Doom 3

Doom 3 Overview

Doom 3 is the third installment in the popular PC shooter series, Doom. This installment of the series disregards the former Doom games. The player starts out in a military conglomerate which has set up a scientific research facility. However the experiments go ary and a gate to hell opens up results in a demon invasion. This installment has also introduced multiplayer which adds another layer of depth to the franchise. While this game is fun and simple the graphics are pretty outdated.

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Full Review

Doom 3 Review

By, Nicholas Bale

Backdrop

.hack Part 1 Infection (Dot Hack) begins with a bang. Something disastrous happens to your character‘s real world friend, while innocently playing a 20 million-subscriber base, wildly popular online RPG game (MMORPG), The World. To unravel the mystery of your friend’s misfortune, you become an online, ingame rogue hacker, exploring every corner of The World, even some virus-infected ones.

The hero is armed with the special skills of Data Drain and Gate Hack, and some colorful, talented fellow adventurers to fill the two other available party slots. Different adventurers must accompany you depending on the plot‘s development. You have some control over the others in your party, including upgrading them through trades or gifts. You can play only a single class, Twin Blade. Other characters are from different classes, with varied strengths and weaknesses, from a mage type (Wavemaster) to a bully (Heavy Axeman).

Gameplay

Gameplay takes place in three principal areas – towns, fields, and dungeons. Towns house The World’s servers. There, the player can save the game, buy magic scrolls and useful and unique items, store items, buy equipment, and talk and trade with lots of other players in character online. One town has an unusual ranch to check out, a patent homage to an enduring feature of just about every Final Fantasy.

The town’s Chaos Gate provides instant teleportation to a particular wide-open Field, containing monster encounter hotspots, a mystical spring, treasure, and lots of mysterious food. You enter three distinct keywords, some known at the game‘s onset, and others learned through play. Whatever keywords are entered, the difficulty level of the destination is helpfully revealed. This prevents a low-level party from being massacred. Once the keywords are entered, you travel through the Chaos Gate. (You can enter specific keywords learned to continue the plot, do side quests, or do unlimited exploring. Or, you can instruct the Gate to enter random keywords, and take your chances. There‘s also an option to enter any keywords you wish from a word list.) Every Field houses a single Dungeon. The dungeons, where you spend much of the game fighting for your life, are not overly large in size, and always range between three and five average levels.

Many have compared Dot Hack to Phantasy Star Online Episode I and II (PSO) on the Gamecube. Let us gently discredit this. We feel Dot Hack has far better graphics than PSO. The Fields and Dungeons contain many colorful, over stylized backdrops and settings, including weather effects. Dot Hack’s monsters resemble the beautifully-drawn monsters of the later Final Fantasy’s. Dot Hack’s world is gigantic with a seeming infinite number of locations to explore. PSO’s world is relatively small, and plot is threadbare, with meaningless, though fun, side quests, which instill no enthusiasm in the player. Dot Hack’s plot is deep and complex, with each subplot advancing the story just a little bit further. (Remember though, the end of this game in no way comes close to wrapping up the story, to be completed in the three games to be released later this year.) One visual treat, however, was lifted directly from PSO – the cascading rings that accompany the teleportation of characters to and from different areas.

Combat

Dot Hack’s combat engine can best be described as modified real-time. Much like the action-RPG, Kingdom Hearts, button mashing can be effective to beat monsters. Monster combat icons appear as large yellow twirling landmarks. As you approach, the landmark dissolves, monsters come at you big-time, and, undoubtedly, players will feel a healthy adrenaline rush. Some of Dot Hack’s many monsters do not stand around waiting to be pummeled, rather some you need to catch. Dot Hack lets you turn combat almost into a turn-based affair. The player needs only to hit Triangle in the middle of battle to pause the game instantly. From there the player can give orders to the others in the party, anything from healing someone, reviving another, casting a spell, designating a target monster. Without jeopardizing your party from the hailstorm of monster blows, combat becomes a calmer, more strategic, experience. This will help the many action-challenged. Camera angles play a big role in successful combat. You must be facing a monster to do any damage. As in many games, manipulating opposing environmental elements, like fire vs. water, is a key to successful monster combat.

