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Advances (or How I Learned Stop Fellating Id And Love The Games)
Posted by Blitz on 2004/10/04 02:16:14
With Doom 3 being hailed as the technological benchmark for some time to come, I got to thinking about what "fools" gamers into thinking that the game they are playing was actually a step up technologically.

My opinion is that Doom 3 only has two distinct features that do this -- texturing and lighting. There is no arguing that the textures are outstanding in terms of clarity and the ability to convey depth like never before. Lighting is something I think you can only truly appreciate once you open up the editor, but it really is fantastic in terms of the level of precision and the number of options you have when it comes to lighting. Realtime lighting also makes the engine shine. (pun intended) The player and monster shadows are stunning.

But other than that, Doom 3 is not really doing a good job of convincing me that it is the step up that it's being hyped as.

Let me give you an example of a next generation game living up to that appellation.

Quake stepped on to the scene boasting "true 3D" environments, and when you play Quake, you see that this feature doesn't go to waste, as you often have to traverse the same area/ structure in several different capacities.

The game also made great use of its improved rendering, providing us with several different distinct themes of textures for its levels and units. This not only provided a great sense of place for the out of the box user, but it supplied the custom designer with more than enough separate ideas to use. Lighting also received a makeover, with the addition of spot lighting to compliment the ability to design in true 3d.

Enemy models in Quake looked far superior to the sprite based enemies of Doom, as well as a new ability to track down the player with some intelligence. Baddies were no longer mere shooting gallery set pieces, they were sentient inhabitants of the game universe.

And finally, where Doom revolutionized the way we play computer games against our fellow man, Quake sharpened and polished that attractive feature into an entity of limitless proportion by increasing the pace, making flowing environments to facilitate that pace, and creating a true sense of victory by making your opponent's death sound like watermelon being smashed with a baseball bat, and making it look like the French revolution.

Quake was a true technological advance and it set the standard for how successful games were made for some time.

As for Quake 2 and Quake 3, they were not hailed as innovative, nor should they have been. Colored lighting here, and increased bit depth there are nice features, but the games offered little else in terms of significant advance. In fact, I think they actually made deathmatch worse since Quake. (An argument could be made for Quake 3's ability to create realistic curves, but to me the feature isn't implemented, nor can it be, in such a way that it completely alters the gaming experience from Quake 2)

So id's loyal sons and daughters waited for their gods to rain a brilliant gift down from Mount Olympus, and we believed that Doom 3 would change the way we play FPS once again. What we got for our 60$ was an OK game that has nearly photo realistic textures and tries to pass off cheap tricks as innovative gameplay.

Sorry id, but casting the player into the darkness to create suspense via the unknown has been used in films since Hitchcock, and used in games since Zelda. I kept reading about how shadows and light would change the way we play DM maps, creating more "suspense."

The only suspense in 'Lights Out' is whether I quit first or my opponent does, because we're both bored out of our minds.

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(cont'd) 
#1 posted by Blitz on 2004/10/04 02:16:36
The PDA idea is also not a new idea, just an old one with a face lift. Infocom games had notes laying around that you could reference later in your journey. In fact, I think 'the Lurking Horror' is a more entertaining game than Doom 3.

So now I'm faced with a tough thought when I consider Doom 3's fate.

Is it just that Doom 3 didn't employ the technological advances it created convincingly enough? Or is that that the advances themselves were not all that important?

I would like to think it's the latter. In the same way that Quake could have had a lot of flat, boxy levels, and then have someone from the community actually put it's advances to good use, I'm hoping some plucky group of lads out there will crack open Doom 3 and say, "Hey guys we can really make a great mod/game/tc with this engine!"

Sadly, I think it's the latter. Photo realistic textures and real-time shadows are nice, but they just don't do anything to create a new level of intensity or interactivity.

With a rocket scientist, a brilliantly talented artist, and a load of good design people, id should have given us something better; something that didn't feel like Quake 2 with better graphics.

(Before I finish I think games like Far Cry and UT2K3/4 are making better steps in terms of innovation. Far Cry with its ability to integrate realistic forestry and excellent landscape into deathmatch and UT2K3/4 with its plethora of game modes out of the box.)

Maybe I am being to hard on id, perhaps the real problem is that shooters don't really have any place else to improve upon except in their outer appearance. Much like sliced bread or prostitution, shooters have been around for a while now and they're still great, there's just no significant way to improve upon them.

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