back to article Doom is BOOM! BOOM! BACK!

It's been nearly 11 years but Doom is back. Bethesda Software has released a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it teaser for the reboot of the famous first-person shooter and confirmed the game will be “unveiled” on June 14 at the E3 2015 games show in Los Angeles. It's been a long time since we've seen a truly new version of the 22-year …

  1. James Hughes 1

    Doom scared the willies out of me playing late at night in a dark room.

    An Oculus rift version? Heart attack territory.

    1. Andy Non Silver badge

      Back in the day, I got hold of a utility to create Doom 2 levels and wrote quite a number of them, trying them out on colleagues at erm... work. I'll never forget the day one of my revenants sneakily stuffed a rocket through a narrow slit straight into a colleagues face. They guy was so startled he shot back from the screen, collided with a cabinet and fell off his office chair onto the floor cursing and swearing.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        I made a few (mostly deathmatch) levels myself.

        For me though it was played at university, not work. With impeccable timing the university installed a brand new, generally accessible, cluster of 50Mhz 486DXs just before the original DOOM was released. Being the only computers on campus that could run it properly they were suddenly very, very popular.

        Obviously the university wasn't too keen on this, resulting in a constant battle to keep the cluster DOOM free. So we started hiding it (e.g. c:\windows\doom) rather than just installing in the root directory. In a way this made the problem worse, it wasn't unusual to find a computer with 2 or 3 copies in different places. Certainly you could generally find one copy somewhere in the cluster, so it didn't take long to copy to the others.

        (Anon? My user name here is the same as my logon for the university's mainframe was ...)

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Those were the days

          We did the same but figured out if you typed alt+255 over 20 times when creating a directory, the directory was invisible. Our it teacher couldn't find where all the space was being used. Tee hee.

          I made numerous levels on doom, then moved into quake in 3d, then onto quake3 then mods like urban terror and finished up on l4d. Good times.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Back in the day, I got hold of a utility to create Doom 2 levels

        One of my friends created a very popular mod which nearly everyone in our school played instead of the stock Doom 2. The Kakodaemon (kako is honorific for "older sister" in Bulgarian) had his sister (from the same school) face superimposed. Some of the other monsters had teachers or other "popular" students grafted on top of them - all of that to form a nice character cast of "all time favourites".

        It offered some great therapeutic fun - you take the grenade launcher (or the chainsaw) and have a 1:1 discussion with your fav school bully :)

        1. Mark 85

          The sad thing is that if you did that today and an authority figure (teacher/parent/cop/whatever) discovered it, you might get some hard time for being someone with terrorist intentions.

    2. Daniel B.
      Go

      Oh yes...

      Doom scared the willies out of me playing late at night in a dark room.

      A Demon, in Command Center's dark maze, with a Rocket Launcher!!!!

      That pretty much sums up the first time Doom actually scared me. I had selected the rocket launcher, was navigating through a maze in E1M4 when I started hearing growling noises behind me. I turn and find a Demon right in front of me. I panicked and shot the thing. At point blank range. With a freaking Rocket Launcher. Fortunately, I survived that with 11% Health. It also didn't help that the next level after that was the horribly dark Phobos Lab.

      1. Jedit Silver badge
        Joke

        "A Demon, in Command Center's dark maze, with a Rocket Launcher!!!!"

        Sorry, you lose - it was Colonel Mustard in the Command Centre with the BFG-9000.

        (Which joke makes me wish for a moment that there was a Doom-themed Cluedo.)

    3. Martin-73 Silver badge

      AMEN

      I came here to say exactly that, and find your comment as the first. Glad it wasn't just me!

    4. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      Close, but no cigar

      An Oculus rift version? Heart attack territory.

      Nope. Bundled diaper territory. As an immediate effect.

      And lots and lots of "correcting" chemicals as an aftermath to fix the nightmares.

    5. Filippo Silver badge

      The scare-out-of-the-chair moment for me was my first encounter with the rocket-launcher-wielding demon, which you meet from a very long distance in a large space.

      "Ooh, that thing over there looks like a new monster. Hmm, it seems to have a dot in the middle. Which is growing fast. And has flames behind it. Oh CR...!"

  2. AndrueC Silver badge
    Happy

    If it sticks to the original simplistic but free-form 'go where you like' levels I might be interested. I gave up on TPS when they started to insist on the character following their story and route. Corridors that mysteriously collapse behind you. Beams that curiously fall over blocking a door you just came through. All those tricks to make you move through the level the way they want.

    All I ever want from a TPS is to run around shooting stuff. I've no interest in stupid stories or the designer's 'vision' for how I'll progress through each level. Just let me run around like a blue arsed fly killing shit.

