Yes, i admit that Doom 3 scared me. It isn’t so much the gameplay, which is beautiful, but it is the zombie dudes that come around the corners in the dark and you can’t see them without using your flashlight. And when you’re too slow to bring up the flashlight, then your scared pissless when you see 2 little red glowing eyes lumbering towards you. I am a wimp b/c D3 scared me. 
Funny, Doom3 scared me for all of maybe 5 min. after that I realized that 95% of the time when you picked something up (armor, weapon, pda, anything really) it would spawn monsters and that every time you fought something it would spawn something else behind you the game got alot less scary. I’d say the frequent cheap scares actually nullified the effect and after a short while it becase comical rather then scary. The very first part, with The marines screaming over the radio and the marine commander telling them to fall back, etc. was by far the worst part… allthough the very first part of delta where there is no monsters, except the occasional imp running around outside over the windows was a bit creepy too.
I thought the game was pretty stupid. Sure, it had nice graphics, but the gameplay was…basic… to say the least and the scare factor was VERY overrated, amounting to basically lots of darkness with the occasional monster jumping out to say BOO! before it gets blasted.
And what was with all the closets which seemed to hold no purpose except to hold a monster and open when you walked over ammo? whoever designed that base was weird 
I must confess to being disappointed with the end:
The cutscene shows a Godzilla-esque Cyberdemon yet it’s not that big in gameplay. And the fate of Dr Betruger could have been expanded a little - a ‘YOU HAVE FAILED …’ would go a long way.
And with regard to boss monsters:
I really didn’t like how the cyberdemon was only harmed by the soulcube and I didn’t like how the boss-monster in Hell could only be harmed while spawning the eyes.
One of the other things that keeps me jumping out of my chair is the occasionaly Satanic-laugh.
How long is the game btw? I just got to the part where you start fighting the skeletons with shoulder-mounted rocket launchers.
As other people said, it was scary for about 5 min. If you found Doom 3 scary, then you should never play anything like the Silent Hill series. (I have finished the first one and played a little from the third)
Bah. Doom 3 is an awesome game, and the creep-factor keeps increasing throughout.
False. While this holds true through the opening stages of the game, such surprise tactics become less and less prevalent. The game does an excellent job of psyching you out, for instance… a plethora of noises, scratchings, skitterings, rumblings, grumbles off in the distance, in the darkness, you never quite knew if what you heard was a monster or just noise…
The teleportation was an excellent way to update one of the staples of the original Doom game.
Each individual enemy is different from one another, requiring you to constantly guess as to which weapon you should have out. They’re also excellent updates to the old Doom enemies… the Cacodemons are crazy, the Lost Souls still the annoying - yet dangerous, if they get a chance to start pounding on you - little bastards, Pinky is just CRAZY in this game… if gets on top of you, he’ll thrash you.
The base is designed very, very well. Each level, while following the same environment scheme (y’know, Martian base), has its own feel and design depending on what its use was. Engineering areas were utilitarian and full of pipes and grates, while Administration areas were more office-like. Medical areas were full of… medical stuff.
I think most people just don’t like the fact that the base is made of, y’know, metal.
Story wise, I think they did an excellent job of expanding the story of the original game, and did it in a brilliant manner with intermittent videos, PDA’s, notes, and such lying around the base.
I haven’t tried Multiplayer yet, but typically multiplayer is the last thing I care about. I don’t consider it fun to be called a “cheater” for managing to kick someone’s ass.
I just hope they remake Hell On Earth, as well.
Wonderful game (and anyone that says otherwise is a poopypants 
). Can’t wait for Half-Life 2 and Halo 2…
My brother has this game for PS and i played it. It too scared me. I found that it was a more intense mindfuck than Doom 3.
And talking of mindfucks, could someone please spoil Forbidden Siren for me? I really want to know what the game is about, but the website is just too darn creepy for me to sit through.
