Half-Life 2 vs. Doom 3

[deathbringer]

I reckon in 2010 doom 3 will be rememebered as a groundbreaking classic and have a dedicated and large moddiing community, and HL2 will be remembered as "oh that old shooter, yeah it was good in its day..it was really just more of the same though wasnt it?"

[toxicfluff]

I somehow doubt it. I think id's games usually have a pretty hardcore following of fans somewhere (except for q2), but I think HL2 is going to be far more popular, and acclaimed in the magazines. But as stated before, concensus means absolutely nothing, or else we'd all be playing the Sims.

[Arno]

deathbringer said:

I reckon in 2010 doom 3 will be rememebered as a groundbreaking classic and have a dedicated and large modding community, and HL2 will be remembered as "oh that old shooter, yeah it was good in its day..it was really just more of the same though wasnt it?"

2010. That's 7 years from now. Both Doom3 and HL2 will be off the main charts. The most expensive video hardware nowadays will be absolutely worthless by then. It's more likely that Doom4 and HL3 will hold the attention of gamers in 2010.

As for which game will be remembered as the most groundbreaking, my guess would be Doom3. Lots of new games will use its technology.

[999cop]

ToXiCFLUFF said:

I somehow doubt it. I think id's games usually have a pretty hardcore following of fans somewhere (except for q2), but I think HL2 is going to be far more popular, and acclaimed in the magazines. But as stated before, concensus means absolutely nothing, or else we'd all be playing the Sims.

Doom 3 is just as popular as Half Life 2...people are just overreacting about what they saw in the show-offs of HL2 plus the stuff about HL2 is newer. But not to mention that there will be a Doom movie coming out in the near future so the hot for it won't be put down so soon.

[StRiKeR]

Movies based on video-games suck, the only exception would be Tomb Raider. Generally they suck though

[dsm]

Let's keep Doom movie speculation out of this thread people.

/Me looks at thread.
Man, I really wanna just freakin' kill this thread, I hate "Doom 3 vs <othergame>" threads - they remind me of gamespy's lame polls. Trouble is, it was started by an Admin (damn traitor! :-P). Oh well...

[toxicfluff]

"Doom 3 is just as popular as Half Life 2."

Not if you look at the "most wanted games" polls in various computer gaming magazines it isn't. Or on fileplanet where the HL2 E32003 trailer has 108,489 downloads as opposed to D3's E32003 trailer's 72,594.

[dsm]

ToXiCFLUFF said:

"Doom 3 is just as popular as Half Life 2."

Not if you look at the "most wanted games" polls in various computer gaming magazines it isn't. Or on fileplanet where the HL2 E32003 trailer has 108,489 downloads as opposed to D3's E32003 trailer's 72,594.

Polls are never reliable and rarely give a truthful picture of reality.
I mean, I haven't voted in that poll, and there are most likely lots of other internet-faring people who didn't vote in the poll. Not to mention all those people who never go on the internet.

[Carp]

dsm said:

Polls are never reliable and rarely give a truthful picture of reality.
I mean, I haven't voted in that poll, and there are most likely lots of other internet-faring people who didn't vote in the poll. Not to mention all those people who never go on the internet.

Also there's the possibility that one person votes many times just to bump the total higher and make it look more popular.

[Shaviro]

ToXiCFLUFF said:

"Doom 3 is just as popular as Half Life 2."

Not if you look at the "most wanted games" polls in various computer gaming magazines it isn't. Or on fileplanet where the HL2 E32003 trailer has 108,489 downloads as opposed to D3's E32003 trailer's 72,594.

Yes well, you are forgetting that HL2 is new so more people are bound to check it out.

[toxicfluff]

Remember though, that apart from the 10 or so screenshots and the old Macworld video D3's new E3 trailer is the first legitimate bit of footage since then.

"Polls are never reliable and rarely give a truthful picture of reality." That's true, but it's really quite difficult to build up a truthful picture of reality without being some kind of omniscient presence, so we have to accept these kinds of fallible methods. And who's to say that the Doom3 people didn't vote more than once? Fanboys are on all sides, after all.

[deathbringer]

2010. That's 7 years from now. Both Doom3 and HL2 will be off the main charts. The most expensive video hardware nowadays will be absolutely worthless by then. It's more likely that Doom4 and HL3 will hold the attention of gamers in 2010.

Yeah, nobody plays the original doom these days do they?

[dsm]

deathbringer said:

Yeah, nobody plays the original doom these days do they?

*Ahem*
/points at self.

[toxicfluff]

deathbringer said:

Yeah, nobody plays the original doom these days do they?

Remember the [sarcasm] tags DB :) You confused DSM.


//Edit: Btw DSM, does your nickname stand for anything?

