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Naked Snake

Time to Set Your World on Fire

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Simon and Schuster, the company that published the original Doom novels, has recently released a new Doom novel, apparently set in the Doom 3 universe. Doom 3: Worlds on Fire was released at the end of last month in paperback only. The author, Matthew Costello, wrote the scripts for Doom 3 and its expansion pack, Resurrection of Evil. You can read an excerpt here. You can also buy it on Amazon for $7.99.

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You know, from what little I've read of it so far, it seems pretty well written. It's certainly not as bad as the original novels.

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I actually bought this just on Friday. Haven't had a chance to read it, though; I'd like to get through the others books I'm reading first.

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I don't expect it to be great but I'll buy a copy. The other novels were terrible, I hope this author is better.

edit.

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Ouch said:

I don't expect it to be great but I'll buy a copy. The other novels were terrible, I don't know how the author is still in the business.
Probably because of us.


This is a different author from the other Doom books. I wouldn't expect any references to automaps that resemble a robot riding a tricycle this time around. :P

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I actually remember enjoying the old Doom novels...but then again, its been so long since I've read them that I doubt I could get as much enjoyment from them again. If I'm desperate for something to read, I might grab this.

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I'm going to love this, just like I loved the other Doom novels!
Granted, if they weren't about Doom I'd knock them mercilessly.

Edit: Just ordered mine. Yay!

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Ouch said:

I don't expect it to be great but I'll buy a copy. The other novels were terrible, I hope this author is better.


Agreed. A lot of the stuff in the last two original Doom novels were just kinda dumb, like the "Freds" and the "newbies", a rapidly evolving race that eventually evolves themselves out of exsistence... <_<;

I just read the excerpt and it's really not all that bad. The imagery is a lot better then the original Doom novels. A lot of times when I was reading the Doom novels I wouldn't have a very good idea of what was going on because the descriptions were so vague.

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Craigs said:

Agreed. A lot of the stuff in the last two original Doom novels were just kinda dumb, like the "Freds" and the "newbies", a rapidly evolving race that eventually evolves themselves out of exsistence... <_<;

I just read the excerpt and it's really not all that bad. The imagery is a lot better then the original Doom novels. A lot of times when I was reading the Doom novels I wouldn't have a very good idea of what was going on because the descriptions were so vague.


I'm on page 178 so far and I can tell you that this guy is a pretty good writer. The book has a pretty good pace and when he writes from a character's POV, you can feel the personality shift. The Doom books fell flat on that. All of the Doom novel characters felt the same : wordy and they all had a troubled past. Anyway, so far, good read.

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The excerpt certainly didn't make me feel like I was going to bleed out my eyes. I suspect this may actually be worthwhile, especially since the General character was originally slated to exist in Doom 3 as Betruger's right hand man before id decided to merge the two characters and make things a lot less interesting. If we're lucky, this could represent what Doom 3's story was supposed to be. I'll pick up a copy and report back with results.

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Well, I just finished it a couple of days ago, and let me tell you I wasn't terribly impressed, but not totally disgusted either. The biggest problem of the book wasn't the quality of the writing, but rather the umpteenmillion typos I saw in my copy. A couple of other things that I found a bit "meh" about it were it was horrendously drawn out until right at the end of the book where it suddenly advances 3 or 4 levels of the game in just a few pages, and it also kept jumping character arcs every few other paragraph or so. Also the whole Theo-and-his-mom thing I found a bit cheesy, and Swann was portrayed as a total whimp, but I guess I can let the latter of that slide since this was more or less based on the author's original story for Doom 3. However I noticed there's even a few changes from his own original story...if you've read The Making of Doom 3 book you'll see what I mean.

Overall, worth 8 bucks if you've got the money and need to kill time at work like I do (working at a call center) and have a lot of downtime. I'd say read it once if you're that much of a fan, then put it away for a while so it doesn't become damaged and frayed like I did with all 4 of my original Doom novels.

And I'm of the general consensus here that it's much better written than the original books. That makes 6 Doom novels total that I now own (the original 4, the movie novel, and this one). Here's to the next in the series.

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Well, if nothing else we've got another name to add to the annals of Doomguy/Flynn Taggert/John "Reaper" Grimm/berserker packin' man-and-a-half: John Kane.

I just call him Fluffy.

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As somebody who loved the first RE novel* i may have to check this out

*-more enjoyable than the game, even. Though i understand the later books went off in a wierd direction. Then again so did RE4...

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deathbringer said:

As somebody who loved the first RE novel* i may have to check this out

*-more enjoyable than the game, even. Though i understand the later books went off in a wierd direction. Then again so did RE4...


I have all the books in the RE series by SD Perry (unless there are more). She's a pretty damn good writer.

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The first Doom novel is okay in my opinion. It's not fabulous, but it reminded me most of the game. After that the series gets really dumb. I can't bring myself to finish the third book, and really probably don't want anything to do with the fourth.

Anyway, this Doom 3 book sounds interesting. As long as there's no weird shit with genetics and aliens and all that like in the Doom novels or movie, I'm already happy. I can ignore typos unless they're really egregious.

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Splatter said:

Well, if nothing else we've got another name to add to the annals of Doomguy/Flynn Taggert/John "Reaper" Grimm/berserker packin' man-and-a-half: John Kane.

I just call him Fluffy.


Don't forget John Stalvern.

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Hellish Godzilla said:

that resemble a robot riding a tricycle this time around. :P


rofl? are you serious

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It never seize to amaze me how far people will reach for a straw to make fun of Doom3's darkness.

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