Dot Hack’s cyberspace setting provides a wealth of Wow-inducing outbursts. The Data Drain option in combat is a great example. When a monster’s approaches zero, the player can Data Drain to reduce a horrendous, gigantic steel robot, for example, into a sniveling, puny monster, easily defeated with a single blow. Data Drain always results in a nifty, rare item or essential Virus Cores so you can Gate Hack areas of The World now closed, but needing investigation. One bad side effect – if you defeat, a Data Drained monster, but a single experience point is earned. One REALLY bad side effect – if you Data Drain too often without giving the skill a rest, you may overload and explode. Game Over. In the case of Boss monsters, Data Drain works the same, but what remains is no sniveling puny monster, but a full-blooded slightly less tough monster. All of this makes for interesting and captivating combat, a large part of the game.

Fresh Features

Dot Hack is replete with new and interesting features that kept us riveted.

To start, the entire background and story of a real world gamer becoming a rascal hacker, penetrating deep into a virus-infected online game, is quite novel. Combine this with Dot Hack’s emulating the look and feel of an online game universe. (Message traffic on the web shows many gamers mistakenly believe Dot Hack is a real online MMORPG, along with monthly fees! No real Internet connection is required.)

Just like in the real word, Dot Hack replicates your excitement level when “New” appears before a popular forum or on your email screen. Some of the game involves receiving emails as the plot develops, as well as new, crucial information surfacing on The World’s Board. (Look out for emails challenging you to a strange game of Tag.) The online game world looks very familiar with a bunch of characters wandering around the game’s towns, with the ubiquitous balloon icons talking typical “trash” to each other, even criticizing “newbies“.

Combat grippingly called for surprisingly strategic decision-making to succeed, not related to the usual attack or defend choices. Do you go for experience and upgrade your character or try for some special equipment or a Virus Core, vital to Gate Hacking? The innovative control of other party members became second nature to us after some practice. The game rewards a player taking chances, like entering a Field or Dungeon rated 5 levels above the player’s current level. On the other hand, the game scoffed at players entering areas much lower rated the their current level, by awarding negligible experience points for victory.

Dot Hack takes progress reports to a new level, by slowly unlocking books that contain much in the way of statistics and information. There’s even a monster compendium with tips for defeating them.

Some might complain about the minimal “Save Game” ability, but we thrived on it. You explore a very hostile cyberspace environment without the facility to save. Only in a server-hosting town is saving possible at the local Recorder. We may be a solitary voice in the Wilderness, but we like this throwback to the good old RPG days. Those of you old enough to remember the Wizardry series, may recall those fingernail-biting multi-combat treks back to the Castle just to save the game. In case you’re really stuck deep in a dungeon, a common item will teleport you to the outdoor field, from where you can simply gate back to town from the command menu.

Many pieces of equipment come with distinctive powerful attack, healing, and status skills, essential to combat dominance. The player must tradeoff whether to equip something that will raise defense or offense or something less vigorous that lets you use a powerful skill. Trading is the most successful way to upgrade equipment.

In a first, Dot Hack comes with a 45 minute anime video. This gives some great background on what’s going on in The World, as well as provide clues for completing the game. In a nice twist, voiceovers for game speech can be set for Japanese or English presentation. Listening to the authentic Japanese voices really keeps you glued to the game.

Though some may scoff at what follows as meaningless, we liked the game’s unlocking of some nifty new “toys” to like, some only available when the game is cleared. You can unlock many different background music play lists. Tired of creepy tunes, just switch to something more upbeat, or futuristic. Just like real world gamers, who constantly change their desktop wallpaper, new and different wallpapers are unlocked along the way. Some are concept art of characters, while others are full blown anime renditions of the characters. This makes for great fun, and seems to pump additional energy into the game. As you progress over a dozen special cut scenes or movies will become viewable after defeating the game.

Though Dot Hack’s extras and new wrinkles enhance the RPG game experience, much of the gameplay will ring true to those who enjoy RPG‘s. Expect plenty of exploration in a huge 3D world, frequent monster combat, tons of treasure to earn and discover, upgrading your character’s weapons and armor, and needing to level before tackling pivotal story dungeons. The status screens for the characters and all equipment are well laid out and easy to grasp.

