The Merits of Doom 3

[Darkcrafter]

Despite my Classic Doom obsession I still think Doom 3 has a right to exist. It's just a different vision on what Doom should be. But it's closer to Doom 1 rather than to the 2nd regarding the story. I totally disliked such modern features like having a pocket mini computer full of stories making a detective out of the game and even worse touch pad switches. I always thought that Doom is more about hell with goodbad old skulls used as switches. The weapons weren't that good too. What was good with Doom 3 is the feeling of invasion and some constant pressure. So Doom 3 was better at story telling whereas Classic Doom player had to imagine a lot of things for themselves and that's probably the problem, so Doom 3 restricted a personal vision of the game as a whole.

[Reactor]

One thing which was absolutely flawless in Doom 3 is the "So you made it this far" at the very last level. I can't really tell you...dunno how to describe...but this was something so little, yet so awesome which actually made me smile. This was the only time in video-game history - as far as my knowledge goes - when the evil final boss speaks with admission and acknowledgement to the hero.

You see, Doom 3 has several of such small, seemingly insignificant things which can really bring out admiration from the player.

[Ghastly]

The game didn't age very well at all, though. Played the BFG edition a few years back after getting it from a Steam sale. The game looks much worse than I remembered, and that's with the shitting computer I originally played on.

There's a set of mods that add higher-resolution textures, add some detail to models and reskin people and monsters, and that's not even including things like Sikkmod. Makes it look a heck of a lot better. BFG did almost nothing to visuals besides turning up base brightness (letting you see the low-res base textures even more clearly...), and it was years before the community was able to port those mods to the updated engine.

[Dr_Cosmobyte]

What was good with Doom 3 is the feeling of invasion and some constant pressure. So Doom 3 was better at story telling whereas Classic Doom player had to imagine a lot of things for themselves and that's probably the problem, so Doom 3 restricted a personal vision of the game as a whole.

This is something i must agree.

But i must both agree with RexS and Enjay: Doom 3 knew what attributes of realism to increase and left the other ones. It's kinda like in comics. When you start to explain too much science to actually LOOK real science stuff, you'll end up facing people confused if the comic book was meant to be realistic or not.

And that's not the point, it never should be 8 or 80. You can, yes, make a game look realistic and at the same time shine on the old game cliches.

[MartinHowe]

I have no reason to play DOOM3; for me it's not Doom, but a different kind of game, but that happens to resemble the FPS "real" Doom. At the time it originally came out I didn't have a computer that could play it, in any case. I also despise DRM and Steam and have so far left Doom3 BFG and Duke3D WT alone for this reason.

All I wanted to do was legally buy the additional DOOM2 content; however, GOG are having a sale at the moment, so I bought BFG just for NERVE.WAD, archived it (and the modified DOOM/DOOM2 IWADS for posterity), then deleted the game. I'll play NRFTL when I have time, though.

In the unlikely event I am ever bored enough to try DOOM3*, I can always download it again from the GOG account anyway; mind you, I have seen a lot of critisicsm of BFG DOOM3 compared to the original so I might go with the original version in any case; one can still get it second hand and an update renders it working on Windows 7.

For the curious, I have found that NERVE.WAD runs fine with the original DOOM2 IWAD (complete with "proper" health boxes ) and GZDOOM recognises it even with the original DOOM2 IWAD loaded.


* With a collection of over 3000+ Duke3D levels and Korax alone knows how many Doom/2, Heretic and HeXen WADs on my hard drive, I think this unlikely

EDIT: Since Steam are having a sale with ridiculous discounts, I *did* buy WT ... for £2.99 - half the price of NRFTL, LOL. I will use EDuke32 to play it so my steam account and software installation can sit there and rot

[Reactor]

More than 3000 Duke Nukem 3D levels? My, my, you surely are a hardcore collector, ain't ya? I am impressed. The most Duke3D maps I had was about 50, most of which were multiplayer-only crap with no monsters. What can I say...in the pre-internet era, possibilities were limited to obtain user maps.

[TDG]

Hello all,

I actually have a question that has more to do with Doom 3 modding than the topic of if Doom 3 can stand up to Doom 1, 2, and 2016. (to respect the spirit of this topic I will do so in a moment)

I want to improve the quality of the shotgun in Doom 3 (and ROE) and have been trying out this mod: https://www.moddb.com/mods/slug-rounds-for-shotgun
But it doesn't seem to work like shown in the video. I placed the file in the base folder of Doom 3, the Doom 3 folder itself, but it keeps acting like the old version.
Has anyone here have any experience with this mod and know how to make it work?

