DOOM: The Boardgame 315
Ant writes "And I thought I had seen it all from DOOM world. Nope, there is a boardgame! It is for 2 to 4 players, playable in 1 to 2 hours, based on the groundbreaking DOOM 3 computer game by id Software. Seen on Blue's News." There's also Frag, which IMHO isn't a very good boardgame. The Doom game looks like it might work, though.
Sounds quite like D&D... (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know, but this sounds like your typical board-playable RPG.
As an off-topic side note, I also remember the Spy vs Spy board game [collectmad.com], we had lots of fun with that one (not that it's related, just a thought)
More information on boardgamegeek (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/10640 [boardgamegeek.com]
Ranked 68th, that's very good!
BoardGameGeek (Score:4, Informative)
The place to check this out is the BoardGameGeek Doom: The Boardgame [boardgamegeek.com] page, which has reviews, scenarios, and other good stuff.
I want the collectors edition (Score:5, Informative)
yeah, that would be cool,
~me walks away from the keyboard for the night, not sure if I'm serious or joking....
I spent New Year's eve playing this... (Score:5, Informative)
The rules provided in the box aren't always clear, but the game does have a lot of replayability. In fact, playing a mission you haven't played before can be extremely difficult, as it's easy to waste too much time and too many respawns exploring.
Some people would argue that the ammo system is rather sucky, though. You collect ammo counters and lose them on the basis of the dice, not for every shot you make, so you may get no opportunity to use the bigger weapons with two dice that have chances to miss. This is especially crucial when you consider some monsters can't even be harmed by most weapons. Oh, and the losing armour on respawn really, really sucks, because there's so little of it in most missions, and without it, pretty much everything that attacks you will do damage.
If you play it much, you'll probably want to establish some tailored rules for your group.
Other stuff: the miniatures are decent and painting allows you to see the nice amount of detail they have on them; the playing pieces and cards are all heavy enough stock that should last a fair while.
Give it a try, though!
Reviews and Pictures and MODS at BoardGameGeek (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/10640 [boardgamegeek.com]
Over priced and late (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Since when? (Score:5, Informative)
Pardon me for nitpicking, but how exactly is Doom 3 a high-poly game that requires "excessive" processing power? If you took Doom 3's graphics on its own and slapped it on an older engine, it would take much, much longer to draw at the same quality.
You're clearly underestimating the massive engineering effort put into making the game. If you think Doom 3's engine was just created by "anyone", think again. Setting aside who made that graphics engine (as there are already lots of Carmack fanboys in the world to emphasize that point), the algorithms used in the game are the product of years of research work by other guys who aren't even directly involved in Doom 3's making.
The shadows alone, though largely derided by most people for making the game "too dark", is only made possible due to Everitt, Kilgard and other people's groundbreaking research work on the area. I currently have their papers on my desk. Without those algorithms, Doom 3's shadows would approach *polynomial* time just to get it to render!
If you want to criticize the game itself, go ahead. (I personally liked the game's atmosphere more than Half-Life 2, but my subjective opinions rarely count for anything.) But don't discount the fact that it took real people with great minds to actually make these stuff. I could say with absolute certainty that Doom 3 is ground-breaking in the graphics arena.
U-G-L-Y (Score:2, Informative)
I'd gladly pay a little more for figures that were painted to look a bit more like their digital counterparts.
Expense of board games (Score:3, Informative)
That said, is anyone else reminded of the Day of the Dead boardgame [homepageofthedead.com]? (link can't be checked, at work and the filters don't allow anything with "game" in it. Alt link [rpg.net] or use Google to find it yourself)
Sounds like Space Crusade (Score:2, Informative)
In both games, up to three players control marines searching through a map, with another player (controlling the nasties) able to drop new things in places the players can't see.
Space Crusade was fun, but fiendishly hard for the marines...which is where I think they got the idea
Played Doom board game... a mini-review... (Score:3, Informative)
The first thing I noticed was the game had approximately a metric buttload of figurines, dice, cards, and widgets. Heck, I think there are even some out-of-state fireworks and dancing girls in the box. So, if you're into games with lotsa bits, Doom has some serious heft to it.
With those bits comes a lot of dice-rolling. Each weapon has an array of dice to be thrown, each with varying damages, ranges, and ammo-usage. We found ammo to be extremely scarce. Each player starts out with a small amount of ammo, and it tends to run out quickly -- at least one out of every three attacks. Due to some bad die rolls, our "sharpshooter" marine was constantly running out of ammo, and had to often resort to the classic "fist" attack. (Which, strangely enough, seems to be more effective than the pistol.)
The line-of-sight rules combined with Evil's spawning rules seemed a little out-of-line. Evil was able to use a constant supply of cards in his hand to spawn new bad guys (which is a departure from the video game). Evil could spawn anywhere he could put a critter out of our "line-of-sight". Unfortunately, even one or two little critters could block line of sight for a big critter. When we finally started working carefully to cover every corner, being careful of line-of-sight, Evil played a "Darkness" card which allowed new baddies to spawn. Twice. This was all great fun for the Evil player, but irritating and frustrating for the players. (In the original game, a player could "clear out" an area and use it as a safe zone. Nothing doing in the board game.)
The game allows 6 respawns of the players before the evil player wins. Which is a good thing -- us players had lost 3 lives before we got out of the first room. The game also took a long time to play. We played for nearly 3 hours before we gave up the ghost, but none of the players except for Evil seemed to have a good time.
Earlier the same day, we played the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer [boardgamegeek.com]" game, which is along the same lines as Doom. A similar theme, a similar style of play (one player versus the rest), but Buffy seemed much better for some reason. Buffy kept things simple, which Doom bogged down with the details.
I'm not really looking forward to playing the Doom boardgame again, but I'll probably give it another shot to see if there was something that I missed. Although it had lovely pieces, I think the gameplay was a lot of dice-rolling for three hours, with the odds stacked frustratingly against the Marines to the point of being "not fun." Maybe the dice were just not with us. If you like the pretty bits, and like slapping a bunch of dice and figures around the table, then you might want to check this out.
Re:Played Doom board game... a mini-review... (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, it's reasonable value when you look at the price of other boardgames and what you get for the cash.
Maybe the dice were just not with us.
I think an "every X shots you lose an ammo token" rule would be a better way of handling things.
Buffy kept things simple, which Doom bogged down with the details.
Plays a lot quicker once people are familiar with the setup. And yep, the Evil player has a decided advantage if they're sharp enough to use all of their options. It's probably best if everyone gets a turn being the Evil.