Time for Completion

Game length in hours always concerns many purchasers. A short RPG normally takes a lot of flack, and many online are asking about Dot Hack‘s time for completion. (Some have questioned whether Bandai should have released a single 80 hour game for $50, rather than four 20-hour games for $200 for a single story. This matter is beyond the scope of this review, but our high opinion of this game as a standalone is obvious.) Our experience, playing the plot without doing side quests or extra exploration, is in the 12 to 15-hour range. Players side-questing and extensively exploring, aside from the main plot, can expect to spend 25 hours to complete the game. You can even continue to advance your character, after game completion, to get a jump start on Part 2 due in May. In the next game, your character can be imported from Part 1.

Furthermore, imagine trying to explore every nook and cranny of the fields and dungeons accessible by a large number of 3-word combinations. Doing that would put the game in the 50-hour range, if not more. However, at a certain point, new items dry up, and a single experience point is earned for any defeated monster, no matter how tough.

Shortcomings

While, as is evident above, there is much to recommend in Dot Hack, certain concerns to varying degrees deserve mention.

From the “Why oh why did they leave this out?“ File. Pregame game board traffic and information about the Japanese version released months ago had many salivating for replaying the game in “parody” mode. This mode apparently converted all Dot Hack’s game world characters into satirical comedians. Sorry to say, this highly-anticipated feature is missing from the version released here.

The game requires massive amounts of button pressing. Every item or treasure uncovered from combat victories or exploration (opening chests, searching expired adventure remains, collecting food for Grunty’s, as examples) must be confirmed with a button press. When there could be 50-100 such occurrences in a single dungeon or field, over the course of the game, finger cramps seem inevitable. Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance also required lots of bashing for buried treasure and chests, but the items literally flew into your inventory, a much better way to handle this.

The manual is woefully terse and lacking in some crucial information and guidance. While the ingame tutorials fill in many of the gaps, one extremely important gameplay feature is missing from both the manual and tutorials – instructions on control your characters directly during combat.

Final Word

We got a kick out of Dot Hack. The feeling of “just one more dungeon” dominated our lives for the 3 days to completion. The engaging environment held our attention without much effort. The strategic nature of combat, plus the convoluted plot kept us going for hours on end. The constant unlocking of both frivolous and important gameplay features created a “what’s next” anticipation. Now, if I could only read Japanese better, Dot Hack Part 2 is already out in Japan!

Final Grade: B

In this long-awaited installment of the Doom series from id, it’s time to be afraid. Be very afraid. You will be.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for most of your life, you’ve heard of Doom. I rememberDoom. I remember shooting waves and waves of monsters down. I remember I was always in God mode: I was too afraid to try anything else. Well Doom 3 has taken that fear factor and multiplied it. By a billion. And two.

First of all, I’ve got to mention the graphics. The pictures that have been released thus far have been nothing compared to the game in motion. The crisp graphics, shadows, and little details make this game look absolutely stunning. And freaky. And surprisingly, it doesn’t create too much of a strain. On my year old graphics card I was able to run the ‘medium’ detail setting. Except for gasses and other particle effects, there was little or no slowdown.

You start off as a nameless, voiceless recruit to the Marines in Mars City. You’re given your first assignment: to locate a missing scientist. You get a pistol. As you finally find him, everything starts shaking, you hear screams over your radio, and things literally go to hell as these ghostly skulls fly into your mission, turning him into something else. Suddenly there are reports of men down over the radio, multiple casualties, and basically, the excrement hits the oscilating object.

The atmosphere of this game is what sticks out the most. The game takes place on a station on Mars, and the claustrophic setting, dark shadows, and cold metallic surroundings all add to the fear. In addition, the sounds echoing through the hallways will keep you on your toes. Was that hiss you just heard the sound of a piston, or some hellish demon behind you?

