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In this playthrough, Chris is keeping things fast and interesting by skipping all the “secret” containers. What you’re supposed to do is listen to all of the audiologs and read all the emails to find the cabinet codes, and use those to unlock the item stashes. I imagine that most of us – trained by years of item-scarcity mechanics – reflexively did all that work without doing any sort of cost / benefit analysis. In my case, I frequently found myself popping open containers to find everything inside was useless to me. I was maxed out on the offered bullets, my health was topped off, and I really only needed a fraction of the armor pickups. But I kept opening them anyway because that’s how you do things in a videogame.
So here 11 years after the fact I’m really glad to see that the cabinets really do make a huge difference. Halfway through this episode is the point where I was able to start using the shotgun exclusively. Now I see Chris skip the containers and wind up completely starved for ammo. I guess I’m just glad to know all that hassle wasn’t a complete waste, only mostly a waste.
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So is Doom’s only canon mechanic for why Doom Guy doesn’t get possessed actually from the movie?
I don’t understand. We meet several people who don’t turn into demons and we hear even more on the radio (as they turn into a quick snack). Clearly the possession wasn’t base-wide. So why is it so remarkable that playerchar.meathead didn’t get possessed when we don’t seem to have a problem with the other humans?
Who said I didn’t have a problem with other humman being not being posessed. You’d thiink the army would be interested in knowing why after the 2 first icidents.
Would imagine it’s inversely proportional to the amount of meat in head.
A shame they never explained it in-game, because there are plenty of options they left open for themselves. Doomguy, Swan and his bodyguard all escape possession, along with a handful of others. Maybe it’s just because they’re very recent arrivals to Mars; evil forces are clearly already seeping into the place, and its people, before the main invasion begins and triggers them. Maybe only people who’ve actually already been through the teleporters (and have hence already been exposed to hell), or in close contact with the machinery or someone else who used it, prior to the invasion get possessed. Maybe it was just proximity to the invasion portal from which the “evil wave” that seems to flow over the base affecting the likelihood of being turned (a nice detailed interactive map of the whole base showing an epicentre with waves radiating outward from it, with increased levels of possession, corruption, mutation etc in the inner rings, would have been a neat way to do that one) Or maybe the people who resist being turned are just the few really decent types on the planet, pure of heart or whatever – hell is a metaphor-heavy concept, and most of the characters you meet prior to the disaster all seem a bit off in some way, corrupt, flawed or “sinful” – being jerky, snarky, jaded, cynical, slothful, cowardly, rude, abusive, arrogant, etc.
But you don’t get that stuff from ID software; they’re all about the game engine. I gather there WERE once people at ID who cared as much about tight, elegant plot as Carmack and others do about tight, elegant code, but they (and their attitude) apparently began to leave the company during the development of Doom 1, which was originally to have actually had a whole lot more plot, and mechanics supporting it.
These monsters arent scary,theyre startling.Theres a difference.
So I have never played this game, but you know what it reminds me of? Dead Space.
I feel both have the overall same issues. Both are actually pretty good at creating a spooky atmosphere with great gameplay(I like the dismembering mechanic at least) but without a point or theme holding that atmosphere together.
I think Doom does suffer from the baggage of its title however, seems like it really is torn between being a horror or a shooter game. While Dead Space ended up becoming a shooter because they never figured out what was suppose to be scary about there game
I would have been much more interested in Dead Space if they’d gone for a more Alone in the Dark sort of feel to it (the original version, at least). Focus more on horror and puzzles, and reduce the shooting.
The thing with Dead Space is that it gets really predictable super fast. Every time you get in a room and have to hit a switch you know shutters are going to come down and enemies will come out of the vents. Also it’s been awhile but I THINK that Dead Space had the situation where you could see the dead bodies on the ground and knew they’d at some point shoot up and run and attack you but you couldn’t break their bodies apart prior to that. Really ruined the atmosphere though for a shooty survival horror I’d say it’s one of the better ones.
You can definitely shoot the corpses before they pop up. I shot all the necromorph bodies any time I entered a new area because of it.
I stand corrected!
Yeah, Dead Space goes to such extraordinary lengths to create this spooky, oppressive and isolated atmosphere. Everything is carefully considered, from the visuals to the inventory to the sound design. Even the slow ponderous way that Isaac walks. And then it ruins all of that effort by throwing Necromorphs at you by the
dozenshundreds, in extremely trite and predictable fashion.I always felt that Dead Space was the game Doom 3 wished it was and everyone wanted it to be, gameplay wise. The core mechanic of the original Doom games was one of harrowing, endless, nightmarish onslaught, endless, frenetic, run and gun combat as uncountable hordes of monstrosities swarm you. Doom 3 had precisely none of that; it was built like a survival horror, and not a very good one. Survival horror needs variety, slower pacing, time to build dread, and a more gripping plot. Dead Space, on the other hand, delivered in spades on the endless, harrowing, nightmare onslaught front.
