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Which do you think is the better game, Doom (1993) or Quake (1996)

Which do you think is the better game, Doom (1993) or Quake (1996)

  • Doom (1993)

    Votes: 276 59.0%

  • Quake (1996)

    Votes: 126 26.9%

  • They're both as good as each other

    Votes: 62 13.2%

  • Other (Leave a comment)

    Votes: 4 0.9%
  • Total voters
    468
xmonkeyofevil

xmonkeyofevil

Member
Jun 9, 2019
481
In general I prefer classic Doom gameplay over Quake gameplay. However, while I think the best Doom level is better than the best Quake level, I think the worst Quake level is faaaar better than the worst level in Doom.

So for consistency sake, I voted Quake. Same with Doom 2, there are some levels that drag it below Quake for me.
 
John Rabbit

John Rabbit

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,111
Absolutely Doom. Quake is amazing but there's something even more sort of...thin...about it's experience than Doom. Not sure why that is.
 
SCUMMbag

SCUMMbag

Prophet of Truth - Chicken Chaser
Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,578
Quake is a worldie of game but DOOM is on another level.
 
Ariakon44

Ariakon44

Prophet of Truth
Member
Nov 17, 2020
10,184
Doom. Quake was good but it was clearly helping prop up the 3d shooter genre when Doom was one of the pinnacles (if not the absolute) of 2d shooters. It's still one of the most fun fps games today, imo.
 
Primal Sage

Primal Sage

Virtually Real
Member
Nov 27, 2017
9,728
Quake is important. A technical showcase. A trailblazer.

But so was Doom and I think Quake is butt ugly. Doom still looks great.
 
lvl 99 Pixel

lvl 99 Pixel

Member
Oct 25, 2017
44,700
Doom is more important but Quake is just more fun. Its hard to go back to Dooms more limited verticality and its keyboard based camera.
Being able to jump around and mouselook is just too essential.
 
Nessus

Nessus

Member
Oct 28, 2017
3,920
Doom was more influential, but given the choice I'd rather play Quake. I prefer the aesthetic and pacing of Quake, too.
 
lvl 99 Pixel

lvl 99 Pixel

Member
Oct 25, 2017
44,700
Edward850 said:
What port were you playing? If you're playing the original DOS version through DOSBox, this can tend to be a mistake. If you're playing on actual DOS (or even in DOSBox), you'll want to run the NoVert TSR first.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I mean back when it came out, using a ball mouse. Its been so long now that things taken for granted like mouselook and just being able to jump around are hard to un-learn.
 
Rickenslacker

Rickenslacker

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,415
I don't think Doom's multiplayer is very good, but it has endless single player possibilities.

Quake's multiplayer is great, and it also has a lot of single player community stuff to delve into. Also rocket jumping.

I like them both about equally though.
 
GlitchyDegree

GlitchyDegree

Prophet of Truth
The Fallen
Dec 4, 2017
5,490
Doom. Played Quake for the first time this year and it didn't really click with me to be honest. Doom on the other hand, is a game I love playing.
 
DustinWretch

DustinWretch

Member
Sep 19, 2019
78
I'd say Quake is probably a slightly better game than Doom, but Doom II is easily better than both, if for no other reason than the increased enemy variety resulting in one of the best rosters of foes in any game.

People are free to discuss whether or not the level design in Doom II is actually any good (I know a lot of people don't think that it is), but I feel like the identity of future Doom games is tied far too much to what Doom II was able to bring to the table design-wise to be ignored. That and the mountain of custom levels that put the enemy diversity to the real test, which it has continued to pass with flying colors all these years later.

Ignoring Doom II though, it does probably go to Quake. Probably.
 
Dary

Dary

Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,416
The English Wilderness
The original Doom is up there with Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Tetris, and Super Mario Bros.

Quake is still a great game, but it doesn't feel as cohesive. It feels like an amalgamation of several different games/ideas churned together (which, iirc, it was).
 
signal

signal

Member
Oct 28, 2017
40,199
Doom over Quake. But Doom 2 over Doom and Quake 2.

But Arcane Dimensions over Doom 2 🤔 ?
 
