Support NeoGAF

[FeastYoEyes]

1. Doom II - super shotgun goes a long way.
2. Doom - holds up, feels slow compared to II though
3. Doom 2016 - still better than Eternal because it felt more like the original doom games in a modern skin. The humor was less schlocky and more self aware.
4. Doom 3 - it's mostly nostalgia keeping this one so high, playing this 4k60 on an QLED screen was nuts after playing on a potato computer when it released
5. Doom Eternal - this has aged very well and gets better every time I play it.
6. Final Doom - can't remember a single level from it
7. Doom 64 - sadly haven't been able to find the fun in this one

 

[64bitmodels]

OG DooM yeah its "cool" but I mean its old and ran over by so many games by now.

it's simplistic and fast paced while also being really mazelike. Not many other games manage to capture that sort of energy, for better or worse. It's not 'run over'

 

[kvltus lvlzvs]

I beat doom 2, 1 and plutonia with pistol starts on ultra violence, here's my take

Doom 2 - Almost all mods are based off of it and it is arguably one of the greatest games of all time. The level design is kinda meh, but the addition of the super shotgun, revenants, archviles, pain elementals and whoever else I am forgetting REALLY rounds out the combat. I personally extend its rating to its offspring, because the game is a vehicle for wads now.

Doom 1 - good, but the lack of SSG and enemies from doom 2 makes it more of a slog. The big difficulty hurdle is oftentimes walls of barons, who take around a dozem shots to kill with the shotgun iirc. E1 is literally perfect, though, so it goes here. Sigil is pretty good, too.

Plutonia - its a level pack but its extremely good. Better than baseline doom 2. One or both of the brothers who made it moved on to do level design for half life.

Doom 2016 - a nice reboot, Im not super into the "arena" design with constant enemy spawns, but it is a rollicking good time. It isnt the same as the original doom games and runs in a very different direction. A lot of it turns into low monster count slaughtermaps as opposed to the vanilla level design.

Doom Eternal - I liked it less than 2016, and think the story was cringe as fuck. It is like the devs thought to themselves, ' Dang, I think we need a little bit more Marvel in our Doom ' The platforming didnt really bother me, but I didnt like it, either.

Doom 3 - Hvanet played it in a decade but it really pissed me off with constant monster closet ambushes. I remember hating it, but should give it another chance.

 

[kvltus lvlzvs]

Ultimate DOOM (E4M2 is the Perfect Doom map, I also include SIGIL, amazing maps)
DOOM Eternal
DOOM 2016
DOOM 3
DOOM 64
DOOM 2
Final DOOM

E4M2 was absolute hell. The baron wall in particular, was so brutal. It was funny watching John Romero surprise himself with how big of a dick younger John Romero was while playing it recently.

 

[Scotty W]

Doom 2, basically because of the shotgun. I consider it and 1 essentially the same game, except 2 has better maps. Final Doom I loved, but I have never been able to bring myself to replay it. These are the best because there is an infinite amount of content made for it, so much AAA content that you would need ay least 6 months to play through it.

Doom Eternal slightly edges out 2016. I love both.

I never finished Doom 3, but I liked it.

Doom 64 is way overrated. The level design is basically every annoying 90’s cliche. The lights are pretty, but the enemies look so much worse than the base game. There are a few good levels.

 

[SF Kosmo]

1. Doom/Doom III/Final Doom/Ultimate Doom (I don't really consider these different games, they are expansion packs)

2. Doom 2016

3. Doom 3

4. Doom Eternal

5. Doom 64.


But really not a stinker in the bunch. Doom64 is great.

 

[Doom_master1122]

1. Doom 2 - All time favorite. Additional enemies + SSG gives it the adrenaline push over the first game. Absolutely love it.
2. Doom - Where it all started, I feel a lot of the level design is still fantastic today. Where a lot of the Level design from Doom 2 falls apart near the end.
3. Doom 3 - They did something new. I feel it works. Its not anything like the original, but I think it did a great job over all. However I enjoy the original Releases of the game and expansion. People may complain about the flashlight dilemma, but I feel its absolutely needed for the full effect of the game. Plus a lot of random level design changes were made in all releases past the original that really diminish the original vision and makes it significantly worse.
4. Final Doom - This would go higher if it wasn't for TNT Evilution. Plutonia is absolutely fantastic, but TNT Evilution was a snore.
5. Doom (2016) - Excellent return to the series, but going from a labyrinth level design to mini arenas per room give it an entirely different feel. Not bad, but I'm not sure I can truly compare the old and new games because of how fundamentally different they are. Glory kills were awesome and kept the flow going at just the right pace.
6. Doom 64 - Over all its very good. I have a hard time placing it as I feel the level design of prior games were superior. This game has some really weird puzzles and map designs.
7. Doom Eternal - Not a fan over all. Its not a bad game, but I found 2016 far more enjoyable both in combat and level design. Forcing me to having to exploit weaknesses on enemies before I can kill them sucks. And while its possible to kill with out exploiting, it causes you to eat through significantly more ammo of an already low ammo pool to do so. It honed in on the mini arena concept for fights with the addition to a lot of platforming, jump pads, and insane amounts of movement. Which altogether really just sets it even further apart from the originals. The story was absolutely awful. Took a simple plot from the original games, gave it a decent expansion in 2016, and really just threw anything they could at it for eternal.

I love original level design of 90's shooters. The labyrinth set up just flows better for me. Its why I feel games like Ion Fury, and Dusk are able to succeed as "Retro inspired" shooters (Although Ion Fury being created literally on the Build engine.)
This list might shift around more over time as this is really difficult to rank them all properly.

 

[JimmyRustler]

First Doom I actually played a bit longer was 3 back in the days, so naturally it was harder for me to get into the earlier ones.

