That's sort of how I felt about the entirety of Doom 3 Spirit :) I just viewed Hell as a necessary escape from the claustrophobic metal rat maze, it didn't change any game-play imo, just theme. 

I really loved the Hell part. It was the most immersive part of the game IMHO... 

I love doom3. 

I have to say that I love Doom3 too. You've just got to relax your expectations a little, remember that 1993/94 wasn't actually *that* great, and go with the flow. If you're not there for the party you won't enjoy it.

RoE I'm in 2 minds about. I never really played very far with it, as the Grabber spoiled it for me. Here was a total unashamed physics gimmick that it seemed like you *had* to use for *everything*. Big yawn. 

Very anti-climatic ending. Did I even kill Sarge at some point? Ending ending sucks. The temple looked so cool like Alien. Why oh why all the stupid hell stuff...

Definitely a good game, I disliked the hell things and cheesyness at times. Up until the first hell it was great, then it sucked for a while, became quite good again, became great and sucked here and there.

You definitely need hardware capable running it well. I did not like it a bit when I had a old graphics card that only let me play in low resolution and effects. It needs the graphics, otherwise atmosphere is second class. 

I thought Hell looked great. I only wished the rest of the game was more like Hell, instead of metal rat maze.

Or at least 1/3 metal maze, 1/3 return to phobos so a mix of indoor/outdoor moon terrain, then 1/3 hell/deimos.

roe is definitely worth playing, if just for the double shotgun. the grabber was a nice gimmick, but slowed gameplay down too much as your fucking around trying to grab projectiles mid air. 

is better IMHO. I liked both though. 

I don't have D3 installed anymore, but, aside from playing through SP, I played Doom3 Coop Online and that was quite fun. Except the horrible lag with moving vehicles (that lift map, aargh!!!).

I played on a public server from clan EWZ. It was almost always empty when I peeked at my server browser, but once I started playing, people always joined me quite quickly. This was earlier this year, 2010, so perhaps the server is still up.


I also played this LMS Coop mod that was fun for a while: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1SFe0Nibdk
Kinda like Left4Dead for D3. A nice feature was the availability of the Double Barrel, as you can see in the video. I kinda disliked the lack of that in standard D3 and I didn't like the SG sound either. I didn't like most of the D3 weapon sounds.

Mapping wise, I loved to walk around in the Hell levels. Just put no-target on and enjoy. Great atmosphere, modeling and overall it didn't have that fake, 'plastic' look to it opposed to the office levels of the game.

And I can totally understand that people out there find D3 boring and stupid. It is indeed very, very old dull gameplay, but I expected that. As a matter of fact: I don't even want a complex type of gameplay or story. If I want a real story, I go read a book. Sometimes you just wanna fire your DoubleBarrel.

However, a little bit more sophistication in several aspects of the game wouldn't have hurt. For that matter, I came to respect HL 1 even more, because I can clearly see how ID tried to do with D3 what Valve did in HL1 to some extent. And even in 2005 D3 didn't even come close to the HL1 SP experience with all it's inventiveness and insane AI (those soldiers and assassins!). Then again, without Quake, no HL I guess...

OK, done typing. 

Skimming through http://celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=27785 czg's DON'T GIVE THE QUAKE GUY A PERSONALITY! immediately made me think of Doom 3. Seeing that black hair grim looking marine as my avatar was a distraction. Each time it felt like "not me" which was bad for immersion.

I forgot to mention how much I liked the PDA and general attention to environmental (not force-feeding in cutscenes) story telling. The e-mails and audiologs contributed a huge part of the atmosphere. Very well made. 

to the System Shock ones though, because there they're an essential part of the plot/storytelling. 

Yeah I thought the PDAs might have been okay but they were seriously overdone. Doom is not system shock. A slower, more complex game would suit the log trawling, but not Doom. It was just tedious 

but doom3 isn't doom either. doom3 was a slower, albeit not more complex, game. 

the audio logs and emails were ok for plot and ambience, but to force the player to trawl through them to acquire locker access codes was kinda annoying imo. It meant that as soon as the player got a new PDA he had to listen to/read it immediately or he might miss a locker. That made them annoying; I'd prefer to look through them at my leisure. 

Yeah it probably would have made it okay if they were strictly optional. I might have approved of the atmosphere then.
I generally think more games should go for making story details optional. It's a good way to reward those who enjoy exploration, and allows people who usually don't give a shit (like me) to ignore it and not miss actual gameplay elements. 

DOom 3 just never had an interesting plot to begin with. That's why the Logs feel so stale and empty and tedious to listen to (because then there's some info in them). I think they're not easily skipped in System Shock, too, but they're just essential, so they feel more like a reward to listen to: "The next piece of the story". In Doom 3 they're just atmosphere fillers, it seems. But maybe I'm just remembering this wrong. 

The logs in Doom3 were tedious to listen to and I skipped most of them even though they contained some information about secrets and stuff. 

I put all of the locker codes into a config file and ran it when I came to one so I could just read it out of the console and unlock it :p 

The logs are a crucial of the story. Maybe you Wanted a brainless run shot game.
System shock is a whole different game but is the story really so much better than a classic "investigate weird things going on in a base on mars"? 

That is what I expect from Doom. But if there had to be a story, it would be okay, too if it wasn't completely braindead and boring as fuck. If it is the same story all over again (idiots open gates, baddies come through, invasion, you're the sole survivor, kick baddies' collective asses, go over to their domain, kick boss ass, done), then thanks, but I'll pass. 

I didnt mind them, they added to the atmospehre.

But I didnt listen to each one, and you didnt have to anyway, unless you wanted all secrets. Listening to a few here and there was fine. 

In System Shock you had inventory to manage, things to hack, research notes to read, skills to mull over,and less monsters to shoot. With stuff to do outside combat putting an audio log on and listening doesn't take away from the atmosphere.

Doom 3 has way way more combat and when you're not fighting you're just wandering around waiting for the next monster to spawn in. Audio logs at this point just serve to break the sound scape and atmosphere. The game doesn't have enough slow moments for you to been plodding around AND listening to stuff at the same time... 

To be fair, D3 is a remake, so why would they make the story radically different from the original game. And the thing is, back when Doom and SS were releases, there weren't that many games with such a story - at least not as refnied as in SS (I know mentioning Doom and Story in one sentence seems weird). 

http://www.shacknews.com/article/74020/doom-3-remastered-for-pc-xbox-360-ps3-in-bfg

This is pretty embarrasing. Things like sikkmod shaders and monoxead displacement textures have been around for what, 5+ years? 

well, there ARE new levels. 

... looks like I need to buy either Xbox or a PS3 now :(