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Bethesda To Unleash the Hounds of Hell On May 13th: Doom Release Date Confirmed (hothardware.com)

Posted by timothy on from the beethoven's-favorite-video-game dept.

MojoKid writes: Bethesda and id Software are in the process rebooting the Doom franchise and it seems like it's been in development for ages. When we last visited the upcoming Doom remake, Bethesda had posted a giblet-filled trailer which showed some pretty impressive gameplay visuals, killer hand-to-hand combat and plenty of head stomping. However, Bethesda just clued gamers in on something that Doom fans have been anticipating for years, an actual release date. Mark your calendars for May 13th, because that's when Doom will be available for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and of course, the PC platform. Bethesda also dropped a new campaign trailer for you to ogle.

14 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. What's the point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    When it came out, it could get away with its completely unremarkable setting because it was technologically unique. But now that there are shooters aplenty, many of which have something to set them apart from the competition beyond technology, what's the point of doing a reboot of what by now has become a completely unremarkable franchise? If you want to release a new game, why not think up something new and fresh?

    1. Re:What's the point? by gman003 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Doom is actually pretty different than modern shooters. Everyone right now is doing near-future sci-fi military conflicts. Doom may still be sci-fi, but it's got a different aesthetic - borrowing from Christian demonology and pseudo-medieval fantasy for the art, and heavy metal for the audio. I can actually think of very few other things that do that sort of mix, definitely very few games.

      As for the gameplay, both the DooM 1/DooM ][ sort of shooter, and the Doom 3 sort of shooter, are pretty different from the modern standard. Classic DooMs were extremely fast, but had slow-moving projectiles that could be dodged, and had extremely nonlinear maps. Doom 3 was slower and more methodical, and much more linear, but made a decent attempt at making a good horror shooter (it didn't fully succeed, but it was at least a novel attempt. Some lessons could be taken from FEAR, which had the same goal but different methods, which brought it more success). Both of those are different from the modern ultra-linear, setpiece-focused level design, and the twitchy, aim-focused shooters that are practically just reaction tests.

      The Doom Reboot seems to be going for the more classic style, which (if true, and if done competently) would make it significantly different from all the other shooters out there.

    2. Re: What's the point? by sumdumass · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Part of the original doom experience was in how it pulled you into the game and took advantage of sound as well as visuals to exploit this immersion. If you go into it thinking it is just another shooter, You might miss anything remarkable about it. Get yourself a good surround sound system or 3d head phones and if this is like the original, you will find what is remarkable about it. You might even get startled a bit in the fun.

  2. IDKFA by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 2

    Still remember.

  3. Giblet filled trailer by sunderland56 · · Score: 3, Informative

    All along I thought that was real human blood and gore; now you're saying it is faked with turkey organs?

  4. Nice try. by westlake · · Score: 2

    By PC do you mean Windows? or can we expect something more useful?

    Linux --- all flavors --- represents 1.7% of the desktop market. Win 7, alone, 53%, Win 10. 12%. Desktop Operating System Market Share The PC gamer who has the hardware needed to run the latest AAA titles is almost certainly running Windows.

    1. Re:Nice try. by complete+loony · · Score: 2

      0.95% of gamers, according to the steam survey. I'm running steam on a debian system with the open source AMD drivers. There are enough games that work at a usable framerate to keep me entertained.

      --
      09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
  5. Re:Bring on the neutering! by Soulskill · · Score: 2

    I wouldn't phrase it quite like that, but you're absolutely right that PC gamers should wait for a bit. I picked up Rage for the PC right when it came out, and it was a complete mess. Carmack even apologized for it. He's not at id Software anymore, but hopefully the folks who are remember that lesson.

  6. It needs lots of enemies by steveha · · Score: 4, Informative

    The original Doom games were noteworthy for having big levels that contained lots and lots of enemies. I haven't played Doom 3, but I've heard that it has much more beautiful 3D graphics, and as a result you would be attacked by only a few monsters at a time (because too many would overwhelm the graphics adapters that were current when that game came out).

    My favorite thing in the the original Doom games was getting the monsters to fight each other. If you could get an Imp so hit a Cacodemon with a fireball, for example, the two would get into a fight. Frequently I would lure some monster into the line of fire and as soon as it was hit, it would forget about me and go kill whatever monster hit it. This is more fun to me than just shooting everything. I hope the new game has this.

    The specific rules: monster special attacks don't hurt other monsters of the exact same type... for example, Imp fireballs don't hurt Imps. But the zombie soldiers shoot bullets and bullets hurt anything, so you could get soldiers to fight each other. And anytime a monster hit a different kind of monster it would do damage.

    P.S. Doom modified as a way to control processses on a system. Kill a process with a shotgun! https://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/chi/chi.html

    One side-effect of this is that processes on a system can get into a fight with each other. Two processes enter, one leaves. Not recommended for critical systems.

    --
    lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
  7. Re:after trying so many times, Romero realized.. by gman003 · · Score: 2

    I'm not sure what relevance that has, because John Romero hasn't been involved with id since 1996. You are (likely accidentally) correct that Romero's gone back to nostalgia games, but that involves mobile sequels to the Dangerous Dave series, not Doom or Quake. Mostly because Zenimax owns id Software, which owns the trademarks to Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein.

    Actually, none of the original id gang was involved with the Doom Reboot. Romero is off doing his thing, Carmack is at Oculus doing VR coding, Tom Hall is failing to get Kickstarted on new games, and Adrian is apparently running a resort, of all things.

  8. Brutal Doom already did it by Bitmanhome · · Score: 2

    Here, just download this:
    http://www.moddb.com/mods/brut...

    I've been playing Brutal Doom with its "Hell on Earth starter pack" and it's turning out to be a better reboot than any of the official games. Strong weapons, insane quantities of enemies, fun tricks with the Doom engine, and, believe it or not, a strong story supported directly by the level design.

    I enjoyed Doom 3 and will likely get this new Doom, but I still think this free game is the best "story of Doom" out there.

    --
    Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
  9. Re:PC? by tsotha · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yes, well, even those of us who remember it realize it's long past, and that there's no point in trying to change the meaning of a phrase probably 99% of people agree on.

  10. John Romero's released his classic DOOM E1M8b! by antdude · · Score: 3, Interesting

    http://twitter.com/romero/stat... for his tweet and a download link. I played it at the end of my long Martin Luther King Jr., weekend, and it was fun.

    --
    Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
  11. Level editor/modkits by phorm · · Score: 2

    Many people mention a lot of the features of the classic Doom with great nostalgia, but I think one thing that was often overlooked were the modkits and customizations. Yes, building a fully functional multiplayer WAD could be infuriating, but it was fun as hell (no pun intended) to play in a homebuilt map full of tricks and traps with buddies while "dance of the sugarplum fairly" played in all of it's MIDI glory.

    As an aside, the coolest "oddly fitting" game music mod experience goes to my buddy, who commented on the "creepy but f***ed up music" when he borrowed my copy of AvP. Apparently the game disc was part audio CD, and his young kids had left some of their music in the drive which it played selected tracks from.