Doom III alpha
Apr. 27th, 2003 09:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fishsupremeI finally got a hold of a copy of the leaked Doom III alpha test from last year's E3. People have been raving about the incredible graphics, and yes, they're impressive, but they're not that much better than UT2003, and they run a lot slower.
This said, I'm extremely impressed with the demo, and for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with the graphics (although the use of realtime shadows and lighting is excellent, and something no game has ever done before).
No, what I'm impressed by is the design. It's hard to make a game scary -- the players are sufficiently detached from it that it just doesn't really work most of the time. The last game to do it well was Half-Life, which sold about a zillion copies. Enemies in Half-Life could gate in out of thin air (loudly), so you never knew when you were truly safe.
Doom III is so far beyond that. Just playing the demo levels had me opening doors and thinking, "Are they out of their minds? I can't go in there! It's dark!" Things have a tendency to leap at you at horrible speeds. And said things are disgusting and have lots of teeth. However, I think the biggest thing that makes these things far scarier than any typical video-game creatures are what happens when they hit you.
Every 3D shooter type game has red screen flashes, etc. when hit by something. But that's just symbolic. In Doom III, your character isn't "pegged to the spot" -- when something hurtles toward you at high speed and slams into you, you go flying (according to a ragdoll physics model, no less). Your position and view direction get swung around. It's very disorienting -- and has the result that if something hits you once, it'll probably hit you three or four more times before you can get your gun aimed at it again... and by then you're dead.
id's going to make millions off this one. Probably even more millions than they made off of the original Doom, which for years was the best-selling game of all time.
This said, I'm extremely impressed with the demo, and for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with the graphics (although the use of realtime shadows and lighting is excellent, and something no game has ever done before).
No, what I'm impressed by is the design. It's hard to make a game scary -- the players are sufficiently detached from it that it just doesn't really work most of the time. The last game to do it well was Half-Life, which sold about a zillion copies. Enemies in Half-Life could gate in out of thin air (loudly), so you never knew when you were truly safe.
Doom III is so far beyond that. Just playing the demo levels had me opening doors and thinking, "Are they out of their minds? I can't go in there! It's dark!" Things have a tendency to leap at you at horrible speeds. And said things are disgusting and have lots of teeth. However, I think the biggest thing that makes these things far scarier than any typical video-game creatures are what happens when they hit you.
Every 3D shooter type game has red screen flashes, etc. when hit by something. But that's just symbolic. In Doom III, your character isn't "pegged to the spot" -- when something hurtles toward you at high speed and slams into you, you go flying (according to a ragdoll physics model, no less). Your position and view direction get swung around. It's very disorienting -- and has the result that if something hits you once, it'll probably hit you three or four more times before you can get your gun aimed at it again... and by then you're dead.
id's going to make millions off this one. Probably even more millions than they made off of the original Doom, which for years was the best-selling game of all time.
