> Doom is about “maneuverability as defense”
> ...
> There’s nothing quite like it today.
By default it also moves fairly slowly, but the player is strongly encouraged and almost forced to use bunny-hopping to gain extreme agility and speed. Most youtube LPs showcase this quite well. "Asylum" and "Snowy Bridge" are imo the highpoint levels to watch for this.
And my experience of playing Dark Souls was all about "dodging around like a maniac and not being where enemies were putting their weapons".
I mean, if you want to constrain it to FPSs, yeah, there's not much like it. But there are a hell of a lot of games whose primary strategy is "Be Where The Bullets Are Not".
On the other hand, you can parry much more reliably in 1 and I've killed dark knights simply by parrying them 4 times successively. Or you can backstab, since the enemies don't turn as quickly as they do in 2.
I'll agree that a lot of strategy in DaS 1 and 2 comes from careful positioning, given that replenishing your health puts you at a considerable danger while you sit immobile drinking estus and can be interrupted at any time by an attack. However, I find that the two games have a definitely different feel to them, even though they're woven from the same cloth. Another thing is that the camera in DaS2 is much, much faster, due to being truly mouse controlled - you can turn as fast as you can swing your mouse (I still recommend using AutoHotkey to bind mouse buttons to keyboard buttons because otherwise you get lag on attack, due to the game waiting a frame or two to check if you're not double-clicking, since you can bind different actions on single and double click; it's not the end of the world, but it's annoying). In 1, not only is m+kb absolutely unworkable, the mouse has a negative acceleration applied and you can't turn any faster than with a joypad.
I like both, but if you play a long enough time these small differences start getting really obvious.
Also, I haven't seen someone mention the Serious Sam games, so there.
the Descent series is all about this, even in multiplayer.
Here's a video of two of the best players in the world: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8eCULTB3IQ (with audio commentary from some of the other best players, starting at around 7%.)
The game that I felt captured this dynamic really well, at least in multiplayer deathmatches, was Half-Life. You were surprisingly zippy, and the long jump module gave you a lot of ability to get out of where you were in a hurry. I enjoyed this sort of dynamic because it played well to my strengths. Having mediocre aim but being able to dodge well worked out okay in this setting. Doom and Half-Life are probably the only shooters I've ever been decent at.
If anyone else is into these kinds of shooters, and wants to try more recent titles, I also highly recommend both Hard Reset (2011) and Shadow Warrior (2013) by Flying Wild Hog. I believe some of the developers were part of the original Painkiller team.
Sure, on the avatar scale, they play at a similar level. The environments are what really set the earlier generation apart, and in that respect very little approaches that sort of design.
Duke Nukem 3D and the Build engine were pretty interesting for level creation. The game engine included the editor so you could actually drop into a mode where you walk through the level and directly modify textures, floor/ceiling height, etc. Was a very cool experience at the time.
Granted Wolfenstein was a much simpler game. But man I spend hours with that editor.
Speedrun of Dead Simple from Doom 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfijpjvS9Q8&feature=player_de...
Quake Done Quick: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpiNDxssUL0
~
That sort of manic movement is, I think, what really sets apart the elite FPS players of the Doom, Quake, and UT era (and the games in the same vein) from folks in the CoD/Halo games.
Also, the level design is pretty much strictly better, because it mattered a lot more. With regenerating health and lots of ammo/easy pickups, you no longer have to be quite so careful when putting together a level, because you know that if the give the player X seconds of time without suffering everything will be okay.
In those days, my friends and I used to get into UT quite a lot. Most of the more experienced UT players I watched would use the double-tap of the left/right arrow button to trigger the short sideways leap as a means of rounding a corner (for a better chance of surprising an enemy), or to make it harder for an enemy to keep a bead on them when they were being fired on. I was always surprised at how - to me at least - this simple mechanic made such a difference to how dynamic the combat felt.
http://theportalwiki.com/wiki/Puzzle_Creator
Of the user-made levels, it's surprising how many used the full level editor anyway--even though, as the post notes, building levels ain't quite as simple as it was in the Doom days. User-made level gallery:
http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse?appid=620&browseso...
There is one level with a Cathedral.... you walk in through the entrance to see a few dozen imps standing at pews, and there are a couple of Knights of Hell and a Baron on the front stage giving a sermon.
The mock up was pleasingly realistic, then I noticed that the crucifix on the front wall was inverted.