Ironically, though Dead Space IS good, I would have much preferred it if it had been an actual survival horror instead.
Basically, if you swapped the gameplay mechanics between Dead Space and Doom 3 (in terms of monster numbers, that is; Doom 3’s monster AI was barely better than that of Doom 1. Keep Dead Space’s monster AI in both.), both games would probably be improved; Doom 3 drastically so, and closer to its roots to boot.
I forgot about the flashlight. In hindsight, it’s a pretty awful design choice to make it so you can’t use it AND a weapon… In a game that depends entirely on your ability to see and shoot at targets with proper reflexes and accuracy.
I have the sneaking suspicion the devs thought people modded the flashlight to be on your weapon because they were too scared of fighting in the dark. When it’s more like they made a shooter game where YOU CAN’T FLIPPIN’ SEE WHAT YOU’RE SHOOTING.
That’s like a platformer where you can’t see where you’re going to land after every jump.
Perhaps it would have been better to have been able to use the flashlight in one hand, and the pistol in the other. Other weapons could have a smaller, less useful flashlight attached.
I can understand why they wanted to have some kind of lighting element to the game. Doom & Doom II were innovative in many ways, and flickering lights were a nice way to instill a sense of trepidation before heading into an area, since it might be a trap.*
The flashlight was a misguided attempt to re-create this, I think. I do believe a nice compromise would’ve been a more useful flashlight sans weapon and a smaller weapon-mounted light (or if they were feeling like coding their fingers off, the same flashlight with your weapon, but your gun casts a shadow, halving the light).
* Of course it’s a trap. It’s always a trap.
“I guess I'm just glad to know all that hassle wasn't a complete waste, only mostly a waste.”
Thank you, Shamus, that’s why I’m a regular here :D
maybe they just ran out of hellskulls
I like how you point out that nobody uses health kits or wall-mounted health stations much after this, but Half Life 2 would be using them until at least 2007 (for HL2:Ep2).
Having regen health for this might have actually been a good idea, to keep tension high and reduce the amount of potential deaths so the game proceeds quite smoothly. (since the idea seems to be to provide more of a horror experience, rather than an action-arcade experience).
I don’t know. There is some amount of meta logic that the player finds hard to ignore with these sorts of design decisions. Like if I have regenerating health then I feel like a challenge should always be within my ability to overcome (ignoring ammo counts). Speaking of ammo, if health is not a resource but ammo is then I am far more tempted to conserve ammo by trying to punch things, meaning that I probably have more ammo than I should have. At this point do you re-balance the game for the players who will cheese it, thus making the cheese the only viable strategy?
Now by making a players health a limited resource you don’t have the comfort of “knowing” that you should have the tools to face any challenge you come up against. You should also see less of the punching of the monsters that nearly got Chris killed. I mean, if you want your player to be afraid of your monsters then the last thing you want is them punching them. Of course non-regening hp has its own balancing problems. Players might actually become stuck and have their entire playthrough become unbeatable and the difficulty of a given encounter becomes really hard to predict and design.
These aren’t unsolvable problems but I think non-regening hp is definitely better for your survival horror type game and regening is better for your action type games. it does make it hard to choose when a game like doom 3 can’t decide which it wants to be though.
Non regen just demands more thought. The response to regen health typically is just up the numbers, be it enemies/damage/what have you. Health kits/stations need to actually be placed in the level, so now it’s an issue of level design, corresponding enemy placement, the mood your trying to set and so one.
To be fair, HL2 had the EV suit, which was administering medical attention to you throughout the game. Perhaps it was the only way to take advantage of a lot of the health items. In both games, one could say that our “healing” is toxic to the monsters, but I’m just justifying a trope, really.
I prefer this model over health regen, as it forces more strategy, I think. With health regen, the question is more “how long is this fight going to take while I sit behind a wall,” vs. “how am I going to get through this with only 15 hp?”
“how am I going to get through this with only 15 hp?”
Simple: go back to your save before the previous fight and keep repeating the section till you complete it with more than 15 hp.
I’ll never get the way folks romanticize non-regenerating health in save-at-will games. I always felt it invariably turns save scumming into the most effective way to play the game, making beating a level more a matter of patience than skill.
