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Doom 3 Xbox Previewed, PC Version No-Show At E3 69

Posted by simoniker from the doomed-i-tell-you-dooooomed dept.
Thanks to IGN Xbox for its hands on preview of the E3 demo for the Xbox version of Doom 3, Vicarious Visions' conversion of id's long-awaited FPS title. They comment: "The atmosphere is dark, the pacing of the demo somewhat slow, and every aspect more fitting of a survival horror game than a run and gun shooter", but praise the results: "That's not a bad thing at all, in fact, it makes for a more intriguing title... The hard part for fans is going to be looking past expectations of what a DOOM game should be and embracing what DOOM 3 is." Elsewhere, GameSpot has a preview confirming that the PC version will not be shown at E3, since id "is locked in 'completion phase' at the company's Mesquite, Texas, offices", and both previews also reference the previously revealed, not yet playable Xbox-exclusive co-operative mode.
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Doom 3 Xbox Previewed, PC Version No-Show At E3 More

Doom 3 Xbox Previewed, PC Version No-Show At E3

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  • exclusive features are stupid (Score:5, Insightful)

    by whiteSanjuro ( 693864 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @11:45AM (#9051857)
    i don't like the notion of a specific platform getting an exclusive feature of the game, especially something as fundamental as co-op. the original doom co-op was awesome, i don't know why they have to screw the pc users...again. *cough*HALO*cough*
    • In 5 years when Quake Reality is introduced, maybe the Doom3 engine will be GPL'ed and someone can add co-op back into the PC version.

      By then the X-Prize will have been won, Armadillo will have at least duplicated the feat, and the private space club will be working on X-Prize-2: Orbit.

    • Re:exclusive features are stupid (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TibbonZero ( 571809 ) <Tibbon@gm a i l . c om> on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @04:21PM (#9055782) Homepage Journal
      Screw PC users? Try being a Mac user for a day, and then talk about Halo.... or NWN
    • I won't be buying this game because of this exclusive feature lockout. For that matter, I bought Halo for the PC, found out that it didn't allow co-op, and took it back.

      Several of us in my office enjoy playing games together, and co-op is our most favorite mode. Unfortunately, games makers, now including Id, are missing a great market. Working together through a great storyline is tons of fun - more so than the standard DM / CTF / etc modes.

      The reality is that Id was probably paid a boatload of cash for

  • Exclusive? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bluephone ( 200451 ) <grey AT burntelectrons DOT org> on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @12:04PM (#9052104) Homepage Journal
    Anymore exclusive doesn't eman what it used to. Nowadays exclusivity lasts only for a limited time. Does anyone knowif the co-op feature will ever come to the PC, aside froma community released mod? Stalking through the bases in Doom with a buddy, trying nt to kill him when stumbling upon a horde of imps.
    • Er, lemme try that again, "...stumbling upon a horde of imps was half the fun."

    • Re:Exclusive? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by irokitt ( 663593 )
      Id games did tend to get a wealth of updates and official mods in the past, but even Carmack might tremble at the idea of spending so much time on writing co-op into PC. A game like DOOM 3 takes a lot of work, and the time that could go into writing co-op in could also be spent on Id's next project.

      The exciting thing about the article is that it hints that the PC version is in "final lockdown." If that means the same thing in the gaming industry as it does in the enterprise software agency, Id is in the f

  • I just hope... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Weirdofreak ( 769987 )
    there are certain areas where "demonic influence" takes over. Hell literally forces its presence in the area, shaking the walls (and camera) and tossing items about in true poltergeist fashion.

    Sounds a bit like Eternal Darkness. I just hope they don't use any more insanity effects, especially not the BSOD one. Too many people will be so used to seeing it that they'll just restart the machine automatically. Not good after three hours of unsaved playing.

  • No PC version (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @12:22PM (#9052327)
    No PC version of Doom3? This is just another sign of how game producers are abandoning the PC platform for the Macintosh.
    • Like the PC version
      The PC and Xbox versions
      the PC version under development at id
      Xbox version will ship after the PC version
      the PC version will ship when it's done
      id will not show the PC version at E3
      there will still be multiplayer for both Xbox and PC
      it's not certain if the PC will support more players
      The PC version will ship with a level editor
      having seen both the Xbox and PC versions in action

      No PC version? Scandal!
    • Please try to read: no co-op in the PC version does not equal no PC version. In fact, the PC version comes out first.

