Shoot Club: The Doom 3 review
TomChick - Columns - Comments - 08/05/04
"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Lousy game designers?"
"Yep. Lousy. Great technology, hats off to Carmack and all that stuff, but it's clear they don't know the first thing about making a good game."
"This is exactly what I meant before. You're way too harsh if you think Doom 3 isn't a good game."
"Okay, maybe it's a good game. But just barely. I could think of ten other PC games this year that are way better than Doom 3. It's overlong, repetitive, derivative, uninspired. It's full of fucking monster closets, for Christ's sake. Monster closets! There's a monster just sitting in a closet that won't open until you walk past it. What's up with that?"
"Okay, this is more your jaded gamer crap. You didn't even like Far Cry."
"At least it's better than Doom 3."
"Far Cry is better than Doom 3?"
"Hell, I'd say Max Payne 2 is better than Doom 3. At least it's got some personality, some variety. It's got a spark of life that's completely missing in Doom 3."
"You're clearly insane. Let's wait and see what the reviews say. Let's see how many Best of 2004 lists have Doom 3."
"Who cares? We're not talking about everