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DOOM

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Trying the demo and it's having memory issues. The first time I ran it, it took about 5 minutes to get through the splash screens, then WIndows warned me about memory usage while it was loading up the campaign, then it got stuck at 94%. So I tried again, the splash screens were fine, I played for about a minute then it crashed and said something about GPUtweak. I think my specs are pretty decent (here's the screen-grab of my original purchase that I always use because I'm too lazy to write my specs out: http://i.imgur.com/qTjSK.png ) so I don't know what's going on here. I perhaps need to do somethnig with my Nvidia settings or get the latest drivers (I've been scared to recently because there's always news about them frying people's PCs) but I've never had to do that with any other game on this rig.

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I had the loading problem with the logo screens in the beginning with the demo and the mp beta.

However that happened only the first time, second starting of the game the logo splash screens ran normally. I don't know what the problem was?

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I bought this last night and managed to fit in an hour before work. Holy shit it's fun. Just shoot, punch, snap necks, die, repeat. Surprised it isn't getting more attention, it's glorious!

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I've been having fun with the game but it crashes for me a lot. I'm up to the latest Nvidia driver which fixed the issue where the Bethesda loading screen used 100% of my cpu but I still have loads of moments when a door opens and I crash or I reload and the game drops to 2 frames a second or some other weird thing happens and the only fix is to restart the program and hope it doesn't happen again within the next 15 minutes which it does. A lot.

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I've been having fun with the game but it crashes for me a lot. I'm up to the latest Nvidia driver which fixed the issue where the Bethesda loading screen used 100% of my cpu but I still have loads of moments when a door opens and I crash or I reload and the game drops to 2 frames a second or some other weird thing happens and the only fix is to restart the program and hope it doesn't happen again within the next 15 minutes which it does. A lot.

 

My game was crashing quite a bit too.  I didn't have the loading screen issue or a frame rate problem, but on average about once a level the game would suddenly just close.  I haven't played in a few days so I don't know if this is still an issue for me but I definitely lost quite a bit of time repeating sections of levels, or in a few cases an entire level.

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I worked out that GPUtweak is the clocking thing my mate installed when he built this PC for me. I turned that off and updated to the second most recent Nvidia driver (the latest one's ropey, apparently), and the game ran very well apart from the occasional super-slow three seconds on restarting from a checkpoint.

 

I enjoyed playing the demo. It looks really nice (considering it's an Aliens-y space base and Mars) and is very slick and well-presented. The shooting felt a little floaty (though this might be because I'm deep in 20th century FPSes at the moment) and I often had trouble discerning the enemies' locations due to the colour scheme, but it was good fun when you got on a roll, running from enemy to enemy and keeping your health up by beating them to death with their own limbs.

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DOOM is like the FPS version of Bayonetta.

I'm really not a FPS guy, but holy shit that would have sold me otherwise!

The last one I tried was the Wolfenstein reboot, which was pretty cool, and had some nice call backs to the ancient version but even so I just got bored of the shooting.

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I just tested the demo today. Runs super well, and the gameplay seems quite fun. I don't think I will buy the full game, though. I guess this sort of hectic FPS is not for me anymore.

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I'm really not a FPS guy, but holy shit that would have sold me otherwise!

The last one I tried was the Wolfenstein reboot, which was pretty cool, and had some nice call backs to the ancient version but even so I just got bored of the shooting.

I'm not much of an FPS guy either. I like them occasionally, but DOOM doesn't feel like an fps. It feels more like a character action game in first person with guns.

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You mean New Order? I thought that was a sequel, not a reboot..?

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I just tested the demo today. Runs super well, and the gameplay seems quite fun. I don't think I will buy the full game, though. I guess this sort of hectic FPS is not for me anymore.

 

I'm planning on buying it at some point, the demo was alright. Not even close to the greatness that original DooM games were, but still I think I'll get it when price is lowered and sales come.

 

The DLC at least is looking to be complete bs so that I won't be touching even with a discount.

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You mean New Order? I thought that was a sequel, not a reboot..?

Yeah that's the one, you're probably right, I lost track after several games that may or may not have been sequels... I think there was some magic involved somewhere?

I watched a fair amount of doom on giant bomb, and it's clearly very well done, and I might try it in a sale, but I'm not in any hurry. Who knows, I mig dredge this thread up and rave about it years later :)

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Yeah that's the one, you're probably right, I lost track after several games that may or may not have been sequels... I think there was some magic involved somewhere?

I watched a fair amount of doom on giant bomb, and it's clearly very well done, and I might try it in a sale, but I'm not in any hurry. Who knows, I mig dredge this thread up and rave about it years later :)

One of the nice things about mostly single player games like this is that you can take your time to get around to them without missing anything.

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So i think Doom 4 is pretty remarkable.

 

I also don't think it's much at all like the original games, i might even argue that it's less of a Doom game than Doom 3 was, or at least extracts different lessons from the original games about what defines Doom. (Messages that might be more on point with the ethos of Doom, if not necessarily its mechanics.)

 

I've been a long-suffering advocate of Doom 3, but i have to say that i think the way Doom 4 has broken down the originals and reconstituted them has been an immensely more effective and interesting approach.

