I OWN DOOM - was it always easy?

[Caine]

im in level 7 and man how i missed this game but somehow it is so easy. easier than doom 1 and 2, somehow i feel i forgot that or i got just better ;D

[AmethystViper]

Origineel geplaatst door CT Forced Jaketh:

Yeah, same kind of men who get into my little pony. Creeps. So yeah creeps, weebs and pedos enjoy it too I guess? Was that your point?

The hell does this have to do with video games other than tactless shaming?

[I Kill Friendlies]

Even with an N64 controller this game was always the easiest Doom game. Main reason is because of the lack of enemy spam probably from hardware constraints on the N64. Also the game is missing things like Archviles.

[Dragova]

Quick save makes everything easy. N64 you could only save at the end of each level if you had a memory pack and you pressed the two C-Buttons during your intermission. Try playing with -Fast monsters. Somehow this port actually supports that command. (Hope they add full nightmare.)

[Defective Dopamine Pez Dispenser]

It was always on the easy side compared to the previous Dooms, if not for the interface and level design challenges imo. (Still my favorite classic Doom, though :P I just love the atmosphere.)

That said, not only was it not balanced for play on PC... it wasn't even balanced for dual analog sticks. Moreover, we need to remember that the N64 controller was the first proper thumbstick ever on a console. We're talking about a time when even 3D camera control in games was so new, they had four yellow buttons for it instead of a second stick, and countless games of that era exhibited the growing pains of that learning process on devs' part.

Strafing in the original N64 version was really challenging, as we just had one thumbstick and had to modify that by holding a button to strafe lol. (I may be remembering it wrong but I think I ended up figuring out how to use the shoulder buttons to strafe left and right back then lol.) So the difficulty wasn't balanced for today's controls at all. So that makes it feel even easier (and is one reason why the new episode is interesting imo.)

Hell the original game didn't even have force feedback, because rumble didn't become a thing (yes we can thank Nintendo for the normalization of that, too lol) until the rumble pack bundled with Star Fox 64 came out.

[sss]

I challenge anyone who says Doom 64 is too easy. Beat one of the later levels on hardest difficulty, with just a pistol as starting equipment, no quicksaving, using a controller and the original N64 control scheme. We'll see.

[Defective Dopamine Pez Dispenser]

Origineel geplaatst door sss:

I challenge anyone who says Doom 64 is too easy. Beat one of the later levels on hardest difficulty, with just a pistol as starting equipment, no quicksaving, using a controller and the original N64 control scheme. We'll see.

This.

It's that last requirement that makes that daunting lol. :P The game often gives you all the weapons (see Watch Your Step for instance,) so even with a pistol start it's not too harsh. But yes, it was the controls that really made it a challenge (that, and the devilish level design lol - way, way more traps than the previous Dooms, which was one reason I loved it so much. It went hand in hand with the slightly more horror vibe and sound design imo. It was a very tense experience playing it back in the day.)

The ability to use wasd and two sticks in this version definitely, definitely makes it immensely easier than it was back in the day. So if people are wondering why there are fewer enemies (though, there are some pretty good crowds on higher difficulties) that's part of the reason why. They had to balance the game around the interface which, at the time, was not only not up to providing wasd-like movement (unlike dual sticks which, while not equivalent to wasd, at least offer us proper independent strafing) but also completely new on consoles. People underestimate how important the adoption of thumbsticks was for game design from that point forward.

[sss]

I wanted to try this for some time now, but it turns out it's not possible to use the N64 control scheme with this port. You'd need to bind the left analog stick up/down to moving and left/right to turning, but the left and right analog sticks are hardcoded to move/look and this cannot be changed. Is there a config file somewhere that could be edited to make it work?

Edit: There is, but the sticks are not remappable.

[Sotho]

Origineel geplaatst door Caine:

im in level 7 and man how i missed this game but somehow it is so easy. easier than doom 1 and 2, somehow i feel i forgot that or i got just better ;D

You can start in different level, try watch me die :)

[mjc0961]

Origineel geplaatst door Tsukiyomaru Zero:

Origineel geplaatst door Caine:

thx man, i dont remember do the maps get much harder? otherwise imma start over on last difficulty

A bit. Just fair warning: Cacodemons, Lost Souls, and Pain Elementals becomes a pain the behind at later levels. About the halfway mark they really show how bad they can be.

Seriously, screw Lost Souls in this game. Obnoxious little turds.

Origineel geplaatst door sss:

I wanted to try this for some time now, but it turns out it's not possible to use the N64 control scheme with this port. You'd need to bind the left analog stick up/down to moving and left/right to turning, but the left and right analog sticks are hardcoded to move/look and this cannot be changed. Is there a config file somewhere that could be edited to make it work?

