From gameinformers hands on with D4 SP :
"In the deepest southern accent I�ve heard outside of actors overemphasizing it in films, Ms. Donna offers me a breath mint, and tells me in a polite way that I better have a good time playing the game. She winks at me and I am immediately at a loss for words."

" A security guard in full police attire (gold badge and all) sits to her right, smiling pleasantly as he soaks in my awkward exchanges with Ms. Donna."

"Marty Stratton, id Software�s game director and executive producer, bounds down the hall, and whether he knows it or not, comes to my rescue at just the right time. I can�t tell if he�s smiling because he knows we just met Ms. Donna, or he�s eager to show us what he and his team have been working on over the last few years."


The mint has happy drugs in it... 

Its too perfect really.

A mint from a lady: make him self conscious about breath, much higher chances of being accepted without further thought.

Everybody knowingly grinning about.

Little office tour to give time for the pill to act before taking him in to try the game.

I'm joking but then again I wouldn't be too surprised if it turned out such tactics were used on big budget games considering the $$$ vested and the importance of good press at this stage. 

 

Not sure why we've dedicated 3 paragraphs to creeping on the receptionist but whatever... 

...or the Hell Knight considering the color scheme, or the Hell Knight has been taken from D3 like in that E3 demo and what we see here is REALLY the Baron of Hell?
Either way, looks neat. Yay for horns coming back. 

Still, it does sound okay. If you ignore the hype and marketting talk. Didn't read the long articles tho, too much words. 

Sorry for the inconvenience, but there�s an error with your location. 

http://www.gameinformer.com/p/doom.aspx

Yeah I couldn't be bothered to read through all that crap either but I spent a few seconds skipping through a couple of the videos, and I'm now feeling cautiously optimistic. Could be fun. 

From some of the things they say, it seems id may be confusing "fast gameplay" with "busy gameplay".

Most of the time, classic Doom didn't have busy gameplay. But the player could run at high speeds, which was essential to explore the whole level figuring out puzzles, hunting secrets and getting all remaining items before exiting the level.

The way they're talking, it seems their concept of "speed" is solely focused on the battles. I hope I'm wrong.

Yay for horns!

Watching the other videos now. 

"But the player could run at high speeds, which was essential to explore the whole level figuring out puzzles, hunting secrets and getting all remaining items before exiting the level" � without getting bored. 

the Game Design was relatively simple: you just run and shoot, you've got items, secrets, you've got to reach the exit, and there's monsters in the way.
It's simple, but the game design allow said simplicity to go beyond what is written on paper: the player's allowed to do whatever he wants from the rules, and monsters can create interesting situations, same thing goes with level design.
Here for Doom4 it feels restricted, and when you try to put restrictions (what it is my guess goes to console pandering) on a simple game design you try to add-on things to try to reach the same "depth" that happened in D1&2 (even though that depth came automatically from the player's perspective, not by artificial means). 

inb4 someone or a small team of modders try to redo from the ground up D4 on iDTech 4 

90s fps = simple mechanics, complex level designs
Modern fps = complex mechanics, simple level designs

In a nut shell 

They're listening to our criticising whinging. 

So, the weapon selection wheel is optional, and there's a quick selection method for weapons. Nice.

However, they mentioned an "upgrade system". For me, upgrade systems reeks of grinding.

In classic Doom, the only upgrade was the backpack, and even back then I didn't like it much. But at least it was an upgrade achieved directly through gameplay, it had a physical interactive presence in the game world (in simple words, it was a pickup item). Now they seem to be using an in-game store for the upgrades.

Let's see how this will turn out. Maybe one purpose of in-game stores is to make sure that players will eventually get the upgrades, since pickup items may sometimes go unnoticed. But I don't think Doom needs this. 

I've been to QuakeCon a few times (1997, 2000, 2002 and 2005) and it's nice to see a guy work his way up through the ranks at id and get to direct a dream project. At the events I saw him at he always seemed liked the hardest working guy of the bunch, very approachable and direct. I'm rooting for D4 myself and I liked the alpha although it was pretty bare bones. 

I like upgrades and RPG-lite stuff, if it's done well. It gives a bit of a reward for exploring around and finding the stuffs etc.

OTOH, Daz is very correct with his assessment, maybe the most succinct summation of where it's all gone wrong. 

Hard reset or shadow warrior comes to mind 

Bleh.

Upgrades and rpg-lite...

What about doom beat on "take it easy" = Doom proficiency +3!
Fucking improving your own fucking skills is all the RPG you need in a Doom FPS ffs.
Here you can even play weapon upgrade with a new mouse = aiming +1! Even take a few graphic tweaks for some extra FPS = Reflexes & Accuracy +1.

Fucking tits.

Its gonna be whinge & whine all the way till release I am afraid :P 

Hard Reset had a better upgrade system than Shadow Warrior, because the store was a physical place in the game world.

Anyway, I just hope it doesn't turn into a "perform 60 fatalities to upgrade your pistol, or kill 10 Hell Knights with the chainsaw to upgrade your shotgun" grindfest. 

THe monster design is lame for some monsters- Very., very lame.

I don't care about recreating doom perfectly but I would settle for a good, doom inspired frantic game full of challenging action. But I don't think doom 4 will be good, it will be mostly ruined by bad, cramped level design and the pinata mechanics making the combat difficulty and tension trivial (my predictions) 

A thing I don't get is how Id Software ISN'T an independent study making games for the sake of making good games. Didn't they earn "fuck you" money way back then? What the fuck happened. Did they seriously mismanage their capital for doom 3 and rage? 

Busy gameplay with fast combat but slow map navigation. Let's hope not.

It worked well enough for the 2013 Shadow Warrior because that game is basically a first-person beat-em-up; mastering the sword is way more effective than shooting.

Slow map navigation sucks. Quake 4 was disappointing in that the running speed was slower than Quake's walking speed. It felt more realistic, but realistic constraints aren't fun. 

They mismanaged their human capital. Plus, maybe they just got bored.

They needed a kind of Romero to pump things up. The last id game that was true to its roots, imo, was Quake III Arena. 

You guys are great at parties aren't you?