 

I think Doom 3 saw its predecessors through a nostalgia lens blind to their inherent sophomoric silliness and attempted to lean into how they were seen at the time as a little bit transgressive. It debatably fell flat on its face with that po-faced self-seriousness and slow-build horror-vibe, despite being strung around around a framework much more faithful to the original games than people generally want to admit. (I always see people cite how "slow" Doom 3 was an example of how it failed in being like the original games - that you can't dodge projectiles - and then i watch footage of these people playing and realize that nobody understands that the game has a sprint key that vaults you into ludicrous Doom 1/2 style sprinting. Never mind that the back half of the game is absolutely manic. Anyways, that's getting off topic.)

 

Doom 4 seems to display a significantly greater degree of awareness about its place in video game history, it's a game that is intensely aware of how people perceive Doom and what they want from Doom. In some sense, the idea of Doom has somewhat drifted away from what Doom actually was. Doom 4 is a game that is as inspired by the modding scene and the history around Doom as it is by the game itself. The result is a game that is more frenetic and immediate than Doom has ever been, with dramatic shifts occurring multiple times over the course of a single battle instead of over the course of multiple rooms, and it's additionally borrowed some interesting mechanics from unusual sources in its modern contemporaries.

 

A few of you have noted that it feels like a character action game with guns, and you're not wrong, there's many elements here that are common in such games but are virtually unseen in shooters, and Doom 4 takes them and makes them work. Special melee actions generating health has become a relatively common fixture in melee-focused action games, for example. Here, despite Doom 4 still ostensibly being a shooter, the glory kill system never feels like a gimmick that overwhelms that action, and it's because it has a clear, distinct role in the framework the game has. It only gives you health if you're below 100hp, you need to use other weapons to first stagger enemies, and it acts as a tether to pull you into the midst of fights, creating that frantic pace Id is aiming for.

 

That all said, no matter what anybody tells you, it essentially means you have regenerating health. The weapons too, people can make big claims about how important and true to the originals not having to reload is, but the big elaborate upgrade trees also create an arsenal of weapons that is less defined by clear roles than in any prior Id game. (I am not particularly a fan of the progression systems in this game.) You play your preferences until you run out of ammo and switch to something else. This is a very different kind of shooter from the original games, one that carries out a significant deception about it being built up on old-school ideas. Again though, i'm not making the argument that this is bad, and i think the way the game has redesigned the chainsaw as a limited-use power weapon is kind of brilliant. Not just a powerful one-hit-kill, but one that drops mountains of ammo to facilitate more shooting and... You know, a lot of this seems really evocative of Bungie's so-called "combat triangle" philosophy for the Halo series. Hell, Doom even has off-hand grenades now.

 

There is one thing that i think Doom 4 replicates impressively from the original games though, and it's that it has these huge open-ended levels that often have non-linear layouts with multiple non-linear objectives, and even when levels are more linear, there is an impressive adherence to avoiding points of no return, providing optional routes back through the level. (At one point, after falling into a large shaft, an elevator opens up at the bottom to take you back up, if you want to, something you would literally never do in normal play.) The game wants you to explore, it wants to recapture the sense of wandering exploration that the original Doom games have, and it's done with all the polish and flash that a multi-million dollar game in 2016 would be expected to have. It's incredible. Doom 3 didn't even do this, Doom 3 kind of followed the Half-Life philosophy of level design. I think it's remarkable to see a major AAA FPS in 2016 try to tackle this kind of level design. I mean, holy shit, it even builds major set piece battles around one-off time-limited power-ups. Deciding when is the best time to grab the quad damage is an important, life-saving choice you make in many later fights, it's fantastic.

 

If there's an issue with what they've done, it's that it could probably throw in a few random enemy spawns, or more incidental groups between major battles, because maps can depopulate very quickly, leading to some pretty uneventful wanderings. They also have a lot of enemies just teleporting in by waves for the big fights, something Doom 3 always got a lot of shit for while nobody's mentioning it with regards to Doom 4. I don't mind it, but I wish they were a little more creative with their enemy composition in those fights, because it often feels like you're just fighting each and every enemy in successive waves.

 

There is, however, an impressive sense of verticality in these fights. Doom 4's levels present a lot of three dimensional space that kind of evokes the first Quake a bit, but where strong z axis movement in quake is generally limited to costly mobility tricks, Doom Guy has learned to pull himself up ledges. (You also eventually gain a double jump.) The result is that you're moving fast through all three dimensions in these fights and it's really pretty thrilling. (Some of the first-person platforming it ends up at outside of the fights i'm less fond of, but it's not as finicky as one might imagine it to be, it works well.)

 

Also, there's a few boss fights. They're actually pretty terrific. Really surprising, that. Man, and Mick Gordon fuckin` nailed that OST.

 

So yeah, i think Doom 4 is mostly kind of spectacular. Way to go New-Id, you've redeemed yourself for Rage. (A game i hated, just to throw it out there.)

