Thursday, October 27, 2005
QuickView:
Good: Beautiful graphics and sound, cool new weapons
Bad: No co-op, blah multiplayer
Better than: Doom 3
Doom 3, both on PC and Xbox fared well in sales and oddly in critical acclaim. Of course, we gave it its due justice. Resurrection of Evil, the standalone expansion for the PC, was developed by Nerve who proved they could make a more interesting version of id's own game. Now Xbox gamers get to enjoy the better half of Doom 3. Well, most of it anyway.
More hellish terror erupts at the UAC after a couple years and more heroes are sent in to stop the oncoming evil. Only this time, cheap scares are traded in for better-paced and more interesting gameplay.
Two new weapons really do make all the difference in RoE. You'll be able to take a hold of the heart artifact and use it to suck the remains from dead bodies. Once the heart sucks enough, it can be activated to slow down time. Sure, this may sound a lot like the overused bullet-time, because it is. The difference here is that it's actually designed to be useful. When things get to frantic and hairy, it truly will get you out of said situations.
The next weapon is the Half-Life 2-inspired "Grabber" that can gravitationally suck in and throw objects:or projectiles. When fireballs are tossed your way, you can catch them and throw them back for better damage to your enemy. This is not only novel but becomes a downright mandatory mechanic in order to progress through the short campaign.
The game looks as beautiful as Doom 3, but trumps it with better, more varied environments, although compared to most games, the levels repeat too much. The campaign is also pretty short and you won't be able to go back through with a friend. Co-op was axed. Blah.
Also suffering from a bit of blah is the multiplayer component:again. There are a decent amount of maps, but you can still only frag with four players at a time. Plus, what happened to CTF? Wasted opportunities my friend.
The sound is just as eerie and wonderful as its predecessor, with beefier weapons sound this time through. Few presentations match the two Doom 3 games.
Resurrection of Evil isn't the standalone expansion it could have been with its lack of multiplayer breadth. The single player experience holds up to the improvements made from its PC counterpart, though. It's still a game that any FPS fan should play at least once.
Graphics: A-
Sound: A
First Play: B
Last Play: C+
Gameplay: B+
Overall: 85% B
Comments
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DonQuipunch (anonymous) says...
Honestly, I enjoyed Doom 3 better than RoE. Call me simple, but I enjoyed the "cheap scares." It kept me on my toes and dying for more...just as soon as I got back into my skin.
I was extremely disappointed at the ending cinematic on RoE; it led me more to believe that the game was more rushed to market than well thought-out. Though I've come to expect expansion packs to offer 20 hrs of "repeat and stir" gameplay, somehow it just still didn't seem to be what I expected it to be. Maybe it never stood a chance against what Doom 3 was by comparison.
The original Doom 3 also featured more audio logs and NPC interaction, making the game feel more like a sci-fi film than a first person shooter at times. The expansion seemed stale without at least some personification of the NPCs.
I do agree that the Grabber adds something to the game. Though I never found myself *completely* out of ammunition, I did find it useful in more than a few places. My personal favorite weapon in the add-on was the double-barreled shotgun. It had its own charm the same way the bolt-action Mauser demands respect yet also demands that your aim be true in games like Day of Defeat: devastating when used properly, but leaving you little Plan B if shot 1 misses its target. Not to mention the fact that your ammo can get away from you if you're not careful.
One thing that is omitted in the review regarding the Artifact is that when you receive the final seal, it actually gives you invincibility. (You DID finish the game, right? RIGHT? ;) MAYBE that's a difference between the XBox and the PC version, but I can't imagine why they would have omitted it for the console.
The orginal Doom 3 won me over instantly. id Software has yet to drop a turd that I've seen, and as a zit-faced kid drooling over the spark effects of the chainsaw (at 1 FPS at that) when I played the original over ten years ago, there was instant nostalgia just looking at the box. Finding the chainsaw in one of the later levels left me grinning from ear-to-ear. I guess I thought of Doom 3 as a whole more in the context of what it was compared to the original Doom. Zombies, shotguns, chainsaws? Check. Graphics, audio, ambiance? Hell yes. Doom 3 on the PC is the most gorgeous video game I've ever seen. To start with such an incredible game, and add such a flaccid expansion pack just doesn't do it justice.
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As this is an expansion pack, My rating reflects what I felt it brought to the table in ADDITION to the orginal game:
Graphics: B (New levels are interesting)
Sound: C (Not much new here).
First Play: B (Nearly seamless transition from Doom 3)
Last Play: D- (Left me going "Huh? Instead of "COOL!")
Gameplay: C
Overall: C (Wait for it the price to go down).
October 28, 2005 at 10:37 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )