Gaming DOOM Open Beta Impressions

Can't be worse than the film though....

 

Yes it worked but what worked really well was a M+K and that's coming from someone who started out playing DOOM II with a joystick, it wasn't until someone expressed surprise when they discovered i used a joystick and said i probably would have won our match if i was using a M+K that i re-learnt how to play the game.

It was eight weapons in the original DOOM, although maybe it's best if we forget using your fists, either way most non-casual players wouldn't dream of using a mouse wheel to scroll through weapons as it's quicker to hit the right key for the right weapon, as sad as it sounds milliseconds matter, and not making a mistake in weapons selection matters even more.

IDK about the optional part but it's worth remembering that both DOOM and the Microsoft Mouse 2.0 came out in the same year.

Therein lies what i believe are some of the reasons for so many of the bad reviews, DOOM (the original one) managed to straddle the line between being accessible while at the same time being highly skills based, from the looks of it this new DOOM has erred on the side of being accessible probably a little to much for some peoples liking

 

Zeniwanks.
No VR.
Pile of crud.

 

1993 doom whilst it could use a mouse , was limited to x axis only = mouse turning as the y axis wasn't in the game at all ; it was a 2.5D shooter

 

I played both the closed and open betas and it wasn't so much the gameplay that I had issues with, rather it was the horrific optimisation!

Running with the rig in my sig below and in order to get any reasonable framerate for a 'twitch' shooter, I had to drop the graphics down to 1280x720 to get anywhere near 50+ fps.

Add to that, the terrible P2P matchmaking, no 21:9 support and the silly loadout system... the MP side yields little to no interest to me. This will be a budget purchase towards the end of the year for the SP and that's about it.

 

your mid range gpu is holding you back

 

The game does look poor IMO but it has nothing to do with a lack of VR support...

 

DOOM is never about multiplayer. The original DOOM was all about single player, I did try the open beta, playted for another 90mins, it felt like a cross between old UT and Quake 3.
However doom was never known for multiplayer. I reserve judgement till I have tried the campaign.

 

why do the comments here remind me of when quake 4 came out ` its nothing like Q3` was the cry

 

Chainsaw replaces fists, so... I'm less wrong. 7 slots(which was what I meant) instead of the 6 I claimed. I WAS thinking of the weapon icons in the status bar, which don't reflect melee.
And yeah, mouse wheel is inferior to direct selection in most cases.

Truthfully, I find the "can't carry an entire arsenal on your back" mechanisms interesting.
The two-weapon setup that was so popular after Halo was TOO limiting. 4 guns offers enough slots to carry a specialized weapon without sacrificing versatility while still asking the player to make value calls about the guns they find.

Ironically, the internet tells me that early versions of Doom had glitches with two-button mice that rendered the game unplayable with them. So the Microsoft Mouse would have been a poor choice.
I had a 3-button mouse back then, and... played Doom with a keyboard and default mappings. Arrow keys to run and turn, < and > for strafing. I was not particularly good at it.

I think it helps that the original Doom was one of the first in the genre. There was very little in the way of expectations, because it was setting the standards. Heck, for years the genre was known simply as "Doom clones".

And, well... honestly? Most of us didn't have any sort of networking for years after the game launched, so it didn't MATTER how well the mechanics worked in competitive multiplayer. For most people, if you could clear nightmare mode without dying, you'd mastered the game. And if you couldn't clear nightmare, no one was going to know you played it on "too young to die" and frequently typed iddqd just so you could see the end.

 

Worst post of the week. Starts with a puerile name calling, moves onto VR, even though VR would be terrible in this game anyway due to locomotion issues, then ends with a statement of fact that is actually opinion. Absolutely brainless.

Really mate, can you not do better? There are plenty of websites on the net which are almost exclusively posts like this. Happy for you to stick around here, but you'll need to start acting like an adult.

 

This reminds me a bit of Fallout 4... Watching all the trailers for it my overriding thought was one of 'this isn't Fallout... it kinda looks like Fallout, but it's not Fallout...'

Watching video of this... this isn't Doom...

 

That kind of feeds back into what i was saying about it effecting the design of a FPS, when you have weapons that can be collected on a level you create hotspots and players fight for control of those hotspots, newly spawned players either take a risk and go for a powerful weapon that maybe guarded or head for one of the lesser used weapons, with this new DOOM it seems they've chosen to forgo this mechanic, possibly because this mechanic breaks down when you have fewer weapons and joypad gamers have problems when dealing with 4+ weapons in multiplayer FPS.

I only got into Doom when Doom II came along, although having done some reading the MS mouse driver was exceptional good and a recommended replacement for glitchy drivers from other manufactures.

You didn't need a local network to dial into a BBS, it wasn't until Quake that multiplayer FPS really hit mainstream consciousness (IMO) before that (with Doom & Doom II) it was mainly the reserve of computer geeks.

 

I had it pre-ordered. Now I don't.
Not because of this review in particular.
The reviews I've read all say about the same thing.
Wait until it gets to the sales bin.
All I want is the single-player game anyway.
And even that isn't the least bit worthy of the franchise.

 

Ah man, memories of Doom 4 player deathmatch hooking up 4 pc's together with bnc connectors and getting all the irc's talking. Making sure the TSR's were right so you had as much base memory as poss for Doom to run. I had a special floppy just for games boots that I wrote so that I could play Doom multiplayer.

When it first came out I was at college and it went round like a virus. So much multiplayer, so much fun, not many games match that fun we used to have. Halcyon days

 

What a load of rubbish!

The author's clearly an arena shooter nube that doesn't know what he's talking about.

I started the beta with reservations, noticed balancing issues, but also remembered that IT'S A BETA!

I also noticed that it seems to be an amalgam of both Doom and Q3; hardly a bad thing, per se.

Just as an example; the rockets complaint? Q3 rockets are equally powered (not insta-kill on single shots to full health targets) and travel as just as fast, as far as I can tell, so as Q3 is still considered the ultimate arena shooter and still warrants tens of thousands in prize money in e-tournaments today, what does that say about the author's complaint about the rockets in Doom?

 

It's hard to take your point about the rockets seriously when you start with a personal insult.

To my mind, and bearing in mind I play a lot of Doom rather than Q3 and so my comparison is to that, catching someone in the face with a rocket directly should kill instantly. I'm willing to concede the rocket point is incorrect on my part, but it doesn't change the feeling that the beta and my impressions of it left me decidedly cold.

 

I hate to be a pedant, Jakey (and don't normally post stuff like this) but you might need to re-proofread that article. Was rather difficult to follow in a few places and not your normal standard, unfortunately :-(

 

Weird, a good friend got around 50 FPS with a 660Ti @ 1080p.

Also, out of curiosity, what was so terrible about the matchmaking? I invited friends into my party and we all played in the same match on the same team.

And there is always the console for 21:9 support.

So you have played the singleplayer campaign already? And finished it as well? Brilliant! Can't wait to see your review of the finished game getting released!

... [/sarcasm]

 

Serious Sam and 2nd Encounter are the closest I've come to the joy I felt playing Doom. The massive end of level bosses. The black cannon, mini gun, double barrel shotgun, etc. The level design was fun with lots of arenas and hordes of enemies. I remember one level where the player is forced to retreat for miles while swarms of enemies attack, you're then ambushed from behind - the level designers knew how you'd try to tackle the attack and turned things on their head.

Maybe we need new games like that, rather than crappy remakes of classics?