[dsm]

ToXiCFLUFF said:

//Edit: Btw DSM, does your nickname stand for anything?

"doomed space marine"

[SyntherAugustus]

EDIT: OH FUCK!! SORRY!!! BLAME POST HELL FOR THE LINKAGE!! (999cop, you ass)

I think you should have scrolled down a bit to see this instead of making another similar topic.

[AirRaid]

Er, Yes.

[Laguna]

Okay... Reality Check for everyone, to sum up the good points here and add a few of my own techie acknowledgements. I've been wanting to get this off my chest.

Doom3 has some of the most INTENSE and scariest atmospheres I have ever seen. When I played the Alpha and got attacked by the tentacle commando and the chaingunner, I almost freaked. When I made it to the bathroom scene, I thought I was going to shit because I didn't know where the damn filty uncircumcised penis bull demon ran off to.

Point? Doom3 rates up to par with the original Doom games in Gameplay. Linear. Hard enemies, plenty of enemies. Doom3 also has a proprietary physics / rendering system which is made by the BEST coder in gaming history, John Carmack. It has a Havok/Karma like "ragdoll" physics system, and it has dynamic shadows. It also has some interesting brush usage (in one map there were pistons which utilized many ranges of motions which would be impossible in earlier games since different brush-based entities catered to those motions).

Half-Life 2... Half-Life 2 IS innovating a new level of realism and interactivity with the engine it is using. Terms like "Interpolation, Extrapolation" are rarely heard of as the engine heralds a new age of brush interactivity... Almost to the point where brush-based entities are no longer brushes, but super-brushes which function more like models if anything. Remember Red Faction? It used a boolean subtraction algorithm (IIRC) to give the player destructible environments, thus allowing them to do MANY things if they needed to.

Half-Life 2 brings to the player MANY options. It creates what I call an "infallible error-proof soluble challenge." In some games, you could do something in the wrong order which would mean you'd have to reload your game and do it again. In Half-Life 2, the new physics system (coupled with other systems) gives a player a VARIETY of opportunities to solve a problem, going up a gradience of difficulty, yet never reaching the 100% mark on that scale. Say a player was supposed to jump on a barrel but he blew it up. What does he do? He moves and stacks items with the Manipulator and jumps on them, hoping he doesn't slip and fall off. It's this kind of subtle improvisation that lures me to games, being that I enjoy a game that stimulates me intellectually AND presents a challenge.

The AI in Half-Life is the most incredible I have ever seen. In the 512 meg 25 minute clip from GameSpy, the Valver demonstrated a situation in which Gordon was being chased by Combine soldiers, and he ran into a small house and moved some furniture up against the door. A strange thing happened. The soldier tried OPENING the door. Do you know what happened next? They started shooting through the windows until more came, and then they beat the door open.

Do you know what is so significant about that event? It showed that the AI characters were actually thinking! In other games where that event were to become a possibility, the AI would simply pace about back and forth mindlessly as if the door would unbar itself.

Half-Life 2 also uses a number of shader effects and heavily scripted (codewise) entity+shader effects. Notice the camera in the GS clip, when the headcrab knocked it over? The monitors refreshed to show what the camera was seeing at ALL times, from ANY position in that room. Quake3's portal cameras are fixed and did not allow for arbitrary moving from what I saw.

The interaction from the brush-based entities and the NPC models also gave me quite a bit of amusement, from Gordon shooting the dumpster down onto the Combine soldiers to turning the engine fan blade on and cutting the Zombies in half. The water effects are astounding, as well.

As for people complaining about the antlions... What about them? You had Snarks in the original Half-Life/Op4/Blue Shift, why do you hate having aliens fight FOR you? Valve has made it clear that Gordon would not be returning to Xen, and that his mission was to save Earth this time around WHILE it was being overrun.

Back to brush usage, anybody familiar with newer CSG engines (whether subtractive or additive) will know that every vertex in the game must lie on at least 1 general grid unit, or else you risk getting some errors at time (most notably the horrendous FloatPlane: Bad Normal errors). In Half-Life 2, AND Doom3, they have made brush objects so complex that you would think it's impossible otherwise. Now, as we know many brush made objects can be made to ride a SET path, but they must ALL go on those vertices, at ALL times. It seems possible that the new engines have discarded these restrictions.

So what we have seen so far in Doom3:

- Amazing dynamic refreshing shadows, good bumpmapping, fucking CREEPY and SCARY environments, horrific and grotesque monsters.
- Next-Generation engine effects
- It's the next Doom, for fuck's sake!
- Action paced, fast, high-tempo gameplay

HL2

- Good dynamic shadowing effects
- Good monsters
- Loads of gameplay value, to the EXTREME amounts, to be exact
- Excellent physics engine, probably the best to date.

I'd say for all you people, these games will end up at a draw.

