id Software Announces Doom 4 425
spoco2 writes "The id Software site has announced that work has begun on the next sequel to their most famous game, Doom. Will they be able to resurrect the series after what many considered to be a serious misstep with Doom 3? Oh... and they're hiring for the team, so maybe you can steer them in the right direction?"
What was wrong with Doom 3? (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know what was wrong with it, but I'm sure someone else will let me know what problems they had with it...
history (Score:2, Interesting)
Hype Hype Hype....show us the game (Score:2, Interesting)
Both from a game pov and from a "id are a tech company" pov.
The game was very poor. The game engine was barely used by anyone else because the tools were so bad and the quality quickly surpassed by others.
Prey showed how good the game could have been [and also how good artists could use Carmacks tech and make it work too]
ET:quake wars showed that Valve [with TF2] are light years ahead.
Unreal showed Id that a lack of tools and an arrogance that they matter just because they are Id is false.
Clearly plenty of other games companies that originally followed in ID's FPS wake have overtaken them.
Valve have created better games, a just-as-good engine, and developed steam. Carmack's response to steam "they didn't want to be publishers" is like someone in their 50s living in poverty saying there's more to life than money...if he'd said it before steam was a huge success it might be believable, but after, well, it's just stupid to say you wouldn't want to have created steam...and he isn't stupid...so it's worse, it's trying to save face. It's even more laughable given that, before ID games appeared on steam, ID had an FTP server on their site that most home users could have done better.
Id haven't produced a decent engine that loads of developers want to use, a decent game nor do you want to publish games...So, what exactly do you want to do then Carmack? Porting Doomto a mobile phone is probably your only recent success, but just about any bunch of half-literate open source buffoons have ported old versions of ID software games to different platforms...it's hardly world leading activity.
Carmack, more or less, acknowledged the tools for D3 were crap and no one [except the usual suspects like splash damage, raven and nerve] used the doom 3 engine and instead the Unreal engine was the tour de force when he introduced id tech 5.
As he introduced the brand new tech 5...he also claimed they were writing a "new IP", albeit without much evidence.
But the biggest problem with Doom 3 [and HL2 to some extent] were the years of hype and hyperbole with nothing to show. The games, no matter how good, could never live up to those expectations.
HL2 lived up to more though, even Ids hastily "it's supposed to be dark" to counter the tech appearing before hardware could really do enough lights and the stolen and kludged gravity gun for the sequel [saying "we always had one" didn't fool anyone...plenty have acknowledged ID as inspiration, it's a sign of their arrogance that ID don't acknowledge their sources]
Sadly it seems that Rage and ID Tech 5 are going the same way...lots of hype and are probably so far off as to be meaningless. Now, to add to the hype, Doom 4.
C'mon Carmack, implement something new...write the code, chuck out the dead wood and write some game play and instead of just saying "when it's done" STFU about it until it is and then, and only then, shout about it.
Re:What the hell was wrong with DOOM3? (Score:5, Interesting)
I tried to use the same trick in FEAR (a game that I thought really was scary). I shot one of the bad guys hid on the other side of the door and waited. And waited some more. And nothing happened. Just as I was about to give up and walk through the door myself I got shot in the back of the head by a sneaky bastard who had flanked behind me.
That game had decent challenging AI. In reality it still used a lot of tricks to keep things simple for the developers, but it gave the appearance of being intelligent and made the game fun and interesting.
I'm tired of Doom (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:they seem like more of a tech company, (Score:2, Interesting)
Call of Duty was released using Quake 3 engine SIX YEARS after it debuted, and was arguably the last AAA Q3 engine game - one of seemingly hundreds of titles.
Where are all the Doom3 tech games?
Re:Misstep? (Score:4, Interesting)
I absolutely hate getting puzzles in an FPS. When I play an FPS I want action, adrenaline, and mindless carnage. I want to vent, to get rid of my frustrations.
Back when Wolfenstien was new there was a german shepherd in the yard next door that would bark all night. I'd take great pleasure in firing up wolfenstien just to shoot the dogs.
If traffic had me pissed on the way home I'd fire up Screamer. If jaywalkers and those damned idiotic runners had me pissed I'd play Road Rash.
Puzzles? No thinks, I'll buy a newspaper for 75 cents and save my $60. Or have those damned games gone up even higher? Seems everything except my paycheck has.
