That said, Doom II picks up directly where the original Doom left off. After traveling to Hell itself and kicking some major demon butt, a skilled space marine makes his way back to Earth.
Upon his arrival, he discovers that Earth has also been invaded by demons, with casualties mounting and humanity at risk. As always, its your job as the space marine to eliminate all demons and save humanity from extinction. When it comes to laying waste to hordes of demons, Doom II plays very similarly to the first Doom. Playing as the space marine, you'll explore dozens of levels, engaging in gunfights with demons and searching for keys to open the exit.
These weapons are good for one thing; blowing the invading demons to bits. As you empty clips of bullets into offending hell-spawn, you'll need to collect ammunition pick-ups to stay supplied. You'll also have to manage your health and armor by collecting med-kits and power-ups, as you can quickly become overrun by enemies. Apart from some expected lag and muddy graphics, there aren't many problems to speak of. Every level from the original game is available, including the various secret stages you can unlock.
Thank you and have fun! The shareware version contains the entire first episode of the game, Knee-Deep in the Dead.
NOTE: This game has a native Windows version but it is recommended to use a third-party source port see the links section below. You're a space marine armed with a mere pistol. Your mission is to locate more substantial firepower, blow your way through an onslaught of undead marines and mutant demons from hell, and navigate yourself off a radioactive moon base.
But in the two months between E3 and Activate , I'd forgotten just how good. When Tim Willits fired up the demo and transported us back into the bowels of hell, I was as gobsmacked as I was the first time around. You might not have seen the video yet, and you might not believe that the game's going to look as good as these screenshots - but it does. It's time to believe the hype - Doom III is the next big thing.
And this time around we weren't just watching a static presentation. Sick of people mainly the sort that populate chat forums on the Internet when they should be drinking in the real world saying the game isn't going to look or play like the video, Tim and Todd have come armed with code this time around and they're ready to unleash it.
Well almost. A card that's going to be available for very little money when the game finally ships in And that's if you want to play the game with full detail.
Apparently the game will play with most detail turned off on a first-generation GeForce card. Moving around the dark, dank corridors he drops a couple of demons in to show off the ultra-realistic character animations. Shooting a folically challenged and overweight bit of undead hellspawn, he shows how it reacts as your body would if you'd just been shot between the legs with a shotgun.
I'm not talking OTT Soldier Of Fortune-stye dismemberments, but more subtle movements in the body and physical feedback that looks and feels real. You know how bodies in shooters act like they've been poked by David Copperfield?
Like when you shoot someone at the top of a flight of stairs and they just float horizontally, held up by their toes, waiting for Debbie McGee to come and point at them in a dramatic fashion? Don't expect to see that in Doom III. In Doom III the body will crumple, slide off the stairs, pick up momentum and crash to the bottom where a limb might fold up behind the back. Or it might get wedged halfway down.
Think realism. And this realism extends to objects in the world as well, which is a first for id. In previous games, they didn't bother with making the environments interactive.
You wouldn't want to push a barrel around in Quake III for example, because you'd just get yourself shot. With Doom III however, it's a different story: it's slower, it's singleplayer and it's going to involve thinking laterally to get yourself through certain situations. Most of what we've seen of the game so far is set in dark claustrophobic corridors deep in the bowels of Mars, and Todd Hollenshead points out that that's exactly where they want it to stay. It's more an intense atmospheric experience.
They're going to be smarter and scary in their own right, as opposed to scary just because there's loads of them. In the past, engines were judged on the number of polygons they could throw around - the more polys, the more detail, and the better the end result - something which led to European journalists asking the same question: "Und, how many polys are in zis scene? In Doom III the emphasis isn't on polys but image fidelity, through the use of multiple texture maps.
Stripping the engine down to wireframe mode, Tim Willits shows how a typical Doom III scene is constructed from basic geometry and multiple texture maps. Todd Hollenshead elaborates even further: "It's the same with the characters as well. They appear to your eye as if they're or , polygons but they're really 2, to 3, And this is what id has always done best. The coders they've got working in their offices are acknowledged as the best in the business, but what about the stuff that's not as quantifiable?
What about the Fear Factor? How do they test something as ephemeral as that? Todd Hollenshead looks pleased: "We turn the lights off in our offices and play the game. If we have to go home and change pants then we know it's scary enough. Will : This was quite fun for me. Unlike Prez and Jamie who did not. Doom 3's narrow corridors aren't really made for three players either - but ammo and guns are at least limited by the mod to ensure it's not a complete pushover. Monsters disintegrating into thin air while still walking towards you instead of keeling over and dying is another bugbear as well - the whole thing really does feel like a fan-made beta release.
Which it is. However, the best moment came when fighting against the guardian in the hell levels. He got confused and instead of smiting our gallant team, just sat there looking grumpy and a lot like the depressed cat that needs baffling in Monty Python's Confuse-a-Cat' sketch. This obviously entailed lots of candid screenshot-takmg of us getting up close with the miffed dark lord of hell.
Better than the usual tourist snaps anyway. Prez : As Will mentioned, hosting Last Man Standing is infinitely preferable to merely joining a game. From the other side of the fence, everyone appeared to be moving on roller skates and their guns inactive, despite the constant hell creature explosions. The lack of gunfire cues made it hard to determine where best to put your own limited ammo supplies, although everyone seemed to be very susceptible to a good torch battering - especially team-mates.
Also, a bug meant that the character models for teleporting bad guys would all be visible long before they activated, ruining most of the game's shocks and scares. There was also an odd side effect with the hell guardian. Aside from remaining motionless, there were two of them. Which you don't see every day. Ultimately, it's an exercise in frustration.