The enemies pop up everywhere, in true Doom fashion. Walls slide down, exposing demons clothed in shadows, or they’ll be summoned in from the pits of hell themselves, creating a hellish red glow that will set your hairs on end in the process. All you’ll have to warn you of their appearance is a indecipherable whispering, and in time, you will begin to fear that noise. Oh, and don’t forget to check your back. Always.

Speaking of enemies, Doom 3 fans will be happy to see all their old favourites brought to stunning 3d life. They’re the old zombies, fire-throwing imps, big pink demons, those floating spherical enemies that spit plasma, and a lot of new additions (seriously freaky additions, lemme tell you).

Some of the old weapons are also back, as well as new ones. You’ll get basics like the pistol and shotgun, the machine gun and rocket launcher, plasma rifle, and even the fabled BFG. Unfortunately, Doom 3 has gone with the ‘bigger-is-better’ route. As you pick up new weapons, the old ones become obselete, except to save ammo on your bigger, better weapons. In fact, ammo for the chain gun pretty much disappears altogether once you find a more powerful gun.

In regards to sound, this game doesn’t really have that category. Except for maybe two or three tracks in the game, the rest of the sounds are ambient and that crescendo that is heard whenever something is going to happen. The voice acting, however, is top-notch, and the ambient sounds are realistic and clear as well.

Now, for all it’s graphical amazement, fear-inspiring enemies, and wicked weapons, the game suffers terribly in the area of gameplay. Seems the guys at id worked a lot more on the graphics engine than the gameplay.

As someone who is expecting Half-Life 2 to be the next coming, Doom 3 is a disappointment, especially since it’s supposed to be on the same level. There is a bare minimum of interactable items, namely, computer screens and boxes you can push for absolutely no reason. While the computer screens are neat in the way they’re used, it’s just not enough. I want to be able to shoot out lights (well, not really. It’s dark enough.), push over some shelves, and shoot out windows.

In addition, the game seems extremely linear and scripted. As I headed up to the communications area, I said to myself “It’s going to be broken. It’s always broken.” Sure enough, it was broken. So obviously I had to go to another station, something I couldn’t have done before I found the first communications area, no of course not. Throughout the game you’re led by the nose, going through a predetermined set of metallic hoops to get to where you want to go.

This scripting manifests itself a lot in items. When I see an item on the ground, I’m always worried to pick it up, because it always triggers some enemy to appear, which makes me use up the item, be it armor or ammo. It starts to get predictable, and that’s never good.

Let’s look at your character. He has no personality, which is okay, this is obviously a game about shooting stuff, not character development. However, answer me this: If this man is a trained soldier, why is it that he can’t hold a flashlight and a pistol at the same time? Nothing is more aggravating than wandering through a dark area, flashlight on, finding an enemy, pulling out a weapon into total darkness, and having no idea what the heck to shoot at. And this happens a lot. And why in the world must I use a flashlight instead of, say, infra red? It makes no sense.

In the area of replayability, Doom 3 isn’t too great. With single player, there are four modes, easy to hard, and nightmare. The game is pretty easy, even on the medium setting, and on nightmare your health constantly is going down, which makes it merely annoying, unless you’re into timed games. Plus, the game is about twenty hours of playing. If you like the game, that’s a little too short. If you find it dull, that’s way too long.

And at times, the game does get dull. Not dull in the sense that nothing happens, but in the sense that you feel like id has run out of ideas. At a couple of points in the game, in between new enemies and guns, I was actually kind of bored, because I knew that behind the next corner there would be an imp, and under the elevator was a spider, and picking up the armor in the middle of the room would send a swarm of demons from hell to tear me apart. Again.

Multiplayer is limited. You can go online but it’s only supported for four players (although apparently some servers have managed to bypass this limit in some way), and there’s not a whole lot of modes, just the basics like DeathMatch and such. The maps are sorely limited at the moment as well. However, this is in its infant stage, and it’s likely the mod community will go bonkers with Doom 3.

If you’re into getting scared, and if you own a surround sound system, then this is probably a great game for you. If you’re a fan of games with some character, choice, and other objectives than shoot everything you see, then this probably isn’t for you. Id has made a shooter that, while it looks fabulous and makes you shiver, it is just that: a shooter.

Final Grade: 81%

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