you're pretty much right. doom3 sold millions, it cannot possibly be improved.

I'd improve it by not mixing survival horror and run-and-gun shooter so poorly. Slowness and darkness aren't appropriate when the monster and level design expect you to be Rambo, and that's where the frustration comes from. 

Just a tiny bit faster with the player movements.

Other than that I enjoyed it (it was a bit predictable, but I think doom is supposed to be!) 

Doom IV: The Infernal Heart

After the events on Mars with Dr Betruger, a man any German screener would've not trusted with such high level access, you were granted a return to earth, with a sizable pension and a moderate promotion. You saved their asses, and they wanted to pay you back - while still keeping you under their thumb.

But Hell wasn't closed. The big beasties and bad asses were beaten down, but the vulnerabilities were still there. Somewhere in space, a radio transmission is cut short. Somewhere on earth, a shadow clouds your mind.

With Betruger, Hell learned that even the modern, analytical human mind can still be swayed, even ensnared. It grows ambitious once again, and it reaches out to you. The flashbacks are terrible, especially when you're not sure if they really are flashbacks. People seem different. Company in which you once rested easy, you now unwittingly rest your hand on your sidearm, with a twitch you didn't have before.

Homegrown terrorism, you've read the propaganda, the fliers, but it actually happened. The ammunition depot on the edge of town lit up quite impressively, and all of the evidence points to one of your own men. Dead now, he didn't flee the flames... yet he was always a rather stable one. It didn't make any sense. But part of you can't blame him, part of you wishes you had the idea first... Hell has found a way.

DIV:The Infernal Heart is a first person shooter taking place in a small/medium sized town that shares land with a military base. Acts of terrorism have sprung up within the populace, just a few, but it has sown a deep seed of mistrust and paranoia. People are losing their grip on reality, faster than a community does even under such conditions, and you are starting to see things.

In The Infernal Heart, the player experiences rapid action and suspense, as Hell itself is truly invading, and corporeally manifesting, but for every foot it digs its heels into the town, it digs its claws an inch deeper into your mind. As the marine, you must make the decisions on what is friend and foe, and deal with your potentially worsening sanity while repelling the ever more numerous invaders, as this contemporary rustic place begins to gradually look more and more otherworldly, unrecognizable, fiendish, and designed for the sheer purpose of choking the life out of all it encompasses.

Main Elements - Typical demon killing action, exploring the changing city to protect citizens, and rescue survivors, battling with your own senses as to whether Hell is before you in that Imp, or in your mind, betraying the reality of a lost child to the barrel of your gun - take enough lives, you will eventually lose your own mind, and become yet another pawn to the fiends who strive for darkness.

In short, you have hallucinations, which do not increase generically but do so based partially on your exposure to Hellish elements for too long, and how many non-combatants you have mistakenly killed. All the while you do fight actual demons. Level design is realistic (though gradually more and more abstract) with overall goals in terms of surviving, finding resources, and protecting people (though no escorting, friendly AI could do that). The environment will change as you progress, and thus the element up to the player is maintaining their mind so that they will have their wits about them once within Hell (and not become a threat to the other survivors, who are not having their minds endangered in any exceptional way like you are). 

As far as I'm concerned any game's quality can objectively be measured in how (subjectively) good its fanfiction is.
If we look at id's track record with Doom 3; how many good Doom 3 fanfics can you remember? Pretty much none? Yeah! Doom 3 sucked.
I mean, how can Doom 4 hope to compete with such heavy-weights as Team Fortress 2? Just look at this!

(Sorry I'm going to have to split this into two posts due to this board's niggardly character limit!
Also, you have to read this with a thick French accent!)


