RoE

Man this place has died down since D3 has been out for awhile. I can't believe all the haters out there who post how bad D3 is. I still love the goddam game, not going to jump on the bandwagon and say that it sucks like everyone else, but that's just my opinion.

Anyway I just got RoE and I have to say... man. WTF? Boom right out of the box, first level it's dark as all hell... actually hell was alot brighter if I recall correctly. Plus they give you a weaker version of HL2's gravity gun 5 seconds after the start of the game. Don't get me wrong, I friggin hate HL2. I'm stuck in ravenholm and hate the level design, if I wanted to explore dark alleyways and dead ends all day I'd become a bum and live on the streets.

Back on topic, I'm still barely in the middle of the first level, and am getting put off on the gameplay already. Is RoE going to piss me off more and more as I play, or is it going to get better?... like alphalabs better? or constant platformer jumping, with monster closet ambuhes from behind in a dark room bad?

If there's a thousand threads about this topic that I've missed, please feel free to flame me, at least it'd be some sort of discussion :)

actually, I find ROE much better than Doom3. The levels aren't that linear (to some extent) and its not always imp after imp after imp.

Doom3 is just different, and it still sticks to its basic roots (shoot anything that moves) and people today who are familar with mission-stealth-othercrap games just can't get adjusted it Doom3. However, Doom3 DID have a few flatness in its gameplay department.

ROE is much better in terms of action and suspense. While I don't have a problem with monster 'closets' (Doom has this too remember?) it provides a nice way to ambush the player. Also remember that this is a game and having monsters surprising the player out of hidden doors is just part of its gameplay.

I am surprised there are still people hanging around in the doom3 community (most of them are just bitching others because they like Doom3).

But ROE has a higher replay value and you won't be dissapointed when you complete it.

Thanks for the reply! I do love fighting swarms of monsters. There's nothing better in Doom than grabbing a key and hearing a wall open up revealing half a dozen angry imps and fighting off with a shotgun. Or walking into a room with a human sacrifice ritual going on and having the door close behind you with a bunch of wraiths and imps teleporting in like crazy. I just don't want walk down a hallway only to have a closet open silently behind me and have to fight in complete darkness while avoiding bottomless-pit-death-drops. I don't know, something about the first few minutes of RoE put me off, I believe I had a headache at the time after reading a million posts on the tivo dealdatabase forum. I'll keep playing!!!!!!!!!!

LOL you got stuck on Halflife2´s Ravenholm level? HL2 is the most linear game I played since Unreal2, the linearity really made me angry after some time. It´s mostly long winding tunnels. Ravenholm was a bit more complex but still 100% linear, maybe you missed a small jumping opportunity to progress.

Tetzlaff said:

LOL you got stuck on Halflife2´s Ravenholm level? HL2 is the most linear game I played since Unreal2, the linearity really made me angry after some time. It´s mostly long winding tunnels. Ravenholm was a bit more complex but still 100% linear, maybe you missed a small jumping opportunity to progress.

Yeah it would go like this, walk down a well lit alley fighting headcrab zombies, explore a dark alley, deadend, get turned around, backtrack accidentially, fight more headcrab zombies, reach another dead end, get angry, save, do the same thing tomorrow. Sometimes I would throw a switch and not see what it did or figure out what it opened up, I just didn't dig it, HL was the same way, I got mad somewhere around the surface.

For me, the absolute best level design on a game had to be Doom 1 E1, Doom2, and Goldeneye. Nothing better than sneaking around a facility killing unsuspecting patrolling guards in Goldeneye. The worst for me are HL, HL2, Turok, anything with loooooong sprawled out levels with repetitive scenery just suck in my opinion and I just can't get into them.

If there's one thing Half-life isn't, it's repetitive.

But if you don't like the game, that's your own opinion and you're welcome to it.

Yes, my opinion is that there are parts that seemed repetitive to me. The levels seem to go on forever and ever. All I remember from HL was that Black Mesa was a huge sprawling complex where I went through door after door after door. Valve doesn't seem to break up the environments well.

