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Single-Player Doom 3 Details Discussed 47

Posted by simoniker from the delightful-dynastic-devilry dept.
MohitKhanna writes "GameSpy has posted a new preview of Doom 3, along with a couple of new screenshots from the game. The article gives an insight into what the single-player story mode of Doom 3 will be like, and also introduces a few new monsters." Blue's News has a good round-up of the other Doom 3 articles released today, also including a new Tim Willits and Todd Hollenshead interview at GameArena, and this 2004-due FPS is also previewed at Eurogamer and checked out via GameSpot.
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Single-Player Doom 3 Details Discussed More

Single-Player Doom 3 Details Discussed

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  • What is it about Doom (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rekkanoryo ( 676146 ) * <rekkanoryo AT rekkanoryo DOT org> on Tuesday September 23, 2003 @06:20PM (#7038376) Homepage
    What I've always wondered about the Doom series is what is it about the series that appeals to so many people? I admit I haven't given the game a chance, but every time I see an article on Doom or Duke Nukem or several other titles, I always have to wonder what people see in the games. Are they really unique (as in different from other games in the genre instead of being cookie-cutter titles)? Or do they retain popularity because they were unique to begin with and just have a loyal fan base? Am I entirely missing the point?

    My intention is not to be a troll or to start a flame war--I am geniunely curious as to what makes a game/series like Doom so popular.

    • Re:What is it about Doom (Score:5, Insightful)

      by fredrikj ( 629833 ) on Tuesday September 23, 2003 @06:27PM (#7038432) Homepage
      For me, personally, it's really the atmosphere of the original Doom. Particularly Knee-Deep in the Dead (the first episode), with its brilliantly laid out levels, the suggestive misty sky (its impact is more important than you might think :), hunting for secret areas, and the awesome surreal design in general. Besides, the gameplay is top notch. And you can make levels for the game.
      • Doom was great. Loved it, completed it twice.

        I don't get the enthusiasm for Doom 3 though. The genre has moved on, and Id have shown with the last two Quake's that they're little more than a tech demonstration, being woefully short on gameplay, and certainly not offering anything other games like Unreal Tournament offer.

        I would love to be excited about Doom 3, I really would. But I just don't care. In fact the only game release I care about on the PC right now is Knights of the Old Republic.
      • How did you forget the sounds? The wheezing, the clicking of a far off imp - I challenge you to find a game with more atmospheric sounds. Even the "chugga" of changing the menu was memorable.

    • Re:What is it about Doom (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Tuesday September 23, 2003 @06:50PM (#7038598) Homepage Journal
      doom was 'really something else' when it came, the '3d' of it all was quite something. even though it was basically just a rehash of wolfenstein 3d, it had enough new things to be really cool(area lighting for example, blinking lights and stuff). also the gameplay was quite good, dodging fireballs and shooting demons, you could choose a tactic in most places too.

      (though, ultima underworld does have more elegant engine for most parts, doom is still so arcade in it's approach(no friendly npc's, no story to talk about, most levels being honest 'get 3 keys' missions) that it works for far bigger audience and is quite excellent for short gaming sessions as for longer sessions as well)
    • Umm.. Killing stuff is fun. If a game is well made, it doesn't need to be unique to attract fans.. look at Halo.
    • Clearly you weren't in hs/college in the early/mid 90's. Wow, we used to play doom so much, at the time it was the only multiplayer 3d game available. It was so much fun... There weren't billions of games available at the time that could all do this, at the time it was either that or castle wolfenstein (no multiplayer, IIRC).

      -Sean

    • Re:What is it about Doom (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Kwil ( 53679 ) on Tuesday September 23, 2003 @08:35PM (#7039350)
      One thing both I and my wife agree on is that the original Doom is still, to this day, the most *satisfying* gameplay experience of any of the first person shooters. It's nowhere near as pretty, complex, scary, or even interesting as the newer ones when you get right down to it, but it's still the most satisfying.

      This is for a number of reasons. The first and most common one that we can recount is the "one shot, one kill" effect that you can get as soon as you pick up the shotgun. And in fact, the level design emphasized this effect as the first level had a place where you open a door to be confronted by an imp at close range. Your first reaction is to jump and pull the the trigger - BOOM! Imp flies backwards, dead. It's immensely satisfying..something just scared the bejeebers out of you and you killed it, just like that. Talk about your instant gratification. And you could do this with basically all of the lower class enemies.

      It seems most of the more recent FPS games require you to unload quite a few shots, even of some of the higher level weapons, before anything at all will fall down. Sure, they all have their one-shot, one-kill weapons, but typically these are specialized like a sniper rifle, which requires using a scope or aim-bot like abilities, or a rocket-launcher type of weapon, which you dare not use in close quarters because you'll likely take yourself out with it as well.