Okay to the subject of this topic, first of all people need to know that I am not a big fan of Doom 1 and 2.
Yes blasphemy I know. It is not because the games are old (I was in my teens when Doom 1 came out and was quite impressed with it at the time), but for me FPS games became interesting when Half Life 1 and Unreal came out and I soon found out that those games represent my niche in FPS gaming (story driven ones).
So my main interest in mods and total conversions of Doom 2 are the narrative ones such as Blade of Agony, Ashes 2063, Total Chaos, and hopefully the Star Trek ones should one of them come out.

Now Doom 3. I did actually like it at the time (and still do now) but I was never totally overwhelmed by it. It was a fun sci-fi horror-ish FPS game that entertained me for the days that I played it and the same would be later for Resurrection of Evil (I did found that one weaker though), but for me the highlight of that year was Half Life 2.

Oh before I forget, I enjoyed Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Wolfenstein 2009 much more than Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny but I can absolutely not give a damn about The New Order and the New Colossus. Always enjoyed the Hellboy/Indiana Jones pulp vibe more.

I fully understand why people who prefer Doom 1 and 2 were really disappointed with Doom 3 (I have similar experiences with other franchises) and feel that Doom 2016 is a return to form. Not surprisingly I find that one rather boring but it sure looks visually nice.

While I am playing Doom 3 and ROE again at the moment I doubt I would do so often again in the future. I mainly reinstalled it so that I could play Phobos.

To be honest I much rather want to play the mentioned Doom 2 TCs because I really want to experience some new stories and enjoy the pulpy WW2 setting and the post-apocalyptic theme setting.

But should someone in the future make a Hell on Earth Doom 3 expansion or should the fates intervene and a commercial Doom 3 like Hell on Earth sequel be released I would definitely play it.

[Chris]

I fully understand why people who prefer Doom 1 and 2 were really disappointed with Doom 3 (I have similar experiences with other franchises) and feel that Doom 2016 is a return to form.

I actually feel Doom 2016 is an over-compensation of Doom 3 (or really, the overly-linear story-driven shooters that dominated the FPS genre). Doom 1 and 2 has a good mix of action and horror, which is unsurprising considering it was originally conceptualized as a game based on the Aliens movie, which also had a mix of action and horror. Doom 3 sacrificed a good bit of action to lean heavily on the horror atmosphere, while Doom 2016 sacrificed a good bit of the horror atmosphere to lean heavily on the action. Both are removed from the original, just in opposite directions. I would actually say Doom 2016 is more a parody of the original games, as much as it is an attempt to scoff at what shooters in general had become.

[TDG]

I get you. It is probably the nostalgia nut in me but I also prefer the... how would you describe it? "functional" "non overdone-ness" of Doom 1 and 2 compared to Doom 2016.
The style/look, choice of design/appearance. That has become rather lost with many media products over the years.

Again I prefer Doom 3 in general because of the story telling over Doom 1 and 2 but I have fondness for its looks. I rather like how more has been added to it over the years, that is one of the things I enjoy about the single player map pack of Brutal Doom.

[TensorMatrix]

I want to improve the quality of the shotgun in Doom 3 (and ROE) and have been trying out this mod: https://www.moddb.com/mods/slug-rounds-for-shotgun
But it doesn't seem to work like shown in the video. I placed the file in the base folder of Doom 3, the Doom 3 folder itself, but it keeps acting like the old version.
Has anyone here have any experience with this mod and know how to make it work?

Did you remember to unpack the .rar file and put the .pk4 file into the base folder?

[TDG]

I want to improve the quality of the shotgun in Doom 3 (and ROE) and have been trying out this mod: https://www.moddb.com/mods/slug-rounds-for-shotgun
But it doesn't seem to work like shown in the video. I placed the file in the base folder of Doom 3, the Doom 3 folder itself, but it keeps acting like the old version.
Has anyone here have any experience with this mod and know how to make it work?

Did you remember to unpack the .rar file and put the .pk4 file into the base folder?

Yes but for some reason it did not work.
I put it in;

(Drive):\Doom3 and (Drive):\Doom3\Base

Because the mod had not result I started to experiment with some other options such as changing the shotgun script and def file to improve it.

I would also like to find out if it is possible to import the shotgun from Phobos into Doom 3 and ROE as it has a nice model and good damage+range.