After-thoughts of the expansion (MAJOR SPOILERS, only for those who've finished it)

[niguel]

What are your thoughts of the expansion, storyline, monsters etc?

In my opinion, it had better stuff than in the original but it was, alas, very very short. I really loved the concept of the artifact, how it fed on human souls to charge and how it was just an evil item unlike the soulcube. And i loved Betruger's new form (but was he in charge of Hell?? still where's Satan?" And btw, the marine got from hell all clean even after using human souls as ammunition?

I also liked the monsters, though i didnt really get into situations to see if the vulgars really climb walls unscripted, and the bruisers were just nasty. But i hoped the first experience with them would have been more memorable, like probing with monitors and then suddenly there were those teeth in one monitor and the bastard would crush thru the walls (i liked the idea alot of them fooling you with their mouths). i hated the overuse of revenants towards the end, since i think they are the most annoying and less scariest monster in the game. I'm surprised they didn't put spider mastermind in the game.

The level designs were great but the satanic textures and hell corruption still didnt impress me (but the delta labs rocked).

[Technician]

You mean the bruisers do not descise them sleves as monitors. I thought that was the plan for them.

[Scuba Steve]

niguel said:

i hated the overuse of revenants towards the end, since i think they are the most annoying and less scariest monster in the game.

So it plays just like Doom 2 then?

Ha ha!

[niguel]

Technician said:

You mean the bruisers do not descise them sleves as monitors. I thought that was the plan for them.

yeah, im still disappointed about it.

[Mogul]

It was a good game.

Stylistically, it's lacking. DOOM 3, in my opinion, is the highest standard available as far as atmosphere is concerned. This game did a good job recreating that feeling in many places, but there were some little things that just cause it to not be as slick as DOOM 3.

Some of the audio logs are waaay predictable and honestly, cheesy, though I hate using that word. :) They really overdid the drama occasionally. The acting talent is pretty good though, when they're not screaming and saying retarded stuff like, "Oh! What's that? AHH" and other such cliche endings to the logs.

The new enemies are all cool; the vulgar is pretty annoying though because of how quickly it can take down 75% of your health if you make one mistake. I really like to look at the bruisers. Great design.

The ending left me confused. I had just survived the second wave of "fire and brimstone" from Betruger, and was shooting at him with the chaingun, then all of the sudden, it's a cutscene. No indication at all that I beat him -- not a groan, scream, or any indication from the action on the screen. I was firing at him, then bam, cutscene. So I left my hands on the mouse and keyboard, just in case.

Furthermore, the way you destroy Betruger was confusing as well. Doesn't seem to make very much sense at all.

I spent more time asking myself if this was the "bad ending," because perhaps this is what happens if you don't beat him fast enough or whatever, than I spent time sitting back and enjoying the satisfaction of the completion of the game.

The very final scene with the white light is apppropriate for an ending, I guess.

On the gameplay side of things, the expansion does exactly what it set out to do. The new gun and the grabber both add so much to the gameplay. I do have two complaints about the ssg though.

In the single player game, it's just not powerful enough. Because you have to reload after every shot, towards the middle and end of the game, I found myself just going with the single barrel sg because you can go much longer without reloading. There' just no payback from using the ssg. Fire once, spend three seconds reloading, fire again. The single is much more effective and useful. If they took out the reload-after-every-shot philosphy, it would've been a much more usable weapon, I think. (and it would've been more unrealistic I guess, but whatever) That, or, if it was powerful enough to compensate for the price you pay after using it even once, it would've been better.

The grabber honestly is more fun to use than Half-Life 2's gravity gun. I found myself in several cases thinking how cool it was to switch to the grabber at the last moment and catch a fireball, and throw it back. Lots of cool moments like that. Not to mention cherubs and trites (probably the two most annoying enemies from DOOM 3) are both very easy to get rid of with the grabber. :)

Anyway, it's a good game. The singleplayer portion is worth the price alone, as it's a well-done expanded experience, with quite a lot more action, and a good portion of DOOM 3's style to go with it. Good game. I recommend it.

[Technician]

In my opinion they should have stuck this expansion on DOOM 3 before it shipped. It finished it off.

[Job]

Technician said:

In my opinion they should have stuck this expansion on DOOM 3 before it shipped. It finished it off.

Saving that content for this add-on is as much of a gimmick to make money as splitting Kill Bill into two parts was. CAPITALISM.

[Technician]

The Bruiser, Vulgar and hazmat's slots are already in DOOM 3 before it came out. The point of an expansion is for new things. Taking perfectly good weapons and monsters out of the original and saving them for a expansion is pretty gay. I'm babbeling. I just think DOOM 3 should have been released with these features. Not bought eight month later.

[Sporku]

Whatever. There were only a couple of things that were probably around before the release of Doom 3, and that would probably be a couple of the new monsters (like the Vulgar, which was said originally to be the Arch-Vile). There is still tons of new stuff (such as the wonderful new levels) included in the expansion pack that make it well worth the money.

I enjoyed the expansion moreso than I enjoyed Doom 3. All of the new levels (especially the DeltaX/Hell levels) are very well done, and very fun to play. Almost everything about it is very nice.

[Technician]

And the Bruiser and hazmat was around from Alpha times too. And I imagine though no evadence the super shotgun was thought up for it. I think that classic lost soul was just made for fan appeal however. Yes there is lots of good thing in ROE. MAps are very well done. Hell hunter were shit IMO and that new artifact was pretty good too.

