Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
First Person Shooters (Games) Announcements Entertainment Games

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?"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

id Software Announces Doom 4

Comments Filter:
  • Misstep? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MankyD ( 567984 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @08:41AM (#23335980) Homepage
    Doom 3 certainly wasn't perfect, but I enjoyed it. And I certainly don't see how they veered too far from the original concept of Doom either. Am I alone in this opinion?
    • Re:Misstep? (Score:5, Informative)

      by spookymonster ( 238226 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @08:47AM (#23336036)
      I think he's referring to 2 things:
      - The massive (at the time) system requirements
      - The repetitive gameplay (turn corner; monster jumps out of hiding; rinse & repeat)
      • Re:Misstep? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by morgan_greywolf ( 835522 ) * on Thursday May 08, 2008 @09:00AM (#23336158) Homepage Journal

        The repetitive gameplay (turn corner; monster jumps out of hiding; rinse & repeat)
        <sarcasm type="heavy"> Yeah, because Doom and Doom 2 were nothing like that.</sarcasm>
        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Wiseman1024 ( 993899 )
          The problem is not the repetitive gameplay, it's that it doesn't matter. Doom 3 is a game that just doesn't matter.

          OMG! We'll use a gazillion polygons, two fucking hundred lights per object, half a megabyte pixel shaders, and more RAM than Oracle! Wow this game is so good go buy it!

          It doesn't matter if the game plays exactly like everything you had and you don't even enjoy the supposedly awesome graphics because they're the same old id Software crap: you're in a dark tunnel made of black walls, black ceilin
          • Re:Misstep? (Score:5, Funny)

            by JDWTopGuy ( 209256 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @10:22AM (#23337174) Homepage Journal
            I agree. In fact, it's a lot like the movie Alien. Alien is a movie that just doesn't matter.

            The whole effing thing was really dark, and you couldn't even see the stupid alien, except when you did you didn't want to because it was ugly, and it scared the shit out of my girlfriend. Then, on top of the $60 I spent on tickets and concessions to see the retarded movie, I had to buy $400 in roses and chocolate to get my girlfriend to go see another movie with me.

            I guarantee that because of my negative experience, nobody else will ever care about or like the movie Alien. I just don't see the point of using all those special effects for the alien when it's so ugly and grotesque. Why they made FOUR sequels and a cross-over series is just beyond me, because nobody could have possibly cared about those either.

            (Protip: Alien came out before I was born, and I enjoyed the series. I like Doom too. YMMV, YHBT.)
          • Re:Misstep? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Coryoth ( 254751 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @10:28AM (#23337234) Homepage Journal
            Wow, talk about bitter. I forked over the cash for the game, but didn't need to upgrade my PC. Doom3 didn't run at maximum quality, but it wasn't bottom end either. And I enjoyed the game; it was, to my mind, what the original Doom had aspired to be, but couldn't because of the relative lack in computing power at the time. It was tense, scary, and fun, and the quality of the graphics and sound were what made it the experience it was.

            Having said all of that, I also understand some of the complaints. It was repetitive, and it certainly didn't bring anything new in the way of gameplay to the table (I didn't mind because I was looking for "Doom done right", but I can certainly understand that others would appreciate more creativity). I don't understand the bitterness though; it seemed pretty clear what Doom3 was going to offer in the way of experience (especially given that it was following after Doom and Doom2 which were repetitive, had fairly simple gameplay, and were pitch black at times). I don't really see that the game was ever misrepresented in what it was going to be, so I'm not sure where you got your expectations and feeling of entitlement from.
            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by spoco2 ( 322835 )
              The issue was that Doom 1 and 2 (2 was just 1 done better, but done so much closer to 1 that this was allowed) were such landmark games. Given so much time it was hoped and prayed for that Doom 3 would be another landmark game, really be a pinnacle of FPS fun.

              But it wasn't.

              It wasn't even the best of the lot out at the time.

              It just made people think "Me, iD has kinda lost it a bit"

              And that made a lot of us sad.
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Sentry21 ( 8183 )
          When Doom and Doom 2 came out, the whole genre (and the way it played) was relatively new. Yet Doom 3, 11 years later, was even MORE predictable than its predecessors. My roommate at the time got a copy before release, and was playing through it while I watched. It got to the point, on the second level, where we would see a hallway and be able to tell exactly where the monsters would leap out from after you went past, with nearly 100% accuracy.

          John Carmack said that Doom 3 lost millions in sales because of
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        what massive system requirement? Just about anything could play that game, the beauty of it was that the game could run very fast even on systems that didn't support pixel shaders or normal maps. In fact it ran faster on systems that didn't support those options.
        • Re:Misstep? (Score:5, Informative)

          by Yvan256 ( 722131 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @09:42AM (#23336680) Homepage Journal
          Just because you had high-end hardware at the time doesn't mean everyone also had it.

