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Udderdude

Doom 3 : The Udderdude Rundown

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So i've been playing the game pretty heavily the past two days. I'll break this review into two parts .. the good and the bad :P

Even though it seems like I complain about the game alot more than I compliment it, I'd still overall reccomend the game. The entire experience is something not to be missed.

Edit : Well I've started the game over again on Veteran mode, and this time I'm doing alot better. I've got tons of ammo, I know most of the traps allready, I know most of the ammo locker codes, and I'm better at taking out the Z-Sec Zombies with grenades :P Overall I feel it's more enjoyable the second time around from a gameplay perspective.

--

The Good : The graphics and sound effects are really damn good. Doom 3 really does revolutionize the graphics in PC games. I haven't been genuinely scared by a game in years, and Doom 3 did it easily. The beginning of the invasion, with it's 'Oh Shit!' factor flying high, is a real thrill. The enemy designs are artistically very good, and fill the role of horrifying demons from hell perfectly. The Hell area just plain rules :P

The level design and monster placement, when it's good, is great. It offers lots of frantic action that requires skill (not luck) to get through unharmed. There were hardly any areas where I felt lost or stuck, with no clue what to do or where to go, even without a map. The use of darkness and underground areas is very nice, and requiring the player to use the flashlight is pretty cool.

The voice acting is, thankfully, very good. There's not a hint of bad movie cheeze at all.

The quickload, mercifully, doesn't reload the entire level. It only takes a few seconds to reload to your former position. If I had to wait half a minute for every quickload, I'd have given up on the game very quickly.

---

The Bad : The enemies just don't have the variety of DOOM 2. Many enemies just seem redundant or put in to have different enemy shapes to throw at the player. The Cherub, Trite, Tick, and Maggot all have the same general pattern. The Pinky Demon is just plain outclassed by these other enemies in speed and attack damage, making him crappy from a gameplay point of view. Just because he takes a few more shots to kill isn't that much of a difference. The Mancubus's fireball spread is replaced with a rapid-fire gun style attack, making him more like a big Hell Knight. The other enemies are good, but there aren't a whole lot of them.

Some battles in the levels are just plaing annoying. There are spots where if you don't know the big trap is coming, you're totally screwed, since there's no time to react. You either die or lose so much health it's impossible to proceed. You have to quickload until you've got a good strategy for getting through the battle or just get lucky. Other parts, with Z-Sec zombies, are totally frustrating as there's no place at all to hide, so you get shot to ribbons no matter what you do. Other areas you get surrounded by monsters so fast, and in such small areas, you just have to be lucky you don't get surrounded. This is especially bad with Trites, which do insane damage (15 w/ full armor) for their small size and numbers.

On Veteran mode, you're really low on ammo most of the time. If you don't manage to unlock every one of the ammo lockers, you're bound to run out eventually. And at that point you're pretty much screwed, since by then the enemies are big, bad and will pound your ass while you try to whack them with your flashlight.

I started to get sick of the UAC base after awhile. There's only so many poorly lit rooms filled with electronic walls and crap I can take before I get tired of it. There should have been more maps set in hell, or the ruins.

The lack of any real music is something I just didn't like. I felt like something was missing the entire game, and this was it. Fighting Z-Sec Zombies with no music and just the sound of gunfire flying around might have made it more realistic, and even scarier. I'd still rather have some good blood pumping music. Also, when you're quickloading a battle over and over, trying to get it right, it starts to seem more like work with no music going on.

Even though the graphics rule, I'd hope after spending $400 to upgrade my PC that I'd be able to run it in more than 640x480 Medium. I've got an XP 2500+, 1 GB RAM, and a Radeon 9600, and it still slows down often in large battles. I've got the latest drivers, I've tried all the doomConfig.cfg tweaks, and it's still not that great (plus the tweaks tend to make it look like Medium-Low quality instead, barf).

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I'm sure ID software have heard most of these complaints already and I wouldn't be suprised if we saw a patch in the next week or two.

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I run it on high detail at 800x600 on my p4 2.6, 512 megs or ram and a 9600xt. It works all right, I get pretty good frames, unless a new room or area is loading. All in all, I'm fairly disappointed.

