First impressions

[Tijn]

#112

You might not have played Doom in a while. Maybe you haven’t even played it at all?

So, what are your first impressions? Does it look & feel like how you remember it? Is it more old fashioned than you had thought? Or maybe more modern? Is it cool, or a disappointment?

[Tijn]

#113

For me personally, playing Doom feels a lot more fun than I thought it would be. I did play some Doom back in the day, but after having played *a lot* of Wolfenstein 3D it felt kinda the same to me at the time. I also didn’t like the darker atmosphere as much, so I never really got into it.

I’ve never really revisited the game since then, although being such a classic title, it does come up from time to time in discussions and articles and whatnot. I’ve always felt a bit “meh” about the original Doom because it didn’t click with me right away when it came out.

So to much of my surprise, playing it now for DOS Game Club, I was actually having loads of fun with it! I don’t mind the darkness as much now for some reason. It’s not as scary to me as an adult, maybe that’s part of why I’m enjoying it more.

I can also appreciate the level design and flow of the game more than I could back then. I sailed through the first few levels of the first episode quite smoothly and felt the urge to keep playing, so that’s pretty good I suppose! I hope the difficulty will ramp up somewhat in later levels, but I’m sure being an oldschool game that will be no problem. And there’s always the difficulty setting which I can increase of course.

Imagine that, Doom is actually pretty cool. Who knew? I didn’t 😀

[rnlf]

#119

Haha! I guess it was to be expected. But imagine what the game must have been for people who didn’t mind the dark atmosphere back in the day!

[sorceress]

#126

It was one of the first DOS games I’d seen, as someone had installed it on the computers at my school. I was quite amazed by it at the time:

– it was a very smooth 3d game with fancy textures and realistic looking monsters.
– controls felt very responsive, and it was enjoyable “dancing” with the monsters, trying to hit them while avoiding being hit.
– the game was simple to understand, so you could pick it up very easily.
– dividing the game into levels was good idea, as it made each level a small challenge in it’s own right, with a well defined goal.

[toasty]

#150

I’ve played Doom 2, but never the original, so this is quite exciting for me. It took a little while to get set up because there are so many different versions to choose from (I played freedoom for a while, which is a great project but just didn’t satisfy in the same way). Eventually I started using the shareware version via chocolate-doom (I’d recommend this if anyone is desperate to just get started on Linux: it’s available through most package managers and has the real assets for the first episode).

My first thoughts (may be brief, as I’m keen to get back to it!):

– The levels are actually incredibly short, which is different to how I remember Doom 2 at least. I wonder if that’s due to the machine I was using back then being slow, or just a fault of memory.
– The strafe functionality is difficult to get used to. On my version (which I assume is close to the original game), you can only strafe by pressing Alt + Left/Right; I’ve been spoiled by modern games (and, IIRC, the version of Doom 2 I used to play) which allow you to strafe and turn at the same time, but this method makes the corner dancing a bit trickier.
– Doom 2 used to scare me, but now I’m able to enjoy the game a lot more. Case in point: I noticed the first time you pick up the chaingun (except perhaps in a secret area), the designers bring out a crowd of monsters for you to play with. As a child I’d have been cowering in a corner, but this morning I just mowed them down with great satisfaction.
– I’m becoming addicted quite quickly. Can’t wait to explode some cacodemons 😀

[rnlf]

#155

toasty, you can reconfigure the keys in default.cfg.
I’ve set

key_right 0
key_left 0
key_up 17
key_down 31
key_strafeleft 30
key_straferight 32
use_mouse 1
mouse_sensitivity 15

That makes it behave almost like a modern FPS, you just have to make sure you don’t move the mouse up and down, because that will make you walk in that direction 😉

[Nic]

#8598

Definitely LTTP because I just joined the club recently, but I was struggling with the same issue as Toasty, until I learned that , and . are strafe left/right (despite the game/manual not telling you). So you can move and strafe, it just takes a minute to get used to it.

[butterburp]

#8822

Welcome Nic! I’m semi-new too, actually joined back in 2018 and disappeared till now. It’s fun to revisit Doom, complete with the original non-WASD control scheme. Being a more peaceful sort, I sheepishly admit I’m more familiar with the kiddie version Chex Quest, but the original is great too. I like using the warp code to try out different levels.

I also like reading people’s glory-days stories of “running” Doom on a 386SX-16 with the smallest screen size, or plunking down 3 grand on a 486-66 for the sole purpose of playing this game. Shows you how popular and revolutionary it was at the time.

[DosDude]

#9201

This game blew me away back in the day. It’s amazing that this game, even 30 years after launch, still feels great. They really nailed the gameplay.

Modern ports, from official to things like gzdoom and prboom make running it a breeze. You can choose your own port to be either as faithful to the original or a port that’s basically its own new engine by now.

The mods was another draw. Even to this day there are still mods and maps being made. Big shout out to myhouse.wad which made the stranger mods more mainstream. If you don’t know myhouse.wad, it’s basically a liminal space with a story and actual doom gameplay. Don’t watch videos, just play it. It runs in gzdoom.

This is probably oldest game to still be this modern. With modern control scheme it’s still the father of all “boomer shooters” and definitely the father of all FPSs

This game, and Duke nukem 3d are the games I always install on any new hardware that will run it. I don’t even need to play it, I just want to know I can.