          Even with all options turned off/at their lowest settings, my Radeon 9600XT was barely able to manage acceptable framerates in 1024x768 (no FAA either).

          And I don't mean 120FPS either, the game was crawling under 10FPS in lots of areas. And yes I had enough system RAM too, if that's what you're wondering.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by EricR86 ( 1144023 )

        - The repetitive gameplay (turn corner; monster jumps out of hiding; rinse & repeat)

        Which is great as long as it's fun.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Schmodus ( 875649 )
        I hope they add more encounters with lots of (cannon-fodder) monsters. I think I missed that the most from the earlier installments. With the new tech out today... it should be more possible?
      • There's more to it (Score:5, Interesting)

        by DesScorp ( 410532 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @11:26AM (#23338138) Journal

        I think he's referring to 2 things:
        - The massive (at the time) system requirements
        - The repetitive gameplay (turn corner; monster jumps out of hiding; rinse & repeat)
        It wasn't even the high system requirements. It was that, well, Doom 3 just wasn't Doom. I spent many a night playing Doom and Doom II. I absolutely loved those games. And Doom 3 was DINO... Doom In Name Only. None of the monsters or demons looked like Doom monsters and demons, and they weren't an improvement. And in an attempt to make the game scary, they made everything too dark, which more often than not, just made Doom 3 frustrating instead.

        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: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by PeelBoy ( 34769 )
          I agree. Doom 2 was by far my favorite. Hell I still enjoy a little Doom 2 DM once in a while.

          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
    • Re:Misstep? (Score:5, Funny)

      by bhima ( 46039 ) * <Bhima.Pandava@DE ... com minus distro> on Thursday May 08, 2008 @08:49AM (#23336062) Journal
      Iâ(TM)m not a serious gamer at all but without that duct tape mod I found the game virtually unplayable.

      • Re:Misstep? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Pazy ( 1169639 ) <Pazy160@Hotmail.com> on Thursday May 08, 2008 @08:53AM (#23336092)
        The flash light thing was a bit wierd but I the experience it created was awesome. Seeing the light at the end of a corridor, or not wanting to leave an area because it had light was a great experience or perhaps the lone light source being a fireball hurling towords you? If you accept it in I think most people will enjoy it (in the same way you can enjoy horror films). Unfortunately most of my friends gave up easy being used to bright lights and jungle textures and things.
        • Re:Misstep? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by MankyD ( 567984 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @08:57AM (#23336128) Homepage
          I just want to second you on this, Pazy. Yes it was dark - and that was awesome. It's one of the few games where I genuinely felt scared and startled at times. Sure it became a bit predictable at times, but so are horror movies and people still love those. 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.
          • Re:Misstep? (Score:4, Insightful)

            by CheShACat ( 999169 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @09:07AM (#23336252) Homepage Journal

            I just want to second you on this, Pazy. Yes it was dark - and that was awesome. It's one of the few games where I genuinely felt scared and startled at times. Sure it became a bit predictable at times, but so are horror movies and people still love those. 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.
            Thirded. The dynamic lighting was used really well and anyone playing with duct tape mod or whatever completely missed the point and basically pissed all over a lot of careful level design. Only right towards the very end when the attack waves really cranked up the pace did it start to get noticeably repetitive and that kind of fits in with the zombie hoardes vibe. The closest to viable criticism I have heard was that it was too easy: Well there's the case for always playing games on the hardest difficulty level - you get the most play time out of them that way anyway. I played on max difficulty and it scared the crap out of me, creeping through the darkness waiting for the next closet to open.
            • Re:Misstep? (Score:5, Insightful)

              by nuzak ( 959558 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @09:46AM (#23336714) Journal
              > anyone playing with duct tape mod or whatever completely missed the point and basically pissed all over a lot of careful level design

              Careful level design that kept going back to the same well for the same tired mechanic: "It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue^H^H^H^Hdemon". A mechanic that was hard to believe in the first place. I could have bought it if the protaganist wasn't a freakin MARINE.

              That and monster closets.

              Id makes a nice engine, but they haven't had a coherent story since Quake II. I hope they have better luck licensing the engine this time: only major Doom3 licensee I can remember was Prey.
              • Re:Misstep? (Score:5, Funny)

                by Chris Burke ( 6130 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @12:41PM (#23339236) Homepage
                That and monster closets.

                Monster closets make perfect sense!

                Okay, you know how sometimes you'd hear a demonic voice and the area would turn all red and then a some evil lightning would flash and a demon would appear? Well when there's a room with a demon with no opposable thumbs already in it, how do you think the demon got there? Right, it was portaled in earlier. And what do you think happens if the forces of hell miscalculate the vector? That's right, monster stuck in a closet.