    1. stucs201

      This sums up the problem:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4yIxUOWrtw

      or the Quake version:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1ZtBCpo0eU

      1. AndrueC Silver badge

        Re: This sums up the problem:

        Very good links! Now can you tell me how to type FPS instead of TPS?

        :)

        1. Khaptain Silver badge

          Re: This sums up the problem:

          I sat for 5 minutes trying to determine what a TPS was, Third Party Shooter !! I have been trying desperately to remember if we could play Doom from an outside point of view...

      2. JLV
        Thumb Up

        Re: This sums up the problem:

        ah, yesssss a good dig at Call of Duty.

        Took me about 2 hrs watching my health meter regenerate mysteriously, as long as I was patient, to realize that CoD would never equal the visceral paranoia that a Doom or Dark Souls game will engender. Nor the despair that you may not, this time, quite be able to beat the boss in the area where you keep on respawning with almost no ammo.

        Ditto Assassin's Creed. And even Skyrim mostly did not measure up to Baldur's Gate in lethality.

        Get those kids offa my lawn!

        1. Hairless Biker

          Re: This sums up the problem:

          Yep, I still go back to the original System Shock now and again for my FPS kicks. I couldn't handle Doom - the gun motion made me queasy!

      3. Daniel B.
        Mushroom

        Re: This sums up the problem:

        Ah yes, the "Call of Halo" genre of FPS. I really, really hate that most FPS games have dumbed down to the 2 weapon limit, linear levels, regen health and checkpoint autosave systems, it has even infested games that used to be better, like Bioshock Infinite and Dead Space 3. Oh, and Duke Nukem Forever, which didn't suck because it should've been released in 1998 ... it sucked because DNF was basically following all the BAD things from the "Call of Halo" genre.

        1. dan1980

          Re: This sums up the problem:

          As someone of about the age that straddles both types of FPS, I grew up on Wolf3D running on an old 286 packing 4MB of RAM and a 40MB HDD (Quantum Fireball if I remember right). Outdated at the time, I remember thinking that Wolfenstein was actual a black & white game until I saw it some years later. I was actually a bit disappointed as it lost some of its special character in colour. Or at least I thought so : )

          But I am still an interested gamer now and have played through both the Halos and the Modern Warfare games (don't care for the WWII era ones) as well as the Gears of War series and I like them. MW2 and Halo 2 are particular favourites.

          In the end, they are, though all FPSs, different types. The newer ones are more story-driven and more focussed on action. There is no back-tracking to find the yellow key, for example. Whether any particular person prefers that or not is another matter but the changes you list - regen, save points, limited weapon swaps - all complement that, helping to move the story along at a suitable pace rather than (e.g.) having people back-track to a health pack or quick-saving/loading when they've walked into a room and been blasted.

          The ability to pick up weapons and ammunition from enemies also works with this as you aren't backtracking (much) for ammo either and can switch weapons as you go, because killing someone = a weapon. Which is the way it really should be - if they are shooting at you, the gun they were using shouldn't magically evaporate when they cease breathing.

          That said, neither style is necessarily better or worse but the changes you mention are part of what makes the modern style work, rather than things that could be removed without affecting anything else.

          Honestly, though, while I loved the older style at the time, they never had the same feeling of actually being your character, battling through, which is something I quite like. In the aforementioned MW2 and Halo 2 instances, MW2 provided an unparalleled feeling of being part of a military unit - particularly the ones where you are in the Rangers - while Halo 2 gave a fantastic sense of being, well, a bad-ass, unstoppable killing machine out to save humanity, which is exactly the point.

          The ability of modern FPSs to tell a story and direct the pace is a direct cause of that immersion.

          1. stucs201

            Re: This sums up the problem:

            I always get confused when people use MW to refer to Modern Warfare. MW is MechWarrior.

            1. Duffy Moon

              Re: This sums up the problem:

              To me, MW means Medium Wave

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: This sums up the problem:

            wooowwwwwww easy Tiger 4mb on a 286!

            1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

              Re: This sums up the problem:

              wooowwwwwww easy Tiger 4mb on a 286!

              Mine had 8 and ran at 25MHz - a Harris surplus military chip + VLSI motherboard with working all banks memory interleave. Add to that the fact that I got p*** off at Miscrosf ineptitude at handling 1024+ cylinders and wrote my own disk drivers for the past-1024 boundary partition which were "only" 4 times faster and well... the picture was complete. All of that with a black and white 1024x768 maskless XGA for budgetary reasons.

              It ran circles around all early 386es and the only reason I upgraded to 386 at all was the first installment of Tie Fighter. That bloody thing categorically refused to run on 286.

