I downloaded Doom on a whim off of Live, and I've got to say I'm surprised by just how good it still is. Great level design, interesting enemies, good weapon balance. Just five levels in and I'm already a little sad that they haven't put out Doom 2, so there's no chance of me happening across a super-shotgun.
Funny thing, though, the game won't run full-screen. I remember being able to choose the size of the screen back in the original Doom, shrinking or embiggening it for (I presume) optimizing the speed on different systems. Since that can't be an issue on the 360, I don't understand why the game's play area has to have such a thick black box around it. Were they worried about image fidelity? If so, I've got a little bit of news for them—it's DOOM. No one's expecting it to look great. Here, allow me to demonstrate with a screenshot from the game:
Now here's the same image a third smaller, the ratio of screen-to-game on the Xbox 360.
Stunning, right?
It's nice that the option to shrink the screen is there, but since I'm the one who bought it, shouldn't I be able to blur the game out as much as I like? I'm playing these things on a monitor, anyways, so it's a little funny that I'm forced to play with a smaller screen than I did back when playing it for the first time.
Also, the game is improved immeasurable by being able to use modern two-joystick shooter controls with it. It's just so much easier now that I don't have to hold down the ALT key to strafe left and right. Embarrassing story: I used to play Doom so much that I gummed up a keyboard's ALT key by taping it down so my thumb wouldn't get sore. Ah, memories.
In a wholly unrelated note, the Bourne Conspiracy demo is great! The fighting system took a few moments to get used to, but after I did, I found the combat to be intuitive and incredibly satisfying. The shaky-cam and mobile camera really add a sense of kineticism to the fistfights without totally sacrificing the player's ability to see what' going on. In that respect, the game actually does a better job of presentation than the movies did.
Shooting's fine, the use of QTEs and action buttons to add environmental elements to the chases works great, but the driving scene is unimaginably bad. Just completely awful. "Yikes" bad. I'll still be picking the game up though, for one simple reason: during the demo, they let me toss people out the back of a cargo plane in mid-flight. What else do you want, game-playing public?
In a final note, I'd just like to point out how shocked I was to discover that this was developed by High Moon Studios—it's really an amazing step up from Darkwatch to this.
Nothing relevant to this conversation, that's for sure! Because we're here to talk about (sorry, write and read about, respectively) GC_Danny!!
Since the last time he updated this bio he's had a bunch of movies that he wrote come out, so that's neat. He's also managed to build up a small YouTube channel where he talks about Girls Und Panzer, The Dark Pictures, and Hidden Object Games.
In addition to general game reviewing, he's also dabbled in more long-form work, writing some of the longest and most comprehensive game reviews of all time. Then there's his non-GameCritics blogging, where he's famous as the world's foremost expert on the TV show Criminal Minds, as well as the co-host of a weekly podcast!
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Doom is even better with mosue aim and jump try Zdoom or Doomsday HQ awsome stuff for the PC that makes the game look and play alil better. Serious Sam lacks 1 element thats in doom (and most mid to late 90s FPSs) and so do 90% of all other corridor based gun and run shooters today and that is level layout. Todays shooters games suffer from realistically warped un fun weapons and bland level design. As FPSs passed the 03 or 04 mark they have become smaller with a sever focus on realism and graphics this has distracted most… Read more »
I actually remember mentioning this same sentiment to Walter a few years back. I would even take it a step further and say that a lot FPS developers should really go back and play Doom again. Obviously every dev is familiar with the game, but I wonder how much they actually remember. Every game that comes out now and is touted as a “modern-day Doom” always ends up like Serious Sam, where you’re just shooting millions of enemies that fill the screen from level 1 all they way until the end credits, and that just isn’t what Doom was about.… Read more »