                Hey, you try ripping open the fabric of space-time and boundary between life and death and see if you don't occasionally miss your target!

                Oh, and the reason why your space marine wouldn't duct tape the flashlight to his gun is because he didn't want to have to clean off the glue residue before his next inspection.

                It all holds together.
            • Re:Misstep? (Score:5, Interesting)

              by neomunk ( 913773 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @09:51AM (#23336770)
              Fourthed. I played that game for a few days starting it up somewhere between 1AM and 3AM every night. Turned all the lights off, TOLD myself to lower my mental defenses and got INTO the game. It was crazy, with one part actually spooking me (as in glancing around my livingroom for demons). It was the part where the screen turns red and you hear the woman's voice "my baby, somebody help my baby" moments before flying baby demons come screaming at you from everywhere.

              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 :-D).
              • Fifthed! (Score:3, Interesting)

                Fifthed. (I know, it's getting tired, but...)

                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'
          • Re:Misstep? (Score:4, Interesting)

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 08, 2008 @10:07AM (#23336964)

            I just want to second you on this, Pazy. Yes it was dark - and that was awesome. It's one of the few games where I genuinely felt scared and startled at times. Sure it became a bit predictable at times, but so are horror movies and people still love those.

            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.
            I loved DOOM III while it was fresh. It took me back to the days of DOOM I/II. I was actually afraid to go around the corner a few times. That my friend was exciting!!

            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
    • Re:Misstep? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Bombula ( 670389 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @09:01AM (#23336170)
      I thought Doom 3 was boring and unimaginative. It looked good, of course, but looks alone don't make a game great. There were no interesting puzzles to solve, no original encounters and action scenarios, just more of the same dark hallways and slobbering monsters slowly thudding toward you ready to absorb a hundred hits from the rocket launcher.

      HL2, by comparison, was quite a bit better just for the diversity of gamepla, with vehicles and interesting new weapons (grav gun was innovative). This made up for the heavily scripted, linear gameplay.

      Now that there's competition from other amazing game engines too, I think Doom 4 is going to have to raise the bar on its gameplay if it wants to compete with new titles like Crysis. Not only did Crysis look astonishingly good, but the gameplay was hugely varied, with the sandbox option of playing missions a dozen different ways each time.

      • Re:Misstep? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by sm62704 ( 957197 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @09:32AM (#23336560) Journal
        There were no interesting puzzles to solve

        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
        • I'm totally with you. I used to think way back when: "You know, Resident Evil would be such an awesome game if they just got rid of these INSANE puzzles.". (and put in more bullets - I didn't have enough ammo to kill a certain boss in Code Veronica and couldn't find any more). Most of the time when I hit them in a game I'll spend at most 10 minutes fretting over it, then I just reference the online walkthrough and skip through it. I certainly don't want chores to do in my video games.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by foo fighter ( 151863 )
        I liked that Doom 3 was all about shooting things, lots of things, in tight, dark spaces. I also liked its visuals and sound effects better than Half-Life 2.

        HL2 really annoyed me by having me solve puzzles all the damn time. There was too much space between fire-fights.

        Doom 3 had just enough story to move you from point to point and to give you an excuse to blow the shit out of hell-spawn. I love it for that. It remains one of my favorite FPS of all time, above HL2, for really hitting the target of what I l
      • Re:Misstep? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by AlexMax2742 ( 602517 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @10:24AM (#23337186)
        Doom 3 was a terrible game, but turning Doom 4 into a wannabe Half Life 2 is not the solution.

        It seems that a lot of people have really fuzzy memories of classic Doom and have totally forgotten why it was a good game. Classic Doom, after you got over the initial scare factor, was a balls to the wall arcadey action game.

        Sure the AI was simple, but with clever level design and judicious placement of the two-dozen monster varieties you could create entirely new situations that tested your ability to plow through them. Levels, though generally only having one 'solution', were non-linear. Puzzles were always simple and arcadey (find switch to lower tower, find key and put it in a colored door), and ultimately the game never took itself too seriously.

        Doom 3 was totally different from that. It traded in its arcadey roots for a bland, linear, by-the-numbers shooter that happened to have awesome graphics. Of course monster closets felt dated in Doom 3, that's because their use was way too obvious and not clever at all. Of course the game was too dark, blame the engine. Of course the story was terrible, Doom's story was meant to be a one page manual filler that nobody was supposed to pay any attention to and Doom 3 kept reminding us of it.

        I loved classic Doom. I hated Doom 3. But since the release of Quake 1, there have been a grand total of TWO gaming series that have gotten the 'arcadey shooter' feeling right: Serious Sam and Painkiller, and it's high time we had another highly publicized one by the ones who started it all. Turning Doom 4 into another wannabe Half Life 2 is NOT the solution.

