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Quasar

My take on BFG Edition

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I went ahead and got BFG Edition entirely for the Lost Mission, as I've been wishing there were any new missions at ALL for Doom 3 since finishing RoE the first time 3 or 4 years ago.

In my opinion, it's worth the $20 for Lost Mission. The new levels are not entirely original, it's true, but the amount that this matters has been blown grossly out of proportion. At best it gave me the impression that I was going through related parts of facilities based on the same blueprints - something not unusual in real life.

The game is short, but to me it's actually nice. I can't play through RoE in less than two settings, but Lost Mission is fun to blast right through quickly. It plays very much like an episode of the original Doom does.

Story-wise it's a great addition, particularly in explaining Betruger's real motivations. I must also give a shout out to the incredible new Hell levels. One of them has what is basically a recreation of the Unholy Cathedral from the DOOM episode 3 intermission map, a huge obsidian fortress with horn-topped towers beneath a swirling vortex of oblivion floating atop infernal conflagrations. Then you take a boat down the river Styx, and end up fighting your way into an ancient Mars civ outpost built in Hell. A thrilling conclusion in my opinion.

Balance is the biggest issue I found. You pretty much have an infinite ammo cheat, in addition to running faster, not needing to toggle the flashlight, and seemingly taking less damage while dishing more out. Recommend playing on Veteran at least ;)

As for the rest of BFG Edition, I'd say don't bother too much. It's kind of fun to rack up the various achievements. But, RoE in particular is terribly butchered. Besides largely unnecessary deliberate changes like removing all the arcade games, the sewer sequence, and the "green area" battle in Hell, all of which were distinctive and memorable, the expansion is absolutely rife with new glitches.

Invisible brushes blocking the middle of hallways, UIs that don't animate correctly (including during critical storyline sequences), broken enemy path finding, broken sentry bot AI, barrels stuck in floors, enemies falling out of the game world when they spawn. I don't think they playtested RoE one single bit.

I have yet to try its copy of plainjane Doom 3 to know whether or not it also has a lot of new glitches. I've heard you don't want to touch the Delta Level 2 elevator panel before turning the power on but aside from that, not much news.

As for graphics, it DOES actually look better, at least for me. I THOUGHT I had my vanilla Doom 3 CD install setup for maximum quality, but running at the same resolution in BFG Edition gives me a much clearer looking display, whereas the textures in the CD version still look muddy. This comes at a cost though. I get framerate dives of as much as -20 fps when certain translucent and particle system entities like flame jets are on screen, which never happens for me in the original CD version on the same hardware.

And of course, finally, Doom Classic. All the problems of the XBox and 360 versions with no attempts to correct any of them even though we've trumpeted them all over the internet. It gives a real impression of laziness. You get a better experience playing the vanilla engines in DOSBox, really. Just there for added value, I guess, and I don't mind that. I AM glad that NR4TL was included, but irritated that it doesn't play in the way that was intended by its designers.

Overall rating from me, 6 stars out of 10. Mediocre quality that you wouldn't have expected from id, pre-buyout. Pretty clear this pack exists because Bethesda needed something to push out after the flop of Rage and the lack of progress on Doom 4.

If you get it, be comfortable with getting it for Lost Mission, and just consider the rest icing.

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I don't recall experiencing any glitches while playing through any of the campaigns. My memory might serve me wrong, though.

On an unrelated note, it was pretty stupid of them to completely remove mod support.

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I haven't experienced any glitches either, but yes, RoE saw quite a lot of unpleasant changes.

Some of them are clearly for optimization purposes. Remember that giant fan at the start of one of the Erebus levels? It's gone. Just an open shaft now.

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So, I just decided to grab BFG as it's only a fiver on Steam today after reading your take on the Lost Mission.

Now, here comes the silly question... How do I load it?! I installed and booted up the game and all I see is Doom, Doom 3 and Doom 2. I don't even see RoE. What am I missing (apart from a brain and common sense!)?

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Just click on Doom 3 and you'll be able to choose between regular Doom 3, RoE and Lost Mission from there.

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Quasar said:

And of course, finally, Doom Classic. All the problems of the XBox and 360 versions with no attempts to correct any of them even though we've trumpeted them all over the internet. It gives a real impression of laziness. You get a better experience playing the vanilla engines in DOSBox, really. Just there for added value, I guess, and I don't mind that.

Ignoring the sound issue, which really should have been fixed by now, it's pretty much just vanilla in higher resolution without the need to fuss around with command line parameters, something I've wished this community had done on their own for years. Other than that, removing the...functions from the function keys is pretty annoying, I never realized how much I used F2/F3 to save/load until the option was gone. I don't even save that often, just at the end of levels mostly to check if I missed anything before starting the next level. Pause to pause is no longer a thing either.

Quasar said:

I AM glad that NR4TL was included, but irritated that it doesn't play in the way that was intended by its designers.

Huh? Unless you mean the music issue (and this is a weird way to put it if you do), it plays exactly how they intended. This is the engine it was designed for and controller support is still in.

