Doom III: Single-Player Comments by Kristan Reed

"Our scores are more based on the overall entertainment value, rather than the one that judges it on some sort of artistic merit."

As they should be, I dont care if im playing certain game 5000, if its fun its fun. That rule seemed to go out the window with driv3r though, come on, behind the lack of polish there was still a better than average game, speaking fun wise here. People how dont find driv3r fun, fair enough, but most just played "spot the bugs" instead of having fun with it. Mind I did take mine back after blitzing it over a long weekend.

No, to be frank I rarely, if ever play games on the hardest difficulty settings. I'd be surprised if Nightmare mode makes you lose health - more than likely the grunts just take more hits and there's less health/ammo pick ups.

Are you really dumb *and* a blonde?

As for your Unreal 2 comment, I wasn't a fan of Unreal 2 (loved the first), and Doom III kicks it all over the place.

Addressing those that wanted Doom III to be something else...could it not just be that you don't like id games in the first place? Would you expect Radiohead to make a skate punk album just because that's what the 'kids' want. Of course not.

This thread isn't the place for a Driv3r discussion, but....I'm sorry, but the score had nothing to do with the bugs. It was down to the terrible gameplay design that drove me to new heights of Gaming Rage.

I tried the Joint ops demo, and frankly it was the biggest load of rubbish I've seen/played in ages.

Interesting review, cheers Kristan. A lot more positive than some of the comments I've heard from friends - but hey. it's all just opinions right?

Bit strange to only review the single-player part though.

Also, I think we can assume that many players won't be playing the game on a 3.4ghz monster - so in the absence of a demo to test hardware compatibility, I'd love to see more "ordinary" PC specs used as review rigs :)

From what I've seen of Doom III, it looks very pretty but not good enough as a game to make me upgrade my one-year-old-but-terribly-out-of-date PC. A demo might change my mind though.

Ian

It only took me about 2 hours of playing it to want to go back to Harvest Moon. It's biggest problem it that it has NO (none, nothing nada) innovation outside of the graphics department. Just try and find one thing about it that you haven't seen somewhere else that isn't a visual touch.

It playes almost exactly like Quake 2 when is comes to your own speed and maneuverability. I think this is the feeling that kept me gripped, since I played Quake 2 to death.

The monsters are quite dumb at times, and more than often I would see them run back and forth over the same spot or literally run in circles, serious, no joke. They don't work together in any other way than surrounding you with numbers. The occasional Dead Marine will take cover, but sadly then you could hold a clock next to him, he has the ability to pop out at exactly the same time interval to shoot almost exactly the same amount of bullets. He also doesn't leave his cover when you get close enough to shoot him in the shoulder without him seeing you. Quite sad. Thankfully their pathfinding over the 5 or so meters they have to walk is generally OK and they make it around corners without too much trouble. On the other hand, sometimes when I was really outnumbered and ran a distance away (not through air ducts or over boxes, flat area) when I came back some of the mosters would be gone. Never knew running was a viable tactic to killing the enemy. Not to mention that jumping on somthing is often enough to get away from the mosters with no ranged attacks.
e.g: "Oh no, it's a large quardupedal Demon with huge teeth OMG OMG!!! Oh well, I'll just stand on this chair and then I'll be safe,".
It's not the difficulty that does this either, they make the same dumb mistakes on both normal and hard. By the way, the only difference between the two difficulties I could notice was that there were more enemies and they did more damage. No faster animations, no gained abilities and certainly not more adept at avoiding you blowing them up.

I liked most of the weapons. The last weapon you get is LAME (not the BFG) and not at all fun to use. The machinegun sounds TERRIBLE, the chaingun sounds mild in comparison. No other complaints 'bout the guns. Three plusses for putting the beserk back in, made me laugh :P

It scared me for a while, a couple of dark corners caused me to bump out of me seat. However... after a while you constantly expect being ambushed, what with enemies behind invisible doors and their ability to teleport into the room at any time (announced by everything going dark for a sec.). You just get suprised so often that... it's not at all suprising. Whereas the first hour or so had me scared to go through the next door, soon I was running around waving a chainsaw and screaming obscenities at the things that had tormented me. They weren't scary at all anymore, just fodder for whatever gun I had. This slowly chipped away the atmosphere. Once this happens, YOU again (like it many FPS's) are the thing that should be feared, not those silly monsters who only have two ways to attack you.

To sum it up, it only really has two things going for it:

It's quite playable because the controls are good (would have been hard for them to miss this one up).
It looks REALLY nice. If you can afford it (mumbles grudge against people with an obscene income).