2016 was the best one IMO. Perfect shooting/exploration balance. Eternal focuses way too much on the shooting for me.

 

[IDKFA]

1. Doom 2
2. Doom 2016
3. Doom 3
4. Doom Eternal
5. Doom 64
6. Doom

Also, if you guys haven't, for the love of all things unholy, check out Brutal Doom or Project Brutality for Doom 2. It really adds so much to the game that it feels as fun to play as any modern game. Those mod packs are awesome.

I really enjoyed Doom 3 more than most of my peers at the time and it's kept a special place in heart for the franchise. I'm a huge horror fan, so Doom 3 perfectly hit at the right time for my age and I just fell in love.




Name checks out.

I Do Kill For Ass????

 

[TerribleAtThisGame]

OG Doom is my favorite type of game design. A really solid, addictive set of mechanics combined with intelligently designed encounters and levels that constantly push your increasing mastery of said mechanics.

I love how clearly color-coded everything is, small touches like explosive barrels and enemy in-fighting, every weapon having clear advantages and disadvantages and so on.

It's just tight, fun, atmospheric and smart. That's why people still play it to this day and why I personally think the reboot series has been dropping the ball on various fronts. Eternal especially is such a convoluted mess and lacks any of the originals' elegance of design. Encounter design is especially baffling in 16 and Eternal to me with gore nests and lockdown arenas with waves everywhere.

My personal favorite Doom is the PC mod for Playstation Doom. A bit obscure but it adds the lighting and amazing PS1 soundtrack/sound effects which are my favorite way to play.

 

[Trogdor1123]

Loved doom 3 and the older ones. Haven’t played the new two.

Doom 3 in vr sounds like nightmare fuel

 

[xpresstuning]

OG Doom is my favorite type of game design. A really solid, addictive set of mechanics combined with intelligently designed encounters and levels that constantly push your increasing mastery of said mechanics.

And that's exactly why it's in my number 1 top spot. Playing this thing on Ultra-Violence is entertaining as heck, just a primal dose of adrenaline and dopamine. The fact that it is entertaining 30 fucking years later is what i would say cements it as the best.

Doom II, there are a lot of aspects i love. It has higher highs than Doom, but also some stupidly bad level design. The original Doom is a much more cohesive experience quality-wise.

 

[nkarafo]

DOOM 1 (Mostly because of it's impact and the amazingly well designed 1st episode).

DOOM 64 (The best level designs IMO, but some annoyances like reload animations missing and some questionable artistic changes)

DOOM 2 (The SSG and extra enemies are essential and made DOOM better. But the level design is not as good as the others)

Ultimate DOOM (good level designs but playing the first DOOM again without the extra enemies/SSG felt like a regression)

For the rest, i don't care.

 

[Krappadizzle]

5. Doom Eternal - this has aged very well and gets better every time I play it.

It's weird, I vastly prefer the way Doom Eternal plays but I just don't like the game as much as 2016. If I could get some of those cooler features of Eternal in 2016, I'd be a happy camper.

Though, I still have yet to play the Eternal DLC and I really should. It kicked my ass the last time I played it and I put it down and got distracted playing other thing.

 

[TerribleAtThisGame]

And that's exactly why it's in my number 1 top spot. Playing this thing on Ultra-Violence is entertaining as heck, just a primal dose of adrenaline and dopamine. The fact that it is entertaining 30 fucking years later is what i would say cements it as the best.

Doom II, there are a lot of aspects i love. It has higher highs than Doom, but also some stupidly bad level design. The original Doom is a much more cohesive experience quality-wise.

It's funny, I played the first two games so much that I can't remember what levels are in which and managed to never notice the differing quality.

I also played the shit out of Final Doom with glee back then.

 

[Bloobs]

1 Doom 3
2 Doom 2016
3 Doom Eternal

I never really liked Doom 1 and 2. Didnt play them at release so it was hard going back to those games after playing Duke 3D, Half-Life and Goldeneye.

 

[SirKicksalot]

Doom 3 with EAX enabled is quite an experience. I played it like that using the dhewm 3 source port. The EAX atmosphere is next-level, nothing else like it out there. I play it every summer lol

 

[BigLee74]

Whilst I enjoyed the new Doom games, they don’t play anything like the originals.

Same with Doom 3.

But you can basically throw a blanket over all the original Dooms - all super fun to play, even today. I will give the nod to Final Doom. It was maybe the last one I played, but it was just a great time for me. I had finished Uni and was just dossing about before settling into my first job. Played it on the PS1 as my mum brought in endless supplies of food and drink

 

[xpresstuning]

It's funny, I played the first two games so much that I can't remember what levels are in which and managed to never notice the differing quality.

I also played the shit out of Final Doom with glee back then.

I played both for years before finally deciding to play them from start to completion on Ultra-Violence right before the release of Doom Eternal. Played them through GZDoom with settings close to vanilla + Smooth Doom (fucking amazing mod, adds additional animations to all the sprites making everything much more fluid).

 

[tr1p1ex]

Old ones were an event. Doom was one of the few games that managed to get into the mainstream press.

I like the old ones. The new reboot i played for a bit a handful of years ago is just generic to me. Maybe nostalgia and/or tolerance for old graphics ... but something about the old is scarier to me. Just a more sinister vibe to them in my mind at least. And as someone said above, there is noting wasted with the old games. They had to make everything count. Maybe this is the difference too.

 

[NightmareFarm]

DOOM Eternal > 2016.

Im a zoomer so thats all I can comment on, the old games look alright though.

 

[Mr Hyde]

Doom 3 is my favorite, that's all I can say. Holds up surprisingly well today, both in terms of gameplay and graphics.