shihonage
Second Variety Games
Nope.
If I had just one sentence to describe the essence of a well designed large enemy encounter in SS then it would be: a high number of decisions the player has to make in a unit of time in a constantly changing environment.
It's achieved by:
- giving the player weapons with different strengths and weaknesses;
- throwing at the player hordes of enemies (preferably from various directions) of various types that require different weapons to kill them most effectively;
- a relatively large open space (preferably with few or no obstructions and places to hide).
Those elements create a CONSTANTLY changing scenario where you are forced to be aware of everything that happens around you and to CONSTANTLY make decisions about which weapon to use in the current moment and how to dodge, based on what kind of enemies you are facing, how they are located, what weapons you have, how much ammo, how much health, how powerups are located around the arena etc.
[...]
And the fun in SS is not supposed to come from exploring the level while feeling a sense of dread or suspense and fighting small groups or individual enemies that are baring your way. The real fun comes from those tens and hundreds of small decisions that you make during a single large encounter. The more decisions (up to a point) you have to make in a unit of time, the more the fun.
Yeah except the Doom 2 design is inclusive of all this, and a lot more. That's the superiority that you get with actual level design - you can make areas with large arenas where all hell breaks loose, without straitjacketing the player into the boring experience of doing this for the entirety of the game.
What are we arguing about, again? If you're trying to say "Serious Sam is as good as Doom but just different", then, well, you can't.