The Merits of Doom 3

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Viscra Maelstrom
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The Merits of Doom 3

Post by Viscra Maelstrom »

[edit - Enjay] Split from viewtopic.php?f=12&t=62336
Enjay wrote:Unfortunately, it's also served to remind how mediocre, borderline bad, Doom3 is as a game (IMO of course). So much potential just seeping away to boredom and frustration every time I play. :?
[/edit]

i was disappointed replaying the game last year, too. granted it was the BFG Edition, but i doubt the differences in mechanics are that noticeable (except for the flashlight). it's rather bizarre going back to the game and finding it thoroughly uninteresting, when i played the game and its expansion quite a lot several years back. i thought i'd feel some nostalgic connection to the game, but i don't.
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Enjay
 
 
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Re: Doom 3 Help/Questions

Post by Enjay »

At least you had fun with it "back in the day". To me it very quickly became apparent that I wasn't really going to enjoy it right from the first time I played. I have always felt that it was such a wasted opportunity and such an uninspiring, dull, lacklustre way to continue the legacy of one of the best games ever. Anyway, I don't want to dwell on it too long. I've said a lot about my disappointment with the game in the past.

Back to the original question, I noticed that Nems mentioned Classic Doom. One thing that the Dhewm page says is that it doesn't support mods that need their own game dll. So, while it supports the base game very well (and apparently the expansion (not yet tested by me)), it's not suitable for some of the third party mods.
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Re: Doom 3 Help/Questions

Post by SouthernLion »

You guys are crazy. Doom 3 was one of my favorite games. Not on par with classic Doom or Duke Nukem games, but still a great run through. I was super high, alone in the dark during a storm just playing this game, my mind thinking about how if Hell really exists, how horrible can it be that our mere mortal minds can't even fathom it?
Spoiler:


I loved poking corners with a flash light and having to switch to a gun in a frightful panic. That was part of the experience to me. I really enjoyed it from beginning to end.
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Enjay
 
 
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Re: Doom 3 Help/Questions

Post by Enjay »

Each to their own I guess. I genuinely thought it was borderline shit from the outset. Technically amazing, great looking in places but horribly troped and reptitive gameplay, lacklustre story and hideously predictable events and just dull, dull, dull for most of it.


Speaking of games from roughly that era, does anyone know if there was ever a code release and PC port of Dead Space that fixes the terrible official PC port's problems? I've looked, but can't see anything. I've tried to play the game a few times but the hideously inflexible customisation in the PC version that basically still assumes you are running a console (and console controller) makes it unplayable for me.
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Re: Doom 3 Help/Questions

Post by ramon.dexter »

Hehe, I also enjoyed Doom 3 when it came out. Hell, it was actually a big thing to me, being a doom fan a then, bam, there will be Doom 3, with cutting edge graphics (for that time) and everything. Then, when I played it, the feel was different from older doom games, with slower gunplay and more focus on survival or horror elements. I must say I enjoyed that a lot, played through for two or three times. Then I completely left doom world (sometimes around 2003-4). Then, ten years later, when the Doom 4 was announced, boy I was hyped. I discovered the possibilities of editing and found my new addiction :) (how come I didnt even think about editing before? how come?). But, to the point: I found out that Doom 3 is not as good received in the community as the prequels or even the sequel, popularity ranging from "yeah" to "to hell with it", which I don't clearly understand too much :)

But, I can this: Doom 3 is not a bad game. It's quite good game. But it is not a good doom game.
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Re: Doom 3 Help/Questions

Post by SouthernLion »

Enjay wrote:Each to their own I guess. I genuinely thought it was borderline shit from the outset. Technically amazing, great looking in places but horribly troped and reptitive gameplay, lacklustre story and hideously predictable events and just dull, dull, dull for most of it.
It's... a Doom game. It's literally the exact same story, just on Mars instead of Mars's natural satellites. lol
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Viscra Maelstrom
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Re: Doom 3 Help/Questions