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          Sure the AI was simple,
          That fact just contributed to the most awesome side-game ever: "How many monsters can I stand behind so that they get shot by friendly fire and attack each other?" I had loads of fun just making zombie soldiers fight each other...
    • This is just IMHO of course, but. Doom 3 was actually quite good, it just wasn't anything really new or exciting (except for the flashy graphics, of course). The original doom - though similar to previous sprite-based FPS's - was quite an innovation in many ways, especially from the perspective of multi-player fun.

      Doom3 was fairly repetitive, but - if you go back - so were the originals... people just weren't worn out from the deluge of a gazillion other FPS games. The storyline wasn't actually bad either
      • by Fozzyuw ( 950608 )

        Yes, Doom3 was a game I only first played a year ago, because I never had a PC I could play it on until then.

        It was Doom. You crawling through maze-like corridors slowly turning into Hell and filled with Hell-like creatures.

        The graphics where awesome. The level design was awesome (it really felt like a Mars research station). The story... was there one?

        Those who where disappointed didn't know what Doom is about. Is it Half-Life? No, Half-Life is a sophisticated Sci-Fi thinker/action film, Doom is

    • I have to agree. I enjoyed the game and RoE as well. I actually paid for these games... okay, I paid like $10 each through the likes of Amazon.com or Walmart.com, but still... I didn't just copy the game. It kept me busy for maybe two or three months off and on... a few hours at a time... played it through twice... the second time at nightmare level.

      If Doom4 is as good, I'll buy it too...for like $10... ;)
    • by fyrie ( 604735 )
      I feel that the only major variations Doom 3 took were the pacing and the storyline. Doom 1 + 2 were all about running around very quickly while taking out monsters. Additionally there was very little plot. Doom 3 on the other hand, had a real story and it was more about slow tension building.
    • by Anonymous Coward
      Doom 3 was poor.

      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.

      Cl
  • I'll apply! (Score:4, Funny)

    by techpawn ( 969834 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @08:42AM (#23335992) Journal
    I'd love to make a game of complete darkness that's nearly impossible to play without cheat codes and and over clocked super cooled box...

    No I'm not bitter at ALL! It's a speech impediment...
  • by L4t3r4lu5 ( 1216702 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @08:42AM (#23335996)
    ... we see Doom 5 before we see Duke Nukem Forever?
    • by sm62704 ( 957197 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @09:42AM (#23336682) Journal
      I was hanging around with Duke when he was a aqueaky little side scroller. I saw him yesterday, the poor old guy isn't doing too well.

      "Duke!" I said. "Hey, dude, it's mcgrew, haven't seen you in a while! Where you been?"

      "In the hospital mostly." He was bald, wrinkled, walked with a stoop and carried a cane. No doubt the cane had a sword in it. Or even more likely, a chain saw.

      "What happened?"

      "Well, after Mr. Broussard and the guys retired me I started drinking pretty heavy. I wound up homeless and depressed, and tried to kill myself. They said I had PTSD and put me on Paxil. Boy, mix that stuff with alcohol...

      "Then I got a bad case of gout. I have arthritis all over now."

      It was sad, seeing my old hero like this.

      "Who's your doctor?" I asked.

      "I'm indigent, so I have to go to the VA hospital and take whoever they give me. The new doctor's name is 'Proton'. They tell me he's pretty good."

      -mcgrew
  • by Shivetya ( 243324 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @08:44AM (#23336012) Homepage Journal
    I liked it. It was a great change of pace. Yeah it was scripted and it was in their trademark brown for the most part but the story and presentation was great! I play Half Life 2 for similar reason, great story and proper visuals. If I wanted to rip Doom 3 for overly scripted encounters that seemed to repeat a lot I could seriously pummel Half Life for the same. Hell I would love to punish the HL team for their over use of their damn physics engine... yeah I know you have one but some things get annoying after a while.

    I guess we can hope for a flash light taped to the gun this time. Still the Doom 3 is one of the few games that actually made me jump. Great sound and visuals.
    • I guess we can hope for a flash light taped to the gun this time.

      Something tells me this will be one of the little jokes in Doom4--somewhere near the beginning, you'll find a flashlight. Then a little while later, you'll find some ducttape and the character will go "Aha!" and put them together.
      • Nah Doom4 will be something more like, you find a flashligh on the 1st level, but there are no batteries to recharge it once you run out.
      • by Yvan256 ( 722131 )
        Well, if they didn't think of it, I do hope they'll read your post.

        That would be at least as funny as Blizzard adding the secret cow level in Diablo 2.
    • by OzRoy ( 602691 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @08:55AM (#23336108)
      To me it felt the same as Doom 1 with better graphics.

