Monday, July 11, 2005
Doomed: How Id Lost its Crown
Veteran animator Steve Bowler (pictured) got pretty angry when he bought Doom 3. And he’s still a mite agitated…
What was it, 12 years ago, that we first laid eyes on the original, the dark new 3D world that was Doom? Even before that, a select few of us recall with wonder the revival of one of our favorite gaming franchises, in a bold new direction, when Wolfenstein 3D hit the shelves.
For a dozen years Id has been the top dog, the guy to beat, the pater familia to the first-person shooter. It can look back on a legacy of six games, each one an unstoppable sales juggernaut, a technological milestone. You didn’t need to know what the review score was for an Id title. You only knew that you needed to buy it.
But one day, the industry changed. The consumer changed. It’s hard to put one’s finger on it. Maybe it was Counter-Strike. Maybe Unreal Tournament. Something happened to the genre between Quake III and Doom 3, and Id somehow didn’t take it into account. Call it braggadocio, or hubris, but Doom 3 is no longer the top dog in the FPS market.
Yes, it’s upsetting. I tried not to admit it either. But it’s undeniably true.
Some have even argued that Doom 3 is a step backwards in FPS gaming, that even when it hit the shelves we were already years past where it hoped to position itself.
The problem, it seems, lies at the core of where Doom came from, and the hopes we had for Doom 3. It was a tale of gameplay, graphics, and mistakes.
Zombie shuffle
We’re all familiar with the helter-skelter breakneck balls-to-the-wall pace that the original Doom set. So where is it in Doom 3? I can appreciate the slow zombie shuffle as much as the next guy, but when Halo’s Flood race existed years before Doom’s sequel, one has to ask why exactly we’re experiencing only one or two imps at a time.
Obviously, there’s a reason why we don’t have a dozen imps chasing us down a corridor, and I’m inclined to say that it’s because of the graphics engine. So much attention has been paid to rendering a realistic environment that there just isn’t a lot of room left for that many bad guys. This left the guys at Id with a bit of a conundrum: How could they still make the game tense and as terrifying as the originals?
The answer, evidently, is to have shit jump out of the dark at you.
Yes, I jumped. I was scared. And then I got tired. Tired of having secret panels open behind me after I’d already cleared the room of any possible beasts from hell, only to get clawed in the back. Who knew demons were capable of such stealth and chicanery? Hey, maybe I’ll open this door and--surprise!--here’s yet another instant 25 hit points removed from my health because an imp was waiting patiently for me to open a door. This isn’t gaming. This isn’t the Id I know. This is scripted nonsense.
And yet, in the face of such scripted trickery, the A.I. then proceeds to fall flat on its face when given an empty room and a box to hide behind. If it doesn’t have a gun, the A.I. just comes straight at you trying to claw your eyes out. If it does have a gun, it hides behind corners and boxes, but since the game lacks a headshot--something which has become so common in FPSs now that it’s no longer a boastable feature--it takes an implausible amount of time to dispatch them.
Maybe I’m crazy, but I recall levels in the original Doom where you were downright encouraged to trick the A.I. into fighting itself. Yes, it was a primitive A.I., but I recall being impressed by it. Hell, even the famed Reaperbot for the original Quake is still 10 times more entertaining than fighting drones in Doom 3.
I guess what it all boils down to is the fact that the gameplay is just too simplified for the graphics. It’s hard to stomach having to shoot a zombie in the head the same number of times as in the body (six rounds from a pistol, thanks for asking) to dispatch it, when you can shoot a light fixture and watch how realistically light dances around the room.
And don’t try justifying it with "well, the zombies obviously aren’t powered by brains, because there’s some zombies without heads," because you can still kill them by shooting them in the jaw six times. I’m sure they’d also die if I shot them in the foot six times, but honestly, I’m just too bored with the game to even try.
Fight mechanics
The problem here is that you can’t justifiably give us Doom 3 fight mechanics (shoot at the sprite till it's taken enough damage to die) and yet put us in a world that’s nearly as well rendered as our own reality. I’m willing to pass on the point that we’re still missing the run-and-gun feel of the original Doom. I (along with the rest of the gaming community, evidently) just want to see some realistic damage models, and when you have competition like Half-Life2, Far Cry, and the upcoming Unreal Tournament 3, you need to step up your A game and deliver.
It seems that for every iteration of the Doom/Quake series, Carmack and company have managed to set the bar for the industry, both graphically and in Netplay. Yet, after being out now for half a year, it is being surpassed in both. Its online game didn’t make even the tiniest ripple in the Internet pond. Ironically, these two items have always set precedent for Id, and Carmack has even been on record in the past as stating, “Who cares about single-player, it’s all about the multiplayer.” It used to be all about selling the engine, and now even that seems fated to despair as the Unreal 3 engine is winning awards and accolades for its ease of use, and is dominating the press as far as who’s using it for their next-gen titles. No one talks about Id’s Doom 3 engine, and in years past, it’s been the engine to have.
I could go even further and discuss how banal the whole metal + hell aspect of it is. One can only take so much future-goth architecture overflowing with demons. It’s sufficiently played out. I’ve played through every Id title to date, and after 12 years of the same thing packaged in a new box, suddenly, I just don’t give a damn about hell anymore.
It’s sad, but in the end, Doom 3 will no doubt be forgotten in the annals of first-person shooters. Will Quake IV be able to pull them out of the slump and get them back to their King of the Hill status? Not if Doom 3 was any indication…
Steve Bowler has been working in the videogame industry on and off for the past 10 years, currently working at Midway Games as a lead animator in Chicago. While his main passion is animation, occasionally he spouts opinions about games. Quite often, people disagree with him.
source: http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=337&Itemid=2
