Black sheep of the series that are great actually (and why)

[SvennoJ]

HoloDust said:

@SvennoJ

I don't know man, I remember that pretty much both me and all of my PC gaming buddies were quite disappointed with Doom 3. Not only it was not "proper" Doom, but just couple months before it sublime The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay launched, which was, both visually and gameplay wise much better game. And then few months later both Half-Life 2 and HALO 2 launched.

2004 was not kind to DOOM3, even in FPS genre, let alone when you account for all other releases.

2004 wanted fast paced action, Unreal Tournament style fps. 

Maybe it was ahead of its time, it played a lot like like Dead Space, or rather Dead Space is a 3rd person version of Doom 3.

I never liked the Chronicles of Riddick, nor Halo 2 (repetitive level design). HL2 was slower paced as well, that got its own criticism at the time. I loved the slower paced sections and puzzles. 

I enjoyed the slower pace of Doom 3 a lot. The lighting and use of terminals with rendered interactive screens instead of a texture was revolutionary at the time as well. There was a lot of 'bitching' about the flashlight, but that made the game, added the tension and turned it towards horror survival rather than a horror shooter..

"The flashlight in Doom 3 cannot be tied to a weapon because it is a deliberate game design choice to increase tension. The original PC version of Doom 3 requires the player to manually switch between the flashlight and their weapon, creating a risk of being in the dark with a weapon out."

People were bitching everywhere that a futuristic game couldn't have the flashlight part of the gun.

Doom 3 was groundbreaking like HL2. Story telling through PDA's you pick up became standard as well as creating a bridge between survival and action horror, laying the groundwork for Dead Space and Alien Isolation type games.