Playing through Ressurection of Evil again!

I have RoE for X-Box and PC... but now I have it a third time for Doom 3 BFG edition. Its been a few years since I've played RoE considering I lost my CD wallet with all my games and my X-Box refuses to read discs.

So this is like my 5th playthrough, but its new again to me! :-) I'm playing on medium and I've gotten to the point where its nicely intense. Bigger enemies getting thrown at me like Revenants, Bruisers and Barons, spiced with some nice Xenomorph looking things.

Its almost all in closed quarters, which adds to the intensity if you can't just strafe away from things. Thankfully BFG lets you have a light and a weapon at the same time (give that guy a raise).

Another thing adding to the intensity is how slow your weapons are (outside of the plasma rifle). Facing down Revenants, you can either run up to them with your double barrel and insta kill them or you can miss and really leave yourself open to abuse as you reload the elephant gun. It loads so slow, which I can see how people would hate that, but again it just adds to the intensity.... gotta go hide while I reload or take rockets, plasmaballs or fireballs to the face. Then on top of that you need to stay out of melee range, because your view will get minsed up and you'll end up missing the next shot.

So while I'd like to be the guy that shoots, hides, reloads, pops out, shoots. I often get followed to the point that I just can't hide. Boxed in by the Xenomorphs or Revenants throwing me about.

There are other ways to take out giant enemies too. Sometimes using the cumbersome rocket launcher against bruisers or a chaingun against Revenants. Having to spin the thing up, jump out and blast away until its time to strafe dodge. Getting wedged up in the tiniest of cover adds a lot to the intensity. While it doesn't exactly make me feel powerful to need the slightest bit of cover so badly, it does keep me alive.

These are all reasons why I swear Doom 3 is a survival horror game disguised as an action FPS. Its not about circle strafing around hundreds of enemies, its simply about staying alive. I don't remember DOOM 3 giving me such a sense of dread as ROE. Everything coupled together, slow shooting speed, tight areas and has every giant enemy putting you at risk to die. Every missed shot is a fuck up you can die from. At least in the medium difficulty.

The original version of RoE is far more difficult than BFG. The most heart-pounding moments such as the waste tunnels and the green area Hell battle were removed entirely. The drastic surplus on ammo means you can spam high-powered shots all over the place without consequence. Once you get the rocket launcher, just use it on anything that's not close enough to make you take splash damage. Kills most mooks in one hit. Especially effective against those retarded tentacle commandos who run right at you in a straight line.

Playing through RoE on Marine skill was no challenge to me. It was still fun, but I breezed through. Ironically the only level that was MORE difficult was Hell itself. Due to removal of the aforementioned green area battle, they "rebalanced" this level by adding a lot of new monsters to it. I actually died several times mostly by being caught off-guard by the additions - also, some of the imps they added are in a really precarious spot (see if you find out which one I mean).

I intend to play it again on Veteran mostly so I can get that achievement (OCD overdrive!) and then I'll report my final opinion. So far though, all the games in BFG Ed are far too nerfed if you're looking for a challenge, IMO.

Quasar said:

I intend to play it again on Veteran mostly so I can get that achievement (OCD overdrive!) and then I'll report my final opinion. So far though, all the games in BFG Ed are far too nerfed if you're looking for a challenge, IMO.

I haven't played non-BFG Doom 3.

Veteran on BFG should be the default. Marine is a boring slog that lasts a few hours (about 8 for regular campaign, 4-5 for RoE, just under 2 for Lost Mission), but Veteran is about right -- RoE on Veteran being my favourite of the trio personally.

I am curious enough to want to try non-BFG Doom 3 though, both campaigns. Never played back in the day because it "wasn't really Doom" and I'm kinda over that -- nothing ever will be again.

I did play through the Doom 3 campaign on Veteran the first time, after Marine proved too easy in Lost Mission and RoE. I still didn't feel it was very challenging, and nowhere near the difficulty of the original CD version of the game. The ammo makes at least 80% of the difference; the rest is being able to run so fast.

Also, I did the "speedrun" achievement challenge (complete the game in less than 10 hours). I did this on Recruit, just for minimum resistance, and ended up finishing the game in approximately 4:20. 10 hours is waaay too generous, though granted I WAS using speedrunning strats (strafe jumping, massive unintended shortcuts, etc).

Unlike Doom 3, which I thankfully have as an original version, I have never had RoE outside of BFG Edition. I played through it when I bought BFGE few months ago. Before that, I've of course read about it being "dumbed down" from the original.