      The story that they hyped up claiming to be written by a professional writer etc was kind of shallow and stupid.

      Even the AI was crap. I found the tactics for the first game worked equally well in Doom 3. Imps for example could move across the ceiling, but they never took advantage of that ability. They would crawl across a wall, then jump down and start slowly shuffling towards you throwing fireballs. The easiest way to dispatch enemies was the get their attention with a pistol, then sit on the other side of a closed door with a shotgun waiting for them to open it so you could unload both barrels into their face at point blank.

      I could go on, but that was the worst of it for me. In summary, it was generic and kind of boring.

      Half Life however had pretty good AI. An interesting plot and varied enemy encounters moving you through different environments, not allowing it to become just the same old crap.

    • by Scutter ( 18425 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @09:05AM (#23336230) Journal
      Still the Doom 3 is one of the few games that actually made me jump.

      Personally, I'm getting sick to death of game designers (and movie makers, for that matter) who confuse "startling" me with "scaring" me. Any hack can startle someone. All you have to do is have a cat jump out from behind a curtain or something. It's not scary, it's just annoying. It takes a real talent to actually scare somebody with a movie, and especially with a game.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by khendron ( 225184 )
        And Doom 3 achieved this. It not only made me jump, it is one of the few games that gave me the creeps and made my skin crawl.

        But it went on too long, and got boring. If Doom 3 were about 2/3 the length it was, then it would have been much better.
      • by MrJynxx ( 902913 )
        Yea I definitley agree, startled is not the same as scared!

        But this reminds me of a game back in the late 90's, Alien Vs. Predator for the PC. Now THAT game was scary. Wandering around as a marine hearing the motion sensor blip, then beep when something was around and you not having any idea where the hell the thing was. That was the only game that actually made me afraid of what it was going to do next, and when the encounter did happen it usually started with a scream, shooting wildly into the dark, an
      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by cb95amc ( 99589 )
        I think System Shock (1&2) is a the best example of how to scare someone without having to resort to lots of dark areas with things jumping out at you...
      • And that is why Alone in the Dark and Silent Hill are actually scary. I never played Doom 3, but I blew a fair amount of junior high playing Doom 1 and 2, and loved them. Not because they were scary, but because of the frantic adrenaline rushes. It was fun.
      • by Kingrames ( 858416 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @10:17AM (#23337098)
        In the demo for Alien Vs Predator 2, there's a part where the floor falls out from under you.

        Keep in mind that there hasn't been a single alien in the game prior to this point.

        I unloaded a full clip of ammo and several grenades into the walls.

        That wasn't scared?
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by EricR86 ( 1144023 )

      Have you gone back and played the original Doom(s) recently? IMHO the problem is Doom and Doom 2 were way more fun than Doom 3. Doom 3 was just a much slower Doom and Doom 2. Doom 3 also wasn't that scary, but admittedly it had a few moments.

      And yes, games can be reasonably faster paced and scary! Undying [wikipedia.org] was a really neat game, a good storyline, and it was pretty creepy sometimes. Didn't people also find Quake to be kinda creepy for it's time (and more so than Doom 3 now)?

      And with Doom 3? You're basically

    • Hell I would love to punish the HL team for their over use of their damn physics engine... yeah I know you have one but some things get annoying after a while.

      Well said, I felt that they were trying to show off half the time, they did the same with the AI, even tho the friendly AI were pretty dumb. I hope Doom does improve, but i also hope that they dont show of their improvements. Better AI shouldn't even stand out, you should just realise after a few levels, "hey, those AI are better" not "Wow, if i throw a can at his face he hits me with a stick, that's soo smart". same with physics and even level design.

  • by hey0you0guy ( 1003040 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @08:46AM (#23336034)
    not a games company. Yes they make games, but their engines are what shine. The doom 3 technology looked fantastic. It's when other companies license id's engines. That's when we see a better game.
    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      not a games company. Yes they make games, but their engines are what shine. The doom 3 technology looked fantastic. It's when other companies license id's engines. That's when we see a better game.

      The startling thing is how few licencees there were for Doom 3 engine. Prey, Quake Wars...

      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?

  • Which one will be released first, Doom 4 or Duke Nukem Forever?
  • by Rik Sweeney ( 471717 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @08:50AM (#23336072) Homepage
    It had a fairly decent story that I would have found enjoyable if that script had been used for the movie. Perhaps the biggest problem was that Doom 3 suffered from the "walk backwards because that's where the enemies come from" syndrome or maybe not enough enemies on screen at a time.

    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...
    • by thermian ( 1267986 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @09:18AM (#23336364)
      1: Monsters

      The monsters were pretty much all encountered one at a time orm in small groups only. This wasn't how it was in doom 1 or 2, where you often found yourself in a large room surrounded by lots of different things that wanted you dead.

