Doom III Review

[Electronic Punk]

10 days

 

[Sazar]

shops started selling the game late last night... got my copy... am currently ripping my hair out from boredom

the game sure LOOKS good... no doubt... the shadows and atmosphere are the best I have ever experienced... but the visuals are not as good as far cry's...

I have not played on Ultra settings but apparently from what I have read it is not much different... anyways the bump-mapping and specular effects are underwhelming...

it would not have mattered that much had there been a story worth a damn but this is basically Half Life redux...

I am still gonna play through it and see if there is anything with a redeeming quality... any twists and stuff but thus far I am annoyed as hell...

 

[Xie]

how did you get the game..did u download it..

If you live in the US a store called Best Buy started selling it Saturday or Sunday

 

[Sazar]

EB and gamestop started selling last night...

 

[chaos945]

got my copy... am currently ripping my hair out from boredom

Yes, it got quite boring after about 7-8 levels, gonna play through too, hopefully it gets more interesting.

 

[Petros]

Got halfway through and started cheating. I think it was the "find key for door in every level" stuff that broke me. They should have made a bigger break from old-school Doom, and not borrowed from the original Half Life as much.

Spoiler: comparisons to HL!

When got in the giant lift toward the end (Excavation site), I looked up and half expected snarks to slide down after me; it's that similar. Also, even the effect of imps spawning in through a pillar of light is a direct copy/

And I agree with Ketchupisyourfriend; it does get a bit scarier toward the end..

 

[Ketchupisyourfriend]

Well I've made it quite a bit farther now. I'll admit that it has gotten better. The closer you get to the end, the more the game tries to mess with your head. I'm constantly finding myself out of ammo and having to chainsaw my way through some parts whlie voices taunt me and pentagrams appear all over the walls. The boring labs that really bothered me at first are now entirely covered in blood, not to mention the cracks in the floor that seem to be small openings to hell itself. There have even been a couple more very brief outside segments.

It's still no Far Cry, but it is getting better.

 

[chaos945]

The 'moments of madness' that flash by are quite interesting, everything turns red and voices yell at you; this is the time when big monsters tend to start teleporting out of hell all around you.

The new 'pinkies' are quite difficult to put down, the worst moment was when I was running dry on ammo and three of the suckers came out of trap doors all around me, my exact words after hearing the ‘click’ of my empty barrels were 'oh sh!t'.

I was also quite impressed with the 'following' of NPC's in the game and the reactions of the zombie marines, unlike most enemies in shooters these zombies don't stand around waiting for you to shoot them and will actually roll and dive for cover.

Using the new ATI beta drivers seem to have added quite a bit of performance and I can now run the game in Ultrahigh graphics mode with very few slowdowns, despite this I run it in High Quality for smoother gameplay.

 

[Wrathchild]

They should have made a bigger break from old-school Doom, and not borrowed from the original Half Life as much.

Spoiler: comparisons to HL!

When got in the giant lift toward the end (Excavation site), I looked up and half expected snarks to slide down after me; it's that similar. Also, even the effect of imps spawning in through a pillar of light is a direct copy/

And I agree with Ketchupisyourfriend; it does get a bit scarier toward the end..

Not to be difficult, but Doom predated HL, and at the end of the day, all FPS games owe their existence to Id software, the true progenetors of the genre.

 

[Ketchupisyourfriend]

Not to be difficult, but Doom predated HL, and at the end of the day, all FPS games owe their existence to Id software, the true progenetors of the genre.

That may be true, but it's not like he's saying that the games are similar because its a fps. He stated a few specific examples like the way the enemies spawn. HL may owe some credit to Doom for pioneering the genre and what not, but that doesn't mean credit for every single thing in the game belongs to Doom as well. In fact, other games have done a lot of things to the genre that Doom (and id) should be quite thankful for.

 

[Teddy]

Here's a screeny...it's as scary as it looks! heh

 

[Krux]

Not to be difficult, but Doom predated HL, and at the end of the day, all FPS games owe their existence to Id software, the true progenetors of the genre.

thats like saying if henry ford didn't make the model T there never would have been cars. some one else would have come up with the idea sooner or later.

 

[Ketchupisyourfriend]

Spoiler: My impressions of later levels, not much of a spoiler but just in case

Wow! I just reached Hell. This feels like a completely different game now, it actually feels like Doom now. When I started the level my jaw just dropped. I was just thinkng, "Now THIS is the groundbreaking, impressive, beautiful game I was expecting. I wish they put as much into the rest of the game as they put into the first few minutes of the first hell level. I haven't completed it yet, and I don't know how many levels are like this, but I'm definitely going to savor these levels.

I was quite surprised at how easy the monsters were that came out of hell right before you go in. They were big and scary looking, but a couple of shots from the bfg took them out no problem :-\

 

[ElementalDragon]

0.o uuh... a few shots from the bfg are usually enough to take ANYTHING out. most, at least in the older games, only took one shot.

 

[Ketchupisyourfriend]

0.o uuh... a few shots from the bfg are usually enough to take ANYTHING out. most, at least in the older games, only took one shot.

It was just a shock, I'm not used to things dying so easily in this game.

 

[chaos945]

Here is a wallpaper 1024x768 of a screenshot I took ingame.

Download 1024x768

 

[Wrathchild]

thats like saying if henry ford didn't make the model T there never would have been cars. some one else would have come up with the idea sooner or later.

Quite true, but we remember Mr Ford for doing it first, just like we remember ( at least those of us who have been gaming that long) id software for doing it first.


-Wrath

 

[ElementalDragon]

Not to be difficult, but Doom predated HL, and at the end of the day, all FPS games owe their existence to Id software, the true progenetors of the genre.

Wrathchild, you were right about one thing. Id software did make the first FPS, but it was not in the Doom series.

 

[Shamus MacNoob]

Well I have to say I am ok with Doom 3 but just ok , I am not as pumped up as I was hopeing for after playing a few hours, I like the way it feels, it looks good, it does get your nerves on edge ( good atmosphere ) but it is not as good as all the hype.

Sorry but for me Its Far Cry ..that holds the number 1 spot on game of the year .. lets see if HL2 can take that crown.

Far Cry 9.5/10
Doom 3 8.5/10

just my 2 cents

 

[Wrathchild]

Uh huh

Wrathchild, you were right about one thing. Id software did make the first FPS, but it was not in the Doom series.

Yeah, I downloaded Wolfenstein 3D via AOL when it first came out. I believe I had a 1200 baud modem at the time. There were no websites per se back then, just content on the AOL servers, the Prodigy Servers and Compuserv. The dawn of the Information Age.

-Wrath