I think part of it is that I get disoriented in 3-D space. I mean, I have a finely tuned beautiful sense of direction IRL, but it dosen’t carry over to first person games.
Also, when I play with my friends it’s a lot more like “Spawn. Get shot. Re-spawn. Try to sneak up. Get shot. Re-spawn. Get run over with the Warthog. Everybody laughs.” I’m just no good at this sort of thing, and honestly it’s not a “skill” I terribly feel the need to develop, but it’s fun to be able to play with friends and that works a lot better when there’s a co-op mode. Plus, multiplayer is boring, even if I weren’t always yelling “Don’t shoot me! I bring you cookies and all you do is blow me up?!” I’ve never understood how people (in my circles, males) can sit around for hours and hours and hours running around maps with their friends shooting each other. How is that fun after twenty minutes? I’d rather play the story.
If any of this is a repost then just see it as me agreeing with what’s already been said.
Complaints: There’s a slight delay between mouse movement and cursor/direction movement. It can get slightly irritating when every enemy blow knocks your aim off and the mouse is slower than your own reactions at moving it back.
Other than that I am as impressed as expected. They’ve obviously put a lot of effort into creating fear (not the “I feel safe” until suddenly face to face with an ugly monster type of fear, but the “I am constantly weary of something jumping out of a wall/ceiling/floor panel behind me” type of fear. The type of fear that makes you reluctant to move on)
I recognise a few trademark doom sounds so far! (collecting health, certain monster sounds)
My usual aggravating gameplay sequence is like this: Save game. Kill a bunch of monsters. Kill a bunch more monsters. Kill even more monsters. In total, game for, like, an hour, without dying. I rock. Then I die. Without saving. No problem. Those monsters were easy. Go back to the first room full of monsters after the save game and find out that apparently I was blessed by the gods getting through that room the first time, because now it takes me three days of playing to get past that freaking room. Save game.
So in the manual, where they say ‘save the game regularly’ they mean it.
This game IME introduces a new necesary habit - reload your weapon a lot. You pick up a shotgun from a foe? expect it to have zero loaded amo. I find myself pressing ‘r’ and ‘f5’ in every single room.
I finished the game on Monday. I liked it but wasn’t terribly impressed. For a game that was in developement for this many years I expected more. I’m holding out more hope for Half Life 2.
I could see a lot of things in Doom3 that reminded me of the original Half Life, Dark Forces and Duke Nukem 3D (plus, of course, the original Doom/Doom2). The spiders kind of remind me of the Replicators from Stargate SG1. The original Half Life allowed the player to break open crates and boxes, nothing like that in Doom3, except for the traditional Doom exploding 55 gallon barrels (always fun). The environment isn’t especially responsive - you can’t break most windows, unless the storyline requires it and rockets don’t blow open doors or damage the equipment that is basically there for decoration. I wanna break chairs and blow up some of those computers and displays in the game. Plus, if this is supposed to showcase id’s new engine why couldn’t they add a greenhouse somewhere on the base to show how the game engine handles bright earth-like environments instead of dark room, dark cave, darker room? The mods might work great, but this isn’t the showcase I hoped for.
I must protest, sir! You got to see the guy’s face in Doom I/II in your status display at the bottom of the screen, sans helmet, and the only resemblance he has to the Doom 3 marine is when you’re playing Super Turbo Turkey Puncher 3.
Perhaps you’re thinking of the guy in Quake 1? He had a helmet on, even in the status display.
(Speaking of the Doom 3 Marine not wearing a helmet: How does he breathe when he’s outside in the Martian atmosphere?
Ah, what am I worried about. They’re obviously not on Mars. The gravity is just as strong as on the surface of the Earth!)
That’s my manly visage in the display, or your wimpy one.
I challenge you to deathmatch, w/o BFGs.
My second will call on you in the morning…er, email you when he’s sober.
I loved Doom 3. Fighting everything from one end to the other, the game really was fun as simple as it is. It takes a game like Doom 3 to really remind you of the roots of the genre.
Well, the first two times I tried playing the game, it crashed to the desktop the moment I pushed the ‘down elevator’ button to start the first mission (you know, to find the missing scientist)
I tried reinstalling the game (the install had acted a little funny on disc 3, so I thought that might be the problem), played it again, and got the exact same crash.
This time though, I’d quicksaved the game just before stepping into the elevator. I reloaded that game, and was able to continue. So far so good.
The @#$# hits the fan (in the game). I kill three or four zombies with the pistol. Then the first armed guard/zombie appears. I shoot him (taking mucho damage in the process), step into his alcove to pick up armor and ammo…and…the game freezes up. Completely. Fortunately I’m able to bring up Windows task manager and shut down the game without having to press my computer’s reset button.
I have to say that what I was actually able to see was very impressive - although the graphics seemed a little sluggish, and I’ve got an ATI 9800 All-in-wonder. However, if it’s going to be this difficult to actually play the game, I question whether it’s going to be worth it.
Honestly, I don’t think its the game. I have a moderate system (3 years old) and I can play it fine, if not in 1280 million by 60 billion mode with mega-snicksels all over, but pretty smoothly. Make sure you upgrade your drivers and you should be fine. If you can’t run it after that you need to clean out your PC and defrag it. Doom 3 is also not particularly buggy, unlike many other games I could name (cough KotOR cough) where they barely even bother with tech testing.
Download and install the latest ATI Radeon 9800-series drivers from ATI’s website.
I’m very serious. I have an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. Before I downloaded the latest drivers, I was getting frame rates of 2-3 frames per second during a firefight and crashing to the desktop all the time. After I downloaded and installed the drivers, I was getting a frame rates of 20-30 frames per second during a firefight and not crashing at all.
