HotWax wrote:Graf Zahl wrote:Doom3 IS a HL ripoff. There are lots of gameplay elements in Doom3 which are directly taken from Half-Life:
1. The beginning of the story: You arrive when everything is 'normal' but then you are an eyewitness of something going *very* wrong.
That took place in the Doom story. Try again.
But not inside the game so the player could experience it. Try again yourself!
2. Many monsters are teleporting in near the player
There were teleport ambushes even in vanilla Doom. They didn't happen more often because they didn't have the scripting they needed at the time.
But they work totally differently so again they don't count. BTW, there were exactly 2 teleport ambushes in all of Doom 1 and both were in optional parts of the map and could be avoided.
3. Health recharge stations (which I haven't seen in any other game yet.)
Lack of scripting. Whether they would have done something similar without HL doing it first is up for grabs, but this is a very minor part of the game and has absolutely nothing to do with the story.
But it was a very strong reminder of HL. The health recharge stations were one of HL's trademark items.
4. Events in both games have a strongly scripted feeling (i.e. very little interactivity with the story although both games pretend that it exists nevertheless)
So does every game made in the last 5 years.
That's because they all ripped off HL! It's truly sad that this static type of scripting has become the standard in modern games. They have become utterly linear and story driven. I prefer games where you are given a complex mission and then have to figure out yourself how to solve it - that does not mean walking along corridors and mazes of interconnected rooms in a strictly linear fashion. Doom3 is one of the worst offenders in this regard.
Right now I am at a point where I tend to avoid strongly story-driven games at all costs. I prefer those where the story is just a means to put the player in a place where he has to do something specific in order to solve a mission etc.
5. It takes place in a research installation
Ummmm, and Doom didn't?!!?
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No. It's just a collection of levels with names that more often than not don't fit the style and content. And even if you buy the story the intermission map makes it abundantly clear that each level is its one building/place/lab/whatever.
Of course there are differences but the points mentioned above are quite obvious to me. There were several instances in the game where my thoughts were something like 'Am I playing Half-Life or what?'
That's funny. While I was playing Half-Life I was thinking "Did they just tear out the Doom story completely, or what?!"
As I said: Some pro-forma story told in the manual doesn't count. I don't read that crap anyway.
Oh, and the most striking similarity between HL and Doom3 is something I completely forgot: You can almost sum up the goal of the game with 2 words 'Get out!' Aside from the fact that in both games you have to confront a big bad demon at the end that's all there is. And right now I really can't remember any other game with such a simplistic thing to achieve.
And don't even think for a moment that this has to do anything with the fact that I didn't like the game. I was thinking of Half-Life well before the game started to piss me off.
