Also: am I remembering wrong, or was doom 64 easier than its predecessors?
Yeah, Doom 63 was impossibly difficult.
this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2024
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Unpopular opinion, but Doom 64 is my least favorite Doom game. I really dislike the visuals and the lack of soundtrack, not to mention it's basically just a worse Doom 2 with fewer enemies, nowhere near as memorable level design and worse controls. (N64 controller ๐คฎ)
I can see where you're coming from - if you look at Ultimate Doom or Doom II and put Doom 64 next to it, then there is a raft of limitations and shortcomings that make it appear to be an inferior product. I personally prefer Doom II as well, with the banging soundtrack and the iconic levels.
However, I'd argue you're missing out by approaching it with that mindset. Aubrey Hodges score is less of a soundtrack, and more of an ominous hum in the background - and the overall art style is far more drab and depressing. I'd probably suggest it has more in common with Doom 3 than it does with the first two. I personally prefer the sound effect collection in Doom 64 - the shotgun sounds meatier, the Barons from Hell's alert sound is a bit more worrisome, and the doors sound a bit more industrial.
Personally I agree with the N64 controller assessment - it feels like it was built by someone who forgot how many hands humans have ๐ but the adaptations in the Unity ports make it more than enjoyable now on Xbox or Dualshock controllers.
The laugh is, the Watch Me Die mode (the Ultra Violence of the 64 editions) is probably the easiest "hard" mode on original hardware, purely because the technical limitations prevented lots of enemies (of any tier, not just hitscan wankers) being spawned - and space limitations prevented difficulty spikes caused by Boney Bois (Plutonia-style) or Arch-Bastards ruining your day by not being included in the game at all.
It's still a very, very good Doom game. 64 and PlayStation Doom should be played together for the alternative Doom experience.
I'm probably biased, because I've only really seen well-made advertisements posted here, but MAN are some of these older ones good.
Gaming ads in the 90s didn't give a fuck.
"Our game will literally kill you. Try it, pussy."
They were so fun and over the top.
I desperately wanted to have this game but it was basically impossible to get in Germany. I was lucky to have Mortal Kombat Trilogy.
I think I read in a gaming magazine in the late 90s that in Germany games are censored so that blood spilling from enemies is coloured green or in some cases the enemies are robots that spill black oil.
Carmageddon here in Italy had zombies instead of people, with green blood.
Nintendo of America only allowed the blood in Mortal Kombat to look like sweat on the SNES. IIRC, the second game had blood though.
Third one definitely had blood and fatalities. With a Konami Code you could unlock one button fatalities. Good times. Unless you had increased the time to enter a fatality and did a stage fatality on a stage without one. Then you had to wait a looooong time for the opponent to fall over.
True. Half Life 1 was awful in German. All the marines were robots. And when you shot a friendly human character they sat down on the ground shaking their head.
Same thing was done in Counter Strike when it went commercial, making it really hard to know whether someone is crouching or ~~dead~~ out of the game.
Patches to put the blood back into games were immensely popular. You'd often find them on the same sites you'd find cracks on.
And of course the effect all the censorship had was that having the latest and greatest most brutal game was more important than having a fun game. You were the king of the schoolyard if you could give the other kids Blood.