Comment on Quake 1 holds up really well!
Caligvla@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months agoMost of the levels are just spamming powerful enemies and having you run in circles to whittle them down, that is if the level isn’t intentionally claustrophobic and obtuse.
I feel like you’re describing some fan made slaughter map, not any of the Doom episodes lol. The only thing I somewhat dislike about the level design is the labyrinthine nature of it, but you get used to it after a while thanks to the automap. If anything I wish the official Doom episodes had more enemies and used the strong ones more often, especially in the first game you mostly just fight imps for duration of it even on ultra-violence.
deegeese@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
No, the level design in original Doom is weak compared to Quake. It’s not as bad as he describes it, but it’s seriously held back by the tech.
Caligvla@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
Sure, the original Doom engine couldn’t handle multiple floors and complex geometry so the levels were fairly horizontal and labyrinthine, but I think that in a way that made it so the developers had to be even more creative and many of the levels in turn are just downright memorable to say the least. What I can say though is that I can easily remember most of the Doom 1 and 2 levels, meanwhile Quake for me is nearly a complete blank.
To each their own, I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
ZOSTED@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
I think you’re on to something. There’s something more “grokkable” about Doom’s 2.5 maps (some more than others, admittedly), both as a player and maker. And I think it shows in the incredible number of Doom maps people have made over the years.
Caligvla@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
I think the limitations of the Doom engine work both against and in favor of the game, the enforced limitations kind of “distills” the levels to it’s bare minimum, pure creative level design, forcing the developers to work around those “barriers” as I’ve said, you can see this with older map packs like Scythe where the map makers were pushing the limits of what the engine could achieve. This is all somewhat lost nowadays with limit breaking source ports like GZDoom though.