapons loadout; well, sure, they're the standard id weapons. I'm pretty sure Rage used them too (based on gameplay videos I've seen, anyway); does that make Rage a spiritual sequel to Doom? Anyway, The problem is they all have overlapping niches, as I implied before. The weapons replace one another; the SSG makes the SG basically redundant (except at range; but even then you're far better off using the MG or HB or RG), the HB makes the MG redundant (the only reason the CG doesn't do this too is ammo conservation issues; the CG is also grotesquely OP), the RL makes the GL redundant (not that the GL was ever dundant; throwing the Gs by hand was just as useless and it's available to you much sooner). The SSG in Doom does this to some extent but it's spread and slow reloading time still allows the SG some minor use. Then there's the pistol, of course. Other than that, the weapons have very clear niches (actually, even the pistol has a metagame sort of purpose to it - 'you failed, your penalty is getting stuck with this thing'). Again, very different in terms of design.

So, yeah. Not a lot in common with Doom really. Certainly not a 'spiritual sequel'.

 

[Jasede]

Definitely not. Anyone who has played both games should notice the huge difference between fighting two to four dudes at a time fighting fifty or so.
DooM for life; I wish we went back to the mindless killing shooters. It's not a genre that used to be associated with sophistication and it never needed to be. There's room in this world for Half-Life and such but when everything is like that nowadays you kind of have to ask where all the fun has gone.

 

[shihonage]

There's been some solid arguments brought forth and I'm not going to split hairs about them.

This of course doesn't change the fact that even though Quake 2 may not "academically" be a 1:1 replica of Doom, and quite possibly a decline from Doom 1 on gameplay level, everything that came after has distanced itself from Doom far, far more.

I would also argue that "getting lost" in an FPS is not something the level designers should be proud of.

Definitely not. Anyone who has played both games should notice the huge difference between fighting two to four dudes at a time fighting fifty or so.

Nope.

In classic Doom (before they added on the fourth episode) you were never fighting "fifty" enemies. It was usually no more than a handful at a time, tops, which is why I think of that game fondly.

Doom 2 is the one that's gone completely insane with large open spaces filled with dozens upon dozens enemies. I never saw the appeal in that sort of gameplay, as it largely negates the need for level design and minimizes importance of enemy placement.

This is also why double shotgun was introduced, to cut through all the crowds of what was now reduced to status of "trashmobs".

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

It isn't though, that's the problem.

Actually, it was. That's precisely the problem. Mindless killing? In my shooter? No wai!!!1

What the fuck are you talking about? As far as I'm concerned, Doom is the best game ever made. I play bullet hell shmups. I fucking love mindless killing. If there was a MindlessKillingCodex I'd post way more there than I do here.
What I don't like is stuff that's boring, and Quake 2 is boring. I've elaborated on this in this thread before, and DraQ (although I don't agree with everything he says) brings up a couple more points that I missed, such as long 'I'm going to shoot you now' animations (ie. FIND COVER OR YOUR MOLE WILL BE POPPED signals) and the fact that the preponderance of hitscanners leads to proto-popamole gameplay. If you think shooting boring enemies with boring weapons while hidden behind a wall is fun then more power to you, I guess.

Find cover? The whole thing is about shooting the enemy before he shoots you. If you pop up from behind cover you still need to locate the enemy and put a crosshair on him before he does the same to you.

Cover is for making sure that you fight one enemy at time, not for popping up from behind it.

 

[Phelot]

I miss all the enemies going nuts and attacking each other after you die. Why can't we still have that?

 

[Lord Rocket]

We never had that; they'd only go nuts if they were already pissed off at each other. It would be a cool feature though.

Find cover? The whole thing is about shooting the enemy before he shoots you. If you pop up from behind cover you still need to locate the enemy and put a crosshair on him before he does the same to you.

Yeah you've got to do that in CoD too.

I would also argue that "getting lost" in an FPS is not something the level designers should be proud of.

True. One of the beautiful things about Doom's level design was that it had lots of visually distinct areas which made navigation easy and fun. 'Getting lost' in Doom is generally a pleasure, since at least you'll get to see something cool. Personally, I like wandering around interesting environments even if I'm not 100% sure what I'm supposed to be doing (others do too - one of my friends once compared Doom to Roguelikes as exploration is such a big part of the game).

This is also why double shotgun was introduced, to cut through all the crowds of what was now reduced to status of "trashmobs".

You reckon? D2's enemy count still wasn't particulary high. My theory is that the SSG exists as a reaction to the Revenant and Arch Vile - fast enemies with powerful attacks. These two enemy types can do some serious damage to the player if they're not taken down quickly, and since the RL (the closest equivalent to the SSG damage-wise) can have nasty side effects, obv. id needed to plonk in a new, more powerful weapon. Hence SSG. In this scenario, the fact it made the majority of the D1 enemies useless was just a run-on effect kind of thing (the other effect being the HP inflation in D2s other new enemies; see my whinging about chaingunners earlier).
I do think that this was unfortunate - they really should have just toned down the Rev and AV a bit. Never mind.

EDIT: the SSG def. fills that role in many usermade 'slaughtermaps' though; what I'm saying is, I don't think that was necessarily intended by id, rather than it isn't true.