johnquiz wrote:
>I disagree. Doom 3 was one of the few games I really enjoyed playing
>enough to stick through to the end. The weapons aren't "run of the
>mill" as much as they're the original guns from the first Doom. If they
>didn't include all the guns from the original Doom game, the fans would
>have been pissed.
Possibly, but they weren't that remarkable stylistically. Perhaps it's
just
hype I'm giving in to, but they seemed like neither an evolution nor a
real
restyling. Just - there. Like the designer was given their names and
projectile colors and told to have at it.
>Likewise, if they added too many new ones it would
>have lost the Doom essence. And what do you mean "...halls with no
>internal logic"?
It was a string of halls. This was supposed to be handed to us as a
cor****ate-designed research base. Even cor****ations aren't that nutty.
Sure,
the original Doom stuff was a bit screwball, but they didn't have humans
milling about it acting like it was fine, either. D3's Hell was better -
it at
least looked like something Ugly Things would live in.
>Every hall was placed specifically to set you up for
>the think to jump out at you next.
And that's it. It was designed as one long series of ambushes. It looked
like
one long series of ambushes. I was railroaded through one long series of
ambushes. I don't think I should be reminded of the human who stuck voxels
or
static meshes together. I think I should be reminded that I'm in a normal
place where bad things happened. While I enjoy carnage in textured boxes
as
much as the next guy, hours of it grates on me. And that's what the levels
felt like to me - not places, but just textured boxes.
>Everything looked pleasing to the
>eye, even with the liberal amount of gore.
>Painful linerity: again, this is Doom! What were expecting?
Multiple attack vectors. As early as E1M1 there was spots where I could
make
choices about how to attack a certain group of monsters. I didn't have to
charge blindly into an ambush unless I wanted to play that way.
Nonlinearity
doesn't mean branching plots or anything "deep", it means that the map
isn't
one long crooked line. Loops, subtle chances for a bit of sniping to
soften
the enemy up, that sort of thing.
>There a few
>parts where you could have gone two ways which were fun,
One, that I remember. That extendible bridge thing. Freeing the trapped
guy
didn't change the level at all, except for access to one ammo stash, and
the
whole sending message thing was a giant MacGuffin.
>but the linear
>parts of the game were just as fun.
>And when talking about the A.I. I
>assume you were not talking about the characters dynamically stepping
>behind boxes, hiding, and running around obstacles to get to you.
No. Ranged critters did have some interesting tricks, but there was almost
as
many nonranged monsters - who could be faked out if the room's
architecture
was on your side.
>And
>if you ever tried to jump on anything higher than a crate with someone
>with ranged weaponry, you will get hit. Trust me, I tried it. The imps,
>hell kinghts, Z-secs, etc. are pretty good shots.
>And of course
>zombies, trites, ticks, and pretty much all ground-stuck monsters won't
>be able to get you on a five foot tall platform. What were you
>expecting?
Well, if things can jump and climb in the cutscenes, I'd rather expect
them to
at least hop a bit while trying to get to me, rather than milling about
and
waiting for me to come down. Watching the maggots climb out of the last
Hell
****tal when they hadn't quite nailed the concept otherwise was amusing.
>The imps can spring to either side to dodge fire, crouch to
>the ground, jump at you, throw fire balls, and accuratle hit you even
>though the fire ball has to arc. Same with the Hell Knight's BFG blast.
>Plus keep in mind, thier DEMONS FROM HELL!!! They're not GIs who have
>memorized HUMAN-CREATED tactics to fool you.
Well, dodging seems pretty simple. I'll admit that the ranged monsters
were
good for dodging, even if I had the height advantage, but the same logic
was
visible in, say, Quake 3 Team Arena, where a poorly designed level (or a
mistake in a good level) could confuse the hell out of a bot and make him
unable to hunt you down as long as you were on the "right" polygon of the
map.
Though if he stumbled on you, he'd shoot.
It was the others that had a hard time with the Z-axis. Seems to be a
difference between the shooting-type AI (which just needs line-of-sight)
and
the clawing-type AI (which needs to understand where you are, and can thus
be
faked out if you get somewhere that the designers didn't think was
accessible
or likely to reach). So perhaps it's just a matter of weak bot pathing.
>And the soul cube being the most evil thing in the game? Obviously
>somebody didn't beat the game *rolls eyes* What about the cyber demon?
(Spoilers)
Standard Satanic-cyber thing. Evil, but evil like "good vs. evil". His
design
is his team colors. But an intelligent box of blades that feeds on death
and
begs to be used to kill things? In exchange giving its user some of the
life
it steals from others? That's, IMHO, *really* evil. It feels evil, and has
a
vampirism taint about it as well. Horror movies (Hellraiser, Phantasm)
have
used similar concepts for evil-looking artifacts and weapons. In books as
well. Elric of Melniboné's sword, Stormbringer, had a similar
healing-owner-for-killing-others MO.
And the flying Bertruger, while icky, was only there for 2 seconds at the
end.
>What about the Guardian?
Monstrous. Interesting design, with the seekers, even though a flying
klieg
light takes some getting used to. Rather rough boss to beat, I'll grant.
>What about the CPU complex boss?
Human augmented with Satanic cybernetic technology. Seemed to be what he
wanted, though. Corrupting innocents is spooky, but deliberately selling
one's
soul is traitorous.
>And the demon
>at the very end of the game? Come on!! Plus, the Sould cube didn't look
>very evil.
We'll just have to disagree. I found it acted and felt evil, you didn't.
>Rambline voice acting? Come on it was fantastic! I've heard worse in
>full feature movies! They talked about what they did that day to give
>you a sense of realism and the fact that you're on a futuristic base.
Which jibes with the ambush-for-ambush's-sake level design.
Red-key-blue-key
(Doom) or pages of dialogue (Deus Ex) design are both fine, as long as the
plot and level architecture are going in the same direction.
>And sometimes, the people un-wittingly give you plot-points that are
>im****tant. Yes, the outside levels were nice, and they were *only* used
>6 six times (maybe more I just can't remember). And using cut-scenes to
>get you into hard situations? It's kind of what most games do. Resident
>Evil 4?
Ah, and there's the core of it. I'm not much for the Resident Evil games.
>What kind of fun what the game be if they didn't put you into
>hard or un-comfortable situations?
Great. Good games let *me* put myself in the uncomfortable situations.
Yeah, I
have to do it to beat the game, but I'm the guy on the trigger. I have
some
handle on the pacing. I'm not being railroaded from event A to event B.
They
control the plot, I control how my avatar acts within the plot.
Len
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