Todd Hollenshead defends Doom III Comments by Tom Bramwell

I thought it was a pretty good game! A bit ahead of it's time really the graphics cards needed to handle the engine properly only came out about 6 months after the game i think.

I loved Doom III, it was awesome!

I'm in the 'I quite liked it' crowd too

Don't worry Todd, i liked it......
that should put his mind at ease

It was ok, repetitive gameplay but lots of atmosphere.

Doom III, in my books, is one of the best FPSs ever. GREAT GREAT atmosphere

Actually what was most wrong with Doom 3 was the 'zombie in a cupboard' syndrome that it suffered from so badly. Walk into a new area, pick up some armour, 3 hidden doors open revealing tiny little rooms full of monsters and/or some monsters just teleport in for the hell of it. Repeat. And again. And then some more.

Still, it was a good game on the whole despite its flaws.

Well I for one liked Doom 3: it was immersive, atmospheric (I don't think not being able to hold a weapon and torch at the same time was a flaw; yes it was a cheap trick to make it more intense, but hey, it worked) and fun.

I love insecure and ignorant people. They're always a source of great entertainment.

Have to agree. Doom 3 was great fun, mainly off the back of the fantastic atmosphere the game built up. With the possible exception of some sections in FEAR, no other game has made me creep round levels in case an enemy pops out from behind the next door I open. The torch / gun thing might have been unrealistic, but it was clearly a gameplay mechanism and in that sense, it worked really well.

Surely if people want to lay into any id game, then it should be Quake 4. (Okay that was Raven, but still...)

It was mostly average with a bit of flair here and there. Great, moody beginning showing a lot of potential. Then manoeuvring itself so it satisfies neither atmosphere and exposition-lovers, nor carve-your-way-through-legions-of-monsters people.

The curse of emo whining NeoGAFers.

I preferred it to Half-Life 2.

i also loved it

did this come from neogaf/onefag?

I just love monster closets, they're fantastic, especially ones that open up behind you, that's not at all cheap and not fun.

Great game, Great graphics, Great atmosphere. I can't believe that people are complaining about it!

Doom 3 coop was a blast. Especially the tactical team work that it forced with the flashlight was nicely done.

Well I thought it was complete shit, so I guess I'm number four.

I must be one of the 3 people who didn't like it that much, but I've never started a thread on the interweb to voice my dislike. It just made me want to play Ultimate Doom and Doom 2 again.

I think that the biggest con people have against it is the "I grab this weapon and predictably there will be monsters spawning around me" gameplay. But what do they expect? This is exactly how doom games work. It's the doom formula.

Besides, it made my mate so scared that he hasn't finished the game to this day. Comedy gold. \0/

go go power Hollenshead...

i like doom3 and roe, played through it 3 to 4 times until now, everytime with a better gpu and more graphic enhancing mods. great dungeon crawler.

I love doom III, only complain was the flash light thing, but it is good for a laugh.

what were people complaining about? I didn't see anything wrong with it when I played besides the flash light thing.

Doom 3 was a perfectly decent game. I think it got more criticism than it deserved because it came out within a few months of Half-Life 2, and frankly, a lot of games look bad in comparison to HL2.

I was disapointed by it... Then again I've not been a Id fan for years.

I'm still waiting until I upgrade my PC before seriously trying to play it. But i remember the first couple of levels on a mate's uber-PC as gorgeously gloomy.

I liked it. It melted my £300 ATI 9800XT graphics card though.

Doom3 did look great, plus it had a nice & dark atmosphere, but once the novelty wore off it was just to repetitive for my tastes. I guess I'm not a great fan on linear shooters as I got bored with Bioshock also.

Id still buy Doom4 when it comes out though.

It kicks the shit out of Half Life 2.

/didn't really like HL2 all that much

As far as unimaginatively designed, heavily scripted, AI-free, on-rails haunted house rides go, Doom 3 is definitely in the Top 10.

Well, Top 20, at least.

I was a bit disappointed when I played it for a while and realized that it was just Doom with amazing graphics... then I thought, hang on. This is Doom with AMAZING GRAPHICS!!

I loved it.

I was also mightily proud of my 9600 XT, it coped admirably in my book.

the simple fact (in my opinion) is that DOOM III did have its flaws but they were all based around keeping it a DOOM game (repetitive gameplay, heavy scripting etc.) it's what gave it that oldschool feel and why many people loved it so much.

As for the flashlight thing, I can see why people disliked it but I thought it was genious, it really made you feel vunerable and kept you on edge ready to quickly switch to your gun if something jumped out.

I found Doom 3 was better on the middle difficulty than the hard one, because it kind of ruined the atmosphere to have monsters all over the shop. Too many creepy moments were getting ruined with a monster pop-up on the hardest setting.

"I love doom III, only complain was the flash light thing, but it is good for a laugh."

The flashlight thing was awesome - only complete muppets complain about the flashlight switch!

I thought it was a very good game, and deserving of 'AAA' status, but it was not without its faults. The beginning was pretty tense, and embodied a strong survival horror vibe, but this soon gave way to the familiar arcadish action, and as a player I never felt particularly threatened. On the other hand, I thought the game picked up towards the end, climaxing in the trip to hell, which was suitably intense.

"I think there are three people on the internet that keep making these posts that Doom 3 was 'bad'

Doom 3 was bad.