Most effective,yes.But also pretty time consuming and not that fun.And in games where you get proper health placement,its not necessary either,even if you arent that skillful.
And wolfenstein new order did it last year.But their point was not that no one does it ever,but that its a very rare thing now.
After Rutskarn’s point about the PDA/audiologs being difficult to concentrate on (unless you listen to them in some isolated spot where you’re definitely safe), I’m now really surprised they didn’t include subtitles.
System Shock and Bioshock also had a bit of an issue with this though (although they at least had subtitles or text to read), I could never be listening to an audiolog and still be wandering around, you never know when you might get a nasty surprise.
Well, if you’re unlikely to be in a safe space to listen, not drawing your attention to the bottom of the screen with subtitles may have been a deliberate choice, your eyes are supposed to be busy keeping track of monsters in the dark. Although if you’re trying to navigate in the dark, sound design should be detailed enough to give you relevant info so covering that up doesn’t make much sense, though vidya is primarily visual, I suppose.
Transcripts for audio logs would solve a bunch of problems.
I read this article about doom3’s source code just a few days ago. Apparently its one of the prettiest codes out there. Judging by the examples, I agree. Whoever coded this game is amazing!
Aye right – as it happens, Shamus did a series of posts on coding style partially inspired by said source code:
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=18368
Talk about the in-game computer UI. To this day I have not seen a better (or even comparable) computer UI in a game. I mean, just going through the menus in every computer is a delight and feels like a very real OS.
Just watching this I have to agree. In other games the “computer” is always huge or an omnidirectional hologram or both, and if you even interact with it you go to a new menu when doing so. You can see them from anywhere and it’s not natural. In this game simply because the computers are textures on a flat surface you have to actually look at it square on, press the touchscreen, and then read the screen. It’s quite refreshing.
The menu screen is apparently your pda, but it doesn’t magically interface with everything to let you ignore the environment and just poke the glowy thing.
I dont quite agree.While its nice for immersion,it drastically limits the amount of info and options you can stick in a computer.Plus,I prefer games that let you use the movement keys to navigate through those entries than the ones where you can only use your mouse.
I always thought the reason you didn’t get possessed was because you were a recent arrival to mars. Everyone else had been hanging out forever and a day sucking up evil hell energy except you. Thats why the other guy trying to stop the villain and his bodyguard don’t just get immediately possessed either at least in my mind.
On the other hand, the
bodyguard does get possessed, eventually, so it’s not just exposure building up over time.Well, unless he had been there before… or there’s some kind of character evil-ness baseline that being in the area adds to, or something like that.
Uh…no he don’t.
You must have him confused with
sergeant Kelley.You guys joke about killing NPCs that they wrote a lot of dialogue for, but I actually think that’s commendable – especially in comparison to Skyrim.
Like, if you modded Skyrim into this engine, you’d have to do a lot more work, because there’s probably no inherent support for invincible NPCs.
“As part of this treaty, I give Riften to…wait – everybody there’s dead.”
“Yeah – they were all part of the thieve’s guild, so I made short work of them.”
“Oh…uh…Ulfric – want Riften?”
I don’t know what the hell these guys are talking about.
The machine gun was literally the only weapon I ever used that wasn’t the shotgun.* It has no spray, virtually no recoil and no bullet drop off. You’ll hit what you’re aiming at no matter how far away they are and this is the only weapon in your arsenal where this applies…and it’s right next to the primary weapon in the game, which means you don’t even have to search for it.
*aside from specific late game enemies such as grenades for the chaingunners, the mini for the cocopuffs ** and plasma for the reavers.
** Seriously Rutz ‘n Chris? You’re going to talk up the mini?! It chews through ammo that’s not plentiful, sprays wider than a water bottle on the mist setting and takes days to wind up. It’s the most useless gun you could possibly get for a game comprised mostly of a small group of close quarter combat enemies. The Cocopuffs are the only thing it’s good for and only because I don’t want to waste my machine gun ammo if I don’t have to.
I used the only mini against a lot of different types of enemies, especially cacodemons. Playing on normal I never felt like there was enough ammo between the machine gun and shotgun to get through the game using just those.
Also, honestly, the shotgun was a piece of shit unless you were rubbing your face against whatever you were shooting. DooM went from one of the most realistic video game shotguns to one of the least realistic over ten or so years.
Does the shotgun sound really… low-pressure to anyone else? It sounds like the shells are being ejected through a pneumatic tube.
Well,it is mars.
But yes,the guns in this game sound anemic.Plus,they dont really pack much of a punch.So one more thing where the game loses the doom feel.Basically,instead of having powerful arsenal to fight a plethora of enemies in colorful arenas,you have a weak arsenal to fight a handful of enemies in dark corridors.