 

Also, there's MP, i guess? I haven't touched it, i don't care about it. I heard it was bad, then i looked into it and thought it looked bad, i don't want to taint the great experience i've had with the campaign. I might mess around with Snap Map at some point, that seems neat.

 

Edit: Oh, and i played on Ultraviolence. I wouldn't recommend any lower difficulty if you are a person who plays a lot of shooters, i didn't find it particularly difficult. It felt comparable to playing Halo on Heroic.

 

Edit 2: Doom Guy's not-giving-a-fuck-about-your-problems emoting towards the other characters and all their "serious business" lends a wonderful little bit of character to the game. Less wonderful is that, despite it, the game still wants you to know all about the story it's trying to tell and will make you sit in place and listen on several occasions. Regardless, the story-telling tends towards appropriately terse, i can't really say it overstays its welcome. Also, what is there is tonally - seemingly knowingly - like a shitty 90's comic book, which is super appropriate for Doom. (Amusingly, it opens on a line from an infamous Doom comic.)

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Great post. 

 

I also have started to become a bit...let's say disappointed with the weapons. Certain weapons just feel useless in the latter stages of the game. The initial shotgun for example. It just does not do enough damage to warrant it taking up a slot on my weapon selection wheel.

 

The heavy/small arms variants that use the same ammo also kind of irritates me. I really like the fully upgraded pulse rifle with the heat explosion. It's super fun to use. I also like the sniper variant of the heavy pulse gun. I have to choose, which kinda sucks, because it's not really a meaningful choice. 

 

I've also found I have essentially settled into a rut of pulse rifle/missile launcher/heavy machine gun. I don't really care about any other weapons any more.

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For the standard shotgun, the explosive mod allowing some flanking damage gives it some persisting value over the super shotgun, considering how durable armor plated and shielded enemies are, but if you build down the triple shot path, yeah... what you said. The same is true of the chaingun and the rifle if you build down the micro missiles for the rifle. You then have two strong mid-range DPS dealers that melt through ammo at similar rates. I don't know why i would choose one over the other in any given fight.

 

At least the gauss/plasma are fulfilling clearly different roles off of that shared ammo pool. If you have one ammo type available, you want to spend it in the most optimal way for the situation at hand, that's what the choice is supposed to be.

 

I mean, then you get the chaingun and how its two paths maxed out create virtually identical results. The turret mode has a slightly faster time to kill with a slight move penalty, but they both do their work in about the same ammo cost and at the same range with the same effects. Are those limited differences really enough to justify the chaingun having two alternate forms that both permanently sit in your character inventory?

 

Honestly, shared ammo, as a mechanic, is pretty thorny and problematic. I've never been fond of it. I think Id's games in the past have only barely gotten away with it. The shotgun and super shotgun in Doom 2 and Quake have this trade off of range-versus-power, but the nailgun and super nailgun in Quake are... The super nailgun literally just does twice as much damage for twice the ammo cost, it completely invalidates the existence of the normal nailgun.

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Yeah I have the explosive mod for the shotgun and the rocket mod for the rifle. The "thing" (I don't want to say problem, because it's not a problem, but I also don't know if I like it) with the rocket mod for the rifle is that it completely changes how that gun is used. Turning it from a mid range good accuracy weapon to a close-mid range spray and pray gun. 

 

The problem with the gauss rifle is that nothing else fills its role. The turret chain gun is useful, but you lose the ability to regen health, so it's extremely situational. 

 

None of this is enough to put me off the game, the fast paced action is what I love about it. 

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It's weird, the things you guys are listing as complaints are the things I love.  If I had to navigate some menu to switch weapon mods, then I'd be right there with you.  But the fact that I can swap mods on the fly creates a dynamic that I just love.  Take the shotgun for example.  In general I'll have the grenade mod equipped but if I've taken down all the smaller enemies and the only thing left is a big enemy like a Baron, I'll switch to the triple shot.  With the chaingun, if I have enough armor before walking into a room I know is going to have a big fight I'll use the turret mod with my infinite ammo rune then switch to the gatling mod after I take a few hits so I have maneuverability.  I also love constantly switching weapons to use in different situations.  I get how some people find a comfort zone of sorts with a specific weapon set but personally I get a huge amount of enjoyment in using all the tools available to me.

 

Though I will admit the shared ammo pool for certain weapons does suck.

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That's totally fair, I like to get into a groove and find one or two weapons I'm comfortable with, then just stick with them.

 

In other news, I played some of the multiplayer... It's not awful. It does feel like something from about 2004 though. I just tested it to see if my internet would work, since Destiny won't connect, and while I still have connection issues, once I'm in a match it works fine.

 

I also want the trophies...I know.

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That's an oddly specific year Griddlelol, and it immediately reminded me of UT2004... that game was truly an oddball in many good ways but just oddly put together (sorry for the tangent).

 

I like weapon progression but yes it does get watered down with redundancies I suppose.  Wouldn't mind carbon copy of UT weapon set and expand it from there.

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It really reminded me of Jedi Knight Academy. Probably the first game I played on Xbox live. I guess that was actually 2003, but I was close enough!

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Weird, after today's 2,5gb update I get just blank screen when starting the game on PC.

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