I don't know about SNES playability... but Doom64 was certainly not lacking in difficulty. As I recall it was regarded as very hard - but also as a fun and good game.

Doom2 on XBL, I recall a friend who was doing well, but ran into difficulty because he needed to switch weapons quickly, and though it has a weapon swap queue, so you can triple tap the button (I think Y), to go from pistol to rocket launcher for example, it had just enough latency to make the game a lot harder for him than it was on PC (and he is primarily a console gamer).

So, it's not completely unfeasible, but rather, it has a higher skill floor, and that cuts out a lot of initial players. 

Was pretty difficult not only in the labyrinthine design but also the fact you could barely see where you were going! The haunting soundtrack was top notch as well...legitimately a frightening game.

Come to think of it, I really enjoyed Quake 64 as well. It was actually my first Quake experience and it scared the living crap out of me.

Erm anyway I still will bide my judgment until I see how the Single Player fares for DOOM. 

The thing is, these games are always designed from the ground up to be optimised for the console/controller (because that's the most profitable platform), and they are aimed at a mass audience, not just the elite players.

They are never designed as PC games first, with a "nerfed" fork for the console crowd.

FPS games *could* and *should* be forked for PC and console, but what happens is the publishers crunch the numbers and decide it's not worth their time. Whatcha gonna do?

Didn't Epic Games famously state many years ago that the PC is no longer worth their time? I imagine most publishers & devs have the same opinion even if they won't publicly say so. 

Kinn :
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-01-26-pc-trumps-mobile-console-in-booming-usd61bn-digital-games-market

For Doom4 we can skip the stuff about free 2 play and mmorpgs / social games etc.

Lets look at GTA V here as a comparable full price pay up front game with SP and MP : http://cdn.gamer-network.net/2015/articles/1/8/0/7/7/7/4/145382136822.jpg at GTA V as an example - 322mill$ revenvue on consoles. 205mill$ on PC.

Yes Consoles may bring in more income on this kind of title, but the PC part is non negligible.

Im saying they could surely substantially raise their take-in on the PC version by treating it seriously instead of pussying out on it a la Epic Games or whatever... 

People who dismiss the negative reviews as "people stuck in the 90's" are, at worst, dishonest and, at best, blind to the obvious issues with the game. OTH, quite a few of the negative reviews are so poorly articulated that "not doom 1 or 2 = not fun" is the only thing you can really take away from it.

I think TotalBiscuit put it well when he said that the MP is essentially a "master of none".

This could just as easily been Quake V. Replace the super shotgun with a nailgun and the demon rune with a nether rune and BAM, Quake V. This is just as much Quake V as it is Doom 4.

I get that the console market is huge and think that it's only right and natural to develop for it, I certainly enjoy some console games. But damn, did no one stop and think that maybe plastering the doom ip, you know, the one that is synonymous with PC gaming, the PC game of all time, onto a nebulous blob of a console game could possibly be a bad idea? I just don't understand why doom? Why, of all ips, why doom? WHY? That's a rhetorical question, of course, and the answer is obvious. That is what I find insulting, the whoring of a beloved ip. 

there's always one... every time. 

Doom is synonymous with PC gaming and should be developed for that audience first and then ported second. 

"Optimizing for consoles" is an oversimplification, and that's the point I was trying to get across.

How could stuff like loadouts, lack of pickup weapons and generic ammo pickups be an optimization? This kind of design choices have nothing to do with technical constraints. 

as these are design choices. I agree. It's crap 

In my time, console players were hardcore. From BattleToads to games like Super Contra, Street Fighter III, Donkey Kong Country Returns and Ikaruga. Console players used to enjoy playing challenging games. 

How could stuff like loadouts, lack of pickup weapons and generic ammo pickups be an optimization? This kind of design choices have nothing to do with technical constraints.

I'm not talking about "optimising performance" I'm using the term in its more general meaning. "Designing for" "catering for" would have been clearer, yes. 

Delivers what promises, 10/10, A+++ etc. 

@Fifth: It's a stretch to say that Doom is synonymous with PC games. It was a cool game 20 years ago that sort of defined the FPS formula and stood out with its excessive gore and violence, but there were many PC games as awesome as Doom. Diablo for one was absolutely huge. Tons of great classic games appeared on the PC around that time. Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment, Fallout...

Great games also appeared on consoles. Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, Vagrant Story, Metal Gear Solid...