-mcgrew
Re:Misstep? (Score:2, Interesting)
Which is great as long as it's fun.
Re:Misstep? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Maybe I'm being elitist here... (Score:3, Interesting)
I think a better solution would've been to mimic Half-Life's flashlight: it's always available, but you'll want to save the battery for when you really need it.
Realistically, where were the night-vision goggles? The technology to create them must have been lost sometime between now and our colonization of Mars. Maybe even have it so the monsters only appear when seen with the naked eye, so you have to take off the goggles to attack them?
Re:Misstep? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, that was the best horror movie I've seen in a while, probably because I was more sucked into it than I can be with cheesy static horror films.
The flashlight mod was for grannies and Halo players (same thing
Re:Misstep? (Score:0, Interesting)
To date, there has been no game that gave me the creepy feeling like the first level of the original Unreal.
F.E.A.R. came close, but that was mainly due to the way the soundtrack set the "mood".
Unreal accomplished the "creep out" factor without using nearly the same amount of "There's so little light that I can't see crap!" programming. That was a level that was coded perfectly.
I debated using the flashlight mod in D3 but, I am a video came purist in most respects, so in the end I tried to play the full game without resorting to hacks or "cheats".
Eventually, I uninstalled the game and moved on to other, more enjoyable games.
I am still waiting for the day where a game encompasses the creep factor of Unreal (level 1) and the sound of F.E.A.R.
That's a game that'll be worth playing. (with the lights on, I might add)
Re:Misstep? (Score:4, Interesting)
Again, I don't think the game was perfect, but it was one of the better FPS productions I've seen I'd seen in awhile.
Now, my issue was it didn't change much which everyone and their grandmother knew about this issue. My thought is, ID needs to rinse and repeat again what DOOM is all about just as they always have. The only thing they need to do different is add functionality to the game (ala Crysis) and the landscape. What I mean by that is everything doesn't have to be dark and dank to be scary. I remember the Cyber Demon in DOOM I scaring the crap out of me in broad daylight! Just the sound of him in the distance without even seeing him caused chills to run up my spine! LOL
Fifthed! (Score:3, Interesting)
I would play it after my daughter was in bed, and my wife would come downstairs and watch. I played on the XBox with a 48" TV and the home theatre sound system cranked up and the lights down low. My limit wasn't much more than an hour before I had to turn it off because I was starting to get freaked out. Don't get me started on those little wasp babies. When they first showed up I was backpedalling as fast as I could, blasting away with the shotgun yelling "That's sick! That's sick!".
I like the dark. It heightens the effect. But it does preclude playing in the daytime, since I can't darken my theatre room enough.
HBH
Re:Stop flogging the greasy spot (Score:2, Interesting)
For example, your issue with requiring a key to open the access code. Personally, I'd love to blow a hole in the wall when I know I can. And, a game should allow it too. Of course, that will bring the monsters running to you because they now know where you are...
Realistic hits should also exist. As you said - if you kneecap an enemy, they should NOT (for ANY reason) keep running towards you.
As for the environment, this is one area I disagree with. Have you ever looked around at your typical office/city/town/etc. The world is a relatively bland place (at least the world created by humans). I prefer the extra realism of a bland world. Now, Doom 3 was pretty bland...I think HL2 hits it a little better without making it downright boring.
Either way, I personally look at the realism of a game (respectively speaking - it is still a game) when I am playing a FPS. And, unfortunately, games have a long way to go before they really hit that sweet spot.
There's more to it (Score:5, Interesting)
- The massive (at the time) system requirements
- The repetitive gameplay (turn corner; monster jumps out of hiding; rinse & repeat)
I don't want to stumble around in the dark with generic monsters. I want to take badass weapons and go into the pits of hell (or hell on earth), and fight off legions of imps, cacodemons, and Baron's of Hell. Real Doom characters.
Doom 3 just didn't look, feel, and play like Doom. Want to make a good Doom game for version four? Go back to Final Doom, and recreate that exactly, but with finer graphics and movement options.
Re:Maybe I'm being elitist here... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:great experience, bad game (Score:5, Interesting)
While they were flawed in many (oh so many) ways, the two PC Aliens vs Predator games kind of understood this. They did, at least, both have no enemies at all in the first mission of their marine campaigns. The second game even had some quiet spells later on, which was very effective. I know there are allegedly a couple of Alien games under development by Sega at the moment... I just hope they've got a decent writer on board.
