So I flicked through Gamespot’s review of Doom3, and it seems to come down to “yeah it’s a generic shooter that kills its own tension by being so repetitive. But it’s really shiny!!!! 8/10”
It’ll be a few years before we look at Doom3 ourselves – but for now here’s my own summary which is “it’s really good at one thing, but just repeats that one thing over for entire game, 6/10”. That one thing being:
“creep fearfully into a chamber, lights flickering on and off, the edges of the room shrouded in darkness. It’s all far too quiet, corpses litter the floor and machinery whirs away. You can almost hear your own heartbeat. You see some ammo scattered on a table, cautiously move to take it. Then BAM an imp teleport in front of you. You scream like a girl and empty an entire clip into it, and BAM another one teleports in behind and another on a ledge up above. So more screaming as you whirl around and spray the entire room with shells and rockets, hopefully hitting a bad guy at some point. Then run and hide behind something”
Except that by the 875th time it’s all not quite so shocking anymore. It got to the point where I walked into each room backwards so I could catch the BAM! BEHIND YOU! guy, then dash to the relative safety of the previously cleared room.
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True, they overused the teleportation, but it always came with a nice *sccccCCHHWHAM!* warning, and a neat little displacement effect that would rattle nearby equipment light enough to be rattled. I don’t remember feeling like it relied too much on cheap tactics and cheaper scares. I do remember distinctly that it made great use of its shadows – unseen zombies shambling into the light, red eyes leering at you from the darkness, etc.
I liked it, but I’m a sucker for Mars, non-fantasy sci-fi equipment/locations, and hell corrupting man a la Hellraiser, so that’s probably a triple whammy of bias. I also have no problem with a game that’s mostly atmosphere. I think that’s why I was able to stick with it well after I learned exactly when to expect the monsters to flash in.
August 16, 2007 @ 12:18 am
It seems like one of those games that people gave vaguely positive reviews to and then slagged off retrospectively.
It’s certainly one I’d like to try, perhaps in 2015 when I can afford a new computer…
August 18, 2007 @ 9:45 am
I’m finally going to try this game when I have a visa card and bought the ID Super Pack.
August 27, 2007 @ 8:51 am