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Doom 3 Gets Reviews, Piracy Questions, Exultation
Yeti Von Baseball writes "Now that Doom 3 has officially shipped to stores, Computer Gaming World just posted its Doom 3 review - they also posted about 100 or so new screens." Elsewhere, GameSpy has an in-progress weblog and first-look impressions on the "claustrophobic corridors" of the game, Telefragged posted one of the first reviews, praising "a grand slam of action, story, atmosphere, and pure terror", the BBC reports on how "potential sales could be hit by the extent of online piracy of the game", and Time Magazine has a feature on Doom 3 and id.
One problem that contributes to piracy is release dates. In the UK, Doom 3 will be released on the 13th, and, being such a long awaited game, it's inevitable that people here will download it, rather than waiting for over a week longer than those living in the US.
More to the point, the multiplayer aspect will be handled by Quake4, which will be based on the new Doom engine.
Until then, Quake3 scene is still alive, especially finely-tweaked competition mods such as CPMA.
That's a very good idea. I am all for giving id Software as much money as is feasibly possible for this game, and giving EBGames/Gamestop as LITTLE money as possible for ANYTHING.
From the BBC article:
"Despite the relatively low price of PC games, many gamers are still choosing to resort to piracy rather than pay for legitimate boxed copies," said Matt Pierce, publisher of the computer games magazine, PC Gamer.
Relatively low price? Relative to what? A movie? A CD? A car? Amazon has it for 54.99. That is anywhere from 25% to 50% of the cost of a brand new console, depending on the platform (and yes, I know it is a PC game). I'm really curious as to what world he is living in that could justify that price as "relatively low".
Give it more than an hour, and you'll want your money back. I mean, the graphics are spiffy and sound is engrossing. I even jumped the first 8 or 9 times a monster jumped out at me. But after an hour and a half of the *exact* same thing, it begins to wear thin.
The description of this game was right, a remake of the original Doom, with new graphics. That's it. Nothing new in terms of gameplay. Sneak around. Get spooked. Empty your clip into a zombie. Move on to the next room. Ho-hum.
Glad I "tried it before I bought it." I'll be deleting it soon enough.
One of my favorite things in the original Doom games was getting monsters to fight each other. And id clearly designed some levels to encourage this.
If you could get a monster to shoot at you, and the shot hit a second monster, the second monster would get angry and turn towards the first and start attacking it. The the first would turn towards the second and attack, and they would ignore you and just beat on each other until one was dead. (This only worked for different types of monsters; if a grunt shot another grunt, they wouldn't fight. In fact, I don't believe that same-type monsters could even damage each other at all.)
The new game, with its insane system requirements, will only have a handful of monsters at a time (about three, if I understood the Telefragged review correctly). Still, it would be cool if you could sometimes get them to start fighting each other.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
And the game does two very annoying things; they like to surprise you with monsters appearing out of nowhere, which has always bugged me, and they like to just turn out all the lights so you can't see anything and just start throwing monsters at you. How is firing blindly in the dark while some monster that can somehow see perfectly is whittling down your health with a machine-gun fun? Yes it is scary, but not in a good way.
Please someone tell me it gets better, because right now I am unsure if I am ever going to bother to play any more and instead go load up one of the more interesting recent FPS games like Farcry or Call Of Duty.
On the other hand, strong retail sales can make an impression on the publisher, distributor, wholesalers, and retailers, which may make it easier to secure an advance on the next title. That said, id Software isn't exactly strapped for cash or clout, so I don't think they care where you buy Doom 3.
If what you want in a game is basically Doom with shiny surfaces, then you're fine. If you want something new, or even something with a refreshing twist, then aside from the rendering engine you're basically out of luck.
The game is well produced. The voice acting is good. The facial animation is decent. The textures are all very detailed, but you know, the 'fun' bottleneck is no longer in the graphics. Its in the gameplay.
So the big news is the latest rendering engine from Id, the people who brought us the first widely released FPS. Well, I'm sorry to say that from what I've seen the rendering engine is about on par with the Source (Half Life 2), Crytek (Far Cry) and Unreal 3 (upcoming America's Army and Unreal releases) engines. There are probably purists out there that will say I'm insane for this and that Doom 3 does X that none of those others do, or do as well. Well, if I don't notice it when I'm playing it doesn't really matter does it? The most impressive things I saw were the distortions glass caused in anything beyond the glass, and the 'heat distortion' you could see in items that were extremely hot. The glass distortion was interesting for about 5 seconds the first time I saw it, and then distracting the rest of the time. The heat haze was interesting in one level, and almost completely obscured with smoke effects the rest of the time. Yes, the lighting was very nice, but since its mostly used to create vast areas of darkness to 'freak you out', I began to hate the lighting.
Gameplay was tedious. If you're a huge fan of haunted houses, maybe this will appeal. If you're not, this is just going to drive home why you typically don't see haunted houses year round. It seems like every corridor is filled with false panels. It also seems like hell's minions have absolutely nothing better to do than to go wait behind one of those panels, wait for you to walk past and then pop out behind you. This kind of mechanism should be used at most once or twice in a game. Here it shows up every 5 minutes or so.
