Been looking forward to Doom 3 for a long time, but I feel somewhat dissapointed

[niatsnie]

*** WaRnInG -- RANT -- WaRnInG ***

Blah, call me old or something, I'm pushing 22, but I had expected a lot more from this Doom game. I haven't still finished it, but I feel it's nothing more then "my graphics/lightning effects are better then yours" engine demonstration then an actual game.

For example, I mean the graphics are off the hook for the most part, but I do have a serious problem with dissapearing corpses to say the least and especially demons dissapearing as soon as you whack 'em (by going to hell) is just bad programming. Perhaps they should have made corpses less polygon intensive and allowed them to remain -- just my idea. I would call it de-evolution of game programming with every new generation of games we lose what we loved in previous ones.

The level design is interesting for the most part, but feels very 2D to me. I'm getting a feeling that Doom 2 had more 3D debth in its levels, then Doom 3 does. Doom 3 feels like one big maze with nice and decorated walls, not much else. The level design in UT2004 for example seems to be a lot more creative and more 3D. It is a different kind of a game but that's just my personal opinion.

The game is too dark for my liking, had to boost brightness on my graphics card to 130% and max brightness in game to actually see anything. Switching between light and a weapon I found was very frustrating. You see an enemy with a light, you put it down pick up a gun, total darkenss... "What am I shooting at? Cutting edge graphics? Where are they? I see endless darkness!!!" That's what flies thru my head. I found that developers usually like to mask piss poor game design / game play with low lighting to "add to the atomsphere", bullshit. Hehe.

Scripting, scripting, scripting... AI is a joke, standard AI, nothing cutting edge that I was expecting in a game of this caliber. If they took quarter of the time they spent of lightining and invested it into better AI then it would be a cool and challanging game. Doom 2's AI and Doom 3's AI = same thing, but mosters can navigate turns now and don't get stuck now, hehe. If it wasn't for all the scripting and events, the game would be rather dull.

That leads me to my next topic... Lasting appeal... From what I seen the game is 100% linear and you must follow the plot from point A to point B. Once you finish the game you can trash it if you aren't interested in mindless DM multiplayer (which other games of this type do A LOT better). Yes the game is moddable, but how that works out we'll have to see.

This sounds like a horrible "Doom 3 sucks" rant doesn't it? I'm a Doom fan, huge fan. Been playing Doom over 10 years now, had a blast playing all the custom WADs thru the years, made my own, etc etc. With Doom 3 I don't see the potential that Doom1/2 had. Not by a long shot. By them scaling the game down in Doom 3 to more player vs moster instead of Doom1/2's player vs monster-s- (more then one), the limiations of the game will not make it fun to create those awesome "blast 'em all levels." In 5 years from now (goddamn I'm gonna be old then), I'll probably will be playing Doom 2's custom WADs and Doom 3 will be a long forgotten memory.

So to conclude my thoughts. Doom 3 is spectacular to show off what newest graphic cards can do and what kind of detail can be achieved. What it fails in is that by doing that with current techonology you cannot create a fun and addictive game we all grown to love. Maybe when Pentium 6 comes out we'll be able to create a Doom 3 level with 500 mosters all duking it out in a massive Doom 2-like level, but right now we're limited to small hallways where an Imp charges at you by himself in complete darkness.

I guess at the end of the day I just expected a lot more from a video game then flashy graphics since that's all the game companies are now concered with. They even go as far to sacrifice the gameplay (which was a lot better in old games) to create the "atomsphere." If I want to see a movie I go to movies, if I want a game, I want an nice addictive game, not an intereactive linear movie. Flame away.

[Grazza]

I haven't got it yet, so can't comment as to the overall assessment. However, your disappointment with the game sounds similar to many of the complaints that those of us who have stuck with Doom for ten years have about many of the more recent games.

I'll move this to the Spoilers forum, since it does contain comments about the experience of playing the game itself.

