Ok, so I partially bit the bullet and downloaded the Demo. I'm no fan of games like Doom 3, but I figured I'd give it a try anyway. After fighting said demo and computer for 20 minutes so that the audio doesn't cut out, I played said demo for 30ish minutes. The demons have appeared, and right now I'm left to wondering why (most) everyone sees this as an awesome game.

Granted, I have very little idea of what's going on, and I haven't seen much. Couple into that the fact that I meet the bare minimum in terms of system requirements. The game is running with everything on Low at 640x480. So I can't really make a fair assessment right now. But what I have seen and played strikes me as mediocre at best.

Right off, I'll say that I don't hate all of it. What I mainly like are the little details. The PDA system. The interaction with computers. Talking to people. The radio chatter after the demons show up. That type of stuff. That is cool. What little story I currently have, was decent enough.

Now for what I just don't get. According to the brief introduction you're given, the UAC has unlimited funds and is all powerful. Now, if they're all powerful, and have unlimited funds, why the hell can't they afford to put in some battery powered flood lights for when the power goes down? Even before the power went off, why wasn't there better lighting? Meh. I found myself being more annoyed with my dinky flashlight that's mostly useless for lighting areas, than I was scared.

I'd comment on the graphics, but seeing as how everything was set to Low and I was running at the lowest resolution possible, those comments would hold less weight than anything else I've said.

So yes, please explain... And realize that I DID say that I've only played a small part of the game and can't make a far assessment. Don't go flaming me.

In the Matrix, why didn't the machines use animals instead of humans?

Uh-oh....here comes Doom III argument #135,100, 345

Not an argument I'm starting. I just seriously want to know, what does everyone find so awesome here?

As for why the machines didn't use animals, either a massive percentage of them died in the initial war, so it was rather pointless to bother with them, or the machines decided they could just get more power from humans than animals. I think that latter argument would be harder to back up though.

Reguardless, that doesn't explain why if UAC is all powerful and has unlimited funds there aren't battery powered flood lights. It only makes logical sense.

The UAC has unlimited funds at it's disposal because they didn't fork out the money for proper lighting for Mars City. :p

From: http://forums.massassi.net/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=27656

If they put battery powered floodlight in, then the game wouldn't be scary.

Kind of the same as saying that stormtroopers have horrible aim because of the force.

This thread is about to become as hostile as a radioactive wasteland. For the love of God Yoshi, just ignore him.

I really enjoyed Doom 3, HL2 and Far Cry though none of them struck me as perfect games.

Ditto. Can we please just have something that resembles a civil discussion?

I'm not saying that they should have the whole place lit up with battery powered flood lights. The rooms I've seen so far are fairly smallish. One light per room would be good enough. Have the lights flicker, have some not work at all. You can make the game still be scary with lights. It doesn't have to be totally dark except for the lights of computers and your flashlight.

They haven't invented the lightbulb on mars/in hell/whatever the setting is

Quicky note on FarCry. I haven't had the oppurtunity to play the full version of that either, but I did download the demo for it recently as well. What impressed me the most, was the way the AI seemed to communicate and function, and the zero bounds you had for completeing mission objectives. Other than that, it was visually stunning, but that was it really.

Mainly it is just the little things like you said. The mood in the game is great thanks to the shadows and it really just has a lot of nice little touches. It's an arcade game yea, but it's fun. Really it all just comes down...once again...to preference. You play what you like, it's all good.

Doom3 is barely playable on my system, i have to play on 640 x 480, low detail. I even have to disable shadows., and even then, its prone to freezing/crashing

the source engine is great, though. I can run it silky smooth with everything on high.

Man, my post was just a joke. I didn't really care for Doom 3 at all.

Far Cry was really awesome, and so was Splinter Cell and Splinter Cell: PT. You might want to look into those if you didn't really like the Doom 3 demo.

I tried my hand at Splinter Cell about a year ago. One of my friends had it on Xbox. He played all the way through the game. Now, it should be stated that he LOVES army and stealth type games. Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, etc. After playing Splinter Cell though, he found it to be pretty boring. He thought the graphics and the overall concept to be pretty cool, but his opinion of gameplay was that it was really really slow and repetative. I played two or three levels, and I had to agree with him. It was interesting, and the concept was cool, but it wasn't something I could really get into and play for and extended period.

I gave my opinion on FarCry further up.

I don't exactly hate Doom 3, but as of this moment, it isn't a game I'd run out and buy. I typically reserve the word 'hate' for games that pretty much suck in every way to me. Doom 3 hasn't ben like that. Yet.

I really liked the dark atmosphere. The fact that the falsh light didn't light everything up was kind of the point. It wasn't supposed to light up an entire room. The dark is supposed to help scare you when a pair of imps teleport behind you or bust out of an office door.

There were a lot of partially lit rooms and flickering lights throught the game. It wasn;t all dark.

Part of that might have been the gamma on my monitor. At 10 years old, it sucks rather badly. When I turn the monitor on, it's noticeably brighter, and then gets darker as time goes on. Eventually it levels out.

Most of the funds were used to polish and shine the whole damn base.

The problem is, it got predictable. You knew that something was going to show up, you just didn't know what it would be the first time around.

Plus, there were too many imps. Virtually every other enemy that spawned was a damn imp. It got boring to run around killing imps the second time i played through it.