And then again, it just struck me that on the great, grand intarweb, there probably are a few other websites discussing this game already. So nevermind. :smack:
Doom 3’s graphics are a great step forward. Unfortunetly, the gameplay is as big a step backwards. The gameplay is actually more primitive than the original Doom, which had more enemies, and could render larger rooms. The quintessential Doom moment for me is opening a door and finding a giant room filled with fifty shotgun wielding zombies, and running backwards as fast as I can while shooting them and saying “…ohshitohshitohshitohshit…” Doom 3 doesn’t do that. Instead, we get this half-assed System Shock knock-off populated by stale enemies that are pretty much interchangable. There’s no real difference between an imp, a zombie, or a cacodemon, except in terms of how much damage they do when they hit you, and how much damage they can take before they die. Unlike SPOOFE’s experience, I found it didn’t much matter which gun you used. The shotgun was about as effective as the assault rifle, which was about as effective as the chaingun. The only deciding factor in which gun to have readied was which gun had the most ammo.
The PDAs and audio logs and whatnot were very well done, but were pretty much pointless. They’re only there for atmosphere (at which they succeed… up to a point) and for the occasional passcode for a door or equipment locker. The amount of effort put into making the PDAs needs a solid adventure game behind to make it worthwhile, or it’s just wasted effort and a big drag in the gameplay. System Shock 2 made you want to listen to the logs because many of them represented the on-going adventures of other characters ostensibly trapped on the ship with you: there was drama to it, it made you hope that some of these people might make it out alive, and the logs gave all sorts of other clues to the game: locations of hidden stashes, plot points, etc. Outside of getting door codes, there’s no reason at all to read any of the PDAs in Doom 3. They don’t affect gameplay at all.
Worst of all, the game simply isn’t scary. Again, I disagree with SPOOFE when he says the “jump out of a closet and grab you” mechanic becomes less prevalent towards the end of the game. I haven’t quite beaten it yet, but I’m close: and I’m getting pretty sick of imps appearing like clockwork everytime I grab a health bonus. The monsters themselves aren’t very frightening, either. Most of 'em are push-overs. I can stand there reloading my shotgun while being savaged by a pack of imps, and still blow them all away without losing more than a third or so of my hit points (assuming I’m starting from full). They just aren’t dangerous enought to be frightening, and there’re so many of them all doing the same “scary” stuff, it’s monotonous. The first twenty minutes of the game, after Hell breaks loose, are pretty good. There’s one great cutscene where you walk into a room, and the flayed torso of some poor marine has been turned into a bio-mechanical alarm system, and all the little spider demons suddenly crawl out of the woodwork and attack. That was a great, genuinely creepy scene. And it’s pretty much unique in the game. Doom 3 should have been filled with that stuff. Instead, there’re maybe half a dozen good, creepy cutscenes in a thirty hour game. Where’s the imagination? If you’re going to have cutscenes (itself a step back: Half Life showed how to do it right) at least get as much use out of them as you can. It’s all in-engine, so it’s not like it takes a whole lot of extra rendering to create them, like in a Blizzard game.
And, really, the graphics aren’t that impressive. The engine is amazingly powerful, no argument, but it’s just being used to create more of the same-old-same-old. More endless, cramped, poorly illuminated tunnels, the same ones gamers have been crawling through since before they invented graphics. Compare to other recent FPS, like Far Cry or Painkiller, with their gigantic, see-for-miles levels, and it’s just hard to get excited by another blood-stained barracks in Doom 3.
Bottom line: if Doom 3 had been made by some third party developer in Lithuania that no one had ever heard of, it’d be a heck of an accomplishment. As the end result of years of work on the flagship title of one of the hottest studios in America, it bites.
One of my most beloved games is HalfLife. I have played it from start to finish maybe 20 times. On the other hand, I will never again touch Doom 3.
I tried to find what makes Halflife such a great game and Doom such a horible game. So far I have come with these explanations:
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Halflife had GREAT level design. There was a lot of variation. Outdoor scenes, indoor scenes, underwater scenes, minefield dodging scenes, cliff hanger scenes, etc. Also, some of the locations would have me stand in awe. Remember that huge tank that contained radioactive goo? Or the huge fan? Realy nice and smart level design.
