Tech Smartly

I just recently bought the id pack on steam, which includes every game ever made by id. The famous doom, wolfenstein 3d, commander keen, all of those famous games were in the pack. Even all of the quake games and mission packs, and expansions were included. Unfortunately, having a 24 inch monitor at 1920 to 1200 meant that many of the old games looked terrible. They still look terrible anyway in today’s day and age, but it is incredibly stretched out when on such a high resolution. Of course, what is there to expect of a game that ran on DOS? However, I’m here to talk about doom 3, a much more recent game which came out in 2004.

First of all, the graphics of the game are pretty nice, just don’t expect Crysis. I really do like the ambiance in the game, as the sounds never stop. Wherever you go, there will always be ambient noise which can be rather unsettling. Also, there are many different audio clips that play when an enemy is about to attack. As far as I know, there is never a moment in the game where the sound is ever distracting, or does not fit the game at all. However, in a game, it’s not the tech that is most important, it’s the amount of fun that is obtained from the game. Different people think different things about what makes a game fun. To each his own, unless fun is derived from how the game looks on maximum settings.

Fun is the one thing this game seems to lack in certain departments. One of the most glaring and obvious problems is the flashlight. You’re left alone in dark corridors, never fighting with anyone else, shooting things in the dark. Many times in the game, you’ll be left fighting in places like this:

Now in this situation, what would you do? Of course, you would take your gun out and shoot him! ok…switch weapons…What’s this??

Edit: This is why you don’t hotlink! Warning for all future bloggers.

Bam Bam Bam! Is he dead?

I think you see what I mean. I don’t have a problem with having a challenging game. I do have a problem with artificial difficulty. Come on, do we have to shoot in the dark? I understand making the game scary, but if it requires clamping down on the user’s control in a limiting way, then obviously it’s going to frustrate the player. The usage of darkness is very good, but the way the player interacts with darkness is frustrating. Luckily, someone made a mod that allows a smaller flashlight that works with the machine gun and shotgun. The constant switching between the flashlight and the gun meant that the player had to choose between being ready to shoot, or knowing where to shoot. Whenever I walk up to the door, I’m always thinking about what I should have ready. It doesn’t make a difference however, as there is always an imp ready to jump on you as soon as the door opens. This brings me to another aspect of the game that it relies too heavily on.

Boo. Did I scare you? if yes, this game is not for you. This game relies heavily on cheap thrills. Every room you go into, there is bound to be something that is going to claw/bite/throw fireballs at you . This ties in with the flashlight problem, as you always have to keep your gun ready for every time something pops out to kill you, but you can’t see it. At least this game is realistic enough to provide some light when you shoot your gun. The scare tactics are used so much that they almost become a parody of themselves. For example, when there is armor laying near a wall, sometimes it turns out to be a door which the constructors of the place seemed to build only to house an imp. A small jump in fright, then I proceeded to mow it down with my chainsaw. In the small compartment that opened up, there was more armor. The exact same thing happened again! This had never happened before, was totally unexpected, and I ended up laughing at what had just happened.I heard that the expansion relies much less on this type of thing, but I have not tried it it yet.

This game is great in so many aspects, but it fails in so many others. This game seems to rely heavily on horror and tense environments. And it does well with things such as the ambiance and the way everything looks. It falls flat however, when the scare tactics start to become overused, and the player becomes desensitized to all the monsters that pop up. It would be much effective if it happened much less. It feels like it’s trying too hard. I have the feeling that if it was a game that was playtested and polished extensively, such as what Valve does, these issues would have been fixed, and given much more polish. Everything would combine effectively to create a great but scary game that would not have been so imperfect.It was a good job, but could have been much better.

edit: Well, I just learned what hotlinking is, and why not to do it. Seems like the pictures are down.

edit 2: pictures are back up.