Saturday, September 18, 2004
Doom3 completed
Yow.
I finally finished doom3 tonight, after getting Laurel into bed. Took me forever - having a new kid doesn't allow much time for gaming.
Doom3 is like watching an animated horror movie, except you're in it. The graphics are that good, given a high-powered 3D card. The engine generates cinematic framerates with quality approaching something like Shrek or Toy Story 2. Except that it isn't about toys or fast-talking donkeys. No, it's about demons and zombies and big, big guns, and being occasionally scared enough to jump out of the chair. The lighting and fogging, in particular, are amazing. There are some scenes with overhead lights that are swaying back and forth, and the shadows do what you'd expect them to do in the real world, and in the last couple levels, there are marsquakes that shake clouds of dust down from the ceiling, and these look spectacular.
My only complaints are that the story is a little thin, and the gameplay is predictable more often than it's surprising.
It's basically a re-interpretation of the original DOOM story; check out doom3portal or planet DOOM for more on the storyline. By comparison, the Marathon series on the mac, or Halo (and hopefully, Halo2) offer a bit more fun in terms of storytelling. Those games are almost like reading a good sci-fi novel, with frequent gunfire. Doom3 is all about the gunfire. Also, unlike Halo, there's no vehicles, and very few outdoors scenes. Of course, being on mars, there isn't much call for being out-of-doors, but still - the outdoors scenes on Halo are some of the most beautiful in the game.
And for the gameplay, it seemed to degenerate into "I'm walking into a new room, I wonder what's going to jump out at me this time" for most of the mazes. The points at which the game actually scared me were pretty few and far-between.
However, at the end of the day, the storyline isn't that big of a deal. My hopes for doom3 were to run around in beautifully rendered mazes and to shoot stuff, and doom3 delivers in spades for that. Big fun, and highly recommended. Oh - and you're definately going to want to buy and install an NVidia 6800-series graphics card before playing. ¶ 11:32 PM
I finally finished doom3 tonight, after getting Laurel into bed. Took me forever - having a new kid doesn't allow much time for gaming.
Doom3 is like watching an animated horror movie, except you're in it. The graphics are that good, given a high-powered 3D card. The engine generates cinematic framerates with quality approaching something like Shrek or Toy Story 2. Except that it isn't about toys or fast-talking donkeys. No, it's about demons and zombies and big, big guns, and being occasionally scared enough to jump out of the chair. The lighting and fogging, in particular, are amazing. There are some scenes with overhead lights that are swaying back and forth, and the shadows do what you'd expect them to do in the real world, and in the last couple levels, there are marsquakes that shake clouds of dust down from the ceiling, and these look spectacular.
My only complaints are that the story is a little thin, and the gameplay is predictable more often than it's surprising.
It's basically a re-interpretation of the original DOOM story; check out doom3portal or planet DOOM for more on the storyline. By comparison, the Marathon series on the mac, or Halo (and hopefully, Halo2) offer a bit more fun in terms of storytelling. Those games are almost like reading a good sci-fi novel, with frequent gunfire. Doom3 is all about the gunfire. Also, unlike Halo, there's no vehicles, and very few outdoors scenes. Of course, being on mars, there isn't much call for being out-of-doors, but still - the outdoors scenes on Halo are some of the most beautiful in the game.
And for the gameplay, it seemed to degenerate into "I'm walking into a new room, I wonder what's going to jump out at me this time" for most of the mazes. The points at which the game actually scared me were pretty few and far-between.
However, at the end of the day, the storyline isn't that big of a deal. My hopes for doom3 were to run around in beautifully rendered mazes and to shoot stuff, and doom3 delivers in spades for that. Big fun, and highly recommended. Oh - and you're definately going to want to buy and install an NVidia 6800-series graphics card before playing. ¶ 11:32 PM