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In Doom, enemies have always the element of surprise over you. There’s not a single scene where you might sneak upon an enemy and kill him. In Halflife, if you play it right, you can sometimes kill everybody without taking a single shot.
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Halflife had more and better weapons. It had also those cool laser-mine-trap things.
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Lots of things to do in Halflife: Use stationary guns, use trains, push boxes, etc.
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Most of the times there were several ways to finish a scene. Doom is way too linear.
I hope HalfLife 2 is as good as the first one in gameplay.
So you’re saying you found no difference between a gun designed for short-range kill, one designed for medium-range kill, and one designed for long-range kill?
I dare you to try to take out ANY enemy with the shotgun from more than fifteen feet away.
Sounds like Doom 3 isn’t your game. May I recommend Painkiller?
(Lose a third of your hit points? A REAL gamer would consider that a disgrace, and would have reloaded long before it got to that point!)
… Didn’t you just say that the graphics were a big step forward? Which is it?
So you’re telling me you see no difference in the lighting graphics in Doom 3 and, say, Jedi Knight? Man, you perceive reality in an interesting way.
This was my biggest complaint of the game. Though I liked it in the end, I was annoyed by the fact that even when I knew where the baddies would come from, I couldn’t do anything about it. I could walk into a room and say “those two panels are going to pop open and monsters will jump out”, but I couldn’t, say, shoot the panel open ahead of time, or toss in a couple of grenades. It didn’t make much difference if you snuck around and were careful or if you just barged in and started shooting up the place. I think if they had given you more places to get the drop on the bad guys if you were sneaky, but also let you get away with shooting everything, the game would’ve fit a broader range of personal play styles, and would’ve had wider acceptance.
Note: that does not mean I want stealth levels that stop the game if I’m spotted. I hate hate hate those games. Especially when you’re powerful enough to walk into the building, kill everyone inside three times over and walk out with the hostage on one shoulder and bags of cash on the other, but you get stopped at the back door because a security camera picked you up. But I digress.
I liked the red eyes, they gave me something to aim at.
The laughing annoyed me. I kept thinking “Oh, god, no! I’m stuck on yet another endless Baal run!” Someone just tele in there and open a portal, please!
But I did like the game. It was fun, the graphics were cool and it had good atmosphere. I look forward to the mods that I’m sure hundreds of people are sweating over even as we speak.
Sure, when you find yourself in one of the rare encounters that takes place further than fifteen feet away. That’s gotta be something like 10% or less of the things you fight. And, really, if they’re twenty feet away, just walk closer. Not like the thing you’re shooting at is dangerous, or anything.
If you’d read my post closely, you’ll notice that I already named Painkiller as a superior game to Doom 3. In fact, Painkiller is exactly what Doom 3 should have been: mindless, non-stop, frenetic action. That’s what id is good at. Instead, inexplicably, they made a survival horror game that’s neither scary nor dangerous.
Don’t get me wrong: I love what they were trying to do. For my money, the best FPS ever was the original System Shock.* It’s just that that sort of game requires more intricate plotting and interactivity than they seem capable of. I don’t mind a game that’s so linear if it’s just action, like the aforementioned Painkiller. But by trying to create this detailed backstory and all these NPCs, it just highlights how shallow the game play is. Painkiller isn’t any deeper, but it does a better job of keeping you so doped up on adrenaline that you don’t notice. It doesn’t even pretend to offer the player any sort of coherent plot, just regular rains of bloody people gibblets. To me, that’s what Doom is all about.
[sub]*Opinion subject to change without warning.[/sub]
You know what’s funny? I started out the game doing just that. I’d screw up, get tag-teamed by two imps while struggling to reload a game, and just punch the QuickLoad key. It wasn’t until I was two or three hours into the game that I realized that I wasn’t losing more than twenty-five or thirty health points whenever it happened, and I didn’t need to bother reloading because there’d be a medpack or a health generator coming along well before my health was critical. I don’t think I died for the first time until I was at least halfway through the game.