Level design is repetitive. Carmack talks about how many levels use up to half a gig of textures. Yet the game comes on 3 CDs. Well the easy explanation for this is that the game has about 4 levels. It has the mars base level repeated ad naseum, the underground caverns level (seen for about 2 levels), Hell (seen in one level and basically the end game) and mars base being overrun by hell (1 level) which really isn't original at all but uses a mixture of textures and design from previous levels. All in all, there are maybe 2 really 'Wow' moments when you're looking around you. This isn't bad, except that the rest of the time, for me anyway, it wasn't so much a lack of 'Wow' but a 'Oh god not this again' feeling.
Sound is well used in the game, but then its only used to try to freak you out.
Overall this is the problem. THe game wants to freak you out. And not just a couple of really good scares, but rather it wants you constantly edgy and terrefied. This isn't really what I want in a game, or at least not what I want the entire game to be about. Think about the most suspenseful movie you've ever watched. Now think about the most suspensful 5 minutes of that movie. Now watch that 5 minutes over and over again. Either you're going to get bored or you're going to need
Jherico
What can the average user can do to ensure his security? "Nothing, you're screwed"
Multi-player has it's place, but Doom has for the most part always been a First Person SHooter in the pure sense, AND, I think it's loseing it's focus/direction/attraction by going multi-multi player. Two, three man teams, maybe even TWO two or three man teams. That's it.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I vaguely recall an interview with someone at id saying the almost the same thing, that deathmatch FPS games had reached a plateau and most players play with a lot of the graphical settings off anyway (for example using 2d icons), so that was part of the reasoning for making a single player game.
Why would you want to? The only reason I can see is to perpetuate a class/caste system of haves and have-nots.
If everyone can copy anything, including the boxes that themselves make the copies, how is anyone the poorer?
Movable type put monks out of business. Horseless carriages put buggy-whip manufacturers out of business. Digital copiers (computers) are working towards putting record and movie comglomerates out of business--but not creative types who would create whether they were being paid or not, because they have a spark in them that will still be there once we're a cashless society.
However, with all my examples we still have a thriving industry of book publishing, transportation, and entertainment. Some bubbles burst; the entertainment one is about to go the way of the dot-com and tulip bubbles, which were generating far more money than they were actually worth.
My main point, though, is this: what is your plan to deal with matter copiers, if you're so vehemently against digital copiers?
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
The multiplayer is forgettable overall. It seemed like an afterthought (or a bone tossed to the kiddies who refuse to play anything that they can't pwnz0r other people at online), which it was, since Doom 3 was meant to be primarily single player.
The single player starts out tense and atmospheric, and quickly gets dull. A lot of people will try comparing this game to System Shock 2, but outside of the audio/video logs and oddly designed facilities, the scares never really change.
Idiots will probably respond to this with, "ZOMG ITS ANN FPS WAT D U EXPCT", but the scares almost never change. Enemies bust out of strangely hidden compartments in the walls and cealing behind and in front of you, and you'll be able to guess exactly where the lights will mysteriously go out after about an hour of playing.
Comparing Doom 3 to Half Life is just stupid. The grunts in HL actually try to flank you and use grenades to drive you out of cover. The zombie marines in Doom 3 either run up and empty their clip at you, or find a single spot of cover and pop out every couple seconds to shoot. Pretty much everything demonic just rushes you from whatever wall compartment you walked by.
Did I mention that your flashlight is separate from your guns, and you can't even have a pistol and flashlight out at the same time? Combine that with how freaking dark Doom 3 is (and it is VERY dark), and you'll either be getting chewed up switching back and forth from flashlight to gun, or just firing blindly in the dark. Yeah, that's fun alright.
Doom 3 makes an awesome first impression, but in the end the whole experience is just shallow. The engine is incredible and no doubt the mod scene will do some amazing stuff with it, but Doom 3 isn't revolutionary. Hell, it's barely evolutionary.
Pick it up now if you're starved for a passable singleplayer FPS, or if you're looking to impress all the l33t kiddies with your framerate counts.
For everyone else, wait until Id comes to their senses and drops the price to $45-50.
I am extremely proud of Doom 3. I think it is the best game we have ever made, and it exceeded all of my expectations. That is a rather trite phrase, but it is literally true -- I had a good set of expectations for how the game would turn out based on the technologies that it was built on, and it wound up being just plain better than that.
We think a lot of people will like it.
I don't follow gaming message boards, because, at its best, entertainment is going to be a subjective thing that can't win for everyone, while at worst, a particular game just becomes a random symbol for petty tribal behavior. This slashdot story is about as close as I want to go...
Amidst all the various Doom ports and expansions, we are starting up on our next game. It will have a new rendering engine, which will be keeping me busy for a while, but the only other thing we are saying for now is that it won't be a sequel to any of our previous work. We have a really solid team that did a lot of maturing through Doom's development, so I have high hopes that it won't be another four year odyssey.
