I don’t fault the new Doom for trying to build a Mars base that made some nods to what an actual Mars base (or any scientific outpost) might look like, but I wish the level designers had been a bit more willing to challenge the status quo with something a bit more gonzo.

No, the problem with map design in Doom 2016 versus Doom Classic is that game design itself has become beholden to realism in a way that 19 could scarcely have imagined.Īs game engines became more complex, games themselves gave players the ability to do more things and sought to model the physical world in more complex ways. I’m not just referring to the fact that Doom leans way too heavily on the whole “Kill all the monsters in the room to unlock your next objective” concept, though it definitely does. Given the vast differences between Doom 2 and the remade Doom, it might seem absurd to compare them in any particular - but after beating the rebooted Doom, it seems to me that there’s one issue where the original Doom games had it beat: Map and level design. As a Doom sequel, it was far more faithful to the original title than Doom 3 ever was (at least in my personal opinion), and it updated the classic gameplay from 1993/1994 with an emphasis on speed, vertical play, and a new array of weapons (with nods to some faithful classics). A few weeks ago, we covered the Doom reboot and its against-all-odds single-player mode that captured what people loved about the original game and gave it a worthwhile and enjoyable update.

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