It’s both: it’s a big, unimpressive step forward. I’ll explain in a second:
Jedi Knight? Read what I wrote again: I’m implying I don’t see a difference between the graphics in Doom 3 and the original Zork!
And, in a way, I don’t. This is what I meant when I said the graphics are both a step forward and unimpressive. Certainly, Doom 3 has the most impressively rendered narrow, dark, claustrophobic tunnels in the history of video games. Except that I’ve been doing that for fifteen years now. With today’s technology, we can create levels that stretch from horizon to horizon. Painkiller and Far Cry have taken the lead on this, I hope that Half Life 2 takes in even further. Doom 3 had all of Mars to play with. Why not put the player outside, on the slopes of Olympus Mons? There are gorges on Mars that make the Grand Canyon look like a drainage ditch. With the options implicit in the setting, why does the entire game take place in a ventillation shaft?
It’s like Jar-Jar Binks. Horrible character. Grating, stupid, unnecessary, hateful. But, in Phantom Menace, if you could get around the fact that the character was awful, the way he was created was incredibly impressive. He really looked like he was standing right there with the other actors. I remember thinking at the time, “I can’t wait until somebody uses this technology to do something cool.” And a few years later, we got Gollum. Doom 3 is Jar Jar Binks: there’s some amazing potential there, it just needs someone to come along and do something cool with it.
I am rather cynical, so I believe that the game was so dark on purpose: Darkness raises the frame-rate. If the game was any brigher, it would require a faster computer.
Big word to everything Miller is saying. This game isn’t scaring me at all. The Silent Hill series makes this look like a bad episode of Scooby Doo. And the Fatal Frame series is even scarier.
Tonight I got to the point where a marine was pulled up into a ventilation shaft, at which point we hear some crunching, then see the pieces of the poor fella bounce out of the shaft one by one. Didn’t we see that in a little game called Half-Life a few years ago?
After trying Doom 3, I’m now really looking forward to Half-Life 2.
Comparing this against the last FPS games I’ve played (Halo and Far Cry), it comes in third. Far Cry kept me interested until the very end, though I did eventually get tired of the big baddies and turned on God mode. Doom3 lost my interest quickly and after not very long I was only interested in the next model, lighting, etc. Played about half the game in God mode. I’ve played Halo through several times all the way with no cheats.
Where Halo shined was in weapons and physics (and hey! a flashlight on the weapons, something the Doom guys could have learned from). The level design largely sucked because of the cookie-cutter layout (oooh, this room looks familiar). Doom3 had rooms that looked different but all felt the same. Far Cry had phenomenal level design, and great weapons.
Doom3 beat both Halo and Far Cry on one important point though: quicksave instead of checkpoints. I will never buy another game that relies on checkpoints to save the game.
Where Doom 3 failed for me big-time was the difficulty of getting monsters to fight each other: in the original Doom you could make use of this; In D3, it’s very difficult.
More thoughts after more play:
It looks nice, but doesn’t seem as revolutionary as I would have thought. Why can’t you shoot out lights? Why can’t you sneak up on anyone? And why the hell did they apparently de-invent the rifle with a flashlight attached? Talk about a contrivance.
Gameplay can be summed up easily:
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Lights flicker out, lights flicker back on. OMG (((MONSTAR)))!!1
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Hey a powerup! OMG (((MONSTAR!!!0))~
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Walk around a corner. OMG ((MONSTAR)) IN FRONT OF ME AND (((MONSTAR))) BEHIND ME!!!1
I’m still trodding through as I’ve heard that it gets interesting toward the end. It better come soon though.
That’s a very good point. Ever since Half Life, just one enemy force trying to kill you doesn’t really cut the mustard anymore. (with a few exceptions, of course. Most of the Jedi games, or System Shock 2 for example.) I was really hoping that Doom 3 would steal another trick from Half Life and have a bunch of Marines show up determined to sterilize everything on Mars, including the player. Then you’d have all those great three-way firefights that have pretty much become a staple in FPS.
What’s doubly frustrating is that, IIRC, the original Doom had something like that. Didn’t the Hell Knights and the Cacodemons attack each other on sight in that game?