I’m on the same page as you, I’m quite worried for it though.
I’ve been looking forward to it for years - I didn’t even know there was a demo, there’s been nothing in the way if hype being built for the game, and when the release date trailer came out I was caught well off guard - I thought it would be a longer run-up to launch.
I hope this low-key launch doesn’t hurt sales and fuck the developers over.
I’ve been following this for years and I’m super stoked that it has a date… and it’s within a month!
Annoyingly it clashes with my end-of-year studies, but maybe I’ll leave it for a few weeks. I picked up South of the Circle on day one and it had some bugs and glitches that took the shine off the experience, even though that was brilliant too.
Harold Halibut and Still Wakes The Deep are top of my summer list this year.
The sound design is half the reason why Doom was so good, and why Doom II is better - going up point blank to a tanky enemy with the super shotgun and making every shot count is borderline orgasmic - second only to beserk-punching an Imp into gibs while still moving forward, beautiful.
Honestly friend, I would give Sigil 2 a bash first. I’m sorry if I’ve spoiled it, but deffo give it the 90mins it takes to rattle through the episode before you YouTube it. It’s good fun all told!
It’s perhaps why Sigil 2’s M8 was so weird - these “rules” of Cyber or Mastermind usage have been known for a long time, and E6M8’s implementation just pisses over the rulebook and burns it in the corner.
It’s like Doom II’s Gotcha… but for primary school.
I have a huge collection of Doom games and merch - I’m a big id fan and bigger Romero fan.
First thing people should do with an interest of the series is get a copy of Masters of Doom by David Kushner, absolutely brilliant read.
Next, subscribe to some awesome Doomtubers like Zero Master, Civvie11, decino, and Coincident. Zero Master’s stuff is generally commentary free but absolutely unbelievable, CV11’s stuff is hilarious, decino explains the mechanics very well, and Coincident puts it all together in one facerocketing package.
My only real claim to fame was writing the first FAQ for a Doom expansion, but it’s nice to have contributed back to the community.
I bought an Xbox 360 when I found out Doom was being re-released for it - I was already thinking about it when Alan Wake came out, but took a day off work and hooned Doom when it came out on the then-XBLA. I never really bothered with the Xbox One or Series S in the house either… until the Unity port came out. It’s a system seller for me.
It’s the game I’d take on a desert island with me - partly because the feel of the game is just perfect to me, but you’d never get bored with the endless WADS for them - particularly when you use limit-removing ports.
Ah yes, there is that. Is that still a thing these days? I remember EA’s Project Ten Dollar a few years back gating a lot of extra features or multiplayer behind a single use code being fairly widely adopted.
I’ll admit to being a bit behind the curve now, I still predominantly use my Xbox Series S, One, and 360 just to play Doom in different rooms so maybe I’m not on the cutting edge of news!
edit: it wasn’t five dollars at all, more like ten!
I wrote a similar reply to a higher comment without seeing yours, and I completely agree - I miss it.
I was a bit younger in the 90s and half the magic of the ride home was reading the manual so you could hit the ground running when you installed it/put the cartridge in/loaded the tape.
It’s a tough one. You’re not wrong by any means, but equally the environmentally unfriendly bit is why people buy physical media. The memory card holding the game is mostly superfluous because of day 1 DLC or patches, but it’s the box; art; manual; and physical tangibility that matter to a collector of the media.
Ideally there would be a middle ground - sack-off the normal physical edition and purchase the memory cards themselves - and push up the price and pay for a premium edition of the copy made from better materials.
I suspect we’d only get the worst of both worlds though, the cynic in me thinks.
Man you would have had a field day with PC gaming in the 90’s!
In fairness though, even though some did skimp out and just launch a CD in, most had a manual and something of lore interest or a physical anti-piracy thing, and a fair few were stuffed full of trinkets or other world building material… just because.
Even my Atari ST edition of Zak McKracken had the floppy, manual, passport anti-piracy card, and a faux-magazine which was both hilarious and acted as a hint book too.
That’s a shame. I can sort of understand taking Unreal and RtNP from the storefronts from a financial perspective as a remaster is rumoured to be in the works, but UT99 - along with Quake III Arena - was probably influential in taking online multiplayer from the discrete deathmatch or capture the flag maps into what would be eSports and games as a service… as much as that makes me almost barf to say.
I’ve always quite liked Sweeney for being “old school” in his approach to game design and company direction, even if I didn’t necessarily like how he went about it, but it has really pulled a hair out of my arse how he’s gone off the rails in the last 6-12 months - complaining about needing more linux devs one month, and binning off hundreds off staff a few weeks later even though they’re proper rinsing the Fortnite cash cow.
Great nod to the Valve documentary though, I enjoyed that far more than I should have.
(edit: crash course for the uninitiated: Fortnite was a great game, until it launched it’s Battle Royale mode - Fortnite then effectively became this game mode, whereas the base game was left to die as Save The World.)
It’s a mode that people paid money for, and Epic treat it as a second rate game even though without it, there wouldn’t even be this behemoth that Fortnite has become.
Epic have come a long way from Epic MegaGames, and it isn’t always a fairytale story I suppose.