It means you don't have to have played it when it first came out to experience it. Well, I'm sure you'll counter that to "properly" experience it, you do. However, I've played plenty of games through services like Steam that I missed because they came out "before my time" and some of them fare better than others. Doom is nothing spectacular. Never has been.
I think the point is that new players cant experience them in relation to other games of their time. The experience will be different. New players compare them to other games that built upon the shoulders of giants, whereas Doom was the giant, the shooter of its time. Doom was spectacular and caused endless sequels, clones, copies and user mods. It still holds up well today if you install a modern engine like Doomsday.
And it was the same for the quakes. If you were a gamer back then, you bought a Voodoo to play Quake because it drove the tech and was pretty much the best thing out. Or a Voodoo2 to play Quake2. After that the genre diversified with Half Life, Unreal, etc.
Personally for single-player I think Q1 with some newer graphics mods (darkplaces) holds up the best out of the series. Still has the same spooky atmosphere (modern lighting+shadows really help), NIN music and lightning-fast pace. Doom being a close second, then Q4, Q2 a distant 'meh' and D3 not even registering.
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