Doom 3 was NEVER "impressive" graphically, or even above-average graphically.

I might be in the minority but I have never felt like I was running through the same corridors over and over again in DOOM 3. Probably I'm just an ignorant fanboy wearing rose-tinted glasses though.

Touchdown said:

I might be in the minority but I have never felt like I was running through the same corridors over and over again in DOOM 3. Probably I'm just an ignorant fanboy wearing rose-tinted glasses though.

IMO only the ppl that lack an eye for details can say that Doom 3 is all the same corridors.

Touchdown said:

I might be in the minority but I have never felt like I was running through the same corridors over and over again in DOOM 3. Probably I'm just an ignorant fanboy wearing rose-tinted glasses though.

You're not alone, I never felt that way either. I did feel like the enemy encounters got to be predictable and repetitive, but I thought the environments and design styles transitioned from one to another at a pretty appropriate pace.

Orchid87 said:

Sarcasm? Marscity/Admin, Alpha labs, Recycling levels, Delta Labs, Caverns, CPU, Hell levels. Thats 7 kinds that are VERY distinct looking. Monorail and Site 3 use stuff from other levels though but anyway.

Enpro, the Comms levels and Mars City Underground all have pretty distinct styles as well. That brings the total closer to 10, depending on how much you differentiate between several of the level styles that are closer together.

Orchid87 said:

IMO only the ppl that lack an eye for details can say that Doom 3 is all the same corridors.

I hate when people who know nothing about level design say that Doom all looks the same.

Nope, D3 levels do not look "the same" each level got different purpose, they share some textures and assets, but You can see there is clear difference between levels like Mars City, Alpha labs, Delta labs, Enpro, CPU and Toxic wastes.

I'm sure there is a place for more improvement and variation. Like those red living tentacles were introduced too early, there could be big levels based on exploring parts infected by those tentacles, or spiders web, or parts were hell overtake base and everything floating and it's sucked out of space.

Orchid87 said:

Sarcasm? Marscity/Admin, Alpha labs, Recycling levels, Delta Labs, Caverns, CPU, Hell levels. Thats 7 kinds that are VERY distinct looking. Monorail and Site 3 use stuff from other levels though but anyway.

Sure, they're distinct looking, but other than Hell, nearly all the maps looked a bit overly similar. I could tell that one area was different from another, and without looking at a reference I can see in my mind's eye several specific environments, but they all looked like part of the same basic gigantic set piece. I don't like that. It made for some realistic settings--after all, research and labs and such are going to look similar--but that's not really important. Realism should not take precedent over interesting layouts.

Yes, You have good point there GoatLord :) all those stages are part of bigger place. So as result You have most part of game set in UAC Mars base plus very small part in ancient ruin and hell, RoE try to fix that by switching levels order.

I kind of liked ROE s a little better than D3. It felt like it had a little more going on.

RoE was pretty much of an improvement over the main game, however its double barrel shotgun was quite overpowered as it could almost one-shot kill most non-boss demons.

No no no, ROE was anything but an improvement in level design. It's too chaotic. I know that demons invasion is going on but Doom 3 was more subtle - cold corridors and blinking lights with occasional wrecked rooms. ROE is all wrecked, like someone shat all over id's beautiful Doom 3 work.

I really dig them both personally, but I do like RoE just a touch more.

Avoozl said:

RoE was pretty much of an improvement over the main game, however its double barrel shotgun was quite overpowered as it could almost one-shot kill most non-boss demons.

To be fair, if it didn't, it would be a super unsatisfactory SSG.

The problem with SSG is that the regular shotgun is already as slow as Doom 2 SSG. They really shot themselves in the leg with that decision.

Although Quake 2 somehow got away with SSG being faster than SG.

doom 3 and its lighting and normal maps looked amazing. yeah the base textures are blurry but that is due to trying to have so many textures on each surface with limited vram most people had.

id is always getting pulled apart, on the one hand people expect revolutionary quality, but if there are any performance issues, pop in etc people freak out.

doom 3 was a milestone. taken in the context of the time it was created, it is pretty amazing.

I think the unified lighting and shadowing techniques were a bit misguided, because they created far too many limitations. Turned Doom 3 primarily into a corridor shooter. It works in a way, but is also incredibly flawed. Something of a fabulous disaster.

Orchid87 said:

http://www.visualwalkthroughs.com/halflife2/anticitizenone2/19.jpg
Half-Life 2 looked average ten years ago save for some nice facial animations and looks like complete shit nowadays. Doom 3 aged MUCH better.

Yeah everything Valve does is seriously overrated horse shit.

Tactical Stiffy said:

Yeah everything Valve does is seriously overrated horse shit.

Well, Hey now. The Half-Life games were pretty great, Portal's pretty good as well. Now, as for TF2 and Counter-Strike, I can see that. The only thing I see fun In TF2 Is playing Mann Vs. Machine with Friends and doing some shit on Counter-Strike: Global Offense.

Tritnew said:

The Half-Life games were pretty great, Portal's pretty good as well.

Half-Life 1 was great. Half-Life 2 is probably the most overrated game of all time. Portal 1 and 2 were cool the first time but have 0 replay value which makes them a waste of money.

Minecraft would probably beat Half-Life 2 for the most overrated game of all time but they are really close.

Tactical Stiffy said:

Half-Life 1 was great. Half-Life 2 is probably the most overrated game of all time. Portal 1 and 2 were cool the first time but have 0 replay value which makes them a waste of money.