You can even kill them before they're through spawning. Just aim for the orange teleportation marker with a fast weapon like the chaingun and start blasting. Poor imp never even has a chance.

Tis true.

I actually bought the game and found it very boring. There was virtually no variety to the level design, there was nothing scary about it, it ran like crap even on my new(ish) computer (3.2 ghz p4), and it was nothing like the originals (which I loved). They basically ruined the gameplay of Doom and turned into a scripted-sequenced nightmare of a game.

I didn't think it was the best either, although I did like it. It pales next to some other games. (I wont be specific)

I haven't heard anyone IRL like the game. Still waiting to try it.

Everyone has their differring tastes in games. If you don't like it, okay, but just don't tell me it sucks. It may not be for everyone, and I agree there are things they could do better, but I find it hilarious that whenever I say something bad about HL2 people jump all over me, yet I've never gotten onto anyone for playing and honestly not liking Doom 3. People who say "OMG IT SUXX0RZ AND LOOKS LIKE CRAP" get a good helping of STFU, but other than that...hey.

Duke Nukem 3D > *

I'm not sure why people would expect the levels to have "varying design," as it's a military base. Complaining about the uniform design is like saying, "Man...all those hallways on the starship Enterprise look the same. Couldn't they have added some variety?"

I, personally, found the game enjoyable. It was a nice departure from DooM 1 & 2's "room full of zombie and demonic hordes" gameplay. If I wanted something like that, I'd shell out the $20 for Serious Sam 1 & 2, but I didn't. I wanted and expected something akin to a "jump out of the shadows at you" deal.

And as for the battery backup deal...well, it probably would have been knocked out, too.

/me agrees

I thought there was quite much variety in design, but the differences were rather subtle.

As for the funds/lighting: I'd assume that those lights that did function, used to be a lot brighter when the power was normal.

In the all of 5 minutes I have before I must leave the computer lab to take an exam, I'll revise and add to my opinion based upon what I played last night.

I got a shotgun and the assualt rifle. Oh boy. I was quite excited to get both. They're nice guns, but what's with the shotgun's sounds? It sounded pathetically whimpy. It was more of a loud 'pop' than the traditional shotgun 'boom'. I'd also like to know, why it is that when I shot a zombie with the shotgun, they hardly flinch, but when I get shot with one by a demonized marine, I go flying through the air.

It also started getting more and more predictable last night. I'd walk into a room, look at a corner or a dark gap in the ceiling and say, "The demon dude will come from there." and then seconds later the demon would pop out of that corner and lunge at me, looking very pissed off that I'd figured out where he was comming from before he jumped, thus making me un-scared.

However, there were a few unexpected attacks and moments last night that DID send a chill down my spine. That was it though. Just a chill. I swear I've gotten bigger scares from certain scenes in Half-Life. My chills from last night? Walking into a bunker, backing up against the window, and then having a demon pop up infront of that window, growl, and climb up to the ceiling. I kinda freaked when I walked to a door that had stairs in front of it and a demon crawled out from underneath and jumped me. What really disturbed me though, was walking into a room, and seeing a human zombie hanging from the ceiling, and hearing a voice mutter, "help me...". I shot him twice and then ran like hell to the next room.

Meh, I have a bit more I could go on about, but my time is up. More this evening.

Ok so it's not bad level design. It's bad game design. If you want all of the hallways of the base to look the same, make the game take place in more areas than a military base. There were a few levels in HL2 where stuff was similar all around, but that's why the game changed locations completely so often. You're supposed to keep it interesting. The fact that they could not have added some more environments to the game amazes me. Or maybe do something ambitious like making hell not suck, or taking us to earth! Then again, if we were on earth, it would probably all look the same too... cause you know... it's a military base... and er...

I played it on 800x, medium-low. I enjoyed it a lot because I thought it was the perfect combo of (the first time) a scary game and (the second time) a run-and-gun that seems to be lacking in some games.

Sometimes it's good to just blow stuff away with a boomstick.

But...that's not really an option when you're stuck on a planet whose natural environment is uninhabitable. And if you had gone back to Earth, it would have ruined the whole "you're stuck on Mars all by yourself with no way to get off the planet."

We're talking about a base on mars, they had to be economical. Think about it, the power sources they would have, would all be feeding these high-tech machines, I don't think they're going to fuss over a few useless corners not being lit. The work areas that need lighting, they ARE lit... just the other places, nobody really cared.

I do find it a bit stupid in terms of defense and how they got mutilated to shreads, how their guns didn't have lights or how they don't have night-vision goggles yet. This game could've been thought-out better but if you ignore those few facts, it turns out really fun in the end.

See, that's the problem. It's a plot hole. It was stated in both words and writing at the beginning of the game that UAC has unlimited funds. They don't HAVE to be economical. You'd expect it not to be. If you were building a base on Mars, and you had unlimited funds, would you find the cheapest way to build that base, or do whatever the hell you wanted?

If I had unlimited funds, i would make the whole base out of 24 kt gold. :p

I'd fill it full of scantily clad ladies, and find a way to make it out of cheese.

Exactly. This is why some of this stuff doesn't make any sense.

UAC is a beauracracy. The guy who managed the Mars base construction reported to someone. So, if you're trying to advance in the corporate ladder, are you going to say, "It cost us 27 million to make this," or, "It cost us 2.7 billion to make this"?