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"On Veteran mode, you're really low on ammo most of the time. If you don't manage to unlock every one of the ammo lockers, you're bound to run out eventually. And at that point you're pretty much screwed, since by then the enemies are big, bad and will pound your ass while you try to whack them with your flashlight."

You need to do one of the following:

1) Miss less
2) Play the candyass difficulty
3) Stop being a lazy bastard and open the storage lockers.

I've played through veteran difficulty and haven't had any problems with ammo whatsoever.

"The lack of any real music is something I just didn't like. I felt like something was missing the entire game, and this was it. Fighting Z-Sec Zombies with no music and just the sound of gunfire flying around might have made it more realistic, and even scarier. I'd still rather have some good blood pumping music. Also, when you're quickloading a battle over and over, trying to get it right, it starts to seem more like work with no music going on."

I enjoy the lack of music, it helps with the level of immersion. If you need music to help distract you from opening those storage containers you ignore - and then proceed to bitch about lack of ammo - run winamp in the background.

"Even though the graphics rule, I'd hope after spending $400 to upgrade my PC that I'd be able to run it in more than 640x480 Medium. I've got an XP 2500+, 1 GB RAM, and a Radeon 9600, and it still slows down often in large battles. I've got the latest drivers, I've tried all the doomConfig.cfg tweaks, and it's still not that great (plus the tweaks tend to make it look like Medium-Low quality instead, barf)."

You expected less? Poor choice in a video card, this is a game that pushes the envelope and requires the latest hardware - thus.. 'next gen game'. You can't have a cutting-edge game and run it on old hardware like that.

I run a 9700 Pro with an AMD 2400+ and it chops.. I expected it to chop. In fact, it runs better than I expected. With some tweaks I'm running 800x600 on medium. Check tweaks available, they help.

EDIT: http://www.artfulenergy.com/personal/doom3_tweaks.txt
Those are the tweaks I'm using, they helped quite a bit. YMMV

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Nothing in the game gives me the slightest sense of nostalgia that’s the biggest mistake ID ever could have made when making a third Doom title. Obviously Doom 3 is a pretty big let down for me, granted its absolutely worth the 43 dollars I spent for it, and even the 60 dollars I was prepared to spend for it but it simply isn’t doom.

If I wasn’t a fanatical believer of the mod community and I didn’t fully expect someone to create a mod of doom 3 done in the doom 1 style id be tempted to say that ID dropped the ball. (Well they threw the ball fine just in the wrong direction.)

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i started the game first time on veteran mode and played it thru and there were enough ammunitions thankyouverymuch.

biggest let down was the lack of coolness of demonic infestation on base. only candles, that slime shit and a bit cooler stuff later on.
that decreased the atmosphere of original doom.

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I'm stumped as to how people aren't getting good performance in this. My system is high-end... The slowest part would be the 9600XT 128. Now, having said this, I'm running the game at 1024x768, High Detail, NoAA. I'm seriously thinking I could do Ultra as well. Screw what the benchmarks tell you, they are I find, going for higher numbers rather than playable performance. My PC floating at 25-45FPS, with occasional jumps to 60, or as low as 15. So anyone with a system near mine could seriously do 1024x768 or 800x600 at ultra.

here are my specs for comparison.

P4 3.2Ghz. 512kb cache. Hyper Threading.
1GB Geil DDR400 running in Dual Channel.
Radeon 9600XT 128MB. DVI/ViVo
Gigabyte 8KNXP/i875 Motherboard

Granted, I'm probably getting a huge boost with the HT/Dual Channel RAM. But alot of fairly recent motherboards have that anyway.

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Udderdude. Don't you make stepmania songs? I've seen songs at bemani-whatever with songs done by someone named Udderdude. :)

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I have a 9200 and it sounds like its outperforming your 9600, because its very playable.

