First honest DOOM3 review

Thats the only part I have played....let me save you the time...you wont miss it as its "been there done that" type of thing The maps them selves are not bad. The flow is ok...again goes with the dark creepy room.

 

Re: U

Ok, I completely disagree. Quake 1 had more scares that Doom 1/2 had, was as fast (or faster) than Doom, and while not having the legions of enemies on screen at the same time, it had tougher ones.

And when it was modified into QuakeWorld it was head and shoulders above any other online multiplayer game out there, Team Fortress, CTF or just straight up Death Match (1on1s, 2on2s and 4on4s). As a matter of fact it defined that entire genre for 2 years (until Q2 came along).

In fact, I'd wager most people bought it for the multiplayer part of it, at least from 97 and onwards (it still sold 1.7 million copies the first year). Of the 20 people I played with regularly we were only two who had ever completed Q1 SP. It had a TON of value (I know, I played it for 7 years)

Q2 continued the same trend. So-so SP but strong multiplayer (in particular Q2 CTF kicked ass).

Q3 is arguably weaker than the previous two, but still had a strong following.

But they were all good games. And they sold on merit, not hype.

Out-the-box Doom 3 death match may suck. But let's see what the MOD makers comes up with in 6 months. It may not top Unreal 1/2/3/t/2004/XXX/Whatever or Counter-Strike as an online shooter, but there are alot of possibilities in the engine that just needs developing (multiplayer Silent Hill anyone ?).

Cheers
Gubbi

 

Re: U

I gotta agree that we should wait. However on the other hand, it should not be up to the mod community to do this as the developer should have been able to provide a better MP experince then what we have. I mean just DM (team, LMS, one-on-one) and no co-op is week

 

Yes, lack of co-op sucks. But oh well.

 

Yeah, just think of the excitement coop would bring as one player takes the point, bolding holding that flashlight up so his team mate can hopefully not shoot him in the back. Weeeeee. . . .

Heh, it's a decent game, pretty much exactly on par with what I expected from id, but the early reviews and hype surrounding it. . .I don't know.

 

Is it just me, or is the story the same one as in Half-Life? Seems like it.

 

Tom Chick weighs in: http://www.quartertothree.com/inhouse/columns/86/

 

You will see plenty of reviews that say that D3 sucks, but as always we get to make our own decisions luckily, and just having a website doesn't make you more correct, only more widely heard.

The thing that I think is funny is that everyone is saying basically the same thing. I want to see a review that says the graphics are terrible but the game is great at least then it would be different. All the reviews I have seen read almost identically.

 

WRT to the topic, heh, it seems they upgraded the review and gave it a higher score. I guess this means the review is no longer "honest" right?

If only people would understand that gaming is subjective and that there are no wrong or right games. Only right or wrong games for each person.

 

Well, I played it for an hour, just to see what everyone was talking about. While the sound is great and it does look slick, in so far as you actually see things, it is just plain boring. While I admit not being a great fan of First-Person Shooters, Deus Ex and System Shock 2 are in my top-5. And Doom 3 just doesn't compare.

Imagine, I spent ten minutes, just to see how you pick stuff up and how to activate my inventory when it hit me: this is Doom, it doesn't have anything else than shoot it and walk over it. No inventory. No stats. No nothing, except a PDA with keycodes. And there is no strategy or tactics, you take a step, the monsters are in your face, you have to shoot them before they kill you. I was actually surprised it allowed me to go back through the door to the medstation.

It reminds me a lot of half-life, but I liked that much, much better, as it gave you actually the choice in how you went about it. It was a much better thrill than Doom 3. And while the first few encounters in Doom 3 made me jump, within 15 minutes I knew just what to expect. Just walk along the path, get jumped, get them in your sights and start blasting before your health runs out. Boring.

Well, multiplayer might be fun, but I have lots of more interesting games to play. No Doom 3 for me.

 

I think we've been spoilt by many newer games that give you a choice of how you want to play the game, or at least variations in the style of play. They let you choose, or have you play in different styles, like sneaking around, sniping from a distance, guns blazing, etc. Some even included vehicles and melee combat. Deus Ex, NOLF 1/2, Chaser, Chrome, Far Cry, JK2, JK:A, all gave us more choice is how we played and what we had to do.