The Real Abed

The Real Abed

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,723
Pennsylvania
DOOM has always been superior to me. I owned them all back then. But I never could get into Quake.

Quake was only better technologically. It had the true 3D engine that DOOM lacked. But it didn't have the heart. It just never felt right enough for me. It's combat was always lacking. For some reason its weapons didn't feel as punchy as DOOM's did. Especially rockets. I think it was the lack of animated explosion sprites and the particles were just not the same. And all of its boss fights sucked. DOOM's bosses might have just been bullet sponges, but Quakes were just switch puzzles and telefrag targets. There was no combat. DOOM's textures also seemed to have a lot more variety. And the music, well back then I wasn't into the "moody" music of the later games. I wanted the high octane rock tracks from DOOM. I can appreciate moody soundtracks now but back then it was just not for me. I also feel the enemy model animations just weren't as good as DOOM's sprite animations. They suffered from the same issue a lot of those "infant years" 3D engines did. They didn't have proper motion capture back then so everything was so stiff to animate. With sprite animations they could perfect it for every frame using stop motion. So DOOM's sprite animations just looked much more fluid.

I always hated that they didn't make DOOM 3 from the Quake engine instead. I hated that they created a new IP instead. A DOOM 3 with the same feeling as the first two but with a proper 3D engine. It would still suffer from the same animation issues but it would still be better.

Also I hated the direction Quake took after the second game. Turning it into a multiplayer game only. And Quake 2 looked terrible with its texture filtering. Actually that's another thing I hate about the infant 3D games is the obsession with bluring textures "because we can now". I blame the N64. But really it was the fault of all those early 3D card makers back then. In games with a low poly count or low detail I'll take the non-filtered textures over blurred ones any day.

That said, Quake is still a good game. It's just not my favorite. I'll take DOOM over even Duke Nukem 3D even though the latter really pushed the limits of those old style fake 3D engines. (Along with other engines like the Dark Forces engine. Everyone was forging their own paths back then in the short time before true 3D came on the scene.)
 
EntelechyFuff

EntelechyFuff

Saw the truth behind the copied door
Member
Nov 19, 2019
10,219
I'm just now playing Quake for the first time on PS5, and as a huge lover of OG Doom, I'm almost surprised the game didn't get any backlash when it came out.

In the first two chapters of the main Quake experience, it just feels like DooM...but less good. This game is Browntown USA. Everything is brown, the enemies are brown, the guns are brown, the water is brown. Why?

The enemies are very same-y, both in the sense that you see the same enemies all over the place (hi, grenade launcher + chainsaw dudes) and that they seem sort of visually close to each other, so discovering a new enemy isn't all that interesting or exciting. The game overall lacks a strong identity on top of this. The early stages and some of the enemy designs absolutely feel like they started out making Doom 3, but then changed gears.

I also wondered when FPS games got so slowed down after Doom sort of set the pace at such a fast level. Quake sort of answers that question. It's still fast paced, but it added now familiar pace-killers to the game: swimming, hard to see death/damage traps, platformer-esque boss encounters.

In a very weird way, playing Quake for me feels like playing a "souls-like" game. I'm enjoying it because it scratches the itch of the parent series I love, but it still doesn't hit the same as a genuine series entry.
 
Kaeden

Kaeden

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,905
US
This wasn't an easy choice... but I refuse to say they're both equal. Had to go with Doom, it was just unlike anything at the time and has lived up quite well over the years. I frequently revisit to this day on numerous platforms.

That being said, playing Quake on Xbox these days has been amazing as well, glad it's getting so much continued support.
 
plagiarize

plagiarize

It's not a loop. It's a spiral.
Moderator
Oct 25, 2017
27,559
Cape Cod, MA
Quake. If you limit it to single player, I'd give it to Doom, but that wasn't the question put in front of me.

So Quake it is.
 
Druffmaul

Druffmaul

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account.
Banned
Oct 24, 2018
2,228
Quake. Huge improvement/evolution/forward progress from Doom.
 
Doomguy Fieri

Doomguy Fieri

Member
Nov 3, 2017
5,268
DOOM is the better game in that I'd rather replay it, and Quake is the more important and influential game that still influences games 2 decades later.
 
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