Post by Viscra Maelstrom »

personally i was never scared when playing the game, even back then. aside from the occasional jumpscare, there's no reason to fear anything, because the gameplay isn't really any different from any other first person shooter. you always have enough weapons and ammo to kill everything. why should i be scared of the redesigned enemies and the dimly lit environments when i'm never in a position where i'd consider myself threatened?
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Re: Doom 3 Help/Questions

Post by Enjay »

RexS wrote:It's... a Doom game. It's literally the exact same story, just on Mars instead of Mars's natural satellites. lol
It is, but the story was never really a big part of Doom's gameplay and it's always been regarded as relatively weak and minimal. Doom3 tried to be much more story driven but, IMO, did so in a very - a kid in high school who is "3 edgy 5 me" could have written this - kind of way, plus all the yawn inducing, predictable, stereotypical elements that were simply not surprising, intriguing or in any way interesting to me.
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Re: The Merits of Doom 3

Post by Graf Zahl »

Doom 3 was one of the most awful gaming experiences ever and marked the beginning of my exit from modern gaming.
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Re: The Merits of Doom 3

Post by SouthernLion »

I'm sorry about your guys' loss. I wouldn't put it in my top 5 games I've ever played, but definitely in the top 10. And then of course, we have Doom 4 (2016) that I think blended both classic Doom and Doom 3 perfectly.
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Re: The Merits of Doom 3

Post by NeuralStunner »

My overall impression is something that can't decide if it wants to be an action shooter, tactical shooter, or horror game... and ends up not doing any of those three particularly well.

I kind of liked it up until the point where it locks you in a tiny room with an Imp, and then it demonstrated the exact same problem I have with HL2: Things do not react much when shot. A significant part of classic Doom's gameplay is using your weapons to interrupt attacks and do crowd control. As it was, it was a shamefully bad attempt at a panic-inducing moment.

It's the first time I've ever ragequit a game so hard that I immediately uninstalled it.

(If anybody knows of a mod that makes monsters respond more reasonably to searing-hot-lead-induced pain, I might give it another chance.)
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Re: The Merits of Doom 3

Post by Cherno »

All faults could be excused but the devs did the one thing that is unforgivable: The shotgun from Doom, probably the greatest video game weapon ever, absolutely sucked both in sound and feel in Doom 3.
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Re: The Merits of Doom 3

Post by Enjay »

NeuralStunner wrote:Things do not react much when shot. A significant part of classic Doom's gameplay is using your weapons to interrupt attacks and do crowd control. As it was, it was a shamefully bad attempt at a panic-inducing moment.
Thank you. That's one of the parts of the Doom3 gameplay where I knew something was frustratingly wrong but I couldn't figure out exactly what it was - and that's it! You've hit that particular nail in the head. Other than a minor flinch, the enemies pretty much just keep going when shot - even the low tier ones. Give them a face-full of lead and they just shake it off and slash at you anyway (complete with annoying camera shake, red effects and slash marks). They are almost immune to my weapons but I get affected by the tiniest hit :roll: .
NeuralStunner wrote:My overall impression is something that can't decide if it wants to be an action shooter, tactical shooter, or horror game... and ends up not doing any of those three particularly well.
One of the relatively early points that got me was one of the first swarms of those spider-head enemies happened. They kept coming in through small openings in an attack wave (dull in itself) and only when they were all wiped out, did a ladder to let me out of the fight area activate. I mean, sure, I've done much the same in my own maps (something doesn't happen until all bad guys are dead) but this wasn't meant to be an abstract map like a scripted version of "Tricks and Traps". It was supposed to be a realistic escape through a believable, functioning space colony. However, like much of D3, it was an annoying little battle, with frustrating enemies, attacking in an absolutely stereotypical scripted game battle kind of way. So there I was, trapped in a small area, with little room to move with a pre-determined number of frustrating, swarming enemies attacking and, to top it all off, only when they were all dead, for no logical in-world reason, a ladder appeared and let me out. How dull and unimaginative.
Cherno wrote:All faults could be excused but the devs did the one thing that is unforgivable: The shotgun from Doom, probably the greatest video game weapon ever, absolutely sucked both in sound and feel in Doom 3.
I found most of the weapons quite underwhelming. Some of them looked pretty meh, the sounds were very meh and the way they operated was often meh, frustrating or just weak too. The weapons in Doom are meant to be good. These, for the most part, were not.


