[CS]-OmNiFraG
August 8th, 2004, 02:53 AM
***Note: This review is being written after completing the game and may contain some minor spoilers, but nothing that will really ruin your gaming experience***
Like many of you, I have been anticipating this game and purchased a copy on Tuesday as soon as it was legally available. But because I didn't pre-order it and camp outside the night before, or download it just to bash it and say how much better HL2 will be, I'll say I'm fairly unbiased. Now onto the review!
Background:
The original Doom games were very important to the FPS genre, I remember playing them quite a lot on my old 486 33Mhz machine. Multiplayer also owes a lot to Doom because of the Deathmatch style play it pioneered. Doom 3 promised to carry this torch with a revamped graphics engine and environments to scare the shit out of you. Does it deliver?
Graphics:
Even others who have written very one-sided and negative reviews of the game don't debate much in this area. There hasn't been much on the PC that can really even come close at this point. Light and shadow interact to create very lifelike environments. The designers seem to have even payed careful attention to little areas like the desks, walls, pipes, corpses, everything you can think of. The monsters many of us know from the older games reappear here and look excellent. Cutscenes also look superb and are integrated seamlessly into the game.
Sound:
Although there wasn't anything too revolutionary here, sounds compliment the overall atmosphere very well. The voices you hear while running through various areas add to the "scariness". Voice acting from the characters sounds great (I definitely think Petruger had an excellent voice actor). You also hear lots of indistinguishable screams and other noises while progressing; I thought these also added atmosphere. The one area I saw possible need for improvement was gun sound effects. For example the plasma gun and grenade explosions sound kind of lame.
Gameplay:
This is probably the most important area. What good is a game that looks and sounds nice, but plays like shit? Fortunately, I didn't think that was the case with Doom 3. The gameplay is intense; just about the most intense gaming experience I've had. You're constantly looking around to see what's going to pop out behind you, or around a corner. Monsters teleport in or come through false walls, and a few of them literally made me almost jump out of my seat. I don't think any other game made me jump as much or made me feel quite as edgy (and I'm not someone is is scared or disturbed easily). The way the environments sort of play with you because they know where you have to go was interesting, other games have to done this to a lesser extent, but this game really messes with you a lot. On the other hand, Repetition is inevitable in any FPS game. Probably the most annoying part to me was running around in the Alpha and Delta labs simply clearing rooms and looking for PDAs. This wouldn't have been so bad, but it takes up a considerable part of the game. I would've much rather had more levels like Hell and Caverns 2 with pentagrams, corpses, and and hordes of monsters around every corner and much less spending 10 levels or so clearing out rooms with a few monsters each and updating my security clearance.
Replay?:
It's a little early to tell, but if the multiplayer gets some bugs taken care of and a few good mods come out... There definitely is potential.
Conclusion:
Graphics and environments were amazing and are unmatched at this point. You'll have a hard time finding another video game that can create a world like this. Downside is that the gameplay seemed to suffer slightly and I would've liked to see some more "hellish" levels. Was Doom 3 worth the wait? To me, yes. Is it revolutionary? Definitely in terms of looks. Gameplay is solid, but not much better than any of the other top-notch FPS games.
Lastly if I had to give a number score I'd probably give 89/100. But the content of the paragraphs above is a better tool to judge by than these numbers.
Like many of you, I have been anticipating this game and purchased a copy on Tuesday as soon as it was legally available. But because I didn't pre-order it and camp outside the night before, or download it just to bash it and say how much better HL2 will be, I'll say I'm fairly unbiased. Now onto the review!
Background:
The original Doom games were very important to the FPS genre, I remember playing them quite a lot on my old 486 33Mhz machine. Multiplayer also owes a lot to Doom because of the Deathmatch style play it pioneered. Doom 3 promised to carry this torch with a revamped graphics engine and environments to scare the shit out of you. Does it deliver?
Graphics:
Even others who have written very one-sided and negative reviews of the game don't debate much in this area. There hasn't been much on the PC that can really even come close at this point. Light and shadow interact to create very lifelike environments. The designers seem to have even payed careful attention to little areas like the desks, walls, pipes, corpses, everything you can think of. The monsters many of us know from the older games reappear here and look excellent. Cutscenes also look superb and are integrated seamlessly into the game.
Sound:
Although there wasn't anything too revolutionary here, sounds compliment the overall atmosphere very well. The voices you hear while running through various areas add to the "scariness". Voice acting from the characters sounds great (I definitely think Petruger had an excellent voice actor). You also hear lots of indistinguishable screams and other noises while progressing; I thought these also added atmosphere. The one area I saw possible need for improvement was gun sound effects. For example the plasma gun and grenade explosions sound kind of lame.
Gameplay:
This is probably the most important area. What good is a game that looks and sounds nice, but plays like shit? Fortunately, I didn't think that was the case with Doom 3. The gameplay is intense; just about the most intense gaming experience I've had. You're constantly looking around to see what's going to pop out behind you, or around a corner. Monsters teleport in or come through false walls, and a few of them literally made me almost jump out of my seat. I don't think any other game made me jump as much or made me feel quite as edgy (and I'm not someone is is scared or disturbed easily). The way the environments sort of play with you because they know where you have to go was interesting, other games have to done this to a lesser extent, but this game really messes with you a lot. On the other hand, Repetition is inevitable in any FPS game. Probably the most annoying part to me was running around in the Alpha and Delta labs simply clearing rooms and looking for PDAs. This wouldn't have been so bad, but it takes up a considerable part of the game. I would've much rather had more levels like Hell and Caverns 2 with pentagrams, corpses, and and hordes of monsters around every corner and much less spending 10 levels or so clearing out rooms with a few monsters each and updating my security clearance.
Replay?:
It's a little early to tell, but if the multiplayer gets some bugs taken care of and a few good mods come out... There definitely is potential.
Conclusion:
Graphics and environments were amazing and are unmatched at this point. You'll have a hard time finding another video game that can create a world like this. Downside is that the gameplay seemed to suffer slightly and I would've liked to see some more "hellish" levels. Was Doom 3 worth the wait? To me, yes. Is it revolutionary? Definitely in terms of looks. Gameplay is solid, but not much better than any of the other top-notch FPS games.
Lastly if I had to give a number score I'd probably give 89/100. But the content of the paragraphs above is a better tool to judge by than these numbers.