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udderdude said:

On Veteran mode, you're really low on ammo most of the time. If you don't manage to unlock every one of the ammo lockers, you're bound to run out eventually. And at that point you're pretty much screwed, since by then the enemies are big, bad and will pound your ass while you try to whack them with your flashlight.


are you kidding? if anything i have MORE ammo

maybe u should be more conservative or use grenades/rockets more or the shotgun. if you run up and get in the imps face it only takes one shot from the shotgun to kill it. the z-sec guys are armored so they sometimes take more but i can always hear em comming. i usually care the shotgun so i can nail anything that jumps out at me. the z-sec guys are loud so i can hear em comming and pull out a grenade or the machine gun. luckily by the time u face the big guys (hk and mancubi) u can slam em with rockets or a charged BFG (when i first faught the 2 hk's i just hit em with a charged BFG and sent em flying... it was really satisfying).

and the rocket doesnt have too much of a backsplash (unless you are absolutely point blank) so u can still hit stuff pretty close.

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S1lent : Maybe a new patch will speed it up by a few FPS but I doubt anything more.

Stergil: I wasn't using a guide to look up all the locker codes, so there were some I just couldn't find the solution to. A Radeon 9600 isn't that old .. neither is a 2 GHz CPU. I've got all the tweaks you mentioned on, plus I uncompressed the .pk4 files (Partly to get at the juicy sounds/textures, yum)

Black Hand : Carmack never said Doom 3 would be Doom 1 with awesome graphics. He said it would be a complete retelling of the Doom story, and that's what id Software delivered. The gameplay may be different from the original Doom, but you can't fault him for that. Also, how could you not feel any nostalgia seeing some of the re-designed baddies for the first time? :P

LorD BaZTArD : How did you turn off AA? I couldn't figure it out.

Mivalekan : That's me. :O

Godshatter : I'll probabally try playing it again from the start, this time using a list of the ammo locker codes from gamefaqs or something, and I'll try to be more conservative in ammo usage. I just wish I got the chainsaw earlier .. that would help alot in ammo conservation, esp. on the zombies.

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Forgive me for asking but were did I say that? I've lost track of my posts. Whatever the case I probably didn’t mean to say, “carmack told us that he was going to recreate doom 1 with all new graphics.”

Shooting the lungs out of zombies gave me a sense of nostalgia but that’s about it. Honestly they could have added "skull" buttons, the candelabras, people impaled on stakes still twitching, A new 3d face HUD that turned towards the direction were it was being attacked and showed facial expressions, redo the wall and floor textures from the first game in perfect 3d. Remember the infamous “ocean of faces” or whatever you call that wall texture that rotates showing the facial expressions of humans screaming, hell they could have added a screaming and moaning effect to that too.

It would have been very very easy for ID to increase the sense of nostalgia and for some reason they chose not to. Don’t give me any crap about hexagonal floors magically taking away from the games atmosphere no ones buying it.

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udderdude said:

I just wish I got the chainsaw earlier .. that would help alot in ammo conservation, esp. on the zombies.


use fists/pistol/flashlight on the regular zombies. if its just one and u have room to manouver u should use the flashlight. even if there are a couple, as long as you have room. otherwise drop em with the pistol. i dont use the pistol for anything except the basic zombies (except for the begining, i use the pistol on the z-secs cause i have no grenades and the shotty has too wide of a spread).

the pistol is also good for dispatching imps at range. otherwise, the shotty is my best friend. a good tactic is to dodge right by the fireball and run up in its face and blow the shit out of it. u should hit so it never takes more than 2 shells to kill an imp.

remember, the shift key is your friend and the SG is his brother.

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Don't know what you guys are talking about on low ammo. Either you're really bad shots or you just don't explore or read PDAs enough. I played on the hardest skill setting the game ships with (the one below nightmare). Before I went to hell, my shotgun ammo never dipped below 100 shells. Every other weapon was always full (I rarely used anything other than the shotgun, even against the bigger baddies).

As for encountering impossible situations to get through on your first time through, that's bullshit as well. All the little surprises I didn't have many problems with.

But, I don't exactly suck at first person games so my reaction times are pretty good.

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I only have one thing to say... Black Hand, will you stop spending every moment you have on this board bitching. We get it, you dont like Doom 3. Whoop dee doo. Shut up already. I respected your opinion for a moment, but at this point, it's enough.

