Displaying items by tag: Doom

During pre-show events at E3 Bethesda decided to release information about a few games including Dishonored 2, Fallout 4 and DOOM. All three of these games have been staples in the gaming community for a number of years and all three (if done right) can expect to continue their respective names well into the future.

The next version of Doom will be picking up some new talent to work on it in the form of Crytek Lead R&D Graphics Engineer, Tiago Sousa. In a tweet made over the weekend Sousa says that he will be moving to id Software to work on the new Doom’s game engine idTech 6.

If you have been into gaming for a long (VERY long) time you might remember two games that kicked off the first person shooter craze; Doom and Castle Wolfenstein. Between these two games a genre and gaming style was kicked off. Both games have also enjoyed success with different releases as graphics technology and other development tools have improved over the years although we have seen more from the Doom horde than we have from the mutants at the Castle.

Despite many claims that touch is the next way we will interact with our devices there are those that think (quite rightly) that this is not actually the case. The problem with touch interaction is that they are not very accurate and also tend to block your field of view (nothing like having your finer over your target). Because of this touch is not really suited for continued usage and is best as an intermediary input form. Now before someone points out that touchpads have accuracy down to 1mm we will clarify what we are saying here, touch screens are not suited for most computing and with the exception of a certain vertical are terrible for gaming.

Although this is not a new or novel concept we are seeing companies begin to use the power of branding to make their games more attractive to the consumer. The concept really started many, many years ago when software companies noted an increased demand for games that had not only similar themes, but the exact same theme and setting. To capitalize on this they began making follow-on installments to their games. Some of the more notable are Doom, Quake, and Wing Commander. Certainly there are more than this small list, but these represent some of the early franchise names that pushed the market along. For those of you wondering why HalfLife is not in there, it is simply because of the length of time between the first and the second games, but yes HalfLife is certainly one of the major Brand Names in gaming now.

For a very long time the gaming industry has struggled with finding a way to bring the gamer deeper into the gaming world. The problem has been that most of the push behind this has involved graphics. This particular gaming war started when we had multiple players in the game like Matrox, S3, nVidia, Diamond, and of course 3dfx. These companies all fought to bring the visual elements in our games to life. Unfortunately, there were casualties of this war and not just the companies that did not make it to the present. These casualties include audio, story line, AI, and other less recognizable items that all go to make up the games we play.

Ah the sweet sounds of DOOM. The classic first person shooter that, when combined with Castle Wolfenstein, kicked off a completely new genre of gaming, the First Person Shooter. In Doom you take on the role of a Space Marine on Mars (sent there because you hit your CO). Mars is a terribly boring place until some of the secret experiments go horribly wrong and demons begin pouring out of the artificial gates that were created. After heading to Phobos to investigate the goings on there you are left as the only person still alive (or not possessed) and must fight your way through the invading hordes.