And then there was the constant teleporting in front of the player and behind at the same time. It happened so often that you just knew that if you saw the teleport sequence starting, you needed to guard your rear as well as your front because there would be enemies in front and behind you in a moment. Every. Damned. Time. Enemies teleporting in that often was horrible cheap and frustrating anyway but the front and rear thing was just bitter icing on an unpleasant, rapidly going stale cake.

And the constant excessive darkness giving no real contrast between areas, so there was no fear of the dark because there was only darkness; frustrating, predictable, not-allowed-to-use-my-flashight-and-a-weapon-at-the-same-time darkness.


In fact, IMO, there are so many flaws in the gameplay that I can pick holes in almost every single aspect of it. Sure, we could all find fault with any game but Doom3 had faults by the bucket load in so many areas of gameplay that I struggle to say much positive about it and I really did not enjoy the experience. The best I can do, and I really am giving it the benefit of the doubt when I do this, is to call it mediocre.

I'm going to hold back a bit now because I'm in danger of going into a rant about it. :lol: Maybe I already did a bit. :oops:
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Re: The Merits of Doom 3

Post by Cherno »

The assault rifle sounded very weak as well, but the chaingun and plasma rifle were great, maybe better than theor Doom counterparts. The extremely tight spaces in which most fights occured bothered me as well; one of my favourite levels is Mount Erebus with it's large open spaces and hordes of monsters. The best you get in D3 is a pair of Cacodemons in an outside environment.

That being said, graphically, it did a lot of things right; At the time, I was amazed at the normal maps applied tro the models which gave them an incredible amount of detail coupled with the real-time lighting and stencil shadows. Months before that, I also got hold of the leaked alpha which ran at about 5 FPS on my PC but it was something I had never seen before.
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Re: The Merits of Doom 3

Post by Enjay »

To be more positive...
Cherno wrote:but the chaingun and plasma rifle were great, maybe better than theor Doom counterparts.
The chaingun sounded great but I found it not as useful as it could have been in action - quite a clumsy weapon. The plasma gun, however, was pretty good and is probably my favourite weapon in the game. It also has a much less annoying sound than the original.
Cherno wrote:That being said, graphically, it did a lot of things right...
It did, and that was it's strength. I still see it as much more of a tech demo for the next generation (at the time) of graphics technology than a good game. As a tech demo, it was really pretty sweet. One of my favourite pre-release videos was of the "bird man" enemy walking towards the camera with the lighting changing all around him.

https://youtu.be/Qj3dPyk7hPI?t=126

Honestly, in many ways, I found watching videos of the tech demos and the good bits of the game more entertaining and interesting than actually playing it. I was also disappointed that the bird man was not in the initial game. I was really looking forward to seeing him in action. I thought he looked great. I wonder why he was dropped?

Anyway, part of the cost of all those graphical bells and whistles was - I believe - the darkness. Certainly at the time I saw a lot of people saying that in order to have real-time lighting bouncing off of every surface on 2004 computers, you simply couldn't have enough lights to illuminate areas fully. So everywhere, even before the invasion happened, was underlit. And the dark wasn't just dark, it was often pitch black because there was no light in those areas at all, and very markedly so at the edge of the lights: sudden darkness from light in a way that rarely happens in that kind of environment, with that kind of lighting in real life. The room I'm in now (night time) is lit by a single bulb and, of course, there are shadows under the desk, behind cupboards and so on but nowhere is black with no light at all.

Anyway, I said I was going to be more positive and I'm straying from that already. :?
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