Developing a game for PC first and then porting to console isn't economical for the large publishers, quite simply. PC k&m twitch shooter players (or esports players) are a minority compared to the console install base. Twitch shooters are moving from general use into esports, which makes complete sense. I mean Quakeworld and Q3 basically IS esports, just not always for money (just sometimes.)

I don't really see what's wrong with consoles, either. I can enjoy a lot of console games just fine. I had great times with consoles and love gamepads for their ergonomics. Consoles and gamepads won for a reason - accessibility, price and ease of use.

If you're looking for Bethesda / Zenimax to make you another twitch based k&m shooter, you're probably looking in the wrong direction. It's not justifiable to them. That's not where the big market is.

I can sort of understand the ire at putting the name Doom on it, but that's just how marketing works. On the other hand, you're not really entitled to tell them what to call their game. They own the IP. It's up to them.

The original Doom won't go away because of this, and the motivation of the developer/publisher is understandable, so I can't really understand the amount of outrage over this.

@ kp: I do think that the frame of reference that all the complainers have in mind is to a degree unrealistic or from the past. You can't apply your rosy memories of twenty year old games as a reference to what today's video game market should be like. Times have changed, and there are reasons for that. Quake fans aren't the target audience anymore.

There's nothing wrong with console gamers just wanting to have some fun with their buddies. That's actually totally legitimate. And if that is so common that it drives the market, then producers have to react. That's the free market. You can't just have the free market when it suits you. You have to take it lock stock and barrel and sometimes it does things you don't like. (This mostly @scarecrow who once told me how awesome the free market is.)

Fans of twitch shooters for PC have the opportunity of Kickstarting games like Strafe or Retroblazer or Reflex. That's the free market as well. It just seems that these games have a hard time. Their market is a niche that appears to be smaller than many people thought. What many of you seem to want has to be considered a specialty/niche/nostalgia product today.

I do agree with Shambler. Criticizing shit gameplay is OK. Just nostalgia and console hate isn't a good argument and that's 75% of this entire shitstorm. 

We dictate what's fun and what isn't! Not the average Joe and his buddies. We know better cause we're old school. They just thinknthey're having fun when really they aren't compared to all the fun they could be having if we had our way! 

That was spot on. Not much else to be said about this IMO. Thanks for taking the time to write this down. 

They make games to make money. For this they read their markets.

The steam reviews on the beta indicate they seriously misread one of their markets (it is a market and as has been demonstrated - a valuable one; even if it is smaller than the console market it is far from negligible for the bottom line of the company).

Additionally again the MP is crucial, they can get good sales on SP alone on consoles, on PC not so due to the easy of pirating SP games.

The PC market probably is not asking for a reel oldskool twitch fest a la original Doom but it sure as fuck is not asking for what has been provided! Right or not? 

And to precise I'm not on the nostalgia angle for D4 - I regularly play D2 online and that is fine, I don't need more of that, its great, servers are populated, maps and gamemodes are great and plentiful, its all groovy there :D 

I think we should all take a moment to count our blessings. 

Spot-on post there. Thread closed imo. 

No, I think that for however shit that version might have been, at least it was honest about what it was. 

You can only carry two guns at a time

any gamepad wielding console kiddie can just pick up the demon spawn and blow everyone away

Are you trying to imply that these are actually good design choices? 

I've made various posts here and in lots of other places.

Doom 4's target audience was the console audience. The design choices of COD loadouts, slow gameplay, XP systems and levelling up, 2 weapons only...

It wouldn't have been difficult for them to look at the source material and think "why was doom great". There are countless videos online which demonstrate this.

Instead they looked at current games and then give it a Doom aesthetic. I'm not shitting on console players or even console games. I own every major console that has been put to market barring the xbox one. I love console games but I simply do not agree that people should cater to console gamers simply because they are the largest market.

If Zenimax want to make a quick buck out of the Doom franchise then that is their business, but PC gamers are a fickle bunch and will gladly divorce themselves from a franchise. Doom 4 will be the first id software game that I will not be buying on launch. I will be waiting to see the user reviews on Steam first (and very likely TotalBiscuits review). 

I always figured id would go down the tubes after selling out to Zenimax. The only question was which pipe they'd take. It's too bad they didn't just sell the ip and shutdown the company while still somewhat in their prime.

To be honest, multiplayer means nothing to me. If this new "Doom" doesn't get good reviews for the single player campaign, I won't be buying it any time soon. Maybe, as with Rage, in a year or so I'll be able to get it for $9 and be pleasantly surprised. 

However, I already bought it and will be playing the eve-living shit out of it on launch day. 

goodbye keyboard