Slashdot Mirror
id Software Announces Doom 4
spoco2 writes "The id Software site has announced that work has begun on the next sequel to their most famous game, Doom. Will they be able to resurrect the series after what many considered to be a serious misstep with Doom 3? Oh... and they're hiring for the team, so maybe you can steer them in the right direction?"
Doom 3 certainly wasn't perfect, but I enjoyed it. And I certainly don't see how they veered too far from the original concept of Doom either. Am I alone in this opinion?
-dave
http://millionnumbers.com/ - own the number of your dreams
I liked it. It was a great change of pace. Yeah it was scripted and it was in their trademark brown for the most part but the story and presentation was great! I play Half Life 2 for similar reason, great story and proper visuals. If I wanted to rip Doom 3 for overly scripted encounters that seemed to repeat a lot I could seriously pummel Half Life for the same. Hell I would love to punish the HL team for their over use of their damn physics engine... yeah I know you have one but some things get annoying after a while.
I guess we can hope for a flash light taped to the gun this time. Still the Doom 3 is one of the few games that actually made me jump. Great sound and visuals.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
not a games company. Yes they make games, but their engines are what shine. The doom 3 technology looked fantastic. It's when other companies license id's engines. That's when we see a better game.
...but I think people who used duct-tape mods for DooM3 were playing it "wrong".
Yes, the flashlight was an ENORMOUS hassle to play with at first, but I'll be damned if the thing didn't ramp up the adrenaline rush tremendously... constantly balancing between seeing where you're going and being able to defend yourself was very very tense and scary; I loved every moment of it.
Machine9dotNet
the horse is long since gone.
.45 hollowpoint. Until you do it enough times to kill them at which point they die instantly, but until that point they will be at full combat effectiveness. You can kneecap a monster and it will still be able to chase you at full speed. If a monster is armoured, you can shoot it in its eyes and open mouth as much as you like without hurting it unduly, because they are every bit as heavily armoured as its scaly, plated hide. Half the monsters will have ridiculous hit points, and the big ones will be somehow impervious to your weapons and the laws of physics until the point where they rear up and reveal their weak point.
.22 air pistol. They can wear jeans, so the pellet won't penetrate skin. As they're rolling around on the ground in pain, or hopping and screaming and cursing, tell them to remember what it felt like when they come to design the weapons, the monsters and the monsters' reactions to getting hit.
Wolfenstein - great idea. Doom, brilliant sequel. Doom 2 - nice, more levels. Quake, wow.
Doom 3 - where's the duct tape? Or string - anything really. Where's the £4.99 headband torch I keep in my backpack?
Nobody really wants to break the FPS formula, least of all the guys who practically invented it. It'll be Doom with shiny graphics, more polygons in the average monster's arse than comprised an entire level from the original Doom, and it'll still be shite, because it's been done to death now for 15 years. The shotgun will be a great weapon for 90% of the game, and be the only weapon for which there's ever enough ammo. Despite being set in the future, and on some alien world, the weapons will have been toned down to the sort of sub-standard kack you wouldn't give to a modern day grunt. Nobody involved with the game will have the slightest idea about current or future military hardware, or know where to find a copy of Jane's Infantry Weapons. There will be no metalstorms, no gauss rifles, no sabot rounds, no poison darts, no armour-piercing rounds. The sniper rifle will carry 5 rounds at best, and any weapon capable of killing an enemy quickly will have almost no ammo available as that might render it somehow useful. You will find weapons dropped by other groups of people who'd been previously ambushed by the monsters. Quite why you'd want to pick them up is unclear, as they clearly didn't do their last owners a blind bit of good.
As for the environment, if there's enough light to see, it'll be drab and featureless as otherwise it might be possible to work out where you are. The colour palette will be green, brown, and grey. Wood will not burn, glass will withstand a rocket launcher if it has a bit of chicken wire in it, and despite carrying around 200lbs of explosives, the door will not open if you don't have the access code. Using a grenade to go through the plasterboard walls will not be an option.
The monsters will not react in any way (stagger, pain, fear) to being shot in the nose with a
In short, it will have every flaw that every other FPS has, but because it's got the magic word 'Doom' written all over it, it will sell many copies and the usual fanboys will be sucking its dick because it's so shiny.
Here's something I'd love to see happen before they write one line of code on this game. Line up every developer, and designer who's going to work on the game, and shoot them in the thigh from 4 feet away with a
Besides, it'd be a major hit as a YouTube video.
This IP was played out and over cooked with Doom 3. Strip out all the good graphics and what you have left was a rehash of a rehash. Doom 4 will push the rehash to new realms with fancy graphics and game play that is a decade away from good.
HL2 and its follow up episodes are good, satisfyingly and resoundingly good. With the release of the Orange Box, Valve blew the lid off of gaming. HL2 Episode 2 is GOOD. Team Fortress 2 is excellent. Portal is the game that shocked everyone in how excellent a new concept combined with excellent writing produced one of the best games ever.
Sure, one can say that Valve is rehashing old stories like ID is with Doom; but they aren't. HL1+HL2+ Episodes are expanding upon a story line that is a decade old...it is still fresh, and fun. Each new bit builds upon the last bit and extends it.
ID and Carmack are going to foist a re-engined same ole' same ole' upon us, just like they did with Doom 3, just like Epic did with the very badly done UT3.
I said that Doom 3 was the most accurate flashlight simulator to date; and I was right. They have the graphics tech, but no plot, no story and no direction. Worse, they have no passion.
Doom 3 was made by clock punchers.
Portal was made by people that love games, game design and gamers.
Doom 4 will be made by people that love John Carmack.
It was a simple, focused game. It was an atmospheric game. It was a nostalgia trip.
From a design point of view, you can certainly criticize it. For starters, 3-4 levels could have been removed to improve the pacing of new features. Some level design tricks were used to excess (e.g., monster closets). One of the bosses was ridiculous and out of place (in terms of using Nintendo-style mechanics). It also had some brilliant moments: the atmosphere of the first level, the incredible hook of wanting to see what hell was like.
But most of the complaints are about things that are outside the scope of the game: wanting puzzles, wanting character interaction, wanting an elaborate story with multiple plot twists, funny arguments about how everything in the original DOOM was so much better back when I was 12 and played it on the school network. That's not criticism. That's just armchair design.