      2: Weapons

      Ok-ish, but I found them to be balanced towards a slower pace of fighting them was the case in doom 1/2.

      3: Lighting

      Neither doom 1 nor doom 2 were that dark all the time. Since when was it required that you constantly be walking around in poor lighting in order for it to be a proper fps? Darkness did occur in doom 1 and 2, but it was well used, and scary.I was constantly irritated by the darkness, never entertained.

      4: Fear

      On the subject of fear, well, doom 3 was too similar to other games to scare me. I was bored a lot of the time.
      The first time a monster appears out of nowhere was a little starling, but when the only nerve inducing element is 'where will the next monster come from', it gets old real fast. There are a lot more ways to induce fear then just monster spawns, but Id seemed not to recall this.

      5: Vehicles

      Awful, really, really, awful. We've got used to vehicles like the warthog in Halo, and the various cars in Half life 2, and they give us bathtubs on wonky wheels.

      5: undoominess

      They wanted a slight departure from the original dooms, but this was a completely different game that took the doom name and otherwise failed to remind me of the originals in any respect, bar the vague similarity in shape of some monsters.
      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        On lighting: I agree wholeheartedly. I think DooM3 would have been made infinitely more enjoyable if the lights had come up after awhile. I feel the darkness was best used early on to set mood, but after awhile, just got irritating.

        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) tha
  • Yet another FPS in which a lone soldier takes on the legions of Hell, starting off with nothing but his trusty .45 semi-automatic. I'm going to reserve a copy right away, yeah!
  • by Machine9 ( 627913 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @08:57AM (#23336124) Homepage
    ...but I think people who used duct-tape mods for DooM3 were playing it "wrong".

    Yes, the flashlight was an ENORMOUS hassle to play with at first, but I'll be damned if the thing didn't ramp up the adrenaline rush tremendously... constantly balancing between seeing where you're going and being able to defend yourself was very very tense and scary; I loved every moment of it.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      I only got the duct tape mod after switching back and forth with the flashlight got boring... ...which means I played the game 'properly' for all of 20 minutes.

      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
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by servognome ( 738846 )
      There are other ways to limit the player's view, without resorting to a gameplay restriction. Use smoke, cascading water, objects, mirrors... they all limit the usefulness of a flashlight.
  • and could care less about everything that came after

    i still play it today sometimes, because its low time commitment

    i don't want all immersive environments and storylines that eat up hours of my day. i have a life. i want to waste 5-10 minutes pointing a shotgun at imps, then get back to what i have to do

    maybe if they placed modern graphics rendering on top of the old 2D control system, i would take a look

    no, i'm not insane: 2D controls dumbs down the game in the RIGHT way: pure enjoyment, pure... id
    • by Hatta ( 162192 )
      You're quite right. I'd be happy if they just published more WADs for the original Doom. There hasn't been much that really competes with single player Doom in terms of fast paced action and creative level design. FPSs kind of split between high action multiplayer games like Q3A and plot heavy single player like Half Life. Doom 4 should bridge that gap once again.
  • by neokushan ( 932374 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @08:59AM (#23336146)
    Are all of the above comments trying to say that Doom 5 is....*gasps*....doomed?
  • $ wget -S http://www.idsoftware.com/ [idsoftware.com]
    --08:57:08-- http://www.idsoftware.com/ [idsoftware.com]
                          => `index.html'
    Resolving www.idsoftware.com... 192.246.40.185
    Connecting to www.idsoftware.com|192.246.40.185|:80... connected.
    HTTP request sent, awaiting response...
        HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable
        Content-Type: text/html
        Date: Thu, 08 May 2008 12:57:20 GMT
        Connection: close
        Content-Length: 28
    08:57:08 ERROR 503: Service Unavailable.


    I recently gave my DOOM 3 box to a friend who bought a new laptop... after several years the game should be playable now on a medium-powered laptop. That's the way to do it - buy the "3.years.ago" game of the year and play it with all the dials turned up.
  • history (Score:2, Interesting)

    by kraemer ( 637938 )
    I followed Doom3's progress with great anticipation. Right from the first showing of the tech at a Steve Jobs keynote I was hooked. I went to E3 in 2002 with Redwood and watched the first big public showing in the "Doom3 theater". It was seriously awesome and the graphics world was rocked by its coolness. The E3 judges couldn't believe the lighting was real time 3d. Many more screen shots and cool trailers would follow until the game finally shipped. And then I was pretty underwhelmed. The graphics were c
  • by imbaczek ( 690596 ) <(mf.atzcop) (ta) (kezcabmi)> on Thursday May 08, 2008 @09:14AM (#23336322) Journal
    link here: doom4 screenshot [imageshack.us].
  • I'm tired of Doom (Score:3, Interesting)