  • Doom 3 Is Old Hat Anyway... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jcenters ( 570494 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @12:24PM (#9052348) Homepage
    Let's see, Doom with 3D rendering, dark, horrific atmosphere, and a slower pace? Yeah, we've seen it, it was called Doom 64. I thought it was a decent game, but many didn't like it because it was so different.

    I love ID as a company, but I don't think the new Doom deserves all the empty hype and massive system upgrades.

    Besides, what made ID, Doom and Quake popular in the first place was mindless, bloody, fast paced carnage. That's what ID needs to focus on, IMHO.
    • I played the demo in the Quakecon last year, sorry but theres not much I cant tell you to change your opinion about it, you just have to wait until you have your hands on it and the buch of mods that will follow suit when is released.(or the ones you will make if thats your thing)
      IMO I had the chance to taste it and I can tell you this much, Doom 3 is to doom What the new ninja Gaiden is to the nes ninja gaiden. Simply the best horror game Ive played.
    • I didn't like Doom 64. Even on the max brightness and contrast settings in the cartridge's setup, everything was extremely low-contrast "very dark brown/gray on black" with a few flashes of dark orange or dark green here and there. And this was in the lit areas. When you went into a darker area, it was black on black. The television's brightness and contrast controls did not help either, but a game's designers have "Failed it" if you even have to consider adjusting those controls on the set.

      I got tired of

    • Besides, what made ID, Doom and Quake popular in the first place was mindless, bloody, fast paced carnage. That's what ID needs to focus on, IMHO.

      There were two games that came out from another developer which featured this kind of content. They were Serious Sam and Serious Sam : The Second Encounter. Both of which initially retailed for $20 USD. Fans loved it. Reviewers praised it. But money didn't come.

      Its not easy releasing any game with a back history these days. If Half-Life 2 somehow manages to suck

      • They were Serious Sam and Serious Sam : The Second Encounter. Both of which initially retailed for $20 USD. Fans loved it. Reviewers praised it. But money didn't come.

        Huh? What does that mean? It didn't sell?

      • What do you mean money didn't come? I know a bunch of people who bought the game.

        Also, since when do opinionated Internet gamers cause game companies to go bankrupt? I can see if they don't recoup their expenses, but it'll take more than complaining to get that to happen.
    • I don't remember what Doom you played, but the Doom that I played was dark and full of atmosphere and suspense. It didn't turn into an all-out actionfest until the last half of the game.

      The same with Quake. In fact, looking at my Quake box, most of the praise seems to be going towards the game's atmosphere and scariness. You remember how dark the game was, right? You remember Trent Reznor's creepy soundtrack, right? You remember monsters jumping out at you from the shadows, right?

      It's unfortunate, but id

  • Ouch. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AzraelKans ( 697974 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @12:28PM (#9052413) Homepage
    Hollenshead said that the Xbox version will ship after the PC version, and the PC version will ship when it's done.

    Translation: Our xbox version (which is relatively simple) is kind of ready but theirs (which is very complex considering the range of cards it has to work on and internet/modding features) is not, so we wont release any version until they are both ready, the cows come home or armaggedon is here.

    There goes another E3 and no Doom 3 yet.

    And for sanity's sake someone should ban the term "when it's done" in an interview, gamers are traumatized with Duke Nukem Forever.

    • "when it's done" (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @01:04PM (#9052962)
      And for sanity's sake someone should ban the term "when it's done" in an interview, gamers are traumatized with Duke Nukem Forever.

      Hmmm, you must not be familiar with the trauma of waiting six months for a patch to make a game that you've already paid for playable. That, my friend, sucks far more and that's a fact.

      I think Id saying "when it's done" is just fine. It's them being arrogant and realistic at the same time. Good for them.

      Don't blame companies like Id and Valve for being in control of their own destiny.

  • well I don't know about you.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @12:28PM (#9052416) Homepage Journal
    but the original DOOM was more of a survival horror than just pure run and shoot.

    sure, it got into a run and shoot after you played it through couple of times or in a deathmatch, but the first time it was pretty horrorish, lights going out, monsters breathing and stuff like that.

    • True.

      Even more so was the Aliens Total Conversion mod for Doom (or was it Doom II?). That, my friends, has been the only game ever to literally have me jumping out of my seat as I played it (at midnight, with the lights out, and headphones on).

      Granted, my gaming has asymptotically been aproaching nill ever since that time as I grew older (that game is, what, 10 years old now?), but man, I've never found a more thoroughly immersive gaming experience as Aliens TC.