Be warned, though, Doom3 MIGHT just take the edge if the modability becomes available to make a Hell-On-Earth mod... Which is what I'd LOVE to see in Doom3.

[Lord FlatHead]

Excellent post. And I agree, they'll both be great games to play and tinker with - and at the end of the day that's how games are judged. I personally think I'll be getting more enjoyment from Half-Life 2, though others might think differently.

[AirRaid]

Yea, excellent post which sums this thread up nicely.

I'm looking forwards to both games equally, and I think I'll enjoy them both equally as much, if for differing reasons.

I'd like to add that there's a Co-Operative mod in the Works for Half-Life 2 already. Valve are going to be working with the Sven-Coop team to produce a Co-Op Mod. Which is totally awesome in my book.

[Arno]

Laguna said:

The AI in Half-Life is the most incredible I have ever seen. In the 512 meg 25 minute clip from GameSpy, the Valver demonstrated a situation in which Gordon was being chased by Combine soldiers, and he ran into a small house and moved some furniture up against the door. A strange thing happened. The soldier tried OPENING the door. Do you know what happened next? They started shooting through the windows until more came, and then they beat the door open.

Do you know what is so significant about that event? It showed that the AI characters were actually thinking! In other games where that event were to become a possibility, the AI would simply pace about back and forth mindlessly as if the door would unbar itself.

With a ton of scripting, such as scene is also possible in RTCW. And perhaps MOHAA too. However, the guy that was playing HL2 commented that the AI of the soldiers was dynamic. Their behavior cannot be accurately predicted. If that level was played again, the soldiers might react in a completely different way. I think that's a big plus for HL2.

AirRaid said:

I'd like to add that there's a Co-Operative mod in the Works for Half-Life 2 already. Valve are going to be working with the Sven-Coop team to produce a Co-Op Mod. Which is totally awesome in my book.

Awesome news indeed! Maybe one player gets to play as Gordon and the other as that sidekick chick. Perhaps they could toss over barrels if they both carry a Manipulator? :D

[Disorder]

You should all download this file. It's a Bink movie file and it demonstrates Half-life 2's facial expression capabilities.

[Shaviro]

Laguna said:

HL2

- Good dynamic shadowing effects
- Good monsters
- Loads of gameplay value, to the EXTREME amounts, to be exact
- Excellent physics engine, probably the best to date.

1: Some look ok, some horrible. Check the released screenshots.
2: I don't think so. The monsters look sp predictable and boring.
3: Looks pretty boring to me, but then again we all have different taste.
4: The physics aren't all that impressive. Go see the 500-something mb video and notice all the bugs. There are a lot.

This doesn't mean I'm not going to play the game or be biased about it. I will play both HL2 and D3 and judge the two games afterwards.

[Noob_Jones]

Laguna said:

The AI in Half-Life is the most incredible I have ever seen. In the 512 meg 25 minute clip from GameSpy, the Valver demonstrated a situation in which Gordon was being chased by Combine soldiers, and he ran into a small house and moved some furniture up against the door. A strange thing happened. The soldier tried OPENING the door. Do you know what happened next? They started shooting through the windows until more came, and then they beat the door open.

Do you know what is so significant about that event? It showed that the AI characters were actually thinking! In other games where that event were to become a possibility, the AI would simply pace about back and forth mindlessly as if the door would unbar itself.

Ok I had to register here just to reply to this one quote, but if you all are lucky you may get a full rant out of me later.

That is BULL****. Look a little closer at the AI in this part after they kick in the door. Gordon runs up a set of stairs and do you know what the AI does? Nothing, they do nothing, they do not chase after him ... I guess they stay downstairs and cook something on that stove. So how is that AI smart if running around a corner and up some stairs out smarts them?

After that you see a guy at the top of the stairs shooting at Gordon but does he try and dodge as he shoots or maybe hide half is body behind a wall ... no hey just stands still to make himself an easy target. Tell me how that can be called smart AI?

And my final rant about HL2 AI comes from the scene right after that when Gordon runs up onto the roof and shoots that beam and it swings down. Look at the AI one of them is not hit and his POV is such that he can see the beam swinging back RIGHT AT HIM so what does he do ... he stands still and shoots at Gordon. Take any animal on Gods green earth and put them infront of a beam swinging at them and they will try to dodge it but the AI does not ...

Now that is just a few of the AI bugs in the official demo where everything is suppost to look at its best ... I wonder how much dumber the AI will be when they can't control the circumstances so much.

