Doom II vs Doom 3 Graphics

Doom 3 looks better. I've always hated pixely graphics. I don't have a full hard-on for photorealism, and I do tend to prefer non-photoreal styles, but blocky pixels have always just sort of grated on me, even when I was a kid. The lack of subtle coloration and shading due to a limited palette also detracts from a piece of character art, in my opinion, so it was a great step forward when video modes started supporting more than 256 colors. Despite the triangulation on the Doom 3 model, it still says "demon" to me. The Doom 2 model just says "vaguely blurry gingerbread man."

As far as replayability, though, I think both Doom 2 and Doom 3 lack it. I can get as nostalgic as the next guy in theory, and I did enjoy both games for a brief time when they were new, but for me nostalgia should remain untouched. Nothing destroys my pleasant memories of a game or movie faster than going back and replaying it years later. I made the mistake of going back and replaying some of the Ultima and Wizardry games of my youth, and I wish I hadn't. In my opinion, there have been a lot of really good advances in modern games, enough that I keenly feel their lack when I go back to play my earlier favorites; even if those early favorites have a lot of good things that modern games won't touch with a 10 foot pole.

I prefer the imp from Doom 3 to be honest. I think that the imp from the original Doom doesn't look menacing at all, same case with the pink demon and lost souls.

However, I think the originals are better games. I still play Doom 2, I'm trying to beat the Plutonia levels on ultra violence starting each level with just a pistol; the gameplay is so fast and the guns so satisfying, its crazy, and I'm not getting hit by nostalgia either, as I discovered this game just a few years back, around the time Doom 3 was released.

Doom 3 on the other hand was tedious to me.

So, uhm... yeah, I prefer the imp from Doom 3...

I prefer the imp from Doom 3 to be honest. I think that the imp from the original Doom doesn't look menacing at all, same case with the pink demon and lost souls.

Pink demons scared the hell out of me back in the 90´s.

I prefer the imp from Doom 3 to be honest. I think that the imp from the original Doom doesn't look menacing at all, same case with the pink demon and lost souls.

However, I think the originals are better games. I still play Doom 2, I'm trying to beat the Plutonia levels on ultra violence starting each level with just a pistol; the gameplay is so fast and the guns so satisfying, its crazy, and I'm not getting hit by nostalgia either, as I discovered this game just a few years back, around the time Doom 3 was released.

Doom 3 on the other hand was tedious to me.

So, uhm... yeah, I prefer the imp from Doom 3...

yep.


IMO, gameplay-wise, Doom 3 is lacking something, also if compared with Quake 1 or 2 or Half-Life IMO.

it is sometimes almost like a wave of not-very-goodness came and befell the FPS genre.

graphics have gotten better, gameplay, not so much...



it is almost like me first encountering Quake 3 Arena and being like "what?".
I generally preferred games with single-player gameplay. well, people who like deathmatch liked it, and it itself led to its own branch of the FPS genre (games primarily defined by multiplayer and DM + CTF gameplay).


Doom 3 seemed to be more like a whole lot of "I can't see crap" and monsters popping up behind the player, which I personally found kind of annoying (at least in the prior games).

also slightly annoying was the sound design, which basically seemingly equated "dramatic" or "exciting" with "noisy". ("what do we need here? oh yeah, a whole bunch of screaming and some baby noises...").

and, sadly, for newer FPS games, Doom 3 is still not doing that badly.

if I could see stuff, and it was less annoying, and if not for it being a good part of a decade before I had hardware powerful enough to get reasonable frame-rates with it, I may have been happier with it.


also thought Half-Life 2 was ok, but still kind of weak in some ways vs Half-Life (like, in HL, a person could wander around a bit more within each area, rather than everything being essentially a long unidirectional corridor).

in older games, you often had to find the exit, rather than essentially just going forwards until arriving at the exit (for pretty much the entire game).


elsewhere, much of the rest of the FPS genre has become dominated by Halo and COD clones...

dunno, could be nostalgia for all I know.

Honestly the Doom 3 imp looks better no matter what, although the colors and lighting sure could be better (though to be fair that's one of the few places where Doom 3 has any lighting at all =P).

As far as replayability, though, I think both Doom 2 and Doom 3 lack it.

The replayability in the Doom games has always been in the modding, not the games as-is =P In fact I wonder how many people spent more time making levels than actually playing them.

I prefer the imp from Doom 3 to be honest. I think that the imp from the original Doom doesn't look menacing at all, same case with the pink demon and lost souls.

Pink demons scared the hell out of me back in the 90´s.

But did they scared you due to their appearance or because they appeared out of nowhere? At least for me its the latter.

Hello

I've just started to play again at Doom3, with highest configuration and resolution; and except some *missing* post-process effects, particles, ...,it's quite hallucinating even nowadays. I like observing shadows in Doom3

I think Doom3 is just a bit *old*, and Doom2 is now into retro-games category (but still a legend).

So the 2 are not really comparable nowadays, Doom3 can still be completely immersive (cf realism) . Playing Doom2 is for 'souvenir', 'nostalgy' ... as myself I play regularly at Mario2 on GameBoy

blah

I agree almost completely, but I will say Doom 3 was more immersive for me, in the sense that it raised more emotions in me. I definitely had more fun with 1/2, but I never really felt anything other than, "fun stuff!" Doom 3 definitely had a couple of moments where I was scared poopless.

it is almost like me first encountering Quake 3 Arena and being like "what?".