D3 takes all that away, and brings us back to run and gun, search for keys, and dungeon-crawl through the tight corridors. While the engine is clever, the game and level design is simplistic. I expect the licencees will show us what can really be done in terms of more interesting gameplay.

The creepy atmosphere is good (especially in the soundscape) but the lack of variation of it does get boring. The storyline does pick up well towards the end, but still remains curiously unengaging. I suspect it's because you seem not to play the storyline, simply shooting one baddy after another in the same dark tunnels.

 

I guess it might be just me. But I'm tired as hell of "choices" , huge pointless soulless maps. Every game that you mentioned (Except for NOLF, which I liked a lot and is actually quite linear like D3), bored me to death. I guess when I play a FPS I'm looking for an "experience" more than anything.
I mean any single player FPS is always going to be linear. So fucking what if they give you three paths to get to the same place, I'd rather have one or two paths that are detailed as hell(literraly) and creep me the fuck out.

I certainly think there's room for other kinds of FPS's, in fact my favorite FPS since Half-Life has definitely been Operation Flashpoint.
However in non playground type environments (which is basically any non-tactical shooter) Doom III is in a class of it's own. Like NOLF it creates it's own environment that immerses me. It boggles my mind that anybody could write this game off in 15 minutes. It honestly sounds like you made up your mind before you played it. And it's a shame... I mean I guess I don't really give a fuck. But you're missing out.. really. I mean, it's Doom for cyring out loud! What the "HELL" don't you understand?

 

I still haven't played DoomIII, but I agree with the above post.

 

Re: U

Which, of course, is the beauty of gaming that everyone has different tastes

For me I found Quake 1 just didn't have the same impact as Doom. Doom was the first proper 3D game I every played and nothing will ever, ever beat that excitement. It was a whole new level of gaming for me, where as Quake was just a little step forward. Also, I found Quake's graphics were less immersive than Doom's - they seemed really pixelated and the polygon monsters didn't have the detail of the bitmap ones in Doom (though maybe this was because of my lowly PC at the time).

Well, I was refering specifcally to the single player game. I missed out on QuakeWorld etc. as I never had an internet connection at the time (not many did in the UK). Maybe if I had I'd think differently. After all, Q2 single player was "so so" according to yourself and Q3 single player was playing against lousy bots (ie. non existant). I'd say they rank as "good" games but not great. Of course, Carmack is still a genius and I think Doom 3 will rock

 

Re: U

Quake II CTF was a fan-made mod, which renders it rather irrelevant as an example.

I didn't find Quake the slighest bit scary, and certainly no where near Doom.

I think the real problem was that once they moved away from 2D worlds (or 2.5D) they started to put a real strain on the CPU, and hordes died. That was the real appeal of Serious Sam, the enormous hordes. That was its true throw back to Doom (but SS just didn't compare because the level design was almost non-existant).

Doom is rightly remebered as a classic because it combined atmopshere, excellent level design and well thought out monsters (both in terms of image and balance) and put them together in a run and gun game that worked for its time. The Quake series never came close to touching that.

 

A good point about level design. What was great about Doom was that the levels never attempted to be realistic. Sure, the first levels were supposedly set on a Mars base, but it was quite obvious that no real base would ever be designed like that! No, most of the Doom levels were totally surreal. They were designed with only one thing in mind - gameplay. They were made to be exciting, weird, scary and just plain tough. There was also humour too (who can forget the Doom disco?). Realism was never the objective, just fun.

Really, things started to go downhill when designers tried to set games in real environments - this is where we got the cliched corridor based shooters. Endless corridors, small rectangular rooms, warehouses full of square crates. Oh, and ladders. God how I hate ladders in FPS games, as invariably you fall off them trying to go down. The early games were even worse as they never had the detail to make you even feel like you were in a real environment. At least now games like Far Cry have opened up the world a bit.

 

IMHO DIII - the best game since Deus Ex I

overall excellent, I am not sure what do you expect, Morrowind on Mars?

And Quake is great - I am replaying that

 

Reminds me, how do i do that in D3. I can climb up but i alway fall on the way down. Thief 3 ladders were almost perfect.

 

I love you.

Also, whoever said Doom3 borrowed from Half-Life is forgetting that the Doom storyline was written about 5 years earlier. Dammit people, stick to your roots!

 

Does anyone else wish people wouldn't bring back old threads?

Please, if you have anything to add to current discussions, please do!