Doom 3 Demo Available

sanderb writes "The Doom 3 demo is out (on Windows). It does not seem to be linked on the Doom 3 site yet, but is available from e.g. 3D Gamers (includes torrent). Time to see what my FX5200 can do..." Other readers point to Fileaholic.Com and Shacknews.com.

That's good of them - a demo of the beginning

[Enlarge Your Penis]

Hasn't the main complaint with Doom 3 been that it gets crap in the middle? Publishers releasing demos highlighting only their showcase early levels are the reason people pirate games to try them out.

Re:You mean

[Anonymous Coward]

they're just *now* getting a demo out? Doesn't that usually come *before* the game is released?

No kidding. Don't waste your bandwidth, Doom 3 sucks royally. It's too dark and boring. You can't have your flashlight on while holding your gun so it's a pain in the ass to even see an enemy coming at you. Also, multiplayer is virtually non-existant! I think the most players you can have is 4. WTF is this, 1994?

Where is the Linux version

[Izaak]

I am not buying Doom III until the Linux version is available for download. That was originally promised about a week after the Windows release... but I still don't see it. Any word from ID on this?

Mac version

[thedogcow]

I really wish they should give more specifics on a mac version. They used a mac to demo Doom 3 way back when for E3, they acknowledged they had a mac version a couple weeks ago that runs... what is the big deal?
I really want to see how Doom 3 performs on my new DP 2.5GHz G5, particularly when I get my Nvidia 6800 Ultra DDL card.

Re:You mean

[Jahf]

That's nuts ... if you have a system that you doubt can run it, you don't buy it until:

a) the demo comes out

b) you upgrade

or

c) you cave in and try anyway

It isn't id's fault if people do c) ... especially if they've announced that the demo will follow on the full release (even before they finish the Linux or Mac binaries), which they most definitely did say.

And the trend lately has been for demos to come out shortly following the full release. Fact is, people who release a demo before a game's release are doing it with the knowledge it will probably not be a full showcase and it is worth it to try and drum up business. On the other hand, if a company knows that the game is high profile and will sell, there is far more incentive to finish the full game and then do a polished demo.

Anyone tried it...

[Trikenstein]

With a Radeon 8500?
All the reviews I've seen are running it on pretty current hardware.
Radeon 9800 pros and newer.
And the nVidia equivalents.

Re:Short review of the game

[Zorilla]

Once you realized that when you picked up that 'too good to be true' item, you'd be blitzed by ten monsters suddenly spawning, it got old REAL quick.

I didn't really witness too much of that. If you want to see a real pain in the ass, try Serious Sam. A mere +2 health vial will cause about 300 monsters to spawn and attack you.

As for trying to be too much like Doom 2, I wish it actually was more like Doom 1 or 2, but instead you get closed, dark areas, overly difficult monsters, and few scenery changes.

Re:Short review of the game

[DrXym]

I'm not sure what all the hype is about. I own Doom 3 and I also own Far Cry. I've completed both too. Far Cry, is a much, much, much better game.

It is better for a multitude of technical reasons, but I'll first mention why Doom is worse - the whole thing is flashlights, scripts and triggers. It might have been acceptable to use triggers in the original, but not in this day and age.

Progress through the game consists of a Quick Save, edge forward with the flashlight, Quick Save, step on trigger, look for baddies, fumble for gun, shoot baddies. If successfull repeat. It's just boring and shows little imagination. The baddies simply appear for the most part from nowhere so there is no anticipation, planning or strategy - just step on the trigger and shoot. There is little AI to speak of except for zombie troopers who at least duck behind cover. It's a shame because some of the levels are fantastically designed.

Now compare to Far Cry. First off this has outdoor zones that are truly massive, leading to some interesting play (e.g. you can snipe, attack in a vehicle, from the sea etc.) It also has drivable vehicles. It has a great physics model. The baddies are also fairly intelligent (they do some dumb things but they not are not completely stupid). There is a lot of randomness to the play so the game plays differently each time. Finally, the level design is better again than Doom. It also got there first with the "evil doctor" plot.

On the bad side, Far Cry has few save points but there is a console command to work around that. It also has much higher system requirements but looks gorgeous if you turn the quality up the full way.

