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After 24 Years Doom 2's Last Secret Has Finally Been Discovered (polygon.com)
"Almost 25 years after it was released, Doom 2 has finally given up its last secret..." writes Polygon. An anonymous reader quotes their report:
It's secret No. 4 on Map 15 (Industrial Zone). Now, the area in question has been known, seen and accessed by other means (usually a noclip cheat code). Getting to it without a cheat appears to be deliberately impossible, according to Doom co-creator John Romero. Romero tweeted out congratulations to the solution's discoverer, Zero Master. Zero Master figured out that the way to trigger the secret was to be pushed into the secret area by an enemy (in this case, a Pain Elemental).
Apparently the secret sector was an area just below the floor of a teleporter -- but entering that teleporter meant players rose up to the level of the teleporter's floor, according to Romero, so "you never enter the sector... you would never get inside the teleporter sector to trigger the secret."
One Reddit user notes Zero Master "has the first legit Doom 2 100% save file on earth, after 24 years."
Apparently the secret sector was an area just below the floor of a teleporter -- but entering that teleporter meant players rose up to the level of the teleporter's floor, according to Romero, so "you never enter the sector... you would never get inside the teleporter sector to trigger the secret."
One Reddit user notes Zero Master "has the first legit Doom 2 100% save file on earth, after 24 years."
I can go on Steam / GOG, the PS store, or Xbox store and find a bunch of old-school side-scrollers, RPGs, beat-up-ups, or whatever genre you like, all with graphics and gameplay teleported from many decades back in addition to the most modern, slickest of AAA productions, and just about everything in-between. So, "whatever we have now" encompasses a broader and more diverse range of games than we've ever had before. And I can legally browse and download a vast selection of it over the internet, which is pretty much as convenient as things could possibly get.
Personally, I think gamers are living in a fantastic time, with more access to a broader range of games than we've ever had before. Yes, there are trends which are annoying or even alarming, but all in all, things are pretty great for modern gamers. If you're not enjoying games like you use to, maybe it's just you, not the games.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
> People might like to complain about how everything these days is about graphics over substance
And for good reason -- one of the problems with Form over Function is pointed out with this sarcastic FPS Map Design: 1990 vs 2016, ironically using Doom as a reference.
> Sometimes a good narrative is exactly what a game needs
Minor quibble. Technically, every game has narrative; the difference is that it isn't also obvious but narrative falls into two categories:
* Developer narrative -- fixed story, or branching story (e.g. Guardian Heroes), may or may not have cut-scenes
* User narrative -- sandbox games, old-school FPS like Doom; the user's decision of what to experience IS the narrative.
There is a reason that Minecraft is the number one best selling PC game of all time: User narrative
Minecraft, the digital Lego of this generation, is built upon 3 foundations:
* Survive
* Explore
* Build
The in-game story is whatever the player wants without all the bullshit of "Hurry-up-and-wait" unskippable cutscenes.
Looking at the top 5 PC game and tagging them we notice that you don't need cut-scenes in order to be successful.
1. Minecraft -- user narrative
2. PUBG -- user narrative
3. Diablo III -- dev narrative
4. WoW -- dev narrative
5. The Sims -- user narrative
Agree with everything else you said. Doom (2016) captures the essence of the original Doom.