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Ok doom 3 kicks ass, I absolutely love it, the levels where lights flash on and off don't hurt my eyes as much as staring directly into the sun! The fact that EVERY enemy encounter in the game is scripted to be played out the exact same way EVERY time doesn't annoy me! The fact that 4/5 of all the games monster have an unavoidable leap attack doesn't piss me off. The levels aren’t all redundant. The doom 3 communities are full of very intelligent people! Everyone who has some minor problem with doom 3 should be quarantined, sterilized and drugged so their "disease" doesn’t spread! Elvis isn’t dead he’s just with Rick James, bitch. The fact that ID has to have monsters teleport in behind you in order to build up a decent “atmosphere” isn’t pathetic!

Sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows, Everything that's wonderful is what I feel when we're together, Brighter than a lucky penny When you're near the rain goes, disappears, and I feel fine Just to know that you are mine My life is sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows That's how this refrain goes So come on and join in, everybody Sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows Everything that's wonderful is sure to come your way When you're in love to stay……

I WUV DUUM TWEE! :)

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Black Hand said:

The fact that ID has to have monsters teleport in behind you in order to build up a decent “atmosphere” isn’t pathetic!


Actually, that's not part of the atmosphere .. that's part of the action :P The atmosphere is the detail, lights, ambient sounds and such.

And there's nothing wrong with throwing a couple of baddies behind the player :P

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gee, its not like doom and doom2 didnt always have monsters in the exact same place (as well as ALL pwads ever made). or HALO, or Max Payne etc...

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udderdude said:

Actually, that's not part of the atmosphere .. that's part of the action :P The atmosphere is the detail, lights, ambient sounds and such.

And there's nothing wrong with throwing a couple of baddies behind the player :P


I personally have no problem with monsters teleporting in behind you occassionally but when the "monsters who teleport behind you" ratio is actually higher then the monsters who you walk into it just gets ludicrous, you might as well walk around backwards while playing the last few levels.

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Godshatter said:

gee, its not like doom and doom2 didnt always have monsters in the exact same place (as well as ALL pwads ever made). or HALO, or Max Payne etc...

Not true at all, as soon as you "activated" the monsters in doom, they ran around and trid to find you, it wasnt genious, but the fights did not end up EXCACTLY the same everytime, patially due to the fact that not every place in the originals were ULTRACRAMPED...

Max Payne had no replay value at all for that excact reason, its excactly the same everytime you play it... Halo the same story.. Painkiller the same problem... nothing to be proud of

Black Hand said:

Ok doom 3 kicks ass, I absolutely love it, the levels where lights flash on and off don't hurt my eyes as much as staring directly into the sun! The fact that EVERY enemy encounter in the game is scripted to be played out the exact same way EVERY time doesn't annoy me! The fact that 4/5 of all the games monster have an unavoidable leap attack doesn't piss me off. The levels aren’t all redundant. The doom 3 communities are full of very intelligent people! Everyone who has some minor problem with doom 3 should be quarantined, sterilized and drugged so their "disease" doesn’t spread! Elvis isn’t dead he’s just with Rick James, bitch. The fact that ID has to have monsters teleport in behind you in order to build up a decent “atmosphere” isn’t pathetic!

*Applause*

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Mivalekan said:

Udderdude. Don't you make stepmania songs? I've seen songs at bemani-whatever with songs done by someone named Udderdude. :)

I was gonna say that!
<-- Big fan

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Black Hand spluttered:
whine bitch bitch bitch whine whine whine bitch

SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY YOU TWAT NO ONE CARES IF YOU DO OR DON'T LIKE DOOM3 PLZ KTHX

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Udderdude: It's in Advanced options. It's off by default I found. One thing I did find odd about AA in Doom 3...is I turned it on to get rid of the jaggies...and turned it off later to check something frame-rate wise, I didn't notice the jaggies off...perhaps I just wasn't paying enough attention but they seemed to disappear once AA went on once...I'm probably wrong though.

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Black Hand said:

Your opinion is valued and respected



Just not outside the Mental institution


oooo DoomBoy got burrrrrrned.

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DooMBoy said:

SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY YOU TWAT NO ONE CARES IF YOU DO OR DON'T LIKE DOOM3 PLZ KTHX

Stupididty cannot... HEY WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!???????????????

whatever man, everybody gets the right to their opinions

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