      BTW... anyone know where I can score a

      • The source for Doom/Doom2 engine was GPL'd years ago. You still have to pay for a copy of the game in order to legally play their levels.

        The Aliens TC was s*tcanned by the studio almost immediately after it came out. Bummer. The guys who created that created a work of art IMHO. I saw an early beta and was blown away by the textures alone.

        I'd love to be able to point you to a copy but I never got to download the thing. I was on vacation the week it came out, and it was gone by the time I got back.

        wbs.
        • There are several open source versions of Doom you can use, I believe Boom was the one closest to the original EXE (But I may be wrong).

          Legacy Doom has some good, but not perfect, compatibility with older wads. And theres of course the jDoom/Doomsday Engine, which has made the original Doom a great experience.

          Aliens TC can be get here [filelibrary.com].

  • Doom III = Tech Demo Redux, and Why Xbox (Score:5, Insightful)

    by superultra ( 670002 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @12:40PM (#9052601) Homepage
    DOOM 3 . . is not a sequel to DOOM II. Instead, it's a retelling of the original. "What if DOOM were made today, with today's technology and with everything learned about gaming in the past decade?"

    I'm not sure why everyone's spoiling their pants over this one. Ok, I do. Gamers go wacky over screenshots and pixels. But we're not only living in a post-DirectX9 world here, we're living in a post Half Life, post Halo, post Call to Duty, post Deus Ex etc FPS world. What I mean is that we're living in a gaming world where games tell stories. Sure, they're not always great (Far Cry comes immediately to mind). But sometimes they are (Deus Ex 1, or the FPS-esque Max Payne). Doom, redone in today's gaming environment, would not only be pretty but not be Doom anymore because it would actually have a legitimate story. As far as I can tell, there is none in Doom III (zombies on a space station sums it up). This isn't surprising, as Carmack has often evangelized that games are as much about story as pornography is.

    Doom III is a tech demo to sell the engine off to more competant storytellers. There's a whole other audience besides gamers that no one has really mentioned, and that's the developing community. Doom III is as much about licensing the new engine out, if not more so, than making a fun game to play.

    To the PC fanboys who have been whining about the Xbox version, you need to realize that you're not the only one Carmack is making this game for. It's not just developers for the PC, which are becoming rarer and rarer. It's developers for consoles, which are quickly becoming much more numerous. I would venture to say that Microsoft probably did not pay much, if anything at all, to get Doom III on the XBox. It's doubtful they could replicate a reasonable facsimile on the PS2, and (sadly) why bother on the GC? Rather, if iD and Vicarious can port the D3 engine over to the Xbox, it opens far more doors in this market than the PC version does. So why the exclusive co-op? Because I think that although iD might be afraid to say it out loud for fear of alienating their PC fanboys, there is more money to be had both on the consumer and especially on the developer side with the consoles (represented by the xbox in this case).



    *Of course, it could be duly noted that Doom III may be instrumental in turning the tables in the cycle and perhaps making the PC more prominent than it has been with this generation of consoles. That, though, is only temporary (a year at best) if the next generation of consoles starts to come out 2005.
    • Some games need a story, some don't. Doom III is definitely in the latter category - who needs the story when you can gleefully waste time killing thousands of demons with the chainsaw?

      When I want to play a game with a great story, I turn to Planescape: Torment, or The Dig, or Day of the Tentacle, etc...

      By the way, last year I attended a meeting with Carmack at Stony Brook University, and he said pretty much the above: Doom doesn't need no stinking story. He also said PC games are usually much more st
    • If you've paid attention to the teasers, trailers, and demo movies you might have figured out the storyline for yourself. Or, if you'd played the original, you might have found something similar to the following text in the readme file...

      You're a marine, one of Earth's toughest, hardened in combat and trained for action. Three years ago you assaulted a superior officer for ordering his soldiers to fire upon civilians. He and his body cast were shipped to Pearl Harbor, while you were transferred to Mars
      • If you've paid attention to the teasers, trailers, and demo movies . . .

        You're right, I haven't orgasmed over every little screenshot that's come out. I watched a trailer a few months ago, and I don't remember seeing much about a storyline, just swinging lights, nice mirrors, and bumpmapped zombies. On a space station.

        you might have found something similar to the following text in the readme file

        So, if the storyline is upgraded for Doom III does that mean we'll have to look in an XML file to read i
        • "You're right, I haven't orgasmed over every little screenshot that's come out. I watched a trailer a few months ago, and I don't remember seeing much about a storyline, just swinging lights, nice mirrors, and bumpmapped zombies. On a space station.

