Read a bit of rants here and there (d3w)
so my thoughts (on the game and the issues)...

First of all (Frib and alike) do yourself a favour and DONT RELOAD each time u get hit!
I took it as a rule to try to survive even with 10% health, cause you know there is always health pack ahead. Improves game experience A LOT. Save often, reload when you are dead.

Played hard skill (veteran) - seemed normal/easy.
Abundance of ammo/health. I had to leave clips and medikits. Unneeded armor (FFS!)
Thus broken reward/challenge pair - you just do NOT need those goods. No satisfaction in finding more cells/bullets when you carry maximum already. Picking up a jacket, just to have some imps spawned... bleh
And once u get cube, healthpacks are obsolete

Spawns behind didnt annoy me but yes, they got boring. I noticed/heard spawning in most cases.
(stereo speakers/cans).

Yes, there is almost always a chance to avoid attacks (hi Lun). Ofcourse I strafe and hold 'run' button in combat. And when you cant avoid (imp jumping from opened door or a whip guy) - its not much damage, just dont let him do it again. The only real pisser is ofcourse Chaingun-guy (I dont like hit-scan grunts overall, but the weaker ones go down easily). And baby-moaths just suck.

D3 Ravenant is easier than original Doom`s and Q`s Vore; Hellknight is much easier than Sahmb (both to dodge and to kill).

I recall, in q1sp feedback most people hated when they couldnt beat a map w/o dying.
Now some cant stand taking any damage at all... WTF?

I agree that 'owl neck syndrome' and ugly 'red celophane' in your face are bad.
But I didnt let that happen very often so Im not annoyed like some ppl are.

Bosses, exept the Hell`s one, were too easy and fast to kill. Hell`s took some effort and I liked it.

What else? Too dark, rather predictable... I hoped it would be more scary and would have more things to interract with.
Too much detailing leads to sensory overload ;|

Overall its good game, will replay it prolly. ;) 

Now some cant stand taking any damage at all... WTF?

Boy, there's no fooling you, is there? 

was a piece of piss. I thought sarge was the hardest since it was such a cheap set up. really pissed me off. 

First of all (Frib and alike) do yourself a favour and DONT RELOAD each time u get hit!
I took it as a rule to try to survive even with 10% health, cause you know there is always health pack ahead. Improves game experience A LOT. Save often, reload when you are dead.

I learned that after the first few hours of fighting. You will take damage and unless you step on your own shoes, you will reach some more health before the next big set up.

My biggest gripe was the predictabilaty of some monster set ups; I'm curious to see how Lunaran improves upon this in his upcoming maps which half the reason the game is still on my laptop, even though my system is a real slog. 

something is not right there:
imps dont die from point-blank shotgun shot while in pre-scripted sequence mode. try it

and another problem: fireball smoke obscures the view. add it to the overall darkness - and u cant see AT ALL

than: sarge goes down from cube + less than one cg belt (~8 seconds of a battle). I was like "and thats all?"
I even reloaded to try killing him w/o cube - still easy, he only had the time to fire his bfg twice.
Hell boss was easy to dodge but it took time to shoot down the 'seekers'. Liked it more 

The reason I hated sarge was that the pillars which you needed to take cover behind were a trap. I had the soul cube ready and used it on him, but I still didn't find it that easy. I'm shit I guess.

I played on veteran... dunno if there is any difference. 

Am I the only one who finds it ironic that a game touted for its awesome lighting effects is so darkly lit? 

on your wedding day... 

rofl 

I recently got a new computer, so I was finally able to play Doom 3 properly.

I just finished it today, so I figured I may as well post my impressions (if anyone still cares).

I much prefered the later half of the game, once you started seeing some variation in the environments. The quality of artistry seen in the level design seemed to be kicked up a notch here too. To be honest, I was kinda getting a bit bored of the same base style, level after level. Once I got to Hell, the game really picked up and started getting interesting for me. The caverns/temple stuff rocked too.

I liked the weapons. Despite the ridiculous spread, I think I used the shotgun 70% of the time. In the later levels I started experimenting with some of the other guns more :P Most of the bigger fights in the caverns stages were done with a plasma gun/Soul Cube combo.

Strangely enough I hardly used the chaingun, except in Hell, when dealing with the Hellknights.

Yeah, the Soul Cube was an odd one. It made the game pretty bloody easy in places. Whenever an Archvile teleported in, I Soul Cubed it. Whenever a Hellknight strode into the melee, I Soul Cubed it. Maybe I should have played on a higher difficulty level. After getting the Soul Cube, it was a rare occurence that I didn't have it charged when the next big monster stomped into the fray.

Monsters pretty much all rocked. The only ones that annoyed me really were the lost souls, cherubs, and the chaingun/tentacle commandos. Actually, the tentacle guys weren't too bad, I just accepted that I was gonna take a little damage from them, and just charged straight at them with the shotgun. The chaingun guys generally ended up eating rocket.

None of the bosses gave me any trouble. Sarge went down like a sack of poo after getting Soul Cubed. In fact, I had the most trouble with the HellKnight's introduction. Squaring off against two of them in a fairly small area the first time you meet them was a bit of a WTF moment for me o_O

Meeting the Vagary(s) again was a pleasant surprise. They ended up tasting BFG though.

The Guardian was probably my favourite boss. He had something very Balrog-esque about him :)

The Cyberdemon (and the build-up to him) was truly spectacular. Went down pretty bloody easy with the Soul Cube though (and yes, I know that's the only way to kill him :P)

So essentially, I loved the monsters and the weapons; and my biggest gripe is that Hell was such a tiny section of the game. There would be some great mapping potential there if the Hell texture set wasn't so limited. Let's hope some talented texture artists take up the mantle and give us "Doom3 Gothic" ^_~ 

I agree with most of that.