Bridget Spy's Diary


February 7th
Ha! Ha! Had enough of emotional fuckwittage from Engy and decided to decorate his sentry with finger paints and pretty bows. Later heard him screeching like deranged Fay Wray-like creature while I hid in resupply cackling. HA! Am brilliant and inspired.
Saw friend Gay Medic up on battlements shouting at Sniper for stealing the last Milk Tray. Apparently Gay Medic has new Russian boyfriend by name of Fat Heavy, who is (obviously) huge and therefore fatter than me. This is good, as am collossal blubberwagon of epic proportion even though scales and mirror suggest anorexic Twiggy-like figure (?) Do look smashing in new Hugo Boss pinstripe suit in deep mauve though. Attempted to flaunt said suit to Engy, who ignored me and went on whacking away at his sentry like the oblivious knobbucket he is. Hate Engy. Emotional fuckwittage. Will go have calming fag and then seek counsel With Gay Medic.

1am: Went down to Intel Room for Bloody Mary piss-up w/ Gay Medic and found him shagging soldier on desk. Ugh. Is a slag. Probably doing it with demoman too. Will cross off X-mas card list.


February 8th
Have chucked copy of Pride and Prejudice at Engy's head in furious indignation as found him making kissy faces at sentry, clutching bottle of beer like hideous Nascar-watching lumbering oaf. Sulked in resupply room eating gallons of chocolate and Emmenthal cheese slices, and am now fat and Engy will never love me. Boo hoo. Am getting drunk on Chardonnay with Gay Medic because Gay Medic is only friend and understands my plight, despite being STD-infested slag and possible prostitute.

2am: wus joly gd toneite. engy emotuional fuwkwit and wil never talkj to him agen. woops. fellover.


February 10th
Valentine's is in four days and nobody loves me. Will inevitably end up as hideous crone-like madman living in cardboard box in Paris, weeing into a jug and getting anally violated by desperate businessmen for 5 francs a shag. Have decided to adopt air of aloof, handsome James Bond-esque sex machine and seduce Engy with my sophisticated charms.

3pm: Ha! Is working. Put on best suit and strutted through Intel Room while Engy was camping it out, brandishing sapper as Engy hates it for some reason. I do not understand this, surely Sapper is some sort of machine and therefore related to his area of expertise (?)
Anyway, ignored Engy for good half hour and sat on his dispenser inspecting my gloves and smoking fag, giving him foul looks when he tried to use it. Sod his stupid contraptions and their stupid beepy noises. I may be fat but at least am not cold, unyielding machine of death and unable to love. Figure must be horrible being sentry gun, always having to shoot people all the time with no room for personal reflection. Maybe sentry gun secretely wishes to be ice cream maker, expresso machine etc etc? Feel sympathy for sentry gun as it possible that sentry gun wishes for something it cannot have, much like me. Oh no, have thought of Engy again and now feel horrible. Will go stab some medics to make me feel better. 

February 12th
Was just having nice, relaxing evening in resupply when Gay Medic bursts in in floods of tears. Was right about him shagging both Soldier and Demo (ugh, ugh) and now apparently he is overwhelmed by massive surge of suitors wanting to be with him and sending him roses, chocolate, tiffany boxes and the like. Told Gay Medic to fuck right off as was enjoying nice bout of self-loathing about own sexual dysfunction, and didn't want to be interrupted by dirty slags in histrionics boo-hooing about how everyone wants to shag them. Interestingly, before he ran off to presumably hang himself, he told me that Engy wanted to talk to me and that I should ship off down to the Intel room ASAP.
Score! Aloof James Bond-type persona has paid off and now Engy is lusting away for me like the pathetic dog he is. Will laugh at him and pretend to sap his sentry. Ha! Am amazing.


February 13th
Huh. Hung around intel room for entire hour waiting for Engy only for him to march in half-dressed, fresh from shower, and bark at me for skulking around in his hidey-hole. Like he owns the damn place. No mention of previous unsaid engagement so assume Medic was being a cow and taking the piss out of me. Is diseased, lying slag. Was furious at Engy as had spent all morning practising my best pout and sarcastic one liners, so particularly enraged as could not exhibit finely-honed James Bond-esque persona - was worth it for half-naked wetness though. Will probably spend rest of sad, romantically defunct life recanting image in my head. Mmm.

