Doom 3 impressions so far (no spoilers)

[TheVoid]

Okay, i've had the game all day, and between work and school, i've played it for about 3 hours.

thoughts:
1) while i do understand and sympathize with the reasoning behind the dissolving bodies, it does kinda suck. to me, it just makes the demons feel empty. like you just shot at an egg shell. i sorta miss the old pinkies that used to CLUMP to the ground.

2) those that are saying the game stops being scary are not playing it the same way i am, thats all there is to it. i play with the speakers (5.1 baby!) almost all the way up, or with headphones turned way up.

3) speaking of which, the ambient background noise is AMAZING. totally chilling. i found myself more than once double checking a hallway because i thought i heard something.

4) the graphics are... i can't put words to it. it feels like you're in Shrek 3: To Hell With That Donkey. It really never computes with me that its a game, just like Doom, Quake, Unreal, etc all were. It feels different... like... this is how it was all SUPPOSED to be.

5) the AI has been at moments average, and then at moments... well... for instance: this shotgun guy and i were trading blasts. He turned and ran from me! i thought "great! i've got him on the run!" i chase him, turn the corner, and there he is, shotgun in my face Bruce Campbell style. BLAM!

6) The cutscenes have been pretty well done, without pulling you out of the game, because, actually, they arent out of the engine. They just pull away from your character, do what they do, then go back.

7) the PDA, declared "one of the most useful things in the game" has been 95% useless to me. every once in a while i'll get a code for a locker or something, but really, its been blah blah blah. Maybe i'm missing all sorts of secrets, who knows. Maybe it's the reason for number 8.

8) I'm stuck. I've gotten to a certain point, and... i dont know what to do. I mean... i know what my objective is... but i don't know how to do it. I'll pick up the game tomorrow with a fresh look on things and try again. My noobish ass is always getting stuck on stupid parts of a level, on really simple tasks.

[ToXiCFLUFF]

I play 5.1 and it's not scary at all. Tense sometimes, yes, but not scary. Play Silent Hill 2 for a game which inspires a constant sense of dread and fear.

[mr_insanity]

I'm having a blast so far, it's a really fun game, but here's my problems, dissolving bodies, like we've all said. I understand why, but I don't like it. I'll deal. So far (i'm not tooo far through) the environment is just so cold and sterile I wanna get out of there and see something bigger/brighter (maybe that's the whole point).

Sound: I have a 4.1 setup which is great for games using 3d audio and EAX like far cry or halo, but I don't like the fact that they spend so much time talking about how great it is now with 5.1 that they don't offer support (yet) for EAX.

aside from the gripes, which are a lot easier to spit out than all the plusses, I'm enjoying the game. There've been some great moments where I was completely surprised by what was going on. I won't say more than that 'cause, no spoilers! But it's all good times, noodle salad.

[MasterOfPuppets]

i haven't really found anything too much to gripe about, exept that it has been quite easy so far.

though i'm not a big fan of the disolving bodies myself, i have to give a bit credit to ID on it. i mean, they could have made them simply fade away, but instead they look like burning ash crumbling to dust. i think its actually pretty cool.

i find myself wishing the game had more in common with the original Dooms. i think the classic pinky would be a lot more frightenning in full 3d than the new one.

still, i'm loving it. i'm not about to jump the gun and call it the best game ever, or even the best game this year, but from what i've seen so far (aprox 7 hours of play, i suppose) this game does live up to its name sake. as for the hype? well...the hype is/was so big that i don't think anything would have lived up to it. probably be the same for Half-Life 2 and Halo 2.

but for me at least, the game hasn't been a let down.

[Alias Jopes]

Quite a lot of people have said the game was a little on the easy side. Maybe id should have set the default difficult (Marine, I assume) on what is currently the hard difficulty. Because if the game is supposed to scare you, the enemies should not only look menacing but BE just as menacing.

Well, at least now I know when I get Doom III in a few days which difficulty to start on.

[lothario]

I'm loving this game! I wasn't sure what to expect, what with all the hype I thought I might be let down. Also, the minimum system specs had me spooked, since my rig is a 1.3 p4, 384mb RDRAM, 9600xt. But it's been running quite well on 1024X768 no AA, low details or 800X600 2xaa, high details, and as everyone says, the graphics are absolutely stunning! I do find the game quite scary , I've been playing it on headphones, and really been immersing myself in the story by reading every e-mail, watching every movie, listening to every audio disk, and this might help. I'm not very far in the game though, so I can' say much about the gameplay being dynamic or becoming reduntant after a while (i'm hoping it's the former).

[MasterOfPuppets]

you rarely see more than a few enemies coming at you at once. but in the few times the shit starts to really hit the fan, things get panicked in a hurry.

[TheVoid]

i find myself swearing at my guy that he won't reload that damn machine gun FASTER DAMNIT!!!

[MasterOfPuppets]

i thought the chaingun reloaded very fast, which was nice considering it takes a full second to spin up.

[TheVoid]

not the chaingun, the machine gun. blue/green gun that he has to crack open, reach into his pocket, pull out a clip, put it in, snap back shut. i havent gotten the chaingun yet.

[badacid678]

Before I played it I said that it better be worth the hype, and it was, but , if I shoot something in the head, why does it disappear? It is totally different from the other dooms, that I can say. It feels like some other game totally. and I forgot that there was an online version, so I will have to try that out today.

I have 1 gig of ram, proper video card and all the other sh!t, but it still seems to stutter a little bit on the setting below ultra. I read something that said the best would be 2 gigs of RAM, and the fastest pentium 4 with 3 ghz or something like that. Who has 2 gigs of RAM already? I just got 1 gig like 4 months ago. I can't imagine this on 512 RAM.

[B-MAn]

the reload for the machine gun is more like #click# fiddle fiddle #Click# then a slap.

while the chaingun is of a soothing sound with a click at the start

[BetoTheDestroyer]

im running the game at medium graphix with 256 ramm and a radeon 9600 SE and it runs fine.The only problem i get is sometimes it will crash or freeze but the gameplay runs smooth.

[MasterOfPuppets]

not the chaingun, the machine gun. blue/green gun that he has to crack open, reach into his pocket, pull out a clip, put it in, snap back shut. i havent gotten the chaingun yet.i know wut you were talking about, i was just saying.

[TheVoid]

P4 3.0E
512Mb PC3200 RAM
R9800 Pro 128

i run the game on medium, at 1024x768, never any problems, smooth as butter.

[TheVoid]

more review, still no spoiler:

fought through a couple levels of the game. i've lost count, something like maybe 8 or so?
anyways, just to let everyone know, especially the ones that are saying "its just the same thing over and over and over"
just when you're starting to get that feeling, and you've pretty much got a firm grasp on killing anything the game has thrown at you, you get to meet something new. then something really big and painful. then more baddies. then you find the TCM closet and personally, i almost died. i mean, in my chair, died of fright.



i heard the devil...