Doom III

[Oblivion437]

Originally posted by Ziroc: IMO it's waaay over hyped. It's a SHOOTER for cripes sake! Yeah, it's got good graphics and stuff, but its a repeat of every other shooter out there.

Not really. "Every other shooter" didn't show rather than tell. Only a few have done this, and Doom 3 is one of them.

You want SPOOKY? Play Thief 1 through 3. [img]smile.gif[/img]

System Shock 1 and 2 were spooky, as with Doom 3, there was no fundamental point of safety. For this reason, Thief 1-3 aren't really scary, just heavy. Thief 2 is my favorite one for sheer atmosphere, but it's a heavy, breathy, Tenessee Williams atmosphere. Doom 3 is like a work of minimalist expressionism, be it in film, painting or whatever. You take a very few paints (simple gameplay mechanics) and paint a picture where most of the information is assembled by the viewer. Shadows aren't scary. Absolute, black as ink darkness isn't scary. Old machinery strewn about isn't scary. Blood isn't scary. Corpses aren't really scary. Hell, even high-detail art of monsters, even art that moves, and moves beautifully, isn't scary. When you put those things together, along with a serious sense of impending mortality, then it becomes very scary indeed. Essentially, it's a mood piece among games. It establishes its mood, and it never, not once to my recollection, lets up. Now, the early game is a bit shocking, frightening, what have you, but believe me, the game gets progressively worse, and towards the end, some truly disturbing images begin to emerge.

[qb]I'll play D3 at my friends house--he's gonna of course by it the day it comes out.. lol It's just that, to me, games with the simple only goal of "Kill everything that moves" genre is SO old and gets boring.

But it's bigger than that. The grand scope of what the game's about only begins to emerge in the second half. That's how you get from place to place, but it's an invasion! What did you expect? The gameplay style is fit perfectly into the story that emerges inside the game (which is a first for id) complete with the automated interfaces.

In the second half, the game takes on a new tone. You become aware of some interesting things, and through some cleverly placed information, a very interesting yarn of gossip, back-ended dealings, betrayals and corporate malfeasance emerges. There's even a hilarious anecdote involving chainsaws.

The most intricate, scary and downright excellent FPS ever made in my opinion is still System Shock 2, and it earns its stripes through a well-woven plot, and really, Doom does the same thing, but to a lesser scale for obvious reasons.

[Thoran]

Never got into the System Shock series, I was seriously into twitch games at the time and couldn't get past the clunky SS user interface. These days I'd probably have a better opinion of it, I've long since grown weary of twitch. Doom 3 is very much in the tradition of the origonal Doom's, and for that alone I've had a blast playing it. I absolutely agree that the storyline is tight and well architected. It IS a creepy and haunting game, but I also see some of the complaints I've read as valid. The lack of gameplay depth results in a sense of repetition even as it enhances the sense of Doom nostalga. The interactive environment included is awesome (consoles, litter, barrels, chairs, lots of other stuff) but intermittant and except for the consoles doesn't really integrate into the plot.

I feel that D3 shines as an interactive horror flick, and I wish they had played up that aspect more. More cut scenes and character interaction developing various personalities. When you kill off sarge you barely know who the guy is... it would've been a LOT more gratifying if he'd been a better fleshed out character (he's as far as I've gotten).

The quality of the graphics would allow the ambitious to really put together a quality script and storyline... then tell that story with frightening effectiveness. I think the ID guys have just scratched the surface there, and I fully expect that we'll see games using this engine that blow us away in the not too distant future.

[frudi_x]

i'm hoping for a system shock 3 using the doom 3 engine. now THAT would be a scary game!

[Elif Godson]

In the Alpha lab's atm and I tell ya, WOW I been having fun with this one. I am glad you can save and go back, I've accidntly killed a few technitians who were working on the power issues, intterupt them one too many times and they got POP Played with and without headphones and geez the sounds can give one the creeps.

Anyone try out the Multiplayer mode yet ?

[Oblivion437]

I did. Well, the multiplayer is no deeper than Doom2's, for better or worse.

Todd Hollenshead himself said that it would be a "simple but fun" multiplayer component.

Both claims are very true.

The mod developers are going to really have fun with this one.

[ 08-16-2004, 07:58 PM: Message edited by: Oblivion437 ]

[Zuvio]

System specs:
AMD XP3000+ Barton core
1GB kingston 400MHz DDRAM
radeon 9800 Pro 128Mb
7200rpm HDD
and the rest...

Even on 640x480 with LOW quality settings, I get low fps when looking into the distance. What is this?! Do I need to smack down 2000 euros to get a machine that can at least give me proper fps on average settings? I am so disappointed right now. 3 months ago, I spend like 600 euros on upgrades, only to play FC reasonably high, but this game is just unfair. Like morrowind was when it first came out. I know D3 has vey advanced graphics, or whatever it has going for itself, but Im busting my chops here

[Bozos of Bones]

Drivers? DirectX? I know my Doom 3 alpha runs on this: Barton 2500+, 1 GB Kingmax SuperRAM 433, 9600XT Sapphire, 7200rpm 160GB HDD; and it's a minimum of 28 FPS(20 with eextra details unlocked). I imagine the full version going as low as 30 on highest detail setting because alpha's are unoptimised. Zuvio, check your versions, maybe read a few FAQs, because I don't see how you get low FPS on that.

[Zuvio]

Oh dear, me and my loud mouth. I just saw I had two instances of the ePSXe emulator still running as a background process. You see, that emulator doesn't kill itself when you click on the close button, rather you have to exit using the exit function.

Hehehe, hehe .... maybe now I'll learn to think before I shout.

Anyway, the game runs much better now, im on 800x600 with ultra quality and i have way better fps than before. But im sure to check out some new drivers, cuz i havent done that in a while. Plus ill see whats on the forum of D3.

Thanks anyway Bozos

[Bozos of Bones]

Lol, Kazaa does the same to me sometimes(v2.6.7 is a processor hog). No problem, dewd.

[Oblivion437]

Some advice: Turn of FSAA (Full Scene Anti-Aliasing) and instead improve your resolution. If you jack it all the way up to 1024X768 you hit a threshold, and the game looks utterly marvelous.