Edit: There is, but the sticks are not remappable.

Which one? There were 5 of them to choose from, if I remember correctly. And none of them were any good. I still remember buying a Doom 64 cartridge, playing a few levels swapping between control schemes to find a good one, getting frustrated that none of them made the game playable, and going over to PC to play Doom 64 EX instead. Challenge should be derived from quality game design, not impossible controls because the console had a stupid controller.

To this day I still would like to meet whatever three-handed alien race Nintendo developed that stupid controller for. It sure as hell wasn't made for human beings with two hands. I have plenty of N64 games I like, but I don't play them often because ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, that controller is the worst. Probably the only controller in existence worse than the Steam controller. Thank goodness so many of these games have been ported to other systems so they can be played with controllers that aren't garbage.

[IamSnorlax]

Being able to use dual analogues really helps.

[*Furious Train Whistling*]

So I may be late to the party, but...

This game was originally designed to be played on the N64. That means using the old controller, and not with the most precise control scheme, either. Turning and moving were on the joystick, which was the style at the time, and so compromises needed to be made to make the game possible to play, like making enemies and projectiles slower. In addition, the game featured no mid-level saves, so if you died, it was back to the start. Making matters worse, it worked just like the original Doom titles where that meant losing all your guns as well. The game was designed with all this in mind, so naturally when we add quick saves and mouse look, it becomes an easier (but much more playable) experience.

Of course, over twenty years of gaming will make you better at it in general, so there's still at least some of that involved.

[Defective Dopamine Pez Dispenser]

^ That last point is also true honestly. I remember Turok being maddeningly difficult back in the day due to the insanely precise platforming sections. But when I played the remaster recently, I was shocked by how much easier it was lol. Decades of gaming definitely change our skill level.

[Chicken_Wang]

You more than likely got better but you also gotta remember that Doom 64 was made as a console only experience with one of the weirdest controllers in history. I play Doom 64 on an actual n64 as a kid a lot, and it so damn difficult because using the controller was a nightmare at first and thus made the game a lot harder.

If you want a really hard challenge. Download Doom 64 Retribution (Great port of the game for PC that adds some tweaks to make it more for pc), they have a difficulty called Doomslayer that really makes the game the challenge you seek.

[Chicken_Wang]

Origineel geplaatst door mjc0961:

Origineel geplaatst door Tsukiyomaru Zero:

A bit. Just fair warning: Cacodemons, Lost Souls, and Pain Elementals becomes a pain the behind at later levels. About the halfway mark they really show how bad they can be.

Seriously, screw Lost Souls in this game. Obnoxious little turds.

Origineel geplaatst door sss:

I wanted to try this for some time now, but it turns out it's not possible to use the N64 control scheme with this port. You'd need to bind the left analog stick up/down to moving and left/right to turning, but the left and right analog sticks are hardcoded to move/look and this cannot be changed. Is there a config file somewhere that could be edited to make it work?

Edit: There is, but the sticks are not remappable.

Which one? There were 5 of them to choose from, if I remember correctly. And none of them were any good. I still remember buying a Doom 64 cartridge, playing a few levels swapping between control schemes to find a good one, getting frustrated that none of them made the game playable, and going over to PC to play Doom 64 EX instead. Challenge should be derived from quality game design, not impossible controls because the console had a stupid controller.

To this day I still would like to meet whatever three-handed alien race Nintendo developed that stupid controller for. It sure as hell wasn't made for human beings with two hands. I have plenty of N64 games I like, but I don't play them often because ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, that controller is the worst. Probably the only controller in existence worse than the Steam controller. Thank goodness so many of these games have been ported to other systems so they can be played with controllers that aren't garbage.

To be fair, people seem to not remember that you could map the N64 control scheme for Doom 64 to however they wanted. I would map it so I could use the D pad to move and play it more like a ps1 controller. Once i did that, it made the game much more enjoyable to play on original hardware

[Defective Dopamine Pez Dispenser]

^ This is true I knew a lot of people who did that. Same with mapping strafe to the shoulder buttons. But for me, it felt like I lost the analog precision gradient for speed changes, etc. And a big marketing angle for N64 was the innovation of the thumbstick. I tried playing it that way but something was lost (for me at least, back in the day.) I wanted to master playing it with the stick lol.

It was my first every thumbstick and I remember reaaaally struggling with it for days initially until I began to adapt. Somehow, as silly as it is now in retrospect, the thumbstick combined with the trigger made the experience more immersive. At the time to my young brain it felt like an "experience" much more so than previous Dooms lol.

Youthful teenage neuroplasticity was a beautiful thing. I miss that lol. Today if someone threw a totally non-standard interface at me, I have a feeling I'd be lost for weeks.