Doom 3

Except for the occasional website recommendation, occasional graphic or one-liner, I’ve been posting a lot of insightful and reflective material on this blog for the past week or so. Thought I’d break the routine by posting something about one of my other…admittedly trivial…but nonetheless entertaining passions. And that happens to be computer gaming.

It’s been more than five months since I bought and installed a copy of Doom 3 on my home computer. And I still haven’t been able to finish it. It’s not that I’m a bad player…actually I think I’m pretty good. It’s just…well…I guess my interest in the game has waned significantly since it’s much hyped release six months ago. How do I say this…at the expense of infuriating the potentially millions of avid Doom 3 players out there, I think the game just sucks like a Hoover vacuum cleaner. Don’t get me wrong though. It’s graphics are among the most advanced and realistic as far as first person shooters are concerned, not to mention that it requires some pretty high end hardware to run at a pace that will satisfy you. The sound is outstanding as well, really making full use of your surround sound speakers if you have them by. But, let’s face it. The gameplay just blows.

The game is dark…too dark. It’s so dark that without a flashlight, I can hardly see any monsters standing right there in front of me…much less shoot at it. Most of the time you just grope around, corridor after corridor with just your flashlight as the only light source. Without the flashlight duct tape mod, (a modification which allows you tape a flashlight to shotgun or machine gun) switch to any weapon and everything just turns pitch black again. And the monsters…what kind of AI (artificial intelligence) did they program these monsters with? Invariably, if a monster materializes in front of you, a few seconds later another monster will materialize behind you. And they rush you. That’s about the only thing they do. Imagine firing your weapon at a monster directly in front of you, while another one is gnawing at your back. In the dark…and these creatures don’t even die easily. And you do it over…and over…and over…again. It’s just too damn frustrating to be any fun anymore.

The scares were cool at first, after a while they get old pretty quick. The game progression was deliberately slowed down to build up tension…but that’s just what it is…slow. I suppose it isn’t unusual, since id software was actually trying to recreate using cutting edge technology the gameplay of the original Doom and Doom II, which was pretty much a brainless scary shoot-‘em-up. And yes, they succeeded. But it sure gets tedious and tiring after a while.

I can think of a lot of better first person shooters out there...with much better gameplay and graphics rivaling that of Doom 3. Half-Life 2 is definitely a winner. The Source 3D engine is much more efficient at maximizing your processor and graphics card power, it possesses a very realistic physics engine, supports driveable vehicles, and the AI is pretty spot-on. Indeed, one of the trademarks of the Half-Life 2 franchise is its excellent AI. The storyline is pretty engaging as well, though the ending is a bit anticlimactic. But that's another story. Far Cry is pretty good too. Good AI as well (not as good as Half Life 2 though), wide open expanses of islands jungle and open seas, varied environments, and driveable (even glidable) vehicles.

In the end, for me at least, Doom 3 is more of a technological showcase to show off what my processor and graphics card (not that I have a high end CPU and video card mind you, just an AMD Athlon XP 2400+ and an overclocked ATI Radeon 9600 Pro) can do. Perhaps games currently under development utilizing Doom 3’s graphics engine can make better use of it in the future.

But I guess you still have to try it…if only to see what state-of-the-art looks like. Just make sure you have at least a 1.5 GHz processor, a GeForce 4 MX class video card, and 384 MB of RAM. That should be enough for the game to be playable. As far as actual gameplay is concerned...don't expect too much.