Jump to content
Search In
  • More options...
Find results that contain...
Find results in...
Naked Snake

Time to Set Your World on Fire

Recommended Posts

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.

Share this post


Link to post

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.

Share this post


Link to post

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.

Share this post


Link to post

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.

Share this post


Link to post
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

Share this post


Link to post

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.

Share this post


Link to post

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!

Share this post


Link to post
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.

Share this post


Link to post
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.

Share this post


Link to post

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.

Share this post


Link to post

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.

Share this post


Link to post
Texas Libra said:

STUFF ABOVE THIS POST


You pretty much summed up my feelings. Too many typos, but ignorable ones.

Share this post


Link to post

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.

Share this post


Link to post

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...

Share this post


Link to post
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.

Share this post


Link to post

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.

Share this post


Link to post
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.

Share this post


Link to post
Hellish Godzilla said:

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


rofl? are you serious

Share this post


Link to post

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

Share this post


Link to post
×