Pissing About Potential : Jumping out of the shadows to try and scare Prez was an amusing aside, especially as the game wasn't very good on that front. Mostly though, nothing beats a good healthy torch fight should you find yourself on a deserted Mars base. The discovery that crouching and shooting a team-mate with the shotgun catapults them across the room also led to much hilarity and impromptu dumping in lava. When I played Doom 31 got much what I expected: a shooter that wasn't particularly clever or mould-breaking, but one that was hugely atmospheric, very dark, full of technological whizz-bangs and a hell of a lot of fun.
When I played Doom 3 multiplayer, however, I didn't. Id Software the games company who broke my deathmatch virginity with such effusive grace back in the good old days of Quake and its map-designing friends at Splash Damage who were responsible for the excellent Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory have cooked the books slightly. Four players, slow pace, five maps, darkened nooks and crannies, a slew of references to former id glories and one or two interesting features per level - far distant from the Arena frag-fests of recent years and with a focus on compact, quality-controlled blasting rather than a huge number of inconsequential maps and features.
At first, as they say, it's all gravy. There's plenty of fun to be had, for example, flicking the switches in the Lights Out map, powering down the generator, pulling the shutters down on the windows and stalking around in the darkness. Indeed, hiding in the shadows and blasting a pursuer as he hurtles past is the greatest pleasure that Doom 3 deathmatch affords. Elsewhere there's a welcome return to the hub-trap style of map-making with the skin-shredding Frag Chamber, a few well-placed Berserk modes hideous screaming included and some nice features you won't notice instantly - like the power-up in the bowels of the Tomiko Reactor.
After a while though, you hit a big bloodstained wall. Fun as the map gimmicks are, there's a finite amount of enjoyment that can be squeezed from them.
You discover that you can join servers that are running with eight players, and that ups the ante somewhat, but before long it becomes painfully apparent that this is a hugely limited multiplayer package. Over a LAN I'd say that this is a great game to stick on for an hour or so and shout abuse at each other, against faceless members of the internet community, but the fun ebbs away the more you play it. The future of Doom 3 multiplayer, however, does lie in the modding community.
As I type all manner of tweaks are appeanng online offering 32 player insta-deathmatches and the like, and with an engine this nifty you can bank on some gems turning up one day or another. For now, though, you play it much as it was developed - and that's as a side thought.
It's fun for a while, but there are bigger, brighter and better things out there. It's not a total disaster, but it's still the most underwhelming multiplayer that we've seen attached to an id product. Dallas, Texas - the jewel of the Lone Star State.
What a godforsaken hellhole. Never before have I been shipped to a bleaker, more soulless place to report on a games event and yes, that includes Slough and Milton Keynes. Like an antiquated videogame, the city is made of singlepolygon buildings, their mirrored veneers reflecting a sterile scene of deserted roads and too-neat hedges, the sidewalks occupied only by cops and the occasional blurry NPC -probably packing heat.
The sole distinguishing feature is the trademark Texan excess. Shopping malls are like small cities. Steaks are the size of your average domestic pet. In a way though, this is what we love about America. The more barren, nasty and crime-ridden a city is, the more thriving the corresponding subcultures usually are. Just look at Washington DC, murder capital of the US, and home to the nation's finest punk-rock scene and some of the finest bands ever created. In Dallas there are no bands they're all in neighbouring Austin , but this bland metropolis has another, more relevant claim to fame: it's the world's undisputed capital of the first-person shooter.
Ten-some odd years ago, to coin a Texanism, a revolution occurred in games that you may be familiar with. In Mesquite, 20 minutes from Dallas, a bunch of geeks got bored with the primary culture of incest, rodeos and meat drinks and created Wolfenstein 3D, the world's first true FPS. The genre has since held the PC gaming population in thrall for over 10 years, and its godfathers at id Software have remained at the centre of the scene throughout.
Other high-profile companies like 3D Realms, Ion Storm, Gearbox and Origin all have their roots in Dallas or nearby Austin, but only id Software creates a fan frenzy big enough to bring thousands of sweaty gamers to Texas every year, 40kg PCs on their backs, to join in a four-day blowout of gaming mayhem.
If you hadn't guessed, the event is QuakeCon, America s biggest LAN party, games convention and prize tournament; a by-the-fans, for-the-fans affair dedicated to the games of the id stable. The event once again took place in Dallas this August, continuing an eight-year tradition of free fragging, partying and sleeping on floors. It's unknown if anyone lasted the full 96 hours, though there were certainly a few freakish characters who were keen to try.
Numbers in the BYOC are estimated to have topped 2, at peak, the full logistical and hygienic considerations of which are impossible to calculate. Needless to say, the fact that the event coincided with the New York blackout did not escape the attention of worried-looking hotel staff.
However, as a proud affirmation of geek culture, QuakeCon is unrivalled. Where else could one wear a T-shirt bearing the slogan Will Frag For Sex' and still hold one's head high? Respect is key, and it's not just earned on the virtual battlefield. Case-modding is de rigueur, and if you don't have a neon light shining out the side of yours then you might as well go home. Extra points are given for doing away with the case altogether, to be replaced with a common industrial or laboratory item, ideally combined with a T-shirt that shows your commitment to the cause.
Anything pre-millennium and you're a goddamned Jedi. But the real reason we were there was not to enjoy the delights of a 2,strong man-fest, but to play Doom 3 and collar the boys from id. We managed both, even sneaking in a few hours playing Call Of Duty genius.
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