I’m listening this like a podcast, because it’s hard to watch in this aspect ratio. Combining it with a way Chris is using mouse, it’s painful. I don’t have motion sickness but i physically feel discomfort (I’m serious).
Wow. 11 years? I had to go and look up Doom 3 on Wikipedia to check I understood right what Shamus was saying. I still think of this as a relatively recent game. But actually there is a longer gap between the release of Doom 3 and now than there is between it and Doom 2 (1994). Golly.
I always thought it was completely random as to who got possessed and who didn’t (although the amount of time spent in proximity to the Hell Portal might have been a factor).
Also, the Machine Gun and the Shotgun were my two go-to weapons for much of the game. If it was far away, Machine Gun. If it was close, Shotgun. The Rocket Launcher and Plasma Rifle were used for tough, sub-boss enemies, while the BFG and the Soulcube basically only saw use against the last and second last boss. I almost never used the Chaingun or the Grenades.
I must have missed it in the episode, but who or what is Reed Rickles? (I tried searching, and the top two links are the episode itself on YouTube, and some D&D website for some reason…)
When we’re getting assisted by the little robot, Josh asks how it can tell the zombies (who are registered UNC employees wearing official gear) apart from the living people it’s trying to protect.
Rutskarn hypothesizes it was a fictional character who managed to push a zombies-vs-people firmware update out to all bots in just 20 minutes despite being shot several times and bleeding, and offhandedly names him Reed Rickles. Then Josh decided that that guy was the guy we shot earlier in the episode, and he was bleeding not because zombies got to him, but because I did.
Hence: The death and redemption of Reed Rickles.
Thanks! I’m kinda glad I missed it now, as that was a great little story.
He’s the foremost scientist in the field of insult comedy in the Marvel Universe. Dr Doom, the biggest ego in the Marvel Universe, is his greatest nemesis. Thats why this game is called Doom.
You’re keeping the demons busy in this complex while Reed “Mr Sarcastic” Rickles finds a weakness in Doom’s self conception. Reed’s secret is that he’s rubber while everyone else is glue.
I haven’t ever played Doom, nor do I have plans to play Doom so I have nothing to contribute to this discussion but I still want to be a part of it.
What I will say is, having absolutely no idea when Doom Cubed was released, it does look good. I appreciate how most of the game focuses on things that the technology can visually represent in a satisfactory way. Reminds me of Wii U that way (though I’m sure Doom Cubed was cutting edge at the time.)
I don’t find is strange that Doom has explanations about space travel since it was produced and coded by Carmak an actuall rocket engineer.
Dude. This is Shamus you’re talking to. He’s knows every individual fact about Carmak twice as much as you do. He has a redundant memory sequence for each of these facts.
And right now its driving him crazy that you and I have both misspelled his name.
Rutscarkin misses the reason that the belaboring the point on the chainsaw works, it isn’t that putting that much effort into the joke some how makes a not funny joke funny, it is that it makes a lampshade into a tiny bit of world building, that even on Mars they have the same problems we have today. A mistake like that in a modern company where they could return the chainsaws would have a paper trail several pages thick at least of trying to find the mistake fix it and complaining that it got made in the first place. If they didn’t actually try hard to sell the joke it would clearly be seen as a lampshade hanging on a contrived gameplay feature. We know people well enough that there would never be a screw up that big that would only have a single line written about it. The least you expect to see in a real office setting is something like:
“Why do we have chainsaws when we can’t use them?”
“That must be a mistake we wanted drills.”
“What does the order we sent out say?”
“Chainsaws!?”
“Who was in charge of this ****”
“Not me, it was him I swear.”
Which is like six times as much at a minimum. The lampshade would be worse than just having a chainsaw on its own. If they just had a chainsaw there could possibly be a reason that is just of screen. An excuse that is one line clearly is bull though. I mean I have screwed up at an office that cost five minutes to fix and spent more than one line explaining it.
there are files and vids in game (including the news show in the mars city cafeteria) that talk about two companies, mixom and their chinese knockoff moxim (or vice versa). they screwed up the order and make really low quality stuff that breaks easily.
I think one of the best things about this early part of the game is the marine chatter on the radio. You can hear them dying and t rying to coordinate and just utterly failing and as time goes on the messages get less and less until finally you just get silence.
What a wonderful way of doing things rather then ‘and then everyone died and you were alone’ in a intro cut scene or something. You are hearing the event happen rather then getting knocked out and waking up or something.