        2. VinceH

          Re: This sums up the problem:

          "I really, really hate that most FPS games have dumbed down to the 2 weapon limit, linear levels, regen health and checkpoint autosave systems"

          The artificially forced, linear levels mentioned further upthread bug me a bit, but generally if the game is good enough (all the key elements, good story, suitably difficult, etc) it doesn't bother me that much.

          The dumbing down, though, that does - a particularly annoying example is where defeating an end of level (or even final) boss isn't a matter of using things you've learnt and skills you've acquired playing the game... instead it's a matter of watching the screen and pressing square or circle (PS3) as soon as the message pops up telling you to do so (MW, I'm looking at you). All of a sudden, the story you've been so deeply immersed in is thrown out the window and it's a game of reaction: Press the right button fast enough when prompted.

          Another thing that annoys me is in the Tomb Raider games. You solve these puzzles that lead you to some remote place and seemingly provide you with the only means to get in to the secret door into the underground temple (or whatever) - and in collecting the pieces to solve that puzzle, your enemy is unable to do the same. Yet when you get there, the enemy is already there, firmly entrenched deep in the system. Grrr! Okay, we need the bad guys to be there to make that part of the game more difficult, but it screws up the story!

          1. Triggerfish

            Re: This sums up the problem:

            Aaah the linear levels bug me so much ever since I think it was one of the Modern Warfares that insisted I get on a bridge over a road to use a MG, but would go mental and kill me for trying to flank the position instead.

            Basically the turned it into space invaders with pretty graphics, its that much on rails.

        3. regadpellagru

          Re: This sums up the problem:

          "Ah yes, the "Call of Halo" genre of FPS. I really, really hate that most FPS games have dumbed down to the 2 weapon limit, linear levels, regen health and checkpoint autosave systems, it has even infested games that used to be better, like Bioshock Infinite and Dead Space 3. Oh, and Duke Nukem Forever, which didn't suck because it should've been released in 1998 ... it sucked because DNF was basically following all the BAD things from the "Call of Halo" genre."

          I feel for you, as I'm the same. I made the fatal mistake to play Bioshock Infinite after 1000+ hours of Borderlands 2. A 2 weapons game after the weapin-fest of BL2. Guarantied frustration.

          Solution ? Stay away from "Call of Halo", stick to better genre, and don't hesitate to play old games.

          Doom 4 is on my radar, but get out if of the "Call of Halo" style.

          1. dan1980

            Re: This sums up the problem:

            It would be nice, I think, if there was more balance in the styles it would be good.

            That said, while I do like the modern style and find it suits me now, even that is less well represented now as has been a big shift toward multiplayer first, story second. Battlefield is a great example to the extent that some reviews focussed almost entirely on multiplayer and gave a paragraph near the end to single player.

            I picked up Battlefield 3 a while ago from the bargain bin (wanted something to play) as I had seen it get good reviews and scores. It looks great and there is a real attempt at a story but the game just fell flat and I couldn't be bothered finishing it. Found out that the good scores were based on multiplayer only, with the assumption that that is what people would be buying it for.

            Compare to Modern Warfare 2, which, though it also had a strong MP side, I played through and then, as soon as I finished on normal difficulty*, fired it up on hard and started again. Once that was done, I played through on the hardest difficulty.

            But the biggest two FPSs to be released on the next gen consoles - Destiny and Titanfall? Both online only and focussed on multiplayer.

            So I feel for those people who miss the old-school FPS games because I know how it feels to look forward to a new game only to find it's MP-focussed or online-only.

            Ideally there would be a good mix of the three styles but the reality is that game are big business these days and many smaller developers (and their IP) have been bought up by the big boys who are very profit-focussed and so will put their money into those styles of games that they see will make the most for them.

            * - I like playing these types of games on the basic difficulty first so that I can enjoy the story a bit more and have it flow better.

      4. Schultz

        Re: This sums up the problem:

        Still remember Doom as the FPS that did not have 'physics' brakes.

        You could jump and turn as fast as your mouse would go, so death-matches would be mostly a test of skills and not just tactics. Those instantaneous 90 or 180 degree turns, the side jump / turn at close range to get out of the opponents vision, the ability to get close enough for the berserk kit to pay off ... happy memories.

    2. Jim 59

      Also I prefer just to shoot monsters, me vs. computer. A quick 30 minute blast. But single player has all but died out now. It is you vs myriad strangers or nothing.

      1. Bongwater

        Playing against AI

        Warhammer SM has a mode where you guys just have to survive and kill waves of enemies. A nice break from playing against people.

        I believe SC and LoL also have those modes as there still are a bunch people who enjoy the play style. I like both.

  3. Sanctimonious Prick
    Happy

    Not Much Of A Gamer...

