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I don't know, I've never played doom when I was a kid, and every time I try to get into it I just get bored after few levels. On the other hand, I'm happy to play Doom 2016 a lot and have completed it multiple times. I suspect certain games just don't age very well, even though I can totally see why it was as revolutionary as it was when it came out(if you haven't read "Master's of Doom" yet, you absolutely have to).

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If you only played the vanilla version, try playing it in gzdoom. It's an updated engine that improves the graphics and adds some QoL updates, like preventing your mouse from moving your character forwards and backwards. It's still no Doom 2016, but it makes it feel less like an outdated game and more like an indie game that could have been released in the past few years.

https://www.zdoom.org/downloads

Alternatively, Doom plays really well on the Nintendo Switch. It just feels right to play on the little device in handheld mode.

How about on a digital camera[0], or a calculator[1], or an ATM[2], or an oscilloscope[3], or an Apple Watch[4], or a printer[5], or a Porsche[6], or an Etch-and-Sketch[7], or a Macbook Pro Touch Bar[8], or a piano[9], or a toaster[10]?

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gCZZkBATSc

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nduMTX86Zl0&feature=youtu.be...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0rStdHowAg&feature=youtu.be...

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2JOs0Aldq0&feature=youtu.be...

[4] https://youtu.be/KXhf_SpO6wA?t=20

[5] https://youtu.be/XLHx3vO7KJM?t=5

[6] https://youtu.be/NRMpNA86e8Q?t=174

[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnmIXK3PYFw

[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD0L46y3IqI

[9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoOzVAYSqzw

[10] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI7tWd7B3iI&feature=youtu.be...

Hah, I love the ingenuity but I'm not sure if they quite match the ergonomics of the Nintendo Switch. Though I do like the idea of buying a Porsche to play Doom.

Playing Doom today needs to be approached like any other nostalgia trip — you need to go into it with a mindset of what things were like at the time (like watching the original Star Wars movies). You really won’t get much out of it if you compare it to some game you’re playing today on your Xbox, and it’s somewhat disingenuous to try to do so.

Everything has a context, and learning to understand where something came from is a skill that is not just useful in appreciating old video games, but is broadly applicable in pretty much any human interaction.

That's all well and good, but if I need to make a particular effort to appreciate something, particularly if that effort includes suspending my ordinary standards of fun and quality, that something is not going to match up to the assertion "X is the best shooter you can play today." At least not by any standard definition of best.

Fwiw I don't think the og star wars movies require nearly the same suspension of standards that something like Doom does. Maybe for sfx buffs but I think most people go to movies for the human elements. That's not the same with videogames because of how the medium is interactive.

That's fine, and very common, as you say. But it is not what is meant by "it stands the test of time as the greatest in the genre." That epithet, explicitly, means an exception to that rule.

A lot of music from the 80s is good in the way you described. Thriller however, is an album that stood the test of time.

I want to say Tetris has stood the test of time. It has actually followed through to modern times, but I’m pretty confident I could play it on a gameboy today and not feel stuck in the past - just playing a game that’s been around a long time.

>Playing Doom today needs to be approached like any other nostalgia trip

I see this a lot in regards to older games especially things like doom or goldeneye. I understand when it comes to graphics or some tedious gameplay features and controls but I find from an actual core gameplay standpoint, a lot of older games hold up a lot better than more modern games. I'd rather manage ammo, while searching obscure tunnels for secrets and keys shooting at blurry pixels than press 'space' for the next qte between beautiful 30 minute cutscenes after the umpteenth tutorial guided linear coridoor I receive the next shiny trophy for walking down where the only risk is having to restart 3 seconds earlier from the last auto save point with a possible bonus for failing too many times accompanied with a link to the ingame store where I can purchase ammo or armour for the price of a cup of coffee.

Sometimes I get conned into buying a game that’s a large series of cutscenes with poor gameplay elements, but there are actually a large number of really good games released every year, even today.

In the 90s there were a lot of crappy games too. I think there’s good games in every time period, and trying to pretend that the past has a monopoly on core gameplay is only remembering the best games of the past.

Don't get me wrong, I understand there were lots of crap games from back in the day and there's good games being made now, I was just saying that I don't think nostalgia glasses are necessary to enjoy quality games from the past because despite a rough appearance and obtuseness the core mechanics behind those good games are just as solid as they were then and a vast majority of high budget titles being made now tend fall on the side of shallow money vaccuums....not that those never used to exist, but the lack of effort in providing an engaging, challenging experience is pretty noticeable as a trend.

As someone who regularly plays games from the 80s, I have to disagree. Unless you're playing a game from an iterative franchise where all are trying to achieve the same vision (sports, cod, simulator), older games absolutely can be compared to modern ones. Obviously the graphics can't, but if the gameplay sucks or the level design is monotonous then it doesn't matter how modern or old a game is. Look at today's Blizzard, who keep pumping things out that annoy their own fan base. Annoyed to the point that people petitioned them for wow classic, and are now petitioning for them to re-release the original warcraft 3.

The best example off the top of my head is the speed running community. The most popular game is super mario 64, which came out in 96. It has a smoothness to the controls that is almost never achieved even in modern games.

I'm a big fan of interactive fiction (think Zork) where there are no graphics, just talking to a parser.

This is one neat area, where the old Infocom games are well respected (see "Get Lamp" documentary on YouTube) today, but it is well recognized that the technology and text game complexity has reached entirety new heights that have pushed the boundaries forward immensely.

I’m currently playing through the original Doom games on Switch. They’re a lot of fun still! Even Doom 3, the weakest of the series, is very enjoyable in handheld mode.

