Doom 3 addendum
As I said in my previous post, I am currently playing Doom 3 on Nightmare setting. This option must be unlocked by beating the game on Veteran setting--a noticeable difference between Doom 3 and Dooms 1 and 2. This means that before you play Nightmare, you have to already have played through the game once, and if you remember from my previous post, the game is linear. In other words, there's nothing new to see.
In previous Doom games, Nightmare was simply not an option. All monsters re-spawned. It took enough energy to kill them once, it's damn nigh impossible to kill them all again. Let's face it, no one played nightmare. In Doom 3, nightmare works a bit differently. First of all, only zombies respond, and not if you kill them with a shotgun or chainsaw. You start off with 25 health. If you rise above 25 health, you lose health every so often until you return to 25. So, you can get extra health through health packs, but when you do, start running because it won't last. The monsters in nightmare seem to do a lot more damage. It really is one shot, one kill unless you've been boosted, and even then, they eat through your health like crazy. I'm currently in the room with all the little spiders (their first appearance). I was barely able to make it through with 100 health the first time, now I've got 25. Furthermore, in nightmare there are no spare health packs lieing around, just health stations and they are few and far between. True you do start off with the soul cube, but when you only have 25 health, it can sometimes be risky to employ it. Things tend to blow you away before you can press Q, aim, and fire.
In other words, Doom 3 on "nightmare" is about as hard as Doom 2 on "difficult"--with one major difference. You see, by the time you're playing nightmare you've beaten the game. None of this is new. You remember that when you go down this passage, there is going to be a monster at the end, so have your shotgun ready. No surprises.
So, I present this as yet another way that the game might have been improved. Make Nightmare equal to the veteran setting. If nightmare had been my first experience of the game, I would have found it to be extremely challenging on a tactical level--the very thing that I'm missing from the game on its difficult Veteran setting.
I would still have complaints--very big complaints--about the game's linear run-through, but at least half of my critique of Doom 3 would have been dealt with without having to tax my processor with 100s of seriously beatifully rendered monsters--which is why I assume the monster populations were cut from 50 to 3.
In previous Doom games, Nightmare was simply not an option. All monsters re-spawned. It took enough energy to kill them once, it's damn nigh impossible to kill them all again. Let's face it, no one played nightmare. In Doom 3, nightmare works a bit differently. First of all, only zombies respond, and not if you kill them with a shotgun or chainsaw. You start off with 25 health. If you rise above 25 health, you lose health every so often until you return to 25. So, you can get extra health through health packs, but when you do, start running because it won't last. The monsters in nightmare seem to do a lot more damage. It really is one shot, one kill unless you've been boosted, and even then, they eat through your health like crazy. I'm currently in the room with all the little spiders (their first appearance). I was barely able to make it through with 100 health the first time, now I've got 25. Furthermore, in nightmare there are no spare health packs lieing around, just health stations and they are few and far between. True you do start off with the soul cube, but when you only have 25 health, it can sometimes be risky to employ it. Things tend to blow you away before you can press Q, aim, and fire.
In other words, Doom 3 on "nightmare" is about as hard as Doom 2 on "difficult"--with one major difference. You see, by the time you're playing nightmare you've beaten the game. None of this is new. You remember that when you go down this passage, there is going to be a monster at the end, so have your shotgun ready. No surprises.
So, I present this as yet another way that the game might have been improved. Make Nightmare equal to the veteran setting. If nightmare had been my first experience of the game, I would have found it to be extremely challenging on a tactical level--the very thing that I'm missing from the game on its difficult Veteran setting.
I would still have complaints--very big complaints--about the game's linear run-through, but at least half of my critique of Doom 3 would have been dealt with without having to tax my processor with 100s of seriously beatifully rendered monsters--which is why I assume the monster populations were cut from 50 to 3.
posted by Monstro D. Whale at
10:58 AM
1 Comments:
At this point I have pretty much given up on "computer games" per say, as game consoles like PS2 and XBox are a lot easier to play. Controls are better and more intuitive than messing around with a keyboard, and even with a 19" monitior, graphics just work better on my basic 26" TV screen. Plus I don't have the heartache of having to buy a whole damn new computer every year to keep up with the latest video drivers, memory capacity, etc. Most of my old favorite games won't work on my new computer -- not the case with my PS2 that will still play old PS games.
I will say that it is easier to enter cheat codes and add fun bits on the computer. Gotta love a "GODMODE" that doesn't require you to master an intricate mashing of X,Y,Z, left, right, left, right, up, down, artichoke. No matter how much I enjoyed Gertrude Stein's "How To Write."
It should be noted that the latest computer game I bothered to buy to play on my new compu-edifice was SpyMuppets "License To Croak" -- which I only bought because I heard that if you type in "Brian Henson" as your character name then the game begins berating you for ruining a beloved genius' legacy. The bits where the Swedish Chef pops out of the screen and actually slaps you around are excellent. Fraggles whisper "we're going to kill you," on the periphery, as Gonzo chants "Goo Goo GaJoob, I am the Kiwi, not an alien," just before you hear Crazy Harry laugh right behind you and the screen goes black.
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