Quake 3 Arena was awesuuuum! I wouldn't mind at all a Quake 5 Arena :D

I liked Doom 3, it looked awesome back then, and it was pretty scary for me. It sure looks better than Doom 2. But they're displaying pretty different artistic styles I guess.

Often I like Id games in the sense that they never wen't too far from their shooting mechanics even after all these years. That's why I enjoyed playing Rage, it still had that old-school PC FPS feeling. Their gameplay is good enough if you like that stuff, in Rage they stepped up their art a LOT (just LOOK at Dead City), I mean, for Id Tech 4 they were all like "SHADUUURS!" and with Id Tech 5 they're all like "ARTIIIIISTS!"

If they could get a good story they would make awesome all-round games me thinks.

I think there's a couple of things. Firstly the higher resolution of Doom 3 shows up the imperfections too. If one excuses the lower resolution of the Doom 2, then yes, you can see it as being a good quality more realistic image that's been scaled down. But I wonder what Doom 3 would look like if you played it at the same very low resolution? Would that hide the imperfections such as the jagged polygons, and show something that looks more similar to Doom 2?

Secondly, 2D has the advantage that an artist can create something of good quality. But part of the advantage of 3D (and part of the reason for games switching to it, I believe) is that it's much easier to create a range of different animations, and orientations.

So I'd argue it's unfair to judge just by static images. When you play the games, Doom 2 feels like you're playing against flat cardboard-cutouts that always turn to face you. Doom 3 feels like playing against real physical enemies that move about more realistically, even if they look a bit blocky.

I think there's a couple of things. Firstly the higher resolution of Doom 3 shows up the imperfections too. If one excuses the lower resolution of the Doom 2, then yes, you can see it as being a good quality more realistic image that's been scaled down. But I wonder what Doom 3 would look like if you played it at the same very low resolution? Would that hide the imperfections such as the jagged polygons, and show something that looks more similar to Doom 2?

Secondly, 2D has the advantage that an artist can create something of good quality. But part of the advantage of 3D (and part of the reason for games switching to it, I believe) is that it's much easier to create a range of different animations, and orientations.

So I'd argue it's unfair to judge just by static images. When you play the games, Doom 2 feels like you're playing against flat cardboard-cutouts that always turn to face you. Doom 3 feels like playing against real physical enemies that move about more realistically, even if they look a bit blocky.

I tried resampling some Doom 3 screenshots to similar resolutions and settings to those in Doom 2 (320x200 at 256 colors).


as for sprites vs models:
yes, for a single sprite it isn't too hard to deliver higher quality with less effort than a 3D model.

when multiple angles and animations come into play, 3D models have an advantage (generally easier to create and animate). however, with regards to fine details, and many kinds of animations, 2D graphics art still has an advantage (so, it makes sense to instead work on putting a lot of detail into the textures, or use an animated texture or looping video-source for the animation, in place of using large numbers of triangles).

granted... most of my own 3D models are pretty lazy.


IIRC, the original Doom 1/2 characters weren't drawn directly as sprites though, but were in-fact first made out of modeling clay, and then pictures were taken of them from various angles. they were then deformed for the various animation frames.

some other games from a similar timeframe (such as ROTT) had instead used actors in costumes.

I know it's kinda old now, but my opinion:

Doom 1/2

Good:

- Challenging gameplay

- Lots of secrets

- Lengthy game

Bad:

- Perspective gave me a headache

- Wasn't very in-depth story wise

Doom 3

Good:

- Spooky (especially at night with all the lights off).

- Random challenges

- The chainsaw didn't suck!!!

Bad:

- Too short, too easy

- Replay value wasn't as high as before

I can't really decide which I like better though.

When it comes to graphics, yes, Doom 3 is miles away. No discussions there.

But I wouldn't be so fast to go hard on the art design of Doom 1&2, particularly the first one.

One detail I noticed was the clever use of circular shapes. Like it was said before, one of the problems with that game was the sprites awkwardly "turning" with you. But that isn't so noticeable with circles, since they don't have clear sides. So, what are the objects most frequently found? Barrels, barrels on fire, torches, lightposts, stakes... the dead trees and impaled guys look awkward, but even then (If i recall correctly) they tried to locate them in places either unreachable, or hard to circle.

The fixed camera helped to avoid many of those awkward angles too, unlike in, say, Duke Nukem 3D. But I think that was hardly their intention. A good but unintended side-effect, if you will

Then there's the color palette. Most walls in Episode 2 are green, with dead guys/blood to add some red. Same deal with some enemies for that matter, like the regular zombie (green/red) and cacodemon (red/blue), wich also had distinctive shapes to make them easier to tell apart. Maybe because of this is why I found all the more baffling the look of Quake, wich as far as I remember is a big brown mess (Though that was probablly because of technical limitations).

Now, I haven't played Doom 3, so I can't really voice an opinion on that one, other than acknowledge the previously mentioned advanteges/disadvanteges of 3D models. From what I heard and seen is dark as all hell, and as long as they used it to creat atmosphere, I'm okay with that. It sounds to me like a good way to hide the edges, too

While I agree the visuals in Doom 1&2 seriously show their age now, they're not a deal breaker to me, mostly because of those decisions. Still, I just felt like playing the Devil's advocate with the original Doom visuals for once, since most of the time all I hear around the web is it being a pixelated mess with cardoard pictures.

Just my 2 cents...