      A second reason, though less obvious, is that the first few weapons in Doom are all simply more powerful versions of the previous one. Even Quake messed this up somewhat, in that one of the early weapons you pick up is the nail gun. While more powerful, it's also more specialized -- it works better with some enemies than others. Doom didn't make you think about that until you got quite a few levels in and picked up your first rocket launcher.

      Together, these two things worked to make the game simple, satisfying, and gave it a great flow. You could run through the game and if you were good, you'd never have to stop to finish killing something. Your first shot was enough.

      The one shot, one kill effect also had other bonuses in that when you started running into guys that you couldn't do that with, you inherently understood that you were dealing with something nastier. It felt more like a difference in kind, rather than (as with most of the newer games) a difference merely in degree.

      The final thing about Doom was that the control was *smooth*. Unless you were playing on a bottom of the barrel computer, there was no question of what framerate you were getting, because you were getting enough.

      All in all, it combined to make Doom a classic.

      • I agree completely. I've recently played through both Doom and Doom 2 at ultraviolence difficulty and without cheating, and wow, that game is genius. I mean, it's almost 10 years old and it's still utterly fantastic.

        The thing about the levels is that they are designed very intelligently, so that it's not just a maze, or arena for killing demons, but an intricate puzzle. Once you factor in things like ammunition levels, it becomes all the more difficult.

        An example: During the middle of Doom 2, I really

    • Re:What is it about Doom (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DarkZero ( 516460 ) on Tuesday September 23, 2003 @11:07PM (#7040302)
      What I've always wondered about the Doom series is what is it about the series that appeals to so many people? I admit I haven't given the game a chance, but every time I see an article on Doom or Duke Nukem or several other titles, I always have to wonder what people see in the games. Are they really unique (as in different from other games in the genre instead of being cookie-cutter titles)? Or do they retain popularity because they were unique to begin with and just have a loyal fan base? Am I entirely missing the point?

      Besides the nostalgia factor, there's also the fact that Doom is just... a pure gaming experience, I guess you could say. Just like many people prefer Super Metroid over Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow or Megaman Zero, or Time Crisis over Vampire Night or Ninja Assault, Doom just has a purer FPS core than most newer FPS games. Doom has no stealth levels, no plot, no puzzles, no platform jumping, no points where you're stripped of your weapons for the sake of the story... just guns, ammo, and targets that can really fuck you up if you're not careful.

      There are also things that Doom got right that have simply been lost in the genre since then. In recent FPS games, the enemies move in one of two distinct ways: they patrol an area or hunt you down. Doom chose neither of these. In Doom, the enemies just wander around wherever they want. Thus, the levels begin to change in structure as you open doors and/or run from enemies. Based on the order in which you open the doors, certainly areas could be relatively calm or complete death traps, and it's so random that you can't even catalogue it well in an FAQ. The result creates much tougher AI than most scripted games.

      And I don't know about anyone else, but I haven't seen an FPS in quite awhile with traps as effective or fun as Doom. Return to Castle Wolfenstein had nothing like the ambushes in Doom, which took place in total darkness with an army of zombies coming at you from the ground and imps sniping from above. Those were awesome.
      • There are also things that Doom got right that have simply been lost in the genre since then.


        Damn right. I'd turn the question around and ask "What the hell is it about Quake that makes people so keen on it?"

        Apart from the eye candy, Quake was a step backwards from Doom in every respect. Really dumb monster AI, dull single-player levels, less puzzling puzzles.
    • Back in 1993 (or was it 1994?), Doom probably sold as many PC systems as MS Office. Just about everyone I knew, myself included, took one look at Doom and revised their opinions of PCs as gaming machines.
      Before Doom PCs were seen as business-only machines by gamers. Both the Atari-ST and Amiga platforms were better looking and had better games.
      Gaming machines and consoles were optimised for fast sprite blitting and horizontal scrolling games were by far the most common. Doom was probably the first game to r

    • Haven't given the game a chance? Then do [doomworld.com] so [sourceforge.net]!

    • My first experience with Doom was when I saw one of the guys playing it on a PC at our Amiga user group. It wasn't until I happened to get a PC shortly after , and I played Doom at night, in the dark, on my own. Then of course Quake came along, that was an interesting moment in the dark when the first shambler I saw gated in. For me, Quake had the better atmosphere and should have been regarded as Doom 3, was it ever intended so?

  • Borrowing a bit? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Bagels ( 676159 ) on Tuesday September 23, 2003 @06:57PM (#7038645)
    The game's description so far sounds like it borrows quite a bit from System Shock 2 (notably, on the pacing of the encounters and the bit about the PDA as a device to advance the storyline). Also, I must say that the physics engine tech demo described in the article simply doesn't sound as impressive as the tech demo for Half-Life 2 - stacks of boxes that collapse don't really match up to a "working" engine that reacts realistically.

    • Re:Borrowing a bit? (Score:3, Informative)

      by mnemonic_ ( 164550 )
      You do realize that Half-Life's physics engine isn't actually Half-Life's, don't you? It is the HAVOK [havok.com] physics engine, long used in the 3ds max plugin known as reactor.

