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Doom 3 Review

Posted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 3:27 pm
by Mike Haley
Before boarding that transport to Mars, I took some time to prepare myself for the journey ahead. I began to tweak my system in hopes of better performance. After all, I wouldn't want to present my vacation on Mars to you as a slideshow. I disabled services that I didn't use, and removed programs from the run key in the registry. To increase hard disk read times, I ran Defragmentation, and Scandisk. Knowing that spyware can bog down system performance, I ran a spyware scan using Adaware, and Spybot. To remove dead entries from the registry, I ran a registry scan using Registry Cleaner, and RegScrubXP.

For the last few months I had been hunting down the nearly impossible to find BFG GeForce 6800 GT, and I just barely got my hands on one in time. There were just a few left in stock at Fry's Electronics. I had to buy a new power supply as well. It seems that my original power supply didn't provide enough power. After installing my new card, and my new power supply, I updated my video drivers, and all of my other system drivers as well. I was ready.

On August 2nd Gamestop called and said they would begin selling the game at 7 PM. I picked up the game, and rushed home. The installation took some time. The game comes on 3 CD's after all. After the installation was finished, I booted up the game. I set my resolution to 1024x768, and my detail level to High Quality. Ultra Quality is also available, but the computer to run it well isn't. I initially set my anti-aliasing level to 8x, but I soon realized that anti-aliasing was not very necessary in this game, and that the higher the resolution was, the less apparent the jagged edges were. You can see from my screenshots (below) how the jagged edges don't impact the game very much. I also set up my sound, and control options while I was configuring things. I set my difficulty to Marine, and my journey began. The first thing I noticed was that this game is breathtaking. Every texture, every polygon, every shadow is perfect. The audio is also great. Especially if you have 5.1 speakers. Throughout my experience with the game, I was getting pretty decent frame rates. There was a few moments were the game chugged a little. Mostly during large fire fights though.

Main Menu
Info: This is the main menu. You can start a new game, load a saved game, play multiplayer, configure your options, load a mod, check for updates, view credits, or quit the game.

PDA Screen
Info: This is your PDA. Your inventory list, mission briefing, profiles, user emails, user info, and video disks are stored here.

Here are some of the demons that you will encounter:

Imp (First appeared in Doom I)
Demon (Pinky) (First appeared in Doom I)
Lost Soul (First appeared in Doom I)
Cacodemon (First appeared in Doom I)
Revenant (First appeared in Doom II: Hell on Earth)
Mancubus (First appeared in Doom II: Hell on Earth)
Hell Knight (First appeared in Doom II: Hell on Earth)
Arch-Vile (First appeared in Doom II: Hell on Earth)

There are quite a few more demons, as well as a few bosses in the game. I won't post screenshots of the bosses though. They contain some major spoilers. Anyway, I look forward to seeing you in deathmatch. Don't forget your rocket launcher.

For reference, my full system specs are:
AMD Athlon XP 2600+ 2.1GHZ
1GB DDR PC2100
BFG GeForce 6800 GT 256MB

Re:Doom 3 Review

Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2004 5:12 pm
by Joey
im running doom 3 on a p4 2.4 ghz with an nvidia geforce 4 ti4200 or something like that, and 512 ram. it runs fine on my computer. i have it at 800x600 and medium quality. i havent tried it any higher yet, but it works great like that.

i dont like multiplayer much. it isnt very addicting, and single player isnt that addicting either but its fun to play. and i also havent been scared much by the game yet :-\ i still really enjoy it and hope to beat it soon.

Re:Doom 3 Review

Posted: Sat Sep 11, 2004 9:42 pm
by mr-t
My only problem with DOOM 3 graphically was that all the shadows are completely black, but that is the fault of stencil shadowing (other games that use stencil shadowing eg the Tenebrae mod for Quake are plagued by the same problem)

It isn't really that much fun to play compared to the original DOOM, but that's really just my opinion.

Re:Doom 3 Review

Posted: Thu Sep 16, 2004 4:24 am
by Joey
i agree. im back to playing rtcw online :D

Re:Doom 3 Review

Posted: Thu Sep 16, 2004 10:26 am
by Eero Ränik
I completed the game a while ago, and I really think the game deserves a 3. Graphics and sounds are top-notch, but the story isn't much good. Well, at least it has one. :P I played the game with the same graphics settings as Mike, and the game ran just fine. Now too bad, that the game couldn't scare me more than once, like it was promised to in lots of reviews.

Re:Doom 3 Review

Posted: Thu Sep 16, 2004 6:30 pm
by mystran
I don't get why people say this is so great.
Like, ok, well, the textures are decent, yeah, the lighting is ok, and YES, you can see there are some pretty advanced effects being used, but what I don't get is the amount of polygons in the models.

Like, it might be there are a lot of polygons in them. At least they constantly claim there are. But if there are, then id obviously has no clue about proper distribution of polygons on a model: every single arc in the models is awfully jagged. The best example (and in the beginning of the game) is the transition from the player-characters neck to his shirt.

No offence anyone, but I've seen software rendered polygon models that look less like polygon models. Advanced texturing and all that is nice, but having the right polygons in the right places is important too... especially if you can't make smooth transitions from one texture to another..

Re:Doom 3 Review

Posted: Fri Sep 17, 2004 4:23 am
by Joey
well, if i am talking about the same thing you are, maybe it has to do with the resolution. once you have a computer good enough for the highest resolution, take a look. im not sure if that would fix anything.

and the game just doesnt grab me. i thought it would be a game that i would be addicted to. i played it for a few days and then stopped. i just cant wait to see the cyber demon :D

Re:Doom 3 Review

Posted: Fri Sep 17, 2004 7:12 am
by mystran
No, just the other way, increasing resolution makes the polygons EASIER to notice...

As for the computer being too slow, well.. my computer won't run the game, but the computer I tried it with is about the second best you can buy.. and it did run 1600x1200 with ~60fps+ except for some moments of heavy explosives all around so... without much filtering at that resolution ofcourse, but that doesn't help such lack of polygons much either..

But irrelevant. The engine might be fine, but id did better job with their art (including models) with Q3 I think. It's better to have all different areas lack the same amount of realism, than to have one thing much worse than others. Such an "error" breaks the immersion..

But I'll shut up. I should know better than to argue. I should know that people like stuff that "looks" like "realistic", not stuff that is "immersive". So who cares. It's just a game.

Re:Doom 3 Review

Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2004 5:09 pm
by Joey
i like the game and the graphics. i played it again yesterday and i got to hell. but i need to know, is the spider mastermind in the game? i hope to god it is because i will **** my pants if i see that and i want to get real scared :D let me know but try not to ruin any spoilers. just tell me if it is in the game or not. and i cant wait to see the cyber demon :D