[Raptor]

Unless you've never played anything but perfect 10's Theres no better AI out there, The darkness is to scare you, when an imp fires up a fireball, you shoot at the light, and if you dont like this game, Uninstall it and ebay it, Its going to have a huge modding future and im sure we will find away around some of ID's pain in the ass anti modding things.

[Psyonisis]

,

[Raptor]

They said it wasnt going to be.

[Ubik]

The only part of the game that's disappointed me so far is that nobody's said, "Get your ass to Mahs."

[pagb]

The only thing I complain is that there is only one hell level... and man, it really did chill me to the bone... One thing I realized during the game is that I'm starting to grow tired of fighting grunt that use the same weapons as me in fpss...

Otherwise... I liked the game a lot, It's astonishing at most... yeah, I know, it plays like QuakeII, but thats nothing bad for me :P

[useless warrior]

Doom 3 definatly doesn't blow me away like the orginal, but then again it is a lot of fun so far.

The whole complaint against the switching from flashlight to gun thing is silly. Honestly, you need to play a game by its own rules. It just seems like the more hardcore gamers start to judge a game by other game standards where a more casual player will be more open minded about the rules a game presents. I found the flashlight thing to be disconcerting at first, but I stuck with it and now I realize how well it works. The game is designed around it, its not just stuck in as an afterthought. The samething goes with your brightness complaint, some areas of the game are suppose to be really dark and no your not suppose to be able to see anything, its not a design flaw, it was pretty intentional.

[Eternal Dreams]

Ubik said:

The only part of the game that's disappointed me so far is that nobody's said, "Get your ass to Mahs."

That reminded me of a Pain Elemental, only with chessy music and a wacky voice. :P

[rodent]

It seems that a lot of this reminds me of the fan following for the Matrix. People seem to not understand the duality of the word unique. If something is truly unique the first time around a sequel has two options:
1. be truly unique again
2. be similar to the first one
They are at least in a total sense, mutually exclusive.
Personally, I think Matrix Reloaded did an excellent job at picking number 1, and then a lot of people flamed it because it was not like the first one. In actuallity it was like the first one in the fact that it established new ground and made the storyline totally new again. Revolutions did not do this so much... But back to games..

Doom was a first literally, in many many ways. So many things have come and gone since then, it is very hard to use something and not evoke a reference to some other game. So, on one hand id wants to cater to the feeling of the great ever lasting DOOM. And on the other hand, they want to create a feeling new enough to draw in another generation.
Actually I think they picked a great mix. Yet seems everyone is alternately complaining about the both. "We'll nothing is new...We'll it's not the same as the old" I think it is a true FPS. Is that formulaic? A bit. Do I have a problem with it? NO...for fuck's sake it defined the term FPS.
So it gives a classic FPS feel with an awesome engine, great storyline, great sound. Maybe formulaic, but it is a good formula. And is claustrophobic, creapy, SP FPS, something I have not really felt since Quake or Half Life.

[useless warrior]

I see what your saying rodent but you could argue that classic doom is an experiance that has never really been recreated. Since the move to 3d rendered enemies happened we've seen a considerable shift in the pacing of first person shooters. Games like serious sam and painkiller try and emulate this old school feel, but they lack the design and exploration that doom and games from the doom clone era had. So with this line of thinking you could say that id maybe should have tried to stick closer to the orginal design and created not an orginal game but a type of game that hasn't been seen in along time.

[COBALT]

Everyone gets into gaming for different reasons. My first personal computer games were played on an Apple Computer. My very first "first person shooter" was Catacombs.

I was a die-hard wolfenstein guy. I was playing it on a MONOCHROME 286 laptop a roommate of mine in college got from his parents to type papers on. He had to kick me off all the time (oops I just dated myself - I'm 31 and a software developer).

Doom was a HUGE sensation because you could play against 3 of your friends. I could open an ftp connection to other college computer systems and find a doom wad, and an executable, download, install it on 3 pcs on a LAN, and we could blow each other up all night until the computer center admins realized what we were doing and kicked us out...