Neither has much in the way of network play (capture the flag etc.) but at least Far Cry sets you up with a server list making it easy to join a game.

To me Doom feels a year out of date. And for my money Doom was something of a let down. If you haven't bought it already, play the demo and make up your own minds, but my advice would be to skip it.

I never played the original Half Life, so I'm keen to see what the fuss is about for the sequel, but that would the one I am interested in a demo for.

Re:Getting your hopes up.

[ergo98]

On second thought, if you just run around the game without ever using the flashlight, you won't be able to see anything anyway, so you won't realize that you're only getting 13 frames per second!

I completed Doom 3 on my rather antiquated GF4 Ti4400, and have a few comments regarding this:

• The demands of the game vary considerably. On my lowly GF4 Ti4400 I ran at Medium quality, achieving a very acceptable framerate, for the majority of the game. There were a couple of sections that became a slideshow and required a downgrade to Low (one I suspect was a bug and perhaps someone accidentally duplicated a model a thousand times or so, as there was nothing visually exceptional in the area. The other was a massive opponent), but otherwise it ran great. The FX5200 would do that much better. The hardware complaints are generally people who think that they have some constitutional right to crank every visual setting to the top and achieve smooth gameplay on any rig
• The comments about the flashlight are completely misguided, and are the result of people with their brightness turned down too far, or who played the game in a bright environment (which results in your own eyes having a vastly decreased ability to perceive the subtle darkness changes). Follow the instructions on the box and play in a darkened room and you'll have no problem apart from one or two short scenes that truly are dark. The idea that people used a patch because they can't read is baffling. If id is at fault, it's that they didn't supply a THX style visual diagnostic screen for people to adjust to, and that they don't put the "Are you in a dark room?" as a confirmation when you launch the game

Re:Linux?

[lphuberdeau]

I think they should just release the demo for linux anyway and mention that it won't work with nVidia. And they should place a link to complain to ATI for they lack of Linux support.

Anyone running Linux with an ATI card knows that their drivers are worthless. I heard they were getting better but I still havn't heard of anyone satisfied.

Re:You mean

[Firehawke]

Really? I was totally disappointed with Far Cry. The AI seemed really flaky, where they could sometimes see you crouching in the middle of bushes so thick you couldn't see out, but other times couldn't see you if you were standing practically in front of them. Admittedly the water looked good, and the environments looked nice, but the gameplay was really suffering.

Re:at least

[Deraj DeZine]

they may well take the "piracy fukced us"

i for exmaple pay for the games i pirate if they're any good

So you pirate games and then don't pay for them if you don't like them? Whereas if you couldn't pirate them, you'd buy them and then just be upset that you wasted money? Sounds like you're demonstrating that piracy eats into sales.

Re:Short review of the game

[26199]

I've also played both, and would tend to disagree.

IMHO, Far Cry wins on one thing and one thing only; the fact that you can choose several different approaches means I'll probably play it more times.

Doom 3 wins on plot... it was much more believable than Far Cry. Sure, it got samey after a while, but unless you completed it all in one sitting, that wasn't a problem... Far Cry also starts to feel a bit repetitive towards the end.

Incidentally, I think that if you cheated to save in Far Cry you missed out... the tension that came from not having saved recently was a big part of the playing experience for me. (It got frustrating once or twice, but was well worth it in the end).

Basically, I think both are awesome :-)

(OT) EA copy protection

[GuyWithLag]

I had a similar problem with Sim City 4 - it requires a CD-ROM drive to run off. Guess what, I have a DVD-ROM and a CD-burner, ant it refuses to run from both of them. WTF, who buys CD-ROM drives these days? Oh, and The Sims 2? It's 60 friggin euros here in Greece!

Re:Where is the Linux version

[HAKdragon]

Can you mix 3D APIs? I was under the impresion that you could have a D3D renderer, an OGL render, a renderer, but you couldn't mix them.

Re:Where is the Linux version

[Trejkaz]

Pfft... I don't see SDL causing any massive performance hits on Neverwinter Nights. The Linux version (which is based on SDL) runs just as fast as the Windows version (which is not based on SDL, oddly.)

So what makes Doom 3 so special that a performance hit would actually take place, and do you really think id are going to use raw X calls to get the keyboard input and such?