I don't know about 'charm' but Doom sure was more frightening to play than Quake.

I actually find Quake quite nice and atmospheric. Although DOOM still wins. Quake II, on the other hand, I found rather dull and monotonous.

The games based on the Build engine (Duke3D, Shadow Warrior, Blood) excelled in making rich, colorful environments that look like real locations. This was very different from the abstract level design approach of id's early games, and it may be part of their lasting appeal.

The DOOMs were Id on top of their game IMO - vibrant, colourful, fast paced worlds with hoards of interesting bad dudes and killer music. Maybe it was a limitation of early 3D but Quake was brown, slow, the bad guys were just dull, and the "music" was tosh.

Yes they did have more charm, more colors, more detail and litle bit diferent approach, first 3d games tried realism, and failed, 2.5d games usually used cartoonish caracters, only one game used realistm, it was Operation Body Count, and was it any good?

But honestly Quake is a brown large triangle and pixel mess... so this on is a very bad example...

I played Quake before the others - probably well before - and loved it, still do, it's one of my all-time favourites. i never play the music though, not my cup of tea. But the atmosphere, architecture, mobs, weapons - all good to me. The expansion packs though really did not grab me - seemed dull and repetitive, nothing to catch my attention.

Doom, |Heretic, Hexen and even Duke3D all have their charm but by comparison - to me - feel cartoony, too coarse and have boring gameplay, and that 2.5D is pretty irksome. They do have "something" - I agree the locations are good, the weapons, the quips, the music too - but overall to me the attain nowhere near the level of Quake.

Quake 2 on the other hand I find boring as hell except for multi-player; and then Q3 was really confusing because that's all there was 😜.

I prefer the full 3D ones, I as with ratfink played Quake before the others, and thus that set the standard.

I played them in the "correct order" but for me Quake is just better. Sure it's a brown game 🤣 but the overall experience is just better for me. Q2 was OK and from there it's downhill for my taste. Luckily the recent DOOM was nice.

I love the story of DOOMs development too which adds to my appreciation of it - here's where the name came from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FohmUXh9rwk

I do still kind of miss the whole [ ] enter inventory system mechanic of old.

When strictly comparing Quake and Doom, Quake had more terror effect on my young mind back in the 90s.
The sound of the monsters and atmosphere in Quake was one step above Doom.

I think Jedi Knight was the first shooter that really blew me away. The expansive maps were part of that. Lots of atmosphere. Storytelling. Then after that Unreal did it again with its mystical/otherworldly and again expansive thing.

The 2.5D games were neat but the gameplay is raw and basic, and they don't really do stories. My favorites are probably Dark Forces and Cybermage.

I was able to experience all these games on original release, and looking back, I remember feeling the most awestruck by Quake I. I can still hear the sound effects in my mind when the demo starts playing on loadup. But I was never a fan of the music. In fact, it's one of the only games that I prefer playing with the music off.

But on more recent playthroughs, I enjoyed Doom and Duke Nukem 3D more than Quake I. But IMO Unreal blows them all away. There was nothing like it from that "mystical/otherworldly" perspective (as swaaye put it), and I really dug that.

For some reason, I could never get into Blood or Shadow Warrior, but LOVED Duke.

dr_st wrote:

The games based on the Build engine (Duke3D, Shadow Warrior, Blood) excelled in making rich, colorful environments that look like real locations. This was very different from the abstract level design approach of id's early games, and it may be part of their lasting appeal.

I think this is one reason I liked those games so much. The environments, the details and interactive bits, Easter eggs and in-jokes... Those games had a personality that elevated them far above their technical limitations of the time.

swaaye wrote:

The 2.5D games were neat but the gameplay is raw and basic, and they don't really do stories. My favorites are probably Dark Forces and Cybermage.

In fairness, a lot of early shooters (2.5D or 3D) didn't do stories. I remember that being the reason Half-Life was so revolutionary when it came out.

Oh, and Dark Forces definitely awesome. 😀

swaaye wrote:

I think Jedi Knight was the first shooter that really blew me away. The expansive maps were part of that. Lots of atmosphere. Storytelling. Then after that Unreal did it again with its mystical/otherworldly and again expansive thing.

The 2.5D games were neat but the gameplay is raw and basic, and they don't really do stories. My favorites are probably Dark Forces and Cybermage.

I've always wondered what became of Jedi Knight 1.5: Imperial Safety Report. Seriously, did nobody think of putting in railings?

swaaye wrote:

I think Jedi Knight was the first shooter that really blew me away. The expansive maps were part of that.

I remember the playable demo of the fuel pipe level from that game. The vast scale of the levels was really impressive.

I'd like to say some stuff about "aesthetic" as well, but that word became so epically overused and misused by the vaporwave fams. *failpalm* and if strafe's any indication, there's a lot who don't really know what they're talking about, so it's hard to explain anything to them. I've seen a "blood fan game maker" claim that Blood is popular as it was because "gamers love old school pixels" *more failpalm*

I'll say this though - palette organization matters. Quake stuck to 15 rows of 15 color gradients with the last row of 16 reserved for various glowing colors exempt from the shading table. The intent was for smooth lighting (as opposed to, the super banded lighting you'd find in System Shock and Future Shock)

Let's not forget Quake's tight development schedule. It's the very definition of a rushed game. I'm sure it'd have more personality and references than a well of wishes had they been given more time. Quakeguy was originally going to lick his own face while under Quad as well. There's also memory concerns though, Quake had to target common 8mb machines and keep map sizes within reasonable limits. It needs to keep plenty of memory ready for the surfacecache system, progs code and everything else.

You should check out the recently released Shadow Warrior betas 😀 the 1996 betas are pretty raw and 'charm'less, and represents a state of the game prior to the major retooling from the Duke team to give it its new "charm" (for better or worse). 96 SW is more like Eradicator in asia

i like that BUILD by Ken Silverman, its allow creation of Levels that would be impossible with a pure 3D geometric system,
such as moebius like spiral level, where you seemingly can move spirally downward infinitely but only to realize the place you arrive to is a place you have already visited.

@leileilol
You lost me at "palette organization" but yes from what I understand the development cycle was messy, with Romero providing very little direction and general disagreement about what sort of game it would be. It was initially going to be a more medieval open world type deal with RPG elements. So the artists were cranking out medieval stuff and the level designers were off doing different things and J Carmack was being a technology obsessed weirdo and Romero was busy being awesome.

It did blow my mind on release, just not as much as DOOM did. Could be a timing thing though.

Blood and Shadow Warrior got a little bit silly and mean spirited, where DOOM was raw excitement and Duke3D was funny and cool (to a teen boy).