As for the actual gameplay in Doom 3... it wasn't really that bad. Sure, it was a run-and-gun fps, but it was by no means a bad one. I played Area 51: Blacksite recently (unwanted present I couldn't quite be bothered to return) and all I could think, all the way through that, was "this is like Doom 3 but not as good". I think people just had absurdly high hopes for it.
I'm not really convinced Valve pulled it off better. Half-Life 2 was a monumental let-down for me. Leaving aside how the AI seemed to have regressed and none of the weapons *felt* right, the atmosphere of the game was just too pretentious. The silent protagonist thing just seemed to really jar, in a game where so many NPCs have "conversations" with the main character.
To my mind, the real winner of that fps generation was Farcry, with Quake 4 (which came a bit later) in second place.
Re:Misstep? (Score:1, Interesting)
4. They substituted craploads of monsters coming at you for just a couple monsters that refuse to die.
5. They made the game about the story, rather than having the story just be the excuse for the game.
They shouldn't have gone to the extremes, but the opposite of these extremes (i.e. sticking you in an open field with a bajillion less powerful monsters) is preferable to the extreme they picked.
Re:Fool me once, shame on you (Score:3, Interesting)
Ambiance And Cacophony; DOOM3 was brilliant! (Score:2, Interesting)
Like all things that make genuine Art truly brilliant, you have being willing to step past your experience of expecting presentation in a "most common denominator"-type assertive narrative that our entertainment is almost ubiquitously produced to extrapolate the highest probability of revenue. Instead, in DOOM3, the Evil (TM) bleeding through everything (literally and figuratively) would alternate between a genious and subtle caress of malice, and flip to almost schizophrenic overt session of violence. And it didn't want to just mince you up into tiny pieces, it wanted to attempt to make you soil yourself, in the process.
Walk down hallways and arbitrary objects or dead bodies would telekinetically jerk across the room, spontaniously, silently and without subsequent attack. Back-room afternoon scientist lunchrooms had candle-lit pentagrams with an oppressing and enabling agenda both visible, but not understood. Conscious satanic flashbacks, pushing the protagonist to the brink, by something seemingly trying to "take him over" or possess him. Emails and Voicemails left by now flayed or disemboweled technicians proceeded along with story, "Martian Buddy" in-jokes and spam, slippery claustrophobia, boss fights that made you both think and fight hard, an uncanny sense as an isolated underdog and a Hell Dimension that I found breathtaking, the very first time. DOOM3 was VERY creative and its gameplay (i.e. flashlight) intentionally crafted to crayon its atmosphere and slow-march of foreboding.
It was fracking brilliant and a true gem in our Post-Golden Age of Gaming (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Schafer [wikipedia.org]) of this relatively infant-stage of computing technology. Any comparison to another genre or title is just shallow and myopic.
Game designers of DOOM3, my hat's off to you.
Cheers.
Re:Misstep? (Score:2, Interesting)
It was my understanding that id mostly does engine sales, and Doom 3 was in a large part a tech demo. The punishing requirements were so companies would see this great engine and use it for the game they would releace in 2 yrs. By that time the sys req's would be upper middle of the road.
Re:the problems with doom 3 (Score:3, Interesting)
If they had gone that route, after the lights came back up (in most areas) and we've established that all Hell has broken loose on Mars, a transition into more open arenas with lots of hell minions would have been more entertaining (and arguably scarier due to variation) than the constant "haunted house" gameplay we got instead.
Re:There's more to it (Score:3, Interesting)
Doom 1 and 2 feel faster to me compared to the more sluggish Doom 3. Kind of like Quake vs Quake 3. Quake 3 feels like you're running through thick muddy water compared to Quake 1.
A perfect Doom 4 for me would have the same weapons as Doom 2 with maybe a new weapon or two thrown in for good measure. I wouldn't mind seeing a few levels done in the style of Doom 1 or 2 levels for nostalgia, and like you said the main thing I'd like to see is the old Doom enemies. I never got bored of fighting those things and they progressed really really well in difficulty.
Re:Misstep? (Score:1, Interesting)
It was Dark, but not pitch black. It had mood, scary music and SFX. Demons and well thought out Class distinctions with varied weapons.
I wish ID would revisit THAT.
How many machine gun FPS games are there anyway...