Too much base, too easy in many places. 

Let's hope some talented texture artists take up the mantle and give us "Doom3 Gothic" ^_~

With a hint of the Dark Moor from Enclave. 

I bought the "Making of Doom3" by Stephen Kent (I think is his name) and id software from amazon.com recently.

All I can say is: Fantastic book. Awesomely put together, lots of huge, high-res pictures, storyboards, concept art, trivia, history and commentary from the id guys all over the place, on each and every page.

If you have the slightest interest in game design/level design focusing on Doom3 (or generally for that matter) I will recommend this book, although it's of course more leaned towards pure entertainment than education. A piece of artwork all on its own. 

Actually, the tentacle guys weren't too bad, I just accepted that I was gonna take a little damage from them, and just charged straight at them with the shotgun.

YOU HAVE A DUCK KEY, USE IT MOTHERFUCKER.

:) 

i'm not sure if it's just me or not, but i found almost ALL the sounds in D3 seem to be very choked and devoid of a lot of midrange sound, so that all that's left is some bass and a lot of highs.
there is a lot of 'hissing' in this game. doors, items, most monsters... not much differentiation... i find that annoying now. :P

any opinions? 

Games are still relatively young and sound is hardly something that has been on the foreground of gamer's or developer's minds. Also if you consider that less than 10 years ago games were using 22khz .wav files and each level only had 3 to 8 ambient sounds--well, it's no wonder sounds in games are still pretty basic and rely on sensationalistic methods of appealing to the player (e.g. heavy bass). Moreover, I suspect that most developers still haven't begun to consider it as one of the better ways of communicating with the player (anyone remember Carmack swooning over how many ways they graphically communicated feedback to the player in Q3?) 

I remember Carmack mentioning a few years back though that sound is the only "dimension" games can be reasonably close to reality nowadays - graphics and controls are so basic still.

Someone mentioned the Trent Reznor-made d3 sounds that weren't put into the game in the end. If you guys didn't know, there was this pak/zip lying somewhere in the internet, I forget where and what was the licence for their use. 

'Reznor' pack sounded like arse too. Don't bother. 

pretty much given the shaft in most games as for quality/filesize. Especially when you bring in the console factor, I had an audio teacher explain to me the PSX games he worked on they were given only approx 1mb of space for all the games sound. If anyone in gamedev here can deny or confirm this that'd be swell. 

well, it's not so much that they are low quality or lacking in character, just that they sound odd and far off.

also, some of the wimpier hiss-ish explosions sound like they have mp3 compression on them... �_� but since they are in ogg format, i can only guess that that was intentional... 

...don't know about compression, but according to Sound Forge some of those .oggs have been clipped senseless. 

<speculation>might be true for sound effects per level/load</speculation> 

to compensate for average pc speakers that lacking his and lows and have messy mids 

...I finally got around to playing Doom3 over Easter break (yes, I've been playing with the sounds for a lot longer).

General Impressions

Nothing's new under the sun, but I did in several instances have "This is very Zer" or "This is very Insomnia" etc, moments. The obvious one was entering Hell and thinking "This is very Spawn".

Id went for immersive horror and by damn they achieved it. I pooped my pants twice, and my heart rate jumped on numerous occasions.

Good Things

1. The absence of both Beta and Gamma Labs (though I'm sure they'll pop up in either mission packs or addon levels - wherein they will hopefully be constructed using corridoors that are wide enough for two people to pass in and where offices aren't all the size of small broom closets).

2. As already mentioned, the soundscape is excellent.

3. Hell (though far to short, except for the excrutiatingly tedious combat with the guardian) was awesome.

4. The transition from new tech to older tech (square corners, no chrome, larger clunkier versions of the same things) in the older section of the complex was very well executed.

5. Starting the generator.

6. Incorporating concepts from the endings of Doom & Doom2 into this ending was a nice touch.

Favourites

Scheme - the first pump section. Approaching steam punk. Yum!

Demon - Mancubis

Monster Model - end boss obviously

Non-monster Model - the RV

Weapon - Shotty

Moment - realising you are standing between its legs. Actually the entry sequence to that bit is a hoot. Our man just nonchalantly steps aside as quarter ton blocks of stone tumble inward. I guess he's pretty cocky by this stage :)

Monster Motion - the Hell Knights kick you when they get close. r4Wk!

Kill - nailing an Imp mid jump and seeing it rotate and flop on it's back before disintergrating.

Crap Things

1. As already mentioned (so I won't drone on), most of the early gameplay. One moment that stands out was being lured into a short dead end duct to grab a weapon, ammo and health only to have three Imps take it in turns to stand at the open end of the duct and hurl plasma balls at me. Just fucking stupid! The gameplay did improve once the designers started giving the player room to move.

2. None of the weapons have stopping power. I get scratched by a Cherub and can't see for three days yet some Imps walk through the first rocket as if nothing has happened.

3. Speaking of the rocket launcher. It's a fucking rocket launcher. A direct hit packs the same explosive punch whether it occurs twenty metres away or forty metres away. Unless you're playing Doom3 wherein RL damage is apparently distance relative. I just stopped using it after a while.

Anyhoo, I'm now tempted to go back and see what happens if I don't call the marines in. This decision was built up to be of some importance, so I assume there's a whole different set of consequences.

Then I'll go map :P 

There are no consequences of choosing either to call in or not calling in the "fleet"...

AFAIK...

Of course, since you now know that Swann is the good guy and Sarge is the bad guy, you apparently made the wrong choice the first time around (but so did I) :P