4pm: Went to sulk on battlements after being shouted at by Engy and found Scout snogging Sniper. Ugh. Everyone is getting a shag except me, even Sniper, who I found last week with his nose in a pair of dirty underwear he presumably filched from the laundry room. Now understand why my pants keep going missing. V. disturbing.


February 14th
Ugh. Is Valentine's day and still have not been bent over desk and shagged roughly by Engy. V. disheartening. (Am pathetic and need emotional validation by way of sex.)

11pm: Apparently our shipment of new uniforms was mixed up in transit with a shipment intended for theatre company, halloween shop, creative harem etc as instead of uniforms we now have a selection of dresses. Have been forced into french maid costume by drunken Sniper for impromptu Valentine's costume party - obv. punishment for unkown sin in past life. Note to self: take up yoga for cleansing of past life naughtiness.
Sniper is wearing v. smashing Cinderella ballgown, though. Strategic slip up side of skirt shows off his calves.
Engy refused delightful Southern Belle ensemble to go sulk in Intel room with crate of beer. Typical. Had had better part of bottle of wine myself so was not of entirely perfect composure, so ended up shouting at Engy for being malignant pig-beast and spoiling everyone's fun.
Somehow, in magnificent blur of noise and confusion, ended up on Engy's lap with his hand up my petticoats. Oh-er. Apparently Engy does not think of me as fat incompetent cow at all. Demonstrated this by removing said petticoats - and my underwear - and growling in delicious low bedroom-voice that would cause even the most hardened celibate nuns to throw themselves to the floor and scream "TAKE ME NOW!"

In hindsight, may have demonstrated a little more composure as aloof James Bond-types do not squeak during sex.
....Must invest in more french maid outfits. 

 

 

but then decided reading any more was a waste of time. 

and

Doom 4 - He... I mean, Terrism! On ear... I mean, in Our Town. Yeah. Terrism in Our Town.

Sounds like a realistic outdoor team shooter.

Or then Alien vs Predator Requiem. 

id is evil since they edit good maps to spoil gameplay. A songbird told me.

id isn't really the same to me without Romero. I guess it was a good if cacophonic mix of talents that wasn't harmonic nor couldn't last. You move on. I haven't played Doom 3 or Quake 4.

But they did make some awesome stuff during the nineties. Some of it is nostalgia but anyway, there's a lot to say about old stuff that sometimes just works so much better than anything new... 

No offense, but if you read that and got "Terrists Did It!" from it, then I suspect you also thought that Half-Life was about teleporters, Blood was about a man and his girlfriend being sacrificed, and Duke Nukem II was about a late night tv interview.

The emphasis is that rather than just generically possessing people into generally useless zombies, Hell influences the dark proclivity in us to sow fear, and paranoia, ripening the population for a very real invasion - which is what the game takes place during, the actual invasion of Hell. Just with the added detail of the fact that your own mind is one of the targets, so it adds another element to be concerned about, not just health and ammo (it reflects health definitely, just in a different aspect, a less numerical form, and one that gradients the good-evil spectrum a bit more). 

Lol.

He is (was?) talented, but he also seems to have consistently acted like a retard every time he was given the chance.

Nevertheless, after id lost him and Sandy Peterson, id seemed to have lost something important. Although that also can be traced to the fact that the industry in general was changing at that time - I think there's a huge difference between the current (hollywood) games industry, and the games industry in the 90s. 

loved the ending 

DooM4: Hell is other people. 

i've tweak doom3 to pretty much how i'd like it...

increased player speed to default to slightly less than the sprint speed, substantially reduced the damage feedback, i use lightscale 3 making the lights 3 times as bright. this oversaturates some lights, but is a good balance between ugly oversaturated and brightness.