They also don’t constantly nag you or hold your hand.

Can you cite a 1993 game that you think aged better than Doom? When Quake came out, the full 3D enemies and environments blew everyone away, but the kinetic gameplay was lost. You don't really get this in the first few levels of Doom, but as you progress on the harder skill levels you start to face an obscene quantity of enemies, which combined with the raw player speed and mostly-2D aim create an intensity that was lost in 3D FPS genre.

secret of monkey island. well, it's 3 years older.

LeChuck's revenge, from 1991, holds up even better.

Day Of The Tentacle is 1993.

ah, that should do fine then.

I'd guess a bunch of platformers and arcade-y games probably qualify for many.

80s Strategy games and others that are more obscure aged well.

“Command HQ” and “Pirates” from MicroProse, Zaxxon on Colecovision, Starflight on PC are fabulous games.

I used to love adventure games, but most of them aged terribly.

Not on PC - the point-and-clicks aside - PC gaming back then was horrible, Doom was an absolute revolution when it game out.

Sam and Max was released in 1993 though I'd argue that it's hurt much more by the graphics than Doom is.

On console? A fair few, with Secrets of Mana being the pick of the bunch. It's still a fantastic game in 2020. After that you have Super Mario Kart and Super Mario All-Stars.

If we include consoles, then I'd put "The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past" in there, from the same year as "Super Mario Kart". That was a good year for SNES.

This comment kinda reads like "Can you name a 1913 car that's aged better than the Model T? There's a reason they sold so many." And yet, for many people, it's not their preferred choice today.

The Super Nintendo came out in 1990, with Super Mario World out in 1990 and Donkey Kong Country coming out in 1994.

Those are both games that have a really strong core and are still close to perfection in their genres.

I think that the FPS genre has had big variations in the past 25 years though, so there’s a lot of small ways for Doom to age.

Myst was released in 1993.

Link’s Awakening was from 1993. It aged so well that the highly successful 2019 remake for Switch is basically just new stylized artwork.

So I just don't see that. To me the original doom is always more clunky than fast and fun, and the game has the annoying habit of releasing enemies from behind you.

But yes, I think Mega Man X has aged fantastically, as in - the developers spent a really large amount of time on good level design and on teaching the player how the game works, so you could pick it up for the very first time in 2020 and get into it immediately. And no, I haven't played this when it came out first either.

I think this highlights exactly what I'm talking about, look at the little things they are doing design wise, it's truly brilliant:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FpigqfcvlM

(Sorry, I know the video is meant to be a "funny" one, but it does make some very very good points about video game design)

Good lord, that is the best content to terrible everything else ratio I've encountered in the past weeks, at the very least. Why do people do this?

Because it gets them views I suppose. But yes, I know what you mean - everything else about it would stop me from showing the video to some people, even though I 1000% agree with his points.

I think some of the classic graphic adventures have aged pretty well (e.g. Monkey Island 1 and 2). They're still graphically beautiful and the writing hasn't aged badly.

You should try project brutality. It pretty much brings it on the same level as newer DOOMs. The graphics are still oldschool, but you won't notice that while ripping intestines at 17 m/s.

You might have to enable performace mode if it lags.

Games don’t age. Doom 2016 is great, but the idea that original Doom isn’t a classic is ludicrous.

Games absolutely age. I recently went back to try and play the original Deus Ex game that came out in 2000, and it feels super clunky compared to modern games. The original Doom is definitely a classic, but that doesn't mean it can't feel dated. For example, it's pretty common in Doom for walls to open up behind you, surrounding you with demons, even though there was no indication that the wall would open. Designers have learned that killing the player with no warning is usually more frustrating than fun, so they try not to do it any more.

There is always an audio cue when the wall opens up behind you in Doom.

Yeah, but you are still getting killed out of nowhere. The audio cue was also usually accompanied by the sound of all the fireballs and shotgun blasts flying your way. That's why devs do stuff now like put blood on the floor if there's some sort of trap, so an observant player can dodge it, or at least learn how to avoid pointless deaths. Unless you know it's there ahead of time, there's no way in Doom to know that picking up a certain item or pressing a certain button will cause demons to start pouring out of the walls around you.

Games aren't necessarily improved by smoothing out the frustrations. Part of the point is to be challenged, and to have sections which are difficult, and produce anxiety. The joy comes from finding out how to overcome those sections.

Additionally, because everyone will have different trouble spots, a game which has smoothed out the frustrations for the greatest number of people is really a game which doesn't provide much challenge. The worst culprits here would be the games of the mid-2000s, with their heavy cinematics, and extremely low difficulty. Conversely, these games fare worse over time than something like classic Doom: the gameplay was never there in the first place, and the graphics only wowed people 1.5 decades ago.

I never got into the original XCOM games of the super clunky UI. I know they were good games but I personally can't play them.

Get GMDX.

That's not what I'm saying. It is a classic. But the author of the article says that the "perfect" FPS is the original doom. I'm arguing that no, for someone playing it without nostalgia glasses distorting reality, the game is rather uninteresting for anyone who hasn't played it as a kid.

I'll grant you that "perfect" is not a very useful term in this case. Perfect means many different things to different people.

But, I'd absolutely disagree that nostalgia is the only thing that makes classic Doom fun. And, it's the crux of what I meant when I said "games don't age." There is a style of gameplay there which I believe is fun at any period in time. There's a lot I could say here, but I'd argue that if a game is only interesting when it's novel and it's cutting edge, then the core gameplay was never good to begin with. (for example, Chess is pretty archaic, but the idea that Chess was only fun back when it was really first popularized is similarly false.)

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