So, if you like running down beautiful hallways shooting at beautiful dumb enemies with predictable attack patterns then this is for you.
I guess that means it's for me too, since I finished the game. I had fun, but I resent it :P

Good comment about scalability. You show me one gamer here or in the forums who will freely admit that they play all the latest FPS games on a PIII 800 running a 64mb graphics card and I'll show you a truly dedicated soul...!

Does AMD T-Bird 800 with a GF2MX 32MB card count? =)

Fully agree, Doom 3's single player is not a 9/10 game. Every rooms the same, open door, monster is directly behind it, monster spawns behind you too just for fun, shoot them, enter room travel through dark tiny corridoor and leave via next door, repeat. All the time your surrounded by pretty but pointless and non interactive animated machinery of some sort.

The engines even dissapointment for me, tiny spaces, no outdoors, small number of monsters and a low player limit in multi. Considering what the unreal engine is pusing out these days, and the outdoor and vehicle vids we've seen of Half Life 2, and doom looks very weak.

I can sort of appreciate a score like 9 - although I would argue that for the same reason, Halo (heh) could've scored it as well. For all its flaws, a game can be lifted above the sum of its parts by the unusual, the unpredictable, the outstanding.

I'd give Halo a 9: I can see its flaws (level repetition being the main one), but altogether the gaming experience is simply one of the best I've ever encountered. Were I to play Doom 3 I probably wouldn't - for the same reasons that people would.

Were I to play Doom 3 I probably wouldn't - for the same reasons that people would

Were I to play Doom 3 I probably would for the same reasons as other people probably would, but not in any way contradicting the reasons of those who wouldn't or those who think they would but actually woudn't for reasons similar to those that I gave earlier for being one of those who would.

Slim is back!

My copy arrived this morning from the states ;) So I will be playing into to the night :)

Night time is the best time to play it, I would guess.

Bleed ?

This game is incredible. Seriously, I can't figure you guys out. Wait 'till it's nightime, crank up the volume, turn out the lights, load up doom... how can you not enjoy it?

I can't remember the last time a game made me break into a sweat so often from sheer terror and adrenline.

What res and settings are you playing it at ?

Some shots on this thread from a guy playing at 800x600 (full detail level) on a geforce 3 card.

It looks sensational, and runs well !

I think Nillsens pretty much has it nailed. Intentional or not, games have moved on. It's a shame that 'id' haven't.

I'd give Doom3 a 6/10 at best... once you get over the gloss, you find a very predictable and very flawed game beneath.

its not been getting the blistering reviews i was hoping for. even the yanks are giving it '8's. i know thats a good score but for such a high-profile release i expect better than '8's and the occassional '9' as shown here. suddenly my anticipation for halo 2 and half-life 2 have went down now that half-life 2 could be scoring 8.2

and if you take away the graphics.

There are games that have technically impressive graphics, but yet their graphics don't achive anything like atmosphere or immersiveness, like Unreal 2.

And of course there are games that are immersive and full of atmosphere despite having bad graphics.

And there's the third category, games where the graphics are an important factor for immersiveness, atmosphere etc. , so they're much more than just eye-candy.

So taking away the graphics, at least for games of this last category, to judge a game is not a valid method . It's like saying if you take away the motor of a Porsche, you're left with an average car, or if you take away the lead singer of a band, you're left with an average instrumental band.

Graphics, gameplay, sound etc. form a unity that is more than the sum of their parts.

Mind, I haven't played Doom 3 yet, but from what I've heard so far, it could very well be a game of the 3rd category.

Halo? What's that?

A far superior game to Doom III...

Having played it, I'd say so Unclelou.

And what makes people dislike Doom (the ones that have tried, though many arounf here surely didn't) is that they don't feel like they're in Mars fighting enemies and for some reason aren't afraid to take the next step.

I do, as Kristan seems to, and that's what makes Doom3 great for me.

Cmon Whizzo, let me bait the tards, that line wasn't for you :)

Though I still fin Doom vastly superior to the IMO average Halo.

And why is that. Because I appreciate immersion and atmosphere above all in a FPS. Halo was much more about gamelay I believe. Well that and the fact it was one of the best FPS on a console.

Oddly enough, I've gone back to playing Doom 64...

So taking away the graphics, at least for games of this last category, to judge a game is not a valid method . It's like saying if you take away the motor of a Porsche, you're left with an average car, or if you take away the lead singer of a band, you're left with an average instrumental band.