    by elrous0 ( 869638 ) * on Thursday May 08, 2008 @09:27AM (#23336492)
    Is running down and endless series of boring hallways, triggering bad guys who appear out of thin air, really going to cut it in this era of open FPS's and sandbox games like Half-life 2, GTA, Crysis, et. al.?
  • Come on Carmack! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by FoolsGold ( 1139759 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @09:33AM (#23336570)
    You have a Slashdot account - http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=userinfo&nick=John+Carmack [slashdot.org] , say something about D4/ Make it a Slashdot exclusive! Meet your adoring fans so they mod you (Score:5, OMFG!!) or something; it'll be fun.
  • Doom 3 was ok. I would have preferred to play HL2, but alas, I have no windoze boxen at home. Hopefully Doom4 will have a linux version to give me something to do when I'm bored at home.
  • Doom RetCon (Score:3, Funny)

    by Enderandrew ( 866215 ) <enderandrew@NOsPAM.gmail.com> on Thursday May 08, 2008 @09:39AM (#23336634) Homepage Journal
    Doom 1-3 go out the window, and Doom 4 is based on the uber-successful movie!
  • by Leo Sasquatch ( 977162 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @09:43AM (#23336684)
    the horse is long since gone.

    Wolfenstein - great idea. Doom, brilliant sequel. Doom 2 - nice, more levels. Quake, wow.

    Doom 3 - where's the duct tape? Or string - anything really. Where's the £4.99 headband torch I keep in my backpack?

    Nobody really wants to break the FPS formula, least of all the guys who practically invented it. It'll be Doom with shiny graphics, more polygons in the average monster's arse than comprised an entire level from the original Doom, and it'll still be shite, because it's been done to death now for 15 years. The shotgun will be a great weapon for 90% of the game, and be the only weapon for which there's ever enough ammo. Despite being set in the future, and on some alien world, the weapons will have been toned down to the sort of sub-standard kack you wouldn't give to a modern day grunt. Nobody involved with the game will have the slightest idea about current or future military hardware, or know where to find a copy of Jane's Infantry Weapons. There will be no metalstorms, no gauss rifles, no sabot rounds, no poison darts, no armour-piercing rounds. The sniper rifle will carry 5 rounds at best, and any weapon capable of killing an enemy quickly will have almost no ammo available as that might render it somehow useful. You will find weapons dropped by other groups of people who'd been previously ambushed by the monsters. Quite why you'd want to pick them up is unclear, as they clearly didn't do their last owners a blind bit of good.

    As for the environment, if there's enough light to see, it'll be drab and featureless as otherwise it might be possible to work out where you are. The colour palette will be green, brown, and grey. Wood will not burn, glass will withstand a rocket launcher if it has a bit of chicken wire in it, and despite carrying around 200lbs of explosives, the door will not open if you don't have the access code. Using a grenade to go through the plasterboard walls will not be an option.

    The monsters will not react in any way (stagger, pain, fear) to being shot in the nose with a .45 hollowpoint. Until you do it enough times to kill them at which point they die instantly, but until that point they will be at full combat effectiveness. You can kneecap a monster and it will still be able to chase you at full speed. If a monster is armoured, you can shoot it in its eyes and open mouth as much as you like without hurting it unduly, because they are every bit as heavily armoured as its scaly, plated hide. Half the monsters will have ridiculous hit points, and the big ones will be somehow impervious to your weapons and the laws of physics until the point where they rear up and reveal their weak point.

    In short, it will have every flaw that every other FPS has, but because it's got the magic word 'Doom' written all over it, it will sell many copies and the usual fanboys will be sucking its dick because it's so shiny.

    Here's something I'd love to see happen before they write one line of code on this game. Line up every developer, and designer who's going to work on the game, and shoot them in the thigh from 4 feet away with a .22 air pistol. They can wear jeans, so the pellet won't penetrate skin. As they're rolling around on the ground in pain, or hopping and screaming and cursing, tell them to remember what it felt like when they come to design the weapons, the monsters and the monsters' reactions to getting hit.

    Besides, it'd be a major hit as a YouTube video.
    • by Chryana ( 708485 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @12:23PM (#23338964)
      If what you want is realism in a FPS, then don't play DOOM, because that's not what the game is about. Is a game more realistic because my character will be limping for 10 seconds after being shot in the knee? Not really. Honestly, I find it quite ridiculous that you show so much contempt for players who have different tastes than yours. Not all shooters have to be remakes of Counter-Strike or Ghost Recon, you know.
  • The site's down already.
  • Played out (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Konster ( 252488 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @09:46AM (#23336710)
    This IP was played out and over cooked with Doom 3. Strip out all the good graphics and what you have left was a rehash of a rehash. Doom 4 will push the rehash to new realms with fancy graphics and game play that is a decade away from good.