Dark, monotonous corridors with monster closets aplenty and enemies spawning behind you in cleared out rooms. Doom 3 was a revolution alright, a revolution in insipid game design and bland monotony. We'd grown out of Doom 3 before it was released. We're even more grown out of it now.

If there are only three people badmouthing Doom 3 on the internet, I'd like to meet them. They certainly have more of an idea of good game design than the cretin currently driving iD down the hoary road of complacency and franchise milking.

Why do people blither on about how great HL2 is? I played through it (and the extra episodes) for the first time on the 360 recently. I was glad when it was over. Boring. Crap graphics. Load of old toss. Go away HL2 - you are the shit of devils.

mr.rowsdower has summarized the faults of the game perfectly.
while im aware some people seriously love the simplicity of the game and find the graphical effects exciting, i personally found the bankruptcy of design ideas pretty appalling - to the extent that it was really hard to stop ignoring the shortcuts and lazy decisions taken by the id staff.
this hollenshed man must be expressing a guilty conscience through a pretence of incredulity. silly

Well, I was bored and frustrated by it. It had a few good genuinely scary and disturbing moments, but, basically, a horror game in a futuristic setting with a protagonist with a plasma rifle doesn't work. And the multiplayer wasn't remotely as good as Q3. No network co-op either!

Also, Serious Sam made a far better sequel to Doom than Doom 3 did.

Doom 3 was bad. the graphics were meant to be groundbreaking, but they ended up being let down by the textures IMO. Also, many of the weapons lacked punch, which is quite important for FPSs. There wasn't very much variation between the enemies (though I will grudgingly admit it was a bit better than HL2 in this respect). I didn't get far enough to get to the "hell" bits, but after a very good intro, the game got boring a bit too quickly.

They got the scares right, for the most part, but I would consider that to be the bare minimum for a Doom game.

I guess I would have enjoyed the game more if I didn't expect something like Doom and Doom 2. The games have pretty much nothing in common (looking at the gameplay) which was very disappointing. Yet another linear FPS that didn't know how to create suspense other than by teleporting a monster right behind you. Ok for a few times but not if every single level is based on that.

Gone are the mazes and the action packed battles in rooms full of monsters. Of course Doom 3 wasn't all that bad but in my book it simply didn't deserve to be called Doom.

One complaint about Doom 3 that always annoys me is the "Lots of monotonous corridors" - It's an underfunded and understaffed research facility on Mars which is run by a shady military corporation. What were you expecting? Wide open vistas of verdant green foliage with white-capped mountains in the distance and blue sky overhead? Google pictures of military bunker/ ISS/space shuttle interiors and the corridors of Doom 3 look quite nice and comfortable in comparison.

Now that I've vented my spleen, I do agree about the irritation of monster closets and the inability of a fully trained marine to hold a gun and a torch at the same time.

On a related note, not only do I quite like Doom 3, but I also quite like Half Life 2. Does this make me odd?

Fucking awful game I had the misfortune of playing.

One complaint about Doom 3 that always annoys me is the "Lots of monotonous corridors" - It's an underfunded and understaffed research facility on Mars which is run by a shady military corporation. What were you expecting?

Well, it's not like it's a documentary. Obviously dark works better for Doom, but they could've set it anywhere, or at least varied the environments within the facility.

The problem I had with Doom3 was it just looked to plasticy when compared to Half Life 2. HL2 was inovative where as Doom 3 struck me as being a tech demo for the latest graphic cards.

The game mechanic was tired and to be honest if you are going for shock value the first AVP game when you play as a Marine was a far more satisfying experience.

Multiplayer was also bloody awful. I know Q4 is for the multiplayers but that wasn't particularly great either. I am sure there are still more people playing Q2 and Doom2 than play Doom3.

@ Dan Whitehead:

I'm not arguing against more level variation. Although that would have Doom 3 a better game, darkened corridors seem more logical to me and fit better within the Doom universe.

Despite Doom 3 being set 137 years in the future, all the weapons (bar the plasma rifle, BFG and soul cube) have modern equivalents. The PDAs are blackberry ripoffs. Most of the buildings and architecture would be possible with current day technology and the more advanced sci-fi technology, for example, faster than light travel, doesn't seem to exist in the Doom universe. The only really fantastical element in Doom 3 is the demon infestation.

With all the emphasis on current day technology, I don't see why the environments of Doom 3 shouldn't all be poorly-lit, barren corridors. After working in several hospital and university biology labs, I can tell you it's a disturbingly accurate portrayal of the real thing.

People also seamed to miss the entire tribute to system shock thang going on

my problem with doom 3 was when the fecking enemies just appeared in front of, or behind, you and you had no chance of avoiding being shot....

I enjoyed Doom III. It was never meant to go beyond the traits that made its predecessors so much, braindead, fun: search bigass weapons, find demons along the way, smash demons. I'm also glad there was no yellow-red-blue key backtracking malarchey but rather a focus on the story of a lonely marine stranded in a dark, desolate, slowly decrepifying environment, all odds against him, yet oddly managing to get by. Oh, and let's not forget it is the source of inspiration for Portal's Weighted Companion Cube.

As for the flashlight thing, if it is troublesome, I believe there's an elegant patch around where the Marine's mental capacities become just high enough to realise the wonders of taping the flashlight to the guns he finds.

People also seamed to miss the entire tribute to system shock thang going on

Most of those people went on to review BioShock.