This Old Neon Forum

The final round of the “Best Boss Fight” side-event ended with a tie for first. Let’s break it!

• You can vote for 1 game.
• The top game will be the official “BEST FREEWARE GAME EVER!!!”
• You can’t change your votes once they’ve been submitted, so click carefully. Voting closes on Saturday at midnight ADT.

VOTE HERE

Best Freeware Game Finals (Tie-Breaker)

Cave Story (2004, PC)
Doom (1993, PC)

Cave story finishing tied first is amazing so proud of game considering how well known doom is.

Cave Story is fine, but it's more revered as a human accomplishment. As a game, it's uneven and somewhat derivative.

Doom was a masterpiece at the time, and somewhat more impressively, is still a masterpiece.

Kong Wen wrote: ↑07 May 2019 02:37 Cave Story is fine, but it's more revered as a human accomplishment. As a game, it's uneven and somewhat derivative.

Doom was a masterpiece at the time, and somewhat more impressively, is still a masterpiece.

Masterpiece is a stretch it looks and plays averagely (for todays standards). Comparable to a old time current masterpiece like Tetris it's very flawed. For example Tetris basically just gets a HD fresh of paint and can be called a current gen masterpiece. Controls are so simple and perfect and work like a charm.

I tried playing Doom about a decade ago and it felt pretty aged. Never going to experience what it was like on launch and not saying it's bad (I said that it was the biggest threat to Cave Story losing last round so I obviously still have a high opinion of it) but "still a masterpiece" seems a huge stretch. Basically has the same issues as every 3d game from the 90's and early 00's.

That being said saying it's better than Cave Story (Agreed not a perfect game) is fair and I get what you're saving just don't agree with the masterpiece category.

One thing Doom did really well is it forced the player to do crowd control. Your movements and actions affected those of the enemies. It became a sort of dance really except you sometimes had lots of dance partners. When you pulled off being able to clean out a room without getting hit it felt grand.

Cave Story I’ve sadly not played yet...

Cave Story got my vote. Doom is more deserving, but not in this category, at least in terms of how I prioritized my choices.

VictorViper wrote: ↑07 May 2019 13:57 Cave Story got my vote. Doom is more deserving, but not in this category, at least in terms of how I prioritized my choices.

Doom does feel like one of those games that has blew up and doesn't really deserve to be called freeware since it's made Bethesda tons of money and basically put them on the gaming map.

Cavestory really feels like a freeware game love and heart put into the game just for the fun of it.

That being said both games are consider freeware as they are free so they both deserve to be here.

Fortunately, Tetris is not in this poll. Tetris gets a fresh coat of paint, but it has also gotten several under the hood mechanical tweaks over the years (t-spins, infinite spin, quick drop, etc.). Doom has gotten mechanical tweaks over the years too, and with a fresh coat of paint, was enough to be a universally acclaimed hit when the new version came out a couple years ago. Of course, there are still people creating WADS and playing new and old Doom levels. It's absolutely a masterpiece. It's still fine to prefer a human achievement over a masterpiece. I happen to think Cave Story sags in places.

VictorViper wrote: ↑07 May 2019 13:57 Cave Story got my vote. Doom is more deserving, but not in this category, at least in terms of how I prioritized my choices.

I'd be interested in hearing you elaborate on how you prioritized your choices.

Definitely Doom. No other freeware game ever made the impact on me as Doom dit. But that was partly because the first time I played the freeware Doom I played it in a dark room and had not adjusted any settings in the game including the brightness and gamma correction. Fireballs came out of the blackness towards me and I only saw the monsters when they were 'in my face' or lit by a lightsource. Had no internet at the time so I had to figure out about the settings myself.

Kong Wen wrote: ↑07 May 2019 18:28

VictorViper wrote: ↑07 May 2019 13:57 Cave Story got my vote. Doom is more deserving, but not in this category, at least in terms of how I prioritized my choices.

I'd be interested in hearing you elaborate on how you prioritized your choices.

Pretty simple: was it freeware on release.