    HL2 and its follow up episodes are good, satisfyingly and resoundingly good. With the release of the Orange Box, Valve blew the lid off of gaming. HL2 Episode 2 is GOOD. Team Fortress 2 is excellent. Portal is the game that shocked everyone in how excellent a new concept combined with excellent writing produced one of the best games ever.

    Sure, one can say that Valve is rehashing old stories like ID is with Doom; but they aren't. HL1+HL2+ Episodes are expanding upon a story line that is a decade old...it is still fresh, and fun. Each new bit builds upon the last bit and extends it.

    ID and Carmack are going to foist a re-engined same ole' same ole' upon us, just like they did with Doom 3, just like Epic did with the very badly done UT3.

    I said that Doom 3 was the most accurate flashlight simulator to date; and I was right. They have the graphics tech, but no plot, no story and no direction. Worse, they have no passion.

    Doom 3 was made by clock punchers.

    Portal was made by people that love games, game design and gamers.

    Doom 4 will be made by people that love John Carmack.
  • What happened to the other game they were working on? The one that was said to be not entirely within their FPS genre -- I think it was called Rage? I don't remember id ever working on (at least not publicly announced) concurrent projects. Will we ever see this project or has it merged into Doom 4?
  • by Junks Jerzey ( 54586 ) on Thursday May 08, 2008 @10:05AM (#23336934)
    It was a simple, focused game. It was an atmospheric game. It was a nostalgia trip.

    From a design point of view, you can certainly criticize it. For starters, 3-4 levels could have been removed to improve the pacing of new features. Some level design tricks were used to excess (e.g., monster closets). One of the bosses was ridiculous and out of place (in terms of using Nintendo-style mechanics). It also had some brilliant moments: the atmosphere of the first level, the incredible hook of wanting to see what hell was like.

    But most of the complaints are about things that are outside the scope of the game: wanting puzzles, wanting character interaction, wanting an elaborate story with multiple plot twists, funny arguments about how everything in the original DOOM was so much better back when I was 12 and played it on the school network. That's not criticism. That's just armchair design.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 08, 2008 @10:53AM (#23337592)
    You guys if we all say things like "Wow I wonder how John Carmack would respond to abc and xyz" then he is sure to appear and then we can love him. It is true if you don't believe me look at his posting history and need I mention that is the real John Carmack not some sort of fanciful imposter. But he is kind of like a mythical gnome or something he will not appear of his own accord.

    All you have to do is set some bait and wait. On a basic level John Carmack is no different from most of us he loves his technology and he loves talking about it and he loves knowledge. Moreover he knows that most of us are on his side and that whatever he posts will be cherished like golden poos dropped upon a silken pillow by Jesus Christ.

    So all you have to do is post something that shows at least minimal knowledge of the kind of work he does and ask for advice or perhaps if you are brave then call one of his past decisions into question. (Of course this is bound to fail. John Carmack knows more about graphics than you not only because of his natural technical skill but also because he thinks about little else all day long. I mean sure he has a wife and expensive sports cars and he wants to fly to the moon on a rocket made of popsicle sticks but I mean come on read his blog. I think he got married just so that he could see a real woman's skin up close so as to improve the lighting effects for human characater models in his next graphics engine.)

    Since some of you may be hesitant I will give you an example:

    Subject: a technical question about the future of idtech

    I remember hearing one of the id developers talking about using sparse voctel octrees as part of a next-generation graphics architecture to improve the efficiency of texture storage in ray casting engines, especially those based on a Davis matrix in which subprimitives are hashed as vogon blits while using the classic X49-B algorithm (see Peters, et al) to eliminate mutex lookback when calculating the reflection-transduction factor for a global vertex integram network. However, I'm wondering how this might affect the classic problems of caching and buffering frames in the GPU's anterior register stack, especially since it could easily push the bus latency above them 4.9M/p limit for theoretical omicron digitization.

    Do you guys think that id will use this approach in Doom 4? Boy, if only John Carmack were here...
    Note the subtle (ahem) weaving of fact and fiction which can only serve to lure Carmack the more strongly because again like any of us if he believes there could be a gap in his knowledge then he wishes it filled immediately.

    Dude it's like Peter Pan and believing in magic we all have to close our eyes and imagine how awesome it would be if John Carmack were here and then post with him in mind. Suddenly he will appear in a flash of light and smoke (or fog, depending on your video card) and then we can love him.
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by 8tim8 ( 623968 )
      >You guys if we all say things like "Wow I wonder how John Carmack would respond to abc and xyz" then he is sure to appear and then we can love him...

      John Romero? Is that you?

Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long. -- Howard Kandel

Working...