For a dozen years Id has been the top dog, the guy to beat, the pater familia to the first-person shooter. It can look back on a legacy of six games, each one an unstoppable sales juggernaut, a technological milestone. You didn’t need to know what the review score was for an Id title. You only knew that you needed to buy it.
But one day, the industry changed. The consumer changed. It’s hard to put one’s finger on it. Maybe it was Counter-Strike. Maybe Unreal Tournament. Something happened to the genre between Quake III and Doom 3, and Id somehow didn’t take it into account. Call it braggadocio, or hubris, but Doom 3 is no longer the top dog in the FPS market.
Yes, it’s upsetting. I tried not to admit it either. But it’s undeniably true.
Some have even argued that Doom 3 is a step backwards in FPS gaming, that even when it hit the shelves we were already years past where it hoped to position itself.
The problem, it seems, lies at the core of where Doom came from, and the hopes we had for Doom 3. It was a tale of gameplay, graphics, and mistakes.
Zombie shuffle
We’re all familiar with the helter-skelter breakneck balls-to-the-wall pace that the original Doom set. So where is it in Doom 3? I can appreciate the slow zombie shuffle as much as the next guy, but when Halo’s Flood race existed years before Doom’s sequel, one has to ask why exactly we’re experiencing only one or two imps at a time.
Obviously, there’s a reason why we don’t have a dozen imps chasing us down a corridor, and I’m inclined to say that it’s because of the graphics engine. So much attention has been paid to rendering a realistic environment that there just isn’t a lot of room left for that many bad guys. This left the guys at Id with a bit of a conundrum: How could they still make the game tense and as terrifying as the originals?
The answer, evidently, is to have shit jump out of the dark at you.
Yes, I jumped. I was scared. And then I got tired. Tired of having secret panels open behind me after I’d already cleared the room of any possible beasts from hell, only to get clawed in the back. Who knew demons were capable of such stealth and chicanery? Hey, maybe I’ll open this door and--surprise!--here’s yet another instant 25 hit points removed from my health because an imp was waiting patiently for me to open a door. This isn’t gaming. This isn’t the Id I know. This is scripted nonsense.
And yet, in the face of such scripted
trickery, the A.I. then proceeds to fall flat on its face when given an
empty room and a box to hide behind. If it doesn’t have a gun, the A.I.
just comes straight at you trying to claw your eyes out. If it does
have a gun, it hides behind corners and boxes, but since the game lacks
a headshot--something which has become so common in FPSs now that it’s
no longer a boastable feature--it takes an implausible amount of time
to dispatch them.