Now that first person shooters have come as far as they have more scripting, more storyline and better graphics have come into play. People want an interactive movie. Lets face it it's a race to see who can create the best environment. The people who now provide the traditionally popular and "addictive" gameplay people like are now up to mod developers. The environment facilitates the mod development. Get it?

Soon you'll start to see advancements in unpredictability in games - better AI, unscripted scenarios, random behavior - and better decision making from the elements in the environment other than the game player.

...but you have to have patience. This kind of development is expensive, and takes a lot of good design work, and practice, practice, practice (prototypes and proofs of concept that can show real advancements). Enjoy what the game provides - a HUGE jump on the physics of an environment. It's more than drawing polygons. It's managing the properties of what that polygon belongs to, and how it behaves when another polygon with different properties comes into contact with it. A LOT of code, and a LOT of thought about optimization to make it runnable on a small personal computer.

Don't get so wrapped up in what it doesn't have. Get excited about what it gives to mod developers for the future.

[rodent]

I could agree with that. I have kinda accepted that Doom just IS. It may never be again...it was just a great era for those of us that were lucky enough to see it in its original time. I don't konw how you could ever do that again. After a while I think it would get boring...Serious Sam turned into "how much ammo can I grab" a lot. But I certainly see your point. I am just tired of 14 years old whining when they have no idea what DOOM really was at the time.

In any case, this was a huge departure from the MP/Arena craze that has dominated for the last few years: Halo...Q3A...UT2003/4 Just that switch is great in my opinion...back to immersive SP. That is a change that had to be led by id or valve, I think. That in itself is a big step in my reinvolvement (I have been concentrating on RTS games since Q2)

Take a grain of salt with this, as I am less that 50% the game, some opinions might not be formed.

[COBALT]

Yes exactly. That doesn't mean that the people who seriously get off on building pure deathmatch arena type games can't build a mod to incorporate the engine, skins, etc. to provide that to the community.

That's another point. Something that half-life and counterstrike taught a lot of poeple. The game was great, but look how BIG the counterstrike community is! It's a half-baked buggy mod that has managed to suck in a lot of gamers over the last few years. The following is HUGE! People are already buzzing about a counterstrike mode for HL 2, and hoping it's "as good" as what they're playing now! Are they serious? Do they have any idea how much better the environment will be??? Obviously, but they get off on the nuances of counterstrike, so that's all they focus on...

Fine. Game developers aren't going to waste time trying to make everyone happy. They're going to leave that up to mod developers. Speaking as one we enjoy making new things. Experimenting, and finding out something cool works that we dreamed up the night before. Their job is to innovate, design, and be creative - the building blocks for good games, good movies, good books, good whatever.

[S1lent]

Yes, the Doom 3's mod-filled future is definitely something to be excited about. As COBALT pointed out, Counter-Strike is a BIG hit and everyone who plays it is all hyped up about CS:Source (Counter-Strike 2). Now, look at how big the Counter-Strike community is and then imagine a Doom 3 mod of the same magnitude. A mod THAT popular!

I have a mod question too, do all the mods have to look like Doom 3? Can you make a WW2 mod from D3? I'm not a modder, just curious if you can mod D3 as openly as you can mod Half-Life.

[rodent]

Excellent points, Cobalt. But then again I am a professional geek, making dough on decisive work ethics, not a 14 year old 'gamer' :) I think customization/hacking is taking on a huge role in the world. While it is most obvious in this arena...it is happening everywhere, cars, computers, xmods, cellphones...everybody wants to tweak everything. This is actually a revival of the backyard hobbyist in the 50s. But of course many of the young un's don't know that. Call it hacking/tweaking/whatever...it goes back to the MIT model railroad club.
This is simply the most recent incarnation. Great platforms live for years...in the automotive world (VW), computer world, etc. When you find a platform that has that ability AND is pretty damn good out of the box, I am impressed.

Bring on the mods, Cobalt. I think they will be awesome. Even coming from me...including "SureFire" gun mounted light mod. Different then designed, yes...but would be a bunch of fun for fast destructive gameplay.