          Apparently you didn't watch the trailer. Go to Doom3.com and try again. I haven't tried the leaked alpha, and besides the screenshots on the website and what's been said here on Slashdot, I haven't seen much either. Somehow I was able to figure it out though
      • Well Doom 2 has a slightly better storyline, though it was nothing special. I don't have the exact text available, but basicly it revolved around returning to Earth, freeing the human last survivors, sending them up into space, with you going down to Hell and killing the 'commander.' Course this was still Doom 1 technology we're talking about so you never saw these human survivors, the spaceship/space shuttle/space dingie, or a sign saying 'Welcome to Hell.'

    • Re:Doom III = Tech Demo Redux, and Why Xbox (Score:4, Insightful)

      by junkgrep ( 266550 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @02:58PM (#9054667)
      Oh, I think you're underestimating id: everything they've said while developing Doom3 shows that they understand your point about story and are trying to do better this time. At least give them a chance to try and make amends before declaring in full cliche form that Doom3 an engine demo. They were as wowed by Half-life as the rest of us in how important building story events into the game can be.

      And if you've played the alpha, then you'll know that they really have tried to work in ongoing events, scripted cutscenes and dynamic (though still scripted) custom in game animations, into the game. The way you move seamlessly from computer controlled in engine cutscenes to player controlled action is a great way to give the adventure some life and story.
    • there is more money to be had both on the consumer and especially on the developer side with the consoles

      Not true at all. An excellent example is Nintendo based consoles. Not only do you have to pay for an proprietary development environment, but you also have to pay for: Licenses, Production, Certification, that little sticker that sais "Nintendo", and a whack load of other stuff that you don't have with PC games. Oh and if you think that you can use the third party based development tools to develop
      • Even if there is less money to spend per copy you may very well sell so many more copies on consoles than PC that the profit for the console production is much higher than the profit for the PC production. Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 will make big profits, but I doubt a lot of PC titles earn much more than break-even with production and marketing costs.
    • If id is making a sellable engine with Doom3, it looks like they are going to fail. Doom3 is not even adequate to existing hi-end 3D hardware. It seems that both nVidia 6800 and ATi X800 would happily run Doom3 in 2048x1536 on max settings. Well, may be only in 1600x1200, I don't know. There isn't much in Doom3 in terms of technology any longer. Lighting and shadows are still good, but nothing to salivate about. Physics is barely passable, bump-mapping is ok, but much more is already possible today, they ha
  • They aren't doing the X-BOX port another company is.

  • Exclusitivity & Modding in a PC/Console World (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BRock97 ( 17460 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @02:20PM (#9054167) Homepage
    Curious about the following circumstance:
    • Company X makes a PC game.
    • Company Y is on tap to port said game to a console.
    • Company Y then touts exclusive features and content for only that console.
    • Company X then releases the tools to mod the software.
    • Modder W comes along and writes the sofware to fully recreate the exclusive content of Company Y (minus the intellectual property like graphics and such, of course).
    Wouldn't this mean, even though it comes from the user supported modding community, that the console version doesn't have exclusive content anymore?

    In the case of Doom3, I would think that this would lead to some enterprising person writing the code and getting a good start before the Xbox version hits the streets.
  • The atmosphere is dark, the pacing of the demo somewhat slow, and every aspect more fitting of a survival horror game than a run and gun shooter

    Well, I guess that just confirms that I'll be playing HL2 first.

    Rob

  • Oh no. . . Oh no no no. . . (Score:4, Insightful)

    by M3wThr33 ( 310489 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @04:51PM (#9056259) Homepage
    Last year at E3, there were 6 stations set up running DX:IW. Four were Xboxes, two were PCs. Right there I knew something was going to be wrong.

    If id isn't showing the PC version off at E3, it means the Xbox version is looking more presentable. I'm scared, Dave. It's ruining lives.

    After I was disappointed by DX:IW, I'm scared to see the Xbox dethroning the PC version at E3, regardless of the reasons used.
    • The reason they aren't showing the PC version is that the PC version is basically done/being finished. They are in the final stretch right now: no time to show it off.

      And what happened with DX:IW is that the devs made the Xbox and PC versions simultaneously and basically identical, crippling the very design of the game with Xbox insanity. id instead is focusing solely on the PC, like they always have. An entirely different developer is then taking their stuff, and changing it so that it works on the Xbo

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