    But I loved playing Wolfenstein, Doom, and Doom2 - the latter scaring the crap out of me on an original release console with an awesome surround sound amp.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "ever since one of Doom’s masterminds jumped ship for Oculus"

    With respect, I think John Carmack has done enough to get a mention by name. The man's a coding God.

  5. Wedge

    If it doesn't have IDDQD, it isn't a doom game..

    1. Anonymous Custard
      Thumb Up

      Especially when coupled with IDKFA

      Just says it all that I can remember both codes off the top of my head after 20-something years...

      1. stucs201

        IDQDQ and IDKFA are easy to remember. IDSPISPOPD is slightly trickier, but is still probably going to occupy some of my brain cells forever.

        1. Jedit Silver badge
          Angel

          "IDQDQ and IDKFA are easy to remember"

          Evidently not, because it's IDDQD and you were replying to a post with it in.

  6. Hazmoid

    But will all the old Doom hacks work?

    God mode was brilliant when you just couldn't get past one of the bosses, so that you could see what was on the other side of the room and if you needed to get there to be able to survive the level. In fact I clearly remember one level where you had God mode turned on as soon as you stepped into the room because there were so many bosses, but you had to kill them as quickly as possible as it was a time limited mode.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Please

    dont be a Duke Nuke'em dont be a Duke Nuke'em dont be a Duke Nuke'em dont be a Duke Nuke'em dont be a Duke Nuke'em dont be a Duke Nuke'em dont be a Duke Nuke'em dont be a Duke Nuke'em dont be a Duke Nuke'em dont be a Duke Nuke'em dont be a Duke Nuke'em dont be a Duke Nuke'em

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Please

      Hail to the king, baby!

  8. Anonymous Custard

    I see your shotgun, and raise you a chainsaw

    ...what looks to be a Super Shotgun, the weapon of choice for the artistic Doom player

    Nah, the choice was always the chainsaw...

    1. Lamont Cranston

      Re: I see your shotgun, and raise you a chainsaw

      Bezerk Pack and fists, please - nothing like watching your enemies explode in one punch!

  9. eJ2095

    The Rock

    Wonder if they will stick "Dwayne Johnson" in so we can shoot him......

    1. codejunky Silver badge

      Re: The Rock

      The film wasnt great but it was better than the game (doom 3 that is). It always seemed like a really poor knock off of Quake 4 with an attempt at interaction but not getting it, but also trying fast paced action which seemed to happen at points where there was something interesting with the storyline. I also hated that everyone would be dead before you got to them. No reinforcements just endless 'meet us here', 'go over there' while occasionally seeing the auditor and his bodyguard.

      I hope the reboot is either an action game or an intelligent story/interaction like halflife and quake(2/4). The original Doom was worth replaying.

      1. Neil B

        Re: The Rock

        @codejunky -- That would have been impressive, considering Quake 4 came out afterwards and used Doom 3's engine. :)

        I really liked Doom 3. A graphical magnitude shift, and a true step forward in game audio as well. Dark room, 5.1 cranked up, new pants please.

        1. codejunky Silver badge

          Re: The Rock

          @ Neil B

          Then I would call quake 4 what doom 3 should have been. The audio, graphics and effort behind it was fantastic but I dont think doom managed to blend the storyline and shoot-em-up very well. I think the engine did fantastic

  10. Gobhicks
    Devil

    But for sheer mindless...

    ... blast as fast as you can for as long as you can keep it up.... does anyone remember a game called Backlash? (Atari ST, don't know about anything else)

    1. Horridbloke

      Re: But for sheer mindless...

      I remember Backlash (ST and Amiga). It was fun, but weirdly I enjoyed the game that inspired it (Encounter, a 1984-era FPS for the Commodore 64) more.

      Encounter was true genius.

  11. Zmodem

    id can get some balls, idtech5 is`nt hard to understand and code with, making a shit game good is easy

    find out me my Q43A http://www.moddb.com/mods/q43a

    quake wars sdk is easy to rip apart and code too

    and they can update the megatexture size in quake wars and release the engine as a UDK type tool, id brought the source back off splash damage for some reason, so you can make some battle field sized games

  12. John Crisp

    3D monster maze, ZX81.... when you turned round and saw him behind you.....

    Ah those were the days.....

    My first paying IT job was fixing a friends IPX network so they could play network Duke :-)

  13. adam payne

    I'm so happy that Doom is coming back, I love the Doom series and have played each game to death.

    IDDQD, IDKFA, IDFA, IDCLIP, IDSPISPOPD, IDBEHOLD

    I think i'm going to get the chainsaw started up.

  14. N2

    Theres nothing quite like it

    Been playing Doom since it first came out in 1993 ish, when it would run quite respectably on a 386

    I still play it on my old iPhone 3 & was searching to see if there were any updates available when I saw this article.

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