shotgun has no clip, chaingun has no clip, plasma gun's clip increased to 99, machinegun's clip increased to i think 80 or something, pistol fires as fast as you can click it, you can interrupt reloading animations to switch to other weapons. shotgun spread tightened up, but damage reduced. grenades act like hl 1 + 2 grenades; they don't explode in your hands.
probably the only questionable change: plasma gun changed to (almost) hitscan but accuracy degrades after 3 or 4 shots.

imp and hknight now fire standard projectiles, not ballistic but faster moving. wraiths can cloak without having to stop. zsec enemies have substantially reduced hitpoints. zombies die in 2 or 3 pistol shots. monsters will now fight each other regardless of 'rank'

i made all these changes over time... basically, it makes the game very fast paced and, to me, a lot more fun. it's a little unbalanced of course, because i never went through to change the map ammo loadouts, so things like the plasmagun being more effective as well as the shotgun being more versatile make some areas a little easier.
this is basically the kind of stuff i'd prefer to see in a doom4 game. 

ooh, is the mod available for download yet? Sounds cool. 

 

sounds way too easy. needs maps made especially for it, with more enemies but I'd try it - url plz!

I editted the particles to be less dense and dissapear quicker and reduced dmg feedback. I played a bit with pm_walkspeed - setting it to same as sprint is pretty cool. TBH I wouldnt mind even faster movement, but the maps are not meant for it. Faster reloading/bigger clip didnt seem to have much impact, so i left it as it was. Tried some other stuff, dont even remember what... Also some testmaps with varied gameplay, from horde to hl2-ish physic puzzles - but nothing satisfying ;/ 

where you can sprint only short distances, carrying stuff makes you slow (and you can't carry much), you die of one hit or get seriously hurt, clips run out quickly, pistol shooting is much less accurate than rifle etc etc, reloading takes long, never mind changing your weapons, there are no health boxes, bandaging takes long...
It of course would have to be based on short missions in that way, it'd probably get very boring otherwise. 

Sadly necros, if there's one direction I don't think id will be taking, it's making the player movement and weapons more "arcadey" in their single player games. As environments get more and more detailed, FOV shrinks, movement speed slows; its a trend that I'm reasonably sure they'll be continuing, especially because id are all about fussy, unique, environmental detail.

Have you seen the latest Killzone 2 footage? I think they're currently leading the race with the narrowest tunnel vision FOV, and correspondingly the slowest player speed I've seen in an FPS yet.

Personally, I don't think that's going to be the main problem though. As long as id can come up with interesting level design, and drop all the stupid crap they did like monster closets and obvious spawning of monsters on item pickups and other arbitrary triggers, then that will be an improvement I suppose. 

bambuz

Condemned has some of that. Fire arms are hard to come by, mostly melee weapons from what you find in the environment, etc.

I can't think of any game that does all of that stuff though. Mainly because I would never play such an annoying game. :P 

Hmm, maybe Stalker. It does most, but not all of that realism stuff. It's also pretty damn good.

Some of the military sims would push the realism more, but then you have to play a military sim. 

anyone tried the oblivion lost mod? Apparently it fixes loads of problems and makes the game way more realistic too. It improves enemy ai, makes the game a properly persistant world, adds some of the enemies that the stalker devs disabled in code, adds vehicles, fixes problems with blowouts etc.

I haven't played it yet and only have STALKER on my work pc, so I doubt I will be trying it anytime soon as I'd rather not spend lunch inside during the summer, but there is a page with lots of info here: http://forums.filefront.com/s-t-l-k-e-r-modding-editing/340033-s-t-l-k-e-r-oblivion-lost-kanyhalos.html

Sounds like a fucking cool mod. 

They should drop that Hell shit. I'd like to see a more general cross-cultural version of the underworld and the forces of Chaos.

give us werewolves, dragons, goddesses of destruction, bloodsucking seductive spirits. No more goats please.

There is a rich mythology out there. But I guess that won't sell to their target audience. 

A vague depiction of an undefined otherworldly realm of evil not entirely unlike the original Quake then.

I'd probably be alright with that.