Yeah, HL2 Is overrated, I actually go back to HL1 more than I would Half-Life 2, but I also forgot to mention Left 4 Dead 1 and 2, those are pretty great.

rampancy said:

doom 3 and its lighting and normal maps looked amazing. yeah the base textures are blurry but that is due to trying to have so many textures on each surface with limited vram most people had.

Technically speaking those are not "base textures" but diffusion maps. The way each surface was made with diffuse, specular, normal maps for big detail and bump maps for smaller, was revolutionary. It all reacted to light in a realistic way. Games like Half-Life 2 or Stalker used normal and specular maps too but they still used conventional textures with most of detail just pre-baked and static.

Tactical Stiffy said:

Half-Life 1 was great. Half-Life 2 is probably the most overrated game of all time. Portal 1 and 2 were cool the first time but have 0 replay value which makes them a waste of money.

Portal really benefits from the mods it has. there's some pretty cool stuff for both games, not to mention the in-game level-editor of the second game. the writing and atmosphere is basically what you'd replay the base games for (as well as time-attack and other challenges) because that're the games strong points. i'd hardly call them "a waste of money." Doom gets boring after subsequent playthroughs too you know.

Half Life 2 really is overrated though. it's got more best game of all time awards than i have finger and toes combined, probably. there are far more games that are truly timeless than never age when you get back to them, but HL2 is kind of showing its age now: the fact that one of the early segments has a bugged train coming in with no official patch fixing it shows how much Valve cares about the game nowadays.

Doomhuntress said:

the fact that one of the early segments has a bugged train coming in with no official patch fixing it shows how much Valve cares about the game nowadays.

HL2 has a ton of bugs since Valve ported it to the Orange Box engine in 2010. The original version without the achievements, HDR, and all that crap was much more polished. That said the game really stood the test of time worse than Doom 3. And not only graphically. Doom 3 was its own thing and never tried to appeal to a casual gamer. It was mostly an old-school corridor wandering shooter. Doom 3 feels and plays the same as it played in 2004 minus the graphics "wow" factor. Half-Life 2 on the other hand was a cinematic park ride, it was something fresh and very popular at the time but ultimately was surpassed by countless other shooters from the 2005-2013 console generation. Its weak "shooting" part makes the things worse because something like Bioshock Infinite has a much more satisfying gunplay and other fun things to dispatch the enemies so it is more replayable in the end. Playing through HL2 nowadays feels like a chore.

Orchid87 said:

HL2 has a ton of bugs since Valve ported it to the Orange Box engine in 2010. The original version without the achievements, HDR, and all that crap was much more polished. That said the game really stood the test of time worse than Doom 3. And not only graphically. Doom 3 was its own thing and never tried to appeal to a casual gamer. It was mostly an old-school corridor wandering shooter. Doom 3 feels and plays the same as it played in 2004 minus the graphics "wow" factor. Half-Life 2 on the other hand was a cinematic park ride, it was something fresh and very popular at the time but ultimately was surpassed by countless other shooters from the 2005-2013 console generation. Its weak "shooting" part makes the things worse because something like Bioshock Infinite has a much more satisfying gunplay and other fun things to dispatch the enemies so it is more replayable in the end. Playing through HL2 nowadays feels like a chore.

that would make sense why it is buggy, then. the only thing that really stood out to me is the train bug - since it can directly impede your progress of the game.

HL2's not that terribly unfun to play, but it is laden with more problems than Doom 3, which is basically just "go here, watch a scripted scene, monsters come in, shoot them dead." HL2 has shit like the Nova Prospekt spawn-train of mobs and the fucking Striders, arguably one of the worst designed enemies i've ever fought in an FPS. and there's several of them! at least Doom 3's enemies were relatively straight-forward to kill...

Orchid87 said:

IMO only the ppl that lack an eye for details can say that Doom 3 is all the same corridors.

Very much agree. I think a lot of people tried to play it like the original games, rushing around and trying to play it faster than it was intended, and therefore missed a lot. It seems id went through a lot of trouble really design a fully functioning base. The detail of the environments was simply astounding. It was one of the first games I've played where I more felt like I was playing through a movie rather than a game. Between the mind-blowing (for the time) graphics and the realism of the base, I thought it was very immersive. Sure Betruger was kind of silly at times, but that never bothered me because the rest of the game fostered a deep suspension of disbelief. I never had problems with it being too dark, or too hard (looking at you, watered down BFG version). I think I just benefited from going into the game with an open mind and not expecting it to just be Doom with better graphics.

And with the complaints about "all the tech bases look the same", they look about as much the same as Dooms tech bases all look the same. They use the same textures, sure, but laid out differently with distinct areas. Many of the complaints about Doom 3 could also be applied to the original Dooms if you wanted to get nitpicky, with the exception that the originals were less linear.

Tactical Stiffy said:

Yeah everything Valve does is seriously overrated horse shit.

Nah bruh you're just a silver casual mate 1v1 me i'll destroy you cause i'm double ak m8

Bitch I have more Coverts than you

Speaking of Half-life 2, i didn't like it first time i saw it (I Was a huge fan of the Classic Series), i liked the first Half-life more, After few attempts at beating some of it's levels i really enjoyed it, while it had a bunch of bugs in early days , it was still an impressive game generally .

I liked HL2 alot, but Half-Life 1 for the win, Man.