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Cire said:

Just click on Doom 3 and you'll be able to choose between regular Doom 3, RoE and Lost Mission from there.


I don't have that option... When I click on Doom 3 I'm just given the option of starting a 'Campaign' of Doom 3 along with Multiplayer, Options etc. Nothing about RoE or the Lost Mission... :(

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So here we are a couple days later and suddenly it's $5. Ask me how I feel about that, I dare you.

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I don't know how you feel but I'll remember not to ask you for stock market advice.

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Average said:

I don't have that option... When I click on Doom 3 I'm just given the option of starting a 'Campaign' of Doom 3 along with Multiplayer, Options etc. Nothing about RoE or the Lost Mission... :(

Are you actually running the BFG Edition?

edit: misread, thought you didn't have a game selection menu at all.

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Average said:

When I click on Doom 3 I'm just given the option of starting a 'Campaign' of Doom 3 along with Multiplayer, Options etc. Nothing about RoE or the Lost Mission... :(

Well, start a campaign. You'll be asked which level set you want to play.

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Well I just finished the lost mission and...that was the final boss? I put two BFG clips into it and it was dead, and I thought for sure I was going to the actual final boss, but no...that was it. Credits take longer than the boss fight. I guess it's E3 all over again, this time without the "designed for a pistol start" excuse.

The new expansion has better gameplay than Doom 3/ROE, but it's not any major improvement. If you thought Doom 3 was mediocre like me, this is still mediocre. If you thought Doom 3 was good, you'll probably complain about the rebalancing. Speaking of that, I still don't get why they didn't just give unlimited sprint, you have enough when you're actually fighting, it's when you're backtracking that the limited sprint gets annoying.

Buy BFG Edition the next time it's $5 for No Rest For The Living, that's the real gem here.

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i am a bit disappointed with the bfg edition.

to me it just looks like standard doom3 with a resolution fix, and the thing i hate the most of all... no mods.

but in all truth i also admit that the engine feels as if it has been waxed, getting a smoother gameplay and fps feel.

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I agree with you on the Lost Mission, the Hell levels were great. Too bad it wasn't longer, beat it in slightly over an hour.

I AM glad that NR4TL was included, but irritated that it doesn't play in the way that was intended by its designers.


What do you mean?

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Sgt_BFG said:

I agree with you on the Lost Mission, the Hell levels were great. Too bad it wasn't longer, beat it in slightly over an hour.

What do you mean?

I had been misinformed at the time that none of the level transitions, map names, etc. were working but in fact, everything is correct except the music tracks.

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The BFG Edition for me was so-so, especially since I own more than 1 copy of the original versions of the games.

I'm REALLY glad they made it for PS3 though. DOOM hasn't been seen on PlayStation in over 15 years and I have no intention of buying a 360, so I'm very grateful for that move.

However, there's also DOOM Classic Complete on PSN that has Final DOOM and the Master Levels, thus making it the only way I need to DOOM on PS3, as I already prefer Classic DOOM over DOOM 3.

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I got doom bfg edition just for lost mission and no rest for the living expansion, because had played all other dooms before. Great value for the money and might eventually play doom 1+2+3 also from the same disc when I have enough free time.

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I find the BFG edition to be excellent and seriously underrated. I never cared much for the "survival" elements of the original Doom 3. Doom was always about running and gunning down demons. I didn't like having to scrounge for ammo and health in Doom 3 nor did I much care for the immense focus on the horror elements. I can honestly say I prefer the BFG edition over vanilla Doom 3. I love that there's more ammo scattered around, it really helps increase the action. However, the lack of mod support is disappointing and, yeah, if I was so obsessed with visuals I would just play my modded Doom 3, which I do still play. But if I want to just play the regular game I'm going with the BFG edition. But I still stick with my original opinion that Doom 3 is a good game, just not a good Doom game. The originals are far superior.

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The lack of mod support really breaks this for me. I bought it for the expansions but I presumed I could use mods with it too. It seems totally against Id's old philosophy.

If Bethesda had sense they could have made this the definitive offical collection just by adding mod support (maybe PrBoom compatibility?) to the original games and retaining it in Doom 3. But they took elements away from the original Doom 3 and left the original games in the same state as the XBLA releases. What a waste of an opportunity. Both to please loyal fans and players but also to set the potential for Doom 4 in a good light... As it is the loyal fans are disappointed and carry on playing homebrew source ports and the prospective buyers of Doom 4 just expect it to be another 'me too' FPS. Sad, really sad. :(

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Well they wanted to make money out of the older ID games, that's all that mattered to them then, first Quake 4 then Doom 3 only Quake 4 didn't get any changes and was console only.

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I didn't really see much of a difference with the Doom 3 BFG edition. I didn't care much for the lost mission levels. However, It was cool that they included the entire Doom 1 & Doom 2 maps in it. They censored Doom 2's Wolfenstein maps 31 and 32 which was kinda stupid, but ID Software most likely did that to sell the game in Germany.

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