Evil Empire Gaming

Doom3 Impressions Part 2

Following on from the previous page 'Initial Impressions', here are some more specific impressions including the annoying. Just so you wouldn't think I'm some sort of gushing Doom3 fanboy.

Weapons

You get the standard id trademark selection of weapons in Doom3. The pistol is still useless, although I think it is very useful against the nests of spiders you come across. They seem to go pop with only 2 bullets and it allows you to conserve ammo for the other weapons.

The shotgun does not disappoint. It's still the badass weapon of choice but I can hear the anguished cries of Doom fans everywhere lamenting the lack of the double barreled shotgun! I characterised the machine gun as 'mild' on this page and I think I was spot on. It's the classic McBain "pea-shooter". If you have the MG out, and a host of evil beasties fill the room, swap it for the shotgun or the chaingun if you can, the MG will just run out and you've hardly made a dent in the numbers. Better to get close with the shotgun where you can get a one shot kill.

The chaingun has all the hallmarks of the classic Doom weapon. Actually I think it's better. And thank God, despite the ammo sharing annoyance described below it doesn't share ammo with the pistol like the original. You can really rip things apart with it but it only had 60 rounds in each belt. Same as the size of the MG clip. I think it should have had at least 100 or more! You really want to plant you feet in the doorway and mow down everything in the room in a "Your ass is grass, Satan, and this my lawnmower" kind of way but there's just not enough continuous ammo to do so.

I have a small problem with ammo and other items though.

In the weapons that require clips you don't waste any ammo; it's automatically distributed between clips. If you have a the pistol, 6 rounds in clip and 7 rounds in reserve, do a reload and now you have 12 rounds in clip and 1 round in reserve. It's an odd little quirk. It works fine for the shottie, because you load it one round at a time. while this may have been fine for Doom 1 and 2, we've been exposed to more realistic military style games since then and now it doesn't quite sit right. When you reload the MG, you see the spent clip spring out of the weapon so those round should be gone.

The other item that doesn't quite site right is the armour shard. We've had them since Quake2 in id games but what are they? Are they little pieces of metal you somehow duct-tape to your shirt to patch up the holes? Can't be because we don't have any duct-tape other wise we'd have used it to tape the torch to our shotgun!

I guess I was hoping for a little more 'Aliens' style military fiction.

Items and Objects

Some boxes, chairs, screen doors, etc. lying on the ground are moveable if you push or shoot them but I'm wondering why, apart from a little realism? The objects on the floor you can move around are sometimes annoying. This is mainly because you can't manipulate them, they just get bumped around as you walk into them. It is annoying especially when something is in your way and you just want to get into the corner to pick something up. It feels like you're an armless gumby and not unlike the games in which you're a penguin and you have to move blocks of ice around to block the evil seals with explosives.

Which leads me to explosive barrels. A Doom signature object, I know. But haven't they been done to death? I mean what kind of scientific installation leaves so much explosive stuff in barrels just lying around the place? Put them where they could be expected to be stored.

There's also heaps of other stuff just lying around as well; shine your torch behind a crate and you're most likely to find a few armour shards and a box of shells lying there. Who leaves all this stuff lying around? It becomes very predictable. See 3 boxes in a corner, look behind, there's always stuff there. The worst examples of this are the secret caches of stuff. A secret panel opens, a monster jumps out and look, more ammo and health packs right there in the wall.

All the above is classic Doom game play but we've all moved on from there, it was 10 years ago. What I would have preferred is more story driven discovery and less arcade game. It's like the soul of Romero still haunts the brains at id. I don't think it would have been hard to put items in the context of the story. Make ammo and such only available at places like lockers, guard stations. It needs to be found in places where it looks plausable, like a firefight between marines and monsters took place. Picking over the dead bodies of slain marines would have been far more moody than checking behind the crate in the corner.

Monsters

If you love FarCry, you may be disappointed in the monster AI in Doom3. They're not dumb as a post like the original, monsters change direction and circle pillars if you go around the other side (although sometimes you can play peek-a-boo with them doing this), former-marines take up shooting positions and will duck and hide and everything comes after you once they know you're there. But, they don't attempt to team up and outflank you like FarCry. And I've still wandered into places and spotted the arm of a zombie, just standing there waiting to be activated, just like the original.

That said most monsters come out of the dark and there are brilliant and very scary moments. A swarm of spider creatures starts pouring out of the walls overwhelming you, an Imp slowly creeps towards you along the cieling, riding down an freight elevator a 2-headed thing is creeping down the shaft walls, circling around you getting ready to pounce.

So the AI isn't great, but in most places it doesn't matter. The situation is very close quarters, and they're coming straight at you. You don't really have time to think about their tactics.

A Short Mention About Program Performance

Surprisingly the game program runs very fast indeed. Levels don't take very long to load, if you hit esc in the middle of a game the menu comes up instantly. It all feel very solid and responsive. I might be getting a little negative influence from Battfield Vietnam here, which feels like a sluggish, flea bitten mutt in comparision.

This is an important feature in this kind of game. When you are slowly making your way through levels at Veteran or Nightmare level of difficulty, you tend to save and die a lot, making it necessary to do a lot of reloading saved games in one session. In Doom3 it takes a metter of seconds to do so.

Final Thoughts

The above 'annoyances' are small and ultimately don't detract from the experience. It's like the ultimate haunted house ride at the show, it's well worth the money.

Read on for my impressions of Multiplayer Doom3...

Comments