You Know What I Love? Old-School First-Person Shooters

[hifi-55]

As someone who grew up in the 90s with a power mac, I very fondly remember the Marathon games. They were the first FPS games that contained a complex story beyond run-and-gun, delivered via the computer terminals throughout the game. In all honesty, I don't think there was any game that came close to the complex story it featured until Deus Ex was released years later.

However, if you want to REALLY feel atmosphere and **** yourself in fright, load up an old mac emulator and play "Pathways Into Darkness" - by the makers of Marathon and Halo, was their first FPS game. Movement was slow, graphics were basic and gameplay was very paced. It also made you **** your pants in fright as a result! It was also near-impossible to complete, at least the first couple of play-throughs due to the maze-like game (it was easy to spend ages going the wrong way) and some really tough puzzles. The monsters are the most cartoony things you've every seen, but that just made them MORE scary! To this day I still can't play it for more then 30 minutes at a time!

[Luke Annett]

Long time reader of the site but haven't feel obliged to register until now.

NO shooter has ever come close to doom and doom 2 yet imho. Doom guy runs at the fastest pace of any character in any fps since. The action is pure arcade and there's nothing like taking on hundreds of enemies at once and looking at their dead corpses after the massacre. Doom 3 missed the point of doom entirely. Doom's greatness always lied in the fact that it was about pure arcarde action. The fantastic weapon balance where even if you had all the weapons they would all still useful depending on the circumstance, a great map would force you to use all the weapons well. And that's not to mention the fantastic, varied bestiary.

Plutonia (Final Doom) would have to be my favourite megawad of all time. Unbelievable amounts of enemies.



The doom community is still alive and well.

Check out http://www.doomworld.com to grab a source port. Gzdoom or prboom are both great. Mouse look, anti aliasing, high resolutions etc. You'll have to grab a megawad, steam sells all the dooms cheaply. Just grab the megawad out of the directory and dump it in the source port folder.

Here's a fantastic article by one of the maker's of Bioshock describing in detail just what makes doom so great. http://vectorpoem.com/news/?p=74


Modern megawads I absolutely love are Ultimate Simplicity (higher resolution textures, gzdoom) and Ultimate Torment & Torture, both feature new monsters and are what I consider to be the real DooM 3.

Long live DooM! It's a game I will never stop playing. Still playing after 18 years.... It's finally an adult!

DooM 4 should be a straight up ultra hd remake.

[MunchY]

stuff

+1!

Good post

[Syncourt]

One thing I think really helped the atmosphere as well was the complete lack of a flashlight back then.

When a room was pitch black while hearing gurgles and grunts from the enemies hiding within, then hearing a roar and watching as the room is lit up only by a big fireball (or 10) as it flies toward you before going pitch black again was a great atmospheric feeling. Knowing there could be unseen enemies right next to you, breathing down your neck.

Or my personal favourite were the strobe lit rooms where you could only see a quick glimpse of the environment every other second.

I have a much better time playing modern games like fear or doom 3 by avoiding using the flashlight. But they aren't really built for that and a lot of rooms can get a bit too hard if you don't use it.

[Artful-dodgeR]

Q3/Arena... How i miss thee.

Alot of us play Quake Live, and a fair few play CPMA ( #promode.au on gamesurge)

Just played some Quake Live... Damn it brings me back. Wish there was a Rocket Arena version though

[Drakand]

great article. I think the most fun I had with Duke 3D was the simple map editor (so easy I could use it). I made many levels in that game, challenge maps that i'd swap with friends for theirs, it was brillant!

Doom was awesome, Doom 2 was great. I played Quake 2 before i played Quake, still like no2 better but that could be because I played it first.

Always took UT over Q3Arena however lanning with either is the f'ing bomb!

[Syncourt]

Doom was awesome, Doom 2 was great. I played Quake 2 before i played Quake, still like no2 better but that could be because I played it first.

I played Q2 before Q1 as well. I preferred Q2 for MP and Q1 for SP.

[Lance P King]

Wish there was a Rocket Arena version though

Sigh, agreed. It's just not the same is it?

[Artful-dodgeR]

I ended up playing 2 1/2 hours of Instagib CTF (railgun goodness).

I forgot just how much I LOVE this freaking game.

[cyclobs]

I ended up playing 2 1/2 hours of Instagib CTF (railgun goodness).

I forgot just how much I LOVE this freaking game.

check out open arena, it's an open source version of q3a, since the engine code is OSS these days they just fix it up and make it run on modern systems.

you still need the q3a cd for all the textures though

[Artful-dodgeR]

Do any/many people play? I was quite happy with how active QuakeLive was last night, especially considering it was a random weeknight!

[Boognish]

this game was great:



i played teh hell out of it back in the mid nineties

[Drakand]

Blake Stone was great fun!

Cyclobs, sif you would suggest Open Arena (bit meh) compared to Sauerbraten, thats where the awesome gaming is at folks! Had a few rounds of that again the other week (after not playing for ages) against Cyclobs and some others of his clan and realised how horribly I was outclassed....though I did beat Cyclobs one round

[Artful-dodgeR]

Never heard of Sauerbraten...

[br0n]

there's zombies in doom?