      As for whether it is more functional than the physics simulation contained within the Doom 3 engine; in my opinion, it is too soon to tell.

  • Unattributed rumors of Tool doing music for Doom 3 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by waaka! ( 681130 ) on Tuesday September 23, 2003 @07:24PM (#7038851)

    ...according to IGN [ign.com].

    Mentioned on the Blue's News link, but not here, since I imagine that not everyone will read all the articles. Seeing as they were all from Willits and Hollenshead's demonstrations at QuakeCon, I'm not surprised that most of the articles are similar, if not identical, in content.

  • Also on Gamespot... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by MMaestro ( 585010 )
    http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/doom3/preview_60 75567.html

    If Doom 3 truely does succeed at delivering a really outstanding single player experience, then Doom 3 will shatter the expectations players have of PC FPS games. No longer will game developers be able to focus on primarily multiplayer experiences or cheap gimmicks to sell.

    • Re:Also on Gamespot... (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      From a recent Q&A [bigpond.com] with Tim Willits and Todd Hollenshead:

      GameArena: Will we see extended support in the Doom 3 engine for multiplayer for mods and future titles?

      Tim Willits: The player limit is fully scalable. We picked four for a number of reasons but those can be scaled up. As far as mod development goes, we think that with the flexibility and the tools that will ship with Doom 3 - the editors included - and because we pulled out a lot of the game code and put it into scripting, we believe th
  • About once every couple years, a game comes out that convinces me to go spend another $1000 on computer upgrades. So much for the GeForce Ti 4600 I bought for $400 a year ago - gotta have DirectX 9 support now. Between Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 this Xmas season is going to cost me a FORTUNE!
  • Its where the game is coming from for some people, Id pretty much created the FPS and with that it has a reputation and many people buy based on the reputation of the company. You know what would be really cool, if Id just released Doom III for Linux, there would probably be quite a massive switch to Linux. Wishful thinking but maybe one day there will be commercial Linux only games, when Windows is all but dead.
  • The original Half-Life marked the end of iD as a viable player in the content game. Don't get me wrong, the engines they create are used time and time again to create some fairly great stuff, and no doubt we'll see the same of Doom III.

    But in terms of viable single player pure *content*, I still don't see Doom III as being much more than a tech demo at worst, and at best a 3D Resident Evil wannabe. I've tried, I really have, but there just isn't much to like when we have potentially more creative work li

    • Carmack is Graphics (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ChopsMIDI ( 613634 )
      Why is Carmack working towards vertical development, better graphics, instead of horizontal development (non-graphical development). I understand there are certain advancements in Doom III in terms of physics, but the main thrust is graphics. Why? Oh, because that's where the money is (-cough- ATI/NVIDIA -cough-). I forgot.

      Carmack has never claimed to be a content designer. He's a graphics programmer, arguably the best in the world. Why on Earth would you take the best graphics programmer in the world
    • WTF? Doom was not just a revelation in graphics, it also had some truly kick-ass gameplay. If you are bored one afternoon I also recommend that you fire up quake- it is truly one of the best single player fps games ever. All of ID's titles have had good gameplay *as well as* good graphics. They have the pick up and play factor that means that the game is not too complex. But then I have simple tastes. I want a game, not a life simulator. I want to run around and shoot lots of things, not try to find keys o
      • No, I never said Doom I and II weren't decent; I'm more than willing to give credit where credit is due. The same with Quake (although I think it's stretching it to say it was one of the best FPS). However, I think we entered a post-iD world when Valve released Half Life. Of course, we had stuff like Blood and System Shock that well predated the story-focused scripted Half Life.

        I'm also not sure I'd agree with the less keys more pure game, otherwise that flash spank the monkey game is god's gift to huma
    • Because ID makes a load of cash licensing it's engine to 3rd parties.

      Think MOHAA etc..
  • You know what, I'm going to stop looking at all these screenshots and reading the articles. One of the things that made Doom and Quake cool was when you ran into an enemy for the first time, you went, "What the -?" It looks like they're doing a lot of cool work on the monsters for this new release, so I will stop spoiling the suprises for myself. At least they're not giving away the boss designs...
    • Let me remnise about doom..
      and damm it my post didnt go though..

      My first game on doom was with god mode on, i did the first few leves and then whent "wtf, this is no fun"

      I turned god mode off, and started on UltraViolance in act2.. oh yes call me a wimp for not choseing Nightmare, but let me reminde you there would be no nightmare difictuly for quite a while yet..

      Everythign going fine,
      im killing things, im solving problems,
      im geting killed everynow and then it happend..

      I turn a connor,
      im killing things
  • Those of us who've posted here about our lack of enthusiasm for Doom III... we're not alone [penny-arcade.com].

    I bet Hot Topic is already selling t-shirts with the screenshots.



    psssss, iD....gothic industrial is so twentieth century.....

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