[Mogul]

If I had to choose between the two, I'd choose DOOM 3 just because it's so much more polished than Resurrection is.

But, I do have to say that in the end, the expansion has better gameplay than DOOM 3. More variety. And all the new stuff (except maybe the ssg) is designed with fun as the top priority. So it's cool.

[Sporku]

Well of course Doom 3 is going to be more polished. They only spent, what, 4 years working on it. But, yeah.. I suppose it could've used a bit more polishing..

[baronofhell]

Mogul you didn't like the super shotgun?

[Mogul]

It didn't impress me a whole lot. It's OK, but the payoff for using it isn't nearly worth the price you pay of the long reloading period after every single shot.

[baronofhell]

stick and move baby, stick and move.

[Opulent]

baronofhell said:

stick and move baby, stick and move.

in DOOM2, yeah. In DOOM3, you move about .15 mph.

[Janderson]

Use the shift key :)

[dsm]

Mogul said:
Some of the audio logs are waaay predictable and honestly, cheesy, though I hate using that word. :) They really overdid the drama occasionally. The acting talent is pretty good though, when they're not screaming and saying retarded stuff like, "Oh! What's that? AHH" and other such cliche endings to the logs.

I thought that was cool - cliché perhaps, but damn cool because it adds to the atmosphere. Oh well, to each his own.

The ending left me confused. I had just survived the second wave of "fire and brimstone" from Betruger, and was shooting at him with the chaingun, then all of the sudden, it's a cutscene. No indication at all that I beat him -- not a groan, scream, or any indication from the action on the screen. I was firing at him, then bam, cutscene. So I left my hands on the mouse and keyboard, just in case.

Furthermore, the way you destroy Betruger was confusing as well. Doesn't seem to make very much sense at all.

I agree about the lack of "boss defeat" indications - the first time I was watching the ending sequence, I was wondering, just like you, whether I had made some kind of mistake during the fight that gave me a "bad ending" or something - right until I saw the marine "kill" Betruger.

On the other hand, I found the ending to be visually pleasing and I'm satisfied that the ending wasn't clear as day - that means it'll be easier for modmakers to come up with excuses for continuing the story and perhaps we'll get another sweet little expansion/Doom game that doesn't give lame excuses. I don't like the white light bit though. Cheap.

But yeah, I don't quite understand why giving Betruger the artefact for dinner winds up killing him, let alone how the marine figured it out. Maybe I missed something in the storyline.

In the single player game, it's just not powerful enough. Because you have to reload after every shot, towards the middle and end of the game, I found myself just going with the single barrel sg because you can go much longer without reloading. There' just no payback from using the ssg. Fire once, spend three seconds reloading, fire again. The single is much more effective and useful. If they took out the reload-after-every-shot philosphy, it would've been a much more usable weapon, I think. (and it would've been more unrealistic I guess, but whatever) That, or, if it was powerful enough to compensate for the price you pay after using it even once, it would've been better.

I think the SSG is perfect - much better than the classic, because now it's not unbalanced (and it sounds infinitely cooler now). In Doom 2, the single barrel shotgun would be useful for ranged attacks, but it was still inferior to the SSG in general and the db shotty was far too effective compared to the other weapons.
In Doom 3, they removed the range from the pump-gun, which could potentially leave it too useless once you got the SSG IF they had made the SSG anymore powerful/effective than it is.

The RoE SSG is exactly as powerful as the balance and gameplay demands and the long reloading *can* leave you at a disadvantage at times, but not if you're good at assessing the combat situation and determine, when and where you can get away with using the SSG effectively. Point in case: use the sb shotty in narrow places against fast enemies, but pull out the SSG when you're facing "big game" or if you've got plenty of cover or space to maneuver about in.

The grabber honestly is more fun to use than Half-Life 2's gravity gun. I found myself in several cases thinking how cool it was to switch to the grabber at the last moment and catch a fireball, and throw it back. Lots of cool moments like that. Not to mention cherubs and trites (probably the two most annoying enemies from DOOM 3) are both very easy to get rid of with the grabber. :)

I'm split on the Grabber. On one hand, I find it enjoyable to grab and throw back fireballs, but grabbing small enemies and tossing them is disappointingly bland imo. Grabbing objects and tossing them never really intrigued me in HL2 and the Grabber is possibly even more boring at this (though I like the *beeoouuwwh!" sound it makes). Lastly, I find it tremendously unbalanced how the grabber is assigned to key '1', and how it doesn't even use ammunition - it's way too effective a weapon to not at least come with some kind of ammo limitation to its usage.

-

I like the Expansion and found it well worth the price. There are definitely some elements that are better than in Doom 3, but Doom 3 was better polished and have plenty of other elements that imo makes it better (like more imps, more ammo for the pistol, more Trites and more Commandos). Oh yeah and what the Hell happened to my dear, beloved chainsaw?

I found, though, that the storyline was seriously inferior to the Doom 3 storyline. There was much less intrigue and the PDA logs and emails didn't give the place the same feeling of believability as they did in Doom 3. You could argue that the storyline in RoE was more gameplay involving, but it felt much more flat and bland somehow.
The lack of monster closets in RoE is not a plus in my book either - I quickly wound up missing that cool situation where you enter a room/pick up an object and then *CLANK!**WHINE!* hidden doors would open all around you and you just have time to think: "Oh shi...".
Teleporting monsters get tedious after a while and always remind me of Serious Sam.