It's about graphics so that would be taking away the styling of the Porshe and the half naked cage dancers of the band.
You'd still have a sports car that's exciting to drive, and you'd still have the bands music.
So the analogy doesn't quite work.
But i'm just nitpicking for no reason ;) :D

Doom 3 - Single Player

Setting a bit of a precedent for all future reviews aren't you?

Nine out of ten? As usual you're crackers.

A nine should bring more to the table than a lick of varnish. A nine should be recognition of everything the original was famous for: pioneering multiplayer, panoptic views, laugh-a-minute co-op, satisfying weaponry, all the stuff that makes the Doom ports so popular.

What we have here is an overdue, over-engineered follow up that sucker syou with lush visuals on the first run through but which nobody sane will be playing past October. Honestly, truthfully, people will have either completed it or been bored giddy by it.

It's all engine and no game. But I should care, eh?

Thing is I bought Halo a year ago (PC not XBOX) and I reloaded it a few days ago and just finished playing for the third time and it's still great. Now in all fairness I havent played Doom 3 but going by the reviews I really don't see myself doing the same with it. Halo and HL are still for my money the greatest FPS's of all time. Though I still will buy Doom 3.

It's about graphics so that would be taking away the styling of the Porshe and the half naked cage dancers of the band.

Sorry, Freek, but you kind of missed the point of my analogy*. What I was trying to convey was that the graphics, for this category of games, is much more than the styling of the Porsche or the cage dancers (= the eye-candy). :-)

*edit: might very well be my fault, so here's another example:

Would "Night of the Hunter", or "The Third Man" be the great movies they are if they hadn't been shot in expressionistic black and white?

"This whole breaking doom III into - enter room, shoot bad guy argument is sloppy and lazy at best. Name me one FPS that you don't do that in at length. Of course if you put it that way your going to create a boring image."

We're not creating that image, the game is. As far as repetition goes, Doom 3 manages to somehow emphasize it. Surely you didn't still think it was 'suprising' or 'fair' or whatever when the walls open up just centimeters away from you to release an imp and another spawns in right behind you. If they have to rely on that to 'suprise' you I find it more than a bit cheesy. Not to mention the imp behind the door. I found myself opening doors from the side just to avoid the inevitable cheese damage.
And, anyhow, most FPS's nowadays offer some other feature too such as vehicles, some special ability, stats of some sort, heck even an inventory. Doom doesn't have any of this or anything else apart from the PDA (which I did like) and thus the diversity is not as large as other games.
Sure, Halo had exactly the same type of architecture throughtout large sections of the level and yes, it did get repetitive. But the thing is, it featured some neat AI, vehicels, a new race of enemies introduced later to keep things fresh... Despite the repetition you kept going because you knew that the option for variation was still very much there. I'd glady trudge down one or two samey corridoors as long as I get out after that and get to drive around or meet some marines or whatever. It's subtle variation, but it works.

"Sorry, Freek, but you kind of missed the point of my analogy*. What I was trying to convey was that the graphics, for this category of games, is much more than the styling of the Porsche or the cage dancers (= the eye-candy)."

That is most certainly true for the atmosphere. And atmosphere is an important part of this game. But atmosphere and gameplay are two seperate things. Those FMV games like Myst etc... some people might argue that they have quite a pronounced atmosphere, but in my opinion they are devoid of the kind of gameplay I want.
I just think that at the heart of any game there should be rock solid gameplay. Anything else is nice, but not a prerequisite.

Pfff, don't have the hardware to run it all pretty like (which seems to be important however you cut it), and it sounds pretty average in the concept department, plus I'm really getting tired of the FPS as a genre. Think I'll give it a miss.

UncleLou, you're right, but the original comment is still valid. Take away the expectation, dilute the hype, ignore the 'HL2 vs D3' sparring, pull Carmack's john thomas out of everyone's mouth and there's not that much to see.

No, okay, there's plenty to see just nothing to do - a helicopter ride over the GRand Canyon. I'm sure you'll tell me yes, that's right, that Doom III is a treat for the senses, but this review and others like it promise so much more. They say there's a game here, yet a surprising number of us have given up trying to find it..

This one also makes glib remarks about some pretty key issues. The copycat plot is "a knowing nod to Valve" and a "fitting tribute", a comment which sidesetps rather than tackles the issue of borrowed/unoriginal storyline. In any other review of any other game, "a knowing nod" would become "a ripping off" and nose-dive the score accordingly.

It also treats the single player as a separate issue, despite it being one box and one game you buy, as though entire sections of any game can now be arbitrarily ignored. THink one aspect of your blockbuster might tarnish an otherwise glowing review? Leave it out!

PC Gamer in the UK said 90 per cent - perhaps I'm being cynical, but to me that translates to 80-something without Activision exclusively humpiung their leg. Oh, what might have been..!

It's ridiculous that just because the intro was similar to Hlaf-Life the score should be lower. Just have fun with your games and stop analysing them.

There's other "homages" to HL in there too, when I saw an air vent spewing body parts I had a flashback to exactly the same thing happening six years ago.

and if you take away the graphics

i think any game would become kinda shite when you take away the graphics. or at least very hard to play.


/coat

So, no game can have an air-vent spewing body parts without it being a homage to Half-life ? wtf ?

When it's done exactly the same what else are you supposed to think it is other than something copied from Half Life, something everyone who's played it will remember.

As a test then turn off all the fancy grafix and play it for a while and see how you feel. Its looks startlingly dull without bumpmapping I can tell you.

As a test, play Half-life through again with all the textures turned off (so just wireframe or bare polygons) - it looks startlingly dull I can tell you.

As a test pluck out your eyeballs and live the rest of your life blind. The world looks startlingly dull without eyeballs I can tell you.

And the blind develop keener senses of touch and hearing, beholding their environment in a different way, in some ways inferior, others superior to one who can see. In much the same way, one might be able to better appraise the qualities of a game without all the eyecandy.

Well I certainly won't be buying the Doom III Text Adventure then.

so what if Doom III doesn't offer your 3 different ways to get to the (same) end of a level. Doom III makes that one path's quality obliterate everything that has come before, since Halo just about every FPS I've played has upped poly counts but remained somewhat sterile. Doom III changes all of that, finally giving a game world the kind of richness that makes it comparable to a (good) movie. This is what makes it so god damn scary IMO. I absolutely love this game. It's everything that I was hoping for. I feel like I've stepped into the future of gaming.

playing on a -
Athlon 64 2800+, Gig of DDR400, GeForce6800 NU 128
runs smooth as butter at 1280x1024 on High.

most perceptive comment is in the review... judge it for what it is not what it isn't or indeed what it is not trying to be. Id have made a game to specific criteria that will appeal to some and not to others

Ironically, considering some of the negative comments on D3, there is a place in the games market for variety

I don't want deus ex, operation flashpoint, thief 3 etc ... they exist already. I want a straightfoward visceral simple fps experience. I don't want a game with extra keys to lean, the whole point is full on go ahead action, not creeping around - that fundamentally changes the game dynamic. I don't want every key mapped for various functions... for doom I want to strafe left and right go forward and back and fire a lot.

I've not played the game but all the reviews, negative and positive, and comments from players reaffirm this is the game I want to play because it clearly the game ID wanted to design and appears to fulfil my expectations of what a doom game shld be

This appeal to some, as it has, and not to others, as it hasn't. There's no point trying to convince each other they are wrong because either the game suits what you want from it or it won't...

This is not because of my general personal preferences regarding games, just what I expect and what from various titles at various time. I love deus ex, operation flashpoint etc... for what they intended to do and how well they did it. If D3 isn't gorgeous, brainless, violent, destructive and with a great engine that feels right (another perceptive comment) ... then yeah it is a bad game according to what it intended to do.

But it's nonsense to play something you know you'll not like because you bring expectations that were never part of the brief or even the concept of a doom3 game and then complain it doesn't do exactly what you knew it wouldn't.

The one comment that really raised my interest was by Nillsen who said it played "exactly like Quake 2 when is comes to your own speed and maneuverability" as I played q2 to death too, multiplayer, and have never found an engine that felt as right, either too light, too heavy, with too little weight, too much, or too complex or too simple manouverability. If this is the case then d3 will exceed my expectations, and many other old q2'ers who have never found a mp game to love in its stead, because then D3 mp may develop into the replacement for q2 we have never really found :)

Yes, the Quake II DM still stands as the finest example of its genre. If Doom III has captured the player movement of Quake II, that alone will interest me.

I think the limited running will be a bit annoying in DM.. other than that it does feel a lot like Quake2. It's sort of slow, the weapons fire slowly, the projectiles are slow -- hehe, you get the picture.

It's always fun to read comments from clueless people. A grade might just as well only be based on the amazing experience that a game is, without forcing the game to do something else above it.

Hehe, big confusion here, everybody seems to disagree with everybody to an extent.

Half of the people can be part right all of the time,
Some of the people can be all right part of the time.
But all the people can't be all right all the time
I think Abraham Lincoln said that.

£18 from www.mx2.com