Thread:Deathstalker666/@comment-26005008-20160407215658/@comment-3547390-20160420013204

That I can understand a lot more. I have ranted in the past about how games prior to Quake didn't have that quality of realism, I often describe it as being a defined world. Predictability is boring, I think you mean consistency. You don't know what you are going to experience up ahead, but you can get a sense of rules in this world and how it operates. Quake is the first title that feels like a world, not just an arena of gimmicky stuff for me to take down sprite-based opponents that exist only to oppose me. I can't look at Doom, Heretic, or even Duke Nukem and say that the world appears to be a place that makes sense for the denizens there. I know all three of those titles are about invaders, but it still is that the levels we see are mazes with no real purpose but to shoot things. Doom II, Seth has said pretty well. Heretic, we have things that look like churches, but it is mostly just a bunch of elevators and corridors that blend together. E6M2 is the exception in my opinion, that level looks pretty impressive for 1994, but it is a case of terrible design with you remember the mouse look limitation. In fact, that might be why games prior to Quake can't really be worlds, because mouse look is the only way to be able to look around a world enough to the point that detail must be on all planes. It is uncommon to be an environment where just horizontal visible is realistic, yet it is what is needed in older games due to the limitations of the mechanics. In essence, levels that try to be realistic would be in essence going towards frustrating level design prior to the days of Quake. Combined with the automap feature which allowed for complicated mazes and the use key which allowed for push walls, I just cannot see many levels in old school games having decent level design. E3M6 is probably one of the best levels of Doom, it does a great job of open world design and is absolutely amazing when you multiply the amount of enemies (one of the only levels I can consider fun to kill hoards of monsters in since the open design means that they can come at you from all sides, there are few areas where you get opposition only directly in front of you. Plus the open nature makes the level not be a maze, though it does have annoying push wall portions.

Painful is the wrong word, I prefer a challenge so I like some of the harder opponents. The problem is that the Pain Elemental is not really hard, just annoying since it spams you endlessly with Lost Souls, the weakest things in the game. They also are alternate versions of Cacodemons, an enemy I never really liked from the original Doom since it is rather weak yet takes forever to die. Name a time you have ever died due to a Cacodemon if the level supplied ammo, I think I have had greater dangers with a Former Human than one of these guys. The problem with many of Doom's opponents is that their attacks are predictable and therefore they become easy, meaning their main form of challenge becomes their health. I understand everything can't be like Unreal, but things that take a bit to die while not giving me constant risk are just boring. At least a Cyberdemon offers such a challenge, but the problem is that you need a great amount of ammo supplied just to take one down. Compare this to Quake, where we have such things as Shamblers and Vores, that are deadly but don't require a hundred shots with a rocket launcher to take one down. Based on level design, Shamblers can be evil since they can hit you if you don't get a wall between you and them, while Vore pods can chase you across the map. It ain't Unreal, but it gives decent challenge without requiring a spam-fest where you spend ages trying to kill one enemy.

I prefer Doom II to Duke Nukem. Most other games of 94 I would rather play, such as System Shock or Elder Scrolls Arena. Both of those have the same limitations with level design being mazes of impracticalities, but the enemies in both tend to play more like those I want, things that die quick but can kill you even quicker. Most people cannot survive the first dungeon of Arena and System Shock is pretty notorious for being difficult, so it isn't due to lack of challenge that they only take a few hits to die. The irony here is that Doom spams more things at you in general per map, meaning you are spending a length of time taking down things that are mostly challenging due to the amount of time it takes to kill them and yet have to deal with even more of them, meaning an even longer grind. Needless to say, Doom can be entertaining, but it tends to get old as you slowly drudge through levels of push wall hell and punch Barons of Hell to death over and over because that is more challenging than using a shotgun. I won't deny that such a thing is a challenge, but it also is pretty tedious.