In HL2, the airboat ride was really fun, but man, checkpoint after checkpoint after checkpoint. It is very linear in the way that if you don't head toward the correct opening in the dam or marsh, it's a dead end. At the beginning in the city, you head out in the streets full of buildings and you have to search them all for the one drab looking door that leads anywhere, and that's upstairs, and there's only one floor that isn't blocked by debris, then you have to search every drab room for one with a window you can jump out of that leads to another street full of drab buildings, etc, etc. Ravenholm is dark alley, after dark alley, after dark alley. Headcrab here, jumping puzzle there, ambush here, crap I fell back down to the dark alley, lets do the jumping puzzle again... forget it, I'll just save and try again next week, then I forget which alley leads to the ladder that leads to the jumping puzzle. It's maddening. At least in D3, I know that Mars City leads to Alpha Labs. Alpha Labs 1 leads to Alpha Labs 2. Alpha Labs 4 leads to Enpro etc, they've broken up the monotony with LEVELS!, who'd have thought? If you look at HL2, Ravenholm is a level. A level I've been on for months :), but I know HL and HL2 are considered the best games to have ever been produced. It's just that the level layout overwhelms my widdle bwain and my crappy attention span.

Anyway, back on topic RoE is coming along nicely (slowly but nicely) I figured out that the artifact slows time and I got past the first "time puzzle" after beating the first "mini boss". Slow eh? Well I don't have a heck of a lot of time to play :) (which explains my frustration with HL2)

BF2's on sale for $34.99, think I'm gonna go buy it!!

DOOM 3 is a serious triumph of style. The gameplay is average, for the most part. d3xp helped with that by adding the grabber weapon and the hellcube powers. I enjoyed both of them very, very much.

AirRaid said:

If there's one thing Half-life isn't, it's repetitive.

The City 17 ruins sequences actually are quite repetitive. They are continously inserted between the more interesting parts of the game.
I found the buggy ride (with the crane puzzle and the optional on food exploration) and Nova Prospect the best parts of HL2, also Ravenholm was quite athmospheric. But all those city ruins levels were pretty dull and junked up with all the same map models so that it felt even more generic.

RoE is just a further example of the ideas that id left out of doom3. but both were enjoyable and i still play them both like a broken record (skipping cd maybe?) like i do all the dooms.. (over and over)

I think half life 2 is an excellent game, this from a non-hl/cs fan boy from the past. this is a whole different game than anything hl/cs (to me) not comparing it to anything from id mind you. i didnt know what to expect in hl2 at first, until i hit highway 17 and then it was a *blast* from there on..i still get a kick out of that one line "pick up the can" lol..

There's two ways to look at it, 1 they fucked up and left out stuff like the double shotty, 2 they left them out on purpose intent on releasing a add-on, knowing that promising stuff like this in it would make it sell even if D3 turned out to flop (which it didn't). 2 is alot more feasable. Id is smart, they left the stuff out on purpose.

Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil starts off fairly slow but you shouldn't give up quite yet. The first few levels based around the dig site were tedious and tiring. You have to utilize the powers from the demon heart often. While it is possible to go through most levels without its assistance you will quickly catch onto when the developers intended for it to be used (i.e. when a group of three or more monsters swarm you at once). If you manage to escape the dig site, you will find the rest of the expansion much more enjoyable. There are a few areas that are a bit of an annoyance such as the slime track, but it's worth roughing it out to see the rest of the expansion.

I believe they left alot out on purpose just for the add-on. The commands for Bruiser, Vulgar, and hazmat zombie's commands are in DOOM 3. Id's smart.

Well yeah to leave a "little" out, but to handicap a game for the sake of an expansion pack (if this was the case) in the shadows of a competitors release (hl2 witch has anti-grav gun) makes it even more noticable to some extent. not saying this is necessarily bad for the people that are making the money from this method (id/nerve) but does leave much to be desired in an long awaited and much anticipated release of a great game 4 years or so in the making. they should have givin us the freakin cake and let us eat it to: grav-gun/lighted helmet, maybe something im not thinking about ect..

No offense but, I get a strong reading from the force that you are a pre teen or teenager...just someone who doesn't have much experience with fps

The most disturbing thing to me is that he didn't mention the DB when he came off with stuff they left out of D3... that was the #1.

Was it even worth mentioning? but i forgot this was intentional for RoE remember? and we knew there was to be no DB a year or so before its realease..