John Carmack
It's been a slow couple of years for the PC games industry, and for the fps genre in particular. Until the release of Farcry earlier this year, there had been little in the way of technological progress since iD released Quake 3. Since then, we've seen countless games using Quake 3's engine, but little in the way of genuine innovation. 2004 promises to change this; there have been three really promising titles this year, namely Farcry, Doom III and Half-Life 2.
The middle of these three titles in terms of release date, Doom III has perhaps the most impressive pedigree. iD software created the first modern fps with Doom, over 10 years ago. Since then, their Quake series, while often felt to be lacking in terms of gameplay, has given us the technical milestones that have marked the progression of the genre. Doom 3 has been in development for four years and from the very beginning of its development, we've been told to expect something groundbreaking.
Some retailers jumped the gun slightly on iD's release date. This meant I had a chance to play the game early and was coming to the end of it just as most players were getting started. I'm writing this review on the basis of a single playthrough on the "normal" difficulty setting and I've not yet really touched on the multiplayer, so I won't be factoring that in.
iD have made it clear from the beginning that we'd be needing an absolutely monster PC to play this game well. I don't really have one. The system used for the purpose of this review was:
Pentium 4 2.0ghz Northwood
512 mb RDRAM
Geforce 4 Ti4200
Sound Blaster AWE 32.
Not exactly obsolete, but hardly cutting edge.
So, with the preliminaries out of the way, how does the game shape up?
Pretty well, all things considered. On loading up, I'm confronted with the normal array of options. I customise my controls to my liking and then decide on some graphics settings. I'm a sucker for detail and will generally put up with a bit of framerate loss in return for an extra touch of "wow factor". First of all, I try the "ultra" detail settings in 1024x768 resolution. It takes me 30 seconds to find this is completely unplayable. No real surprise there. So I change the detail level down to "high", which, annoyingly, requires me to quit and restart the game. To my surprise, things now run fairly well. Although I experiment a bit further, I end up playing through the game with these settings. By and large, it's pretty good, although a couple of the bigger areas do cause fairly severe slowdown,
The opening sections of the game are very much reminiscent of Half-Life. You wander through the colony while people go about their lives and work around you. Expect to spend several minutes more than is strictly necessary here, just gawping at the level of detail. The visuals really are like nothing we've seen before. Farcry's outdoor sections were stunning, but the effect broke down indoors. Here, the indoor areas look almost photorealistic at times. There's a solid, gritty feeling to everything and it all fits together very well.
You're given a few "go to point A then point B" objectives and then, predictably, all hell quite literally breaks loose. It's hard to get over in a review just how terrifying it is when everything goes wrong. My reaction as the people around me started deforming into hideous monsters was verging on outright panic. I stayed in a pretty much constant state of fear for about the next 5 hours of the game, with occasional resurgences right through to the end.
Once the shooting starts, the nature of the game stays pretty much constant. You get an objective, usually to go to a location or find a way of opening a door, over your communicator. Accomplishing the objective involves moving through a sequence of rooms and corridors, dealing with any enemies you come across with extreme prejudice. As I've already said, this is extremely scary at first. Everywhere is very dark (more on this later) and the enemies really are quite unpleasant. Expect
This game is getting a bad rap because people are expecting no story, no plot and no variation just because that's what id have given them in the past.
With Doom 3, that's not the case.
The first thing that strikes you about the game is how cohesive everything is. The attention to detail is fantastic, from the UAC propoganda films, to the video discs, emails and audio logs, there's been a whole wealth of production value been heaped on incidentals, making the station feel more alive and really making you feel more like you're actually on Mars.
There are a number of different enemies, each with their unique abilities. The enemy AI is not non-existent, the zombie soliders hide behind walls and crates, ducking down to get a better shot. They chase you around corners before barrel rolling and ducking down to get you. They bunch themselves right up against pillars so you can't see them, they path-find through doors and other rooms to get you, I even saw one soldier try and climb through the railing that seperated him and me. Combined with the fact that things happen on all 4 sides since imps and spiders climb out of the ceiling and walls and scuttle down them with perfect animation and timing... means this is not a dumb or easy game.
Massive machinery, using grappling hooks to lift toxic barrels, using the relative safety of the roving sentry guns to aid your progress, listening to the radio chatter from your dying soldiers, following the scientist with the electric lamp as he leads you through the dark corridors (his shadow stretching up every wall with perfect accuracy), being scared by your own shadow, seeing enemies bend doors and rip them off their hinges before lunging at you, or crashing through glass windows... I could go on. There are plenty of scripted sequences, small and large indoor areas, you get out onto the surface of Mars, some enemies require you to just get in there and shoot, others require a bit more care. And slowly you descend into Hell, where the real fun begins.
Don't just dismiss Doom 3 as a simple blaster, it's an experience to be enjoyed and repeated. People's expectations are clouding their judgements, when id should be congratulated for doing exactly what they said they would do, create a scary, chilling re-imagining of the original Doom.