I just got it (in Chicago, over Thanksgiving…for some reason it was only $20.) So far I have enjoyed it. It’s a creepy game, not at all like the other Dooms. I found it to be very similar to Chronicles of Riddick for Xbox, in terms of the environments, the lighting, and the overall mood. (On the other hand, every game with dark industrial textures makes me wish for a Marathon remake, which I know is never going to happen. The legacy of the Space Marine lives on in Halo’s Master Chief, along with weapons like the SPNKR rocket launcher and plasma pistol. [Marathon fans will know what I mean. Any Marathon fans here? {thought so}])
If anyone else here has it, what do you think of it? How does it compare to other FPSs like Painkiller (which I have) and FarCry (which I don’t) ?
It came with my new video card so of course, I had to play it.
I really like it. It’s suitably creepy; creepy enough that at first I avoided playing it at night, in my dark office, with the lights off. I got over that though. It’s got a good story line, and it moves fast. Also, it doesn’t have too many of those bits where you have to do everything right or you die - I’m hardly a FPS power gamer, and it’s not much fun for me to have to do the same fight 1,432 times before “beating” it. I like it challenging enough that I maybe have to do the boss a 3-5 times before I figure out the strategy. Much longer after that, I get bored.
Playing on either the “easy” or “medium” setting - I can’t recall which - there was only one fight that really pissed me off and I resorted to God mode to get through. God mode, I’m happy to report, is easy to get to.
I also have Far Cry, and it’s hard to compare them. They’re very different games. Far Cry has gorgeous scenery and the enemy AI is really impressive. Doom 3 is more creepy, and it’s the monsters, not the scenery, that really catch your eye most often. One thing against Far Cry - they opted to do this stupid thing where you couldn’t save anywhere you want, you can only save at ‘save points’ which are anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes apart - longer if you don’t go directly from one ‘save point’ to another. I got really screwed by that a couple times, especially in the harder bits. It’s not much fun at all to have really fought your way along an area, found it was the wrong way, turn around, come back, go along the correct way, spend an hour doing so, and get killed 3 minutes away from the next save point and have to do the whole damn thing again.
They may have changed the save point thing; back when I was playing lots of people were bitching about it.
Well, I would disagree that it has a story and moves fast. It’s Doom 1 and Doom 2 in a pretty wrapper. Hellish monsters attack our space marine. Shoot them. That’s about it. It has a very, very good engine, great graphics, and glorious light effects, but the enclosed level designs are a decade out of date. If you are expecting huge vistas and outside battles, you will be disappointed. In fact, since nearly the entire game takes place inside a Martian base, most of the interior design becomes very monotonous. I got so bored I finally just put it in “god mode” and plowed through it. It definitely has some creepy moments, but in the long run, even the monster encounters became totally predictable - the lights go out when you walk in a room, you pick up a health pack, etc… I played it through once and I haven’t touched it since. It had no replayability for me. There are far better FPS’s out there, but I give it props for having an outstanding engine. Other companies may make great games with that engine, but Doom 3 is average.