There were several things I noticed in RoE that I really DID mind:

• Even more apparent linearity than in Doom 3.
  
• Leveldesign was generally somewhat worse, more cramped and with less landmarks. I do recall remarkable areas from D3, but not so many from Roe.
  
• Vulgars. The crawling imp-like creatures throwing blue energyballs. What I disliked about them? That their attack sequences were overly fast to me, even more than of other enemies. The thing is slowly walking and suddenly, without any warning, it leaps right into your face. It's annoying.
  
• Bruisers. Because they always killed me if I didn't use at least a BFG or an Artifact powerup. Their firing sequence was too fast, too. Bruisers and vulgars were in fact more of a threat (attack-wise, not endurance) than any of the bosses.
  
• Too much ammo. That's been said too many times already. That does NOT mean I found the game easy. I was spamming save-load because of sudden deaths, mostly by the two abovementioned monsters. I know - I know that it's in a certain way my fault and I shouldn't complaint like this, but I'd enjoy the game more if it gave me only little ammo, but fights were fair.
  
• SSG didn't seem to be much more powerful than regular shotgun. Unless I literally put its barrel directly on enemy's chest. Two shotgun blasts were always a better choice, I felt.
  
• On one of the first levels (the one with first SSG), I overlooked an access card on a table, and got stuck for about an hour due to it, running there and back and looking for... I didn't even know what.
  
• Meteor rain in the final battle was a trial-and-error -> death unfairness, until I eventually found effective strategy. Which was - to always use Artifact when it comes.

In general I didn't like it. (and the Lost Levels or how was it called too, for similar reasons) I'm not however sure if I would like more if I had a non-BFG version. I'm not going to buy it.

I tend to forget the Artifact power up option when meeting a Bruiser. Also, the removal of the greenish Hell area saved me a lot of anger because I only managed to complete that sequence on Marine and never on Veteran. Why did the BFG Edition remove the bio suit / helmet? Thought that particular part of the game was pretty neat. Yeah, the Bruisers attack is way too intense.

scifista42 said:

• Even more apparent linearity than in Doom 3.

Sadly both were very linear.

Leveldesign was generally somewhat worse, more cramped and with less landmarks. I do recall remarkable areas from D3, but not so many from Roe.

Doom 3 RoE started with more Martian mines and had that circular reactor room with multiple walkways on the circumference — that looked cool.

Vulgars. The crawling imp-like creatures throwing blue energyballs. What I disliked about them? That their attack sequences were overly fast to me, even more than of other enemies. The thing is slowly walking and suddenly, without any warning, it leaps right into your face. It's annoying.

They're supposed to be better than imps.

Bruisers. Because they always killed me if I didn't use at least a BFG or an Artifact powerup. Their firing sequence was too fast, too. Bruisers and vulgars were in fact more of a threat (attack-wise, not endurance) than any of the bosses.

I suspect by that time you're just supposed to use the Artifact and Grabber against them. Maybe that's why they didn't work that hard on improving it…

Too much ammo. That's been said too many times already. That does NOT mean I found the game easy. I was spamming save-load because of sudden deaths, mostly by the two abovementioned monsters. I know - I know that it's in a certain way my fault and I shouldn't complaint like this, but I'd enjoy the game more if it gave me only little ammo, but fights were fair.

Must be BFG edition ripping you off. Real Resurrection of Evil has very little ammo, just so you use the Artifact and the Grabber instead. I tried playing without using those gimmicks (which make the game too easy in any case) and I eventually run out of any useful ammo, while being ambushed by many powerful monsters.

SSG didn't seem to be much more powerful than regular shotgun. Unless I literally put its barrel directly on enemy's chest. Two shotgun blasts were always a better choice, I felt.

I think the SSG is slightly more accurate than the SG!

On one of the first levels (the one with first SSG), I overlooked an access card on a table, and got stuck for about an hour due to it, running there and back and looking for... I didn't even know what.

I know, that happened to me too :(

Meteor rain in the final battle was a trial-and-error -> death unfairness, until I eventually found effective strategy. Which was - to always use Artifact when it comes.

Heh, that kills you even if you use the Invulnerability artifact. It reminds me of Doom 2 MAP30 :)

LOL oh yeah there's an artifact. Yeah I just beat the berserker boss and I think that I used the artifact 3x so far in the entire game. ... oh yeah and there's a grabber gun too! I totally forgot. Which is sad. I remember other play throughs I'd actually use it to lob plasmaballs back and the wraths.