With the recent announcement that id Software has begun work on Doom 4, the latest installment in the franchise that basically made first-person shooters what they are today, our mouths reflexively started slavering. We've been with Doom from the beginning, battling our way through Carmack and Romero's early masterpiece before going online at LAN parties and discovering the joy of deathmatch for the first time. Several sequels followed, for a variety of platforms (including the Super NES, Atari Jaguar and more) as well as a series of novels and a big-budget movie starring The Rock. However, it's fair to say that the first next-gen installment, Doom 3, was sort of a disappointment, replacing the balls-out adrenaline of the early games with a slower-paced survival horror experience. With the sequel looming, we took some time to tell id exactly want we want to see - so get cracking, Carmack!
No Monster Closets
One thing that we loved about Doom and Doom 2 was that the enemies, no matter how absurd they seemed, operated under rules that made them seem like they existed in a quasi-real environment. Nowhere was this better illustrated than in the Doom 2 levels that purposefully denied you the ammunition that would be needed to kill everything on the floor, forcing you to use your wits to lure enemies into attacking each other. That kind of interaction was incredible for the time, and it was a shame that Doom 3 abandoned it, choosing instead to place enemies in "monster closets" that popped them out whenever the player drew near. Sure, the first time it happened it was scary. The second time it was tense. But after the third time, we just wanted them to stay trapped in the closet forever.