[Shaviro]

Noob_Jones: Scenes like those are the ones which have lowered by expectations of HL2 to a minimum. The same thing goes for graphics and physics. Too many gimmicks, too little REAL content, perhaps? ;)

[toxicfluff]

I would hardly say HL2 looks gimmicky. It looks like a pretty rounded off playing experience, to my eyes anyway, and undeniably more ambitious than Doom3. People will say blah blah another safe-bet linear blockbuster style game like MOHAA or Unreal 2 but it doesn't really look that way. HL2 is innovating in quite a few areas here, and is doing things differently and I think that sets it apart from the type of game mentioned above.

And about the AI, you can hardly deny that it is much more impressive than anything we have seen in current games, which after all is what you have to measure these things by.

As for the physics, all these kind of systems have bugs. Doom3 will undoubtedly have physics bugs at some points, and the physics engine ain't as comprehensive as HL2's.

[Laguna]

Man I shouldn't have even bothered...

A SELECT few of you have to stop being such FUCKING SISSIES and realize that Doom WAS the godfather of FPS... It does not mean it will solely dominate the market down the road. Id Software IS truly responsible for ALL the new FPS games, as they pioneered that industry... HOWEVER, not everyone will have the same taste in gaming as John Carmack did!

You guys bashing HL2 so much (Oh big fucking deal, wahhh the AI isn't perfect, omfg the collision allowed 1 unit of the dumpster to submerge in the concrete wahhh omfg no) really need to quit being such close-minded asshole Doom fundamentalists (read: fanboy) and realise there ARE other games which will be on par or above par on the impact it has in gaming history, contrasted to Id Software.

Obviously, however, the person that suggested I read the video clip did not pay attention to what _I_ said about when _I_ watched it. Let me tell you something about that swining girder...

Gordon shot it loose, the soldier turned to look at it, and before he could react, he was crushed.

Do you expect EVERY single person in real life to naturally have ESP and tell that a 3 ton steel girder is about to smash them? Shit man, I saw the combines LOOK at the thing before they got crushed, and with how fast it was swinging I wouldn't say I'd blame them for not having the time to avert it.

All the Fanboys in here (no offense, I love Doom as much as any of you, if not more) need to realize there are other games. I wouldn't go so far to say that you should go and buy a copy of Daikatana from the $9 at your local CompUSA or anything, but stop being such bigots.

Jesus Christ you fucking imbeciles, it's irrelevant bickering and gander that has DESTROYED online communities for games in the first place. Games are games, they are not athletes. There is no gold or silver medal for the 1st place winner and runner-up. Can you GRASP this concept, yet? Good. As one person said before, we do not need to engage in an e-penis battle regarding fucking video games.

On a further note, the line between our reality, and virtual reality, still has a long distance between them before they meet. Doom3 has its nitpickable aspects, and HL2 has its own too.

But I'll tell you guys one thing, good game or not, if Doom3 turns into an online soapbox, I'm fucking buying HL2 and I'll say that Doom3 can kiss my ass. Don't ruin it for everybody with your fanboyism, because it's THAT kind of attitude that drives people away from online communities.

Think about what I've said, because I've seen the fall of the remaining (organized) Half-Life community because of stupid shit like this, and it can, and WILL happen to Doom3 and more games if you let it.

[Noob_Jones]

Laguna said:Gordon shot it loose, the soldier turned to look at it, and before he could react, he was crushed.

I have the video sitting on my desktop and he had 2 if not 3 seconds to react. Infact Gordon jumps down a few seconds latter and ducks under the beam with no problem.

Laguna said:Do you expect EVERY single person in real life to naturally have ESP and tell that a 3 ton steel girder is about to smash them

You do not need ESP when you have EYES that are looking right at the beam swinging toward you.

Laguna said:There is no gold or silver medal for the 1st place winner and runner-up.

I am not sure what this is about or how it relates to the topic but you must have never heard of ESWC, WCG, CPL or so on.

Laguna said:I'm fucking buying HL2 and I'll say that Doom3 can kiss my ass. Don't ruin it for everybody with your fanboyism, because it's THAT kind of attitude that drives people away from online communities.

Read what you just wrote, you seem to be the fanboy here ... sorry.

[DaJuice]

I just saw the 600MB trailer yesterday and HOLY CRAP that was badass!
If someone gave me a choice between D3 and HL2 right now, I think I'd pick HL2. To be fair, we've seen a good deal more of Half-Life 2 than of Doom3, and the final test is of course how each one plays.

[Laguna]

Errr... Yes, I'm the fanboy here.

If I were such a fanboy as you state, I wouldn't bother even defending both games in my previous posts.

I too, have the video sitting on my desktop and the soldiers simply didn't have enough time to react to it, yes, Gordon can duck under it, he pays attention to it because the player KNOWS it is swinging, and if you paid much attention to the video, you'd notice he almost got hit by it too.

But I don't care, you think what you want... Both games are going to own, but if one turns into an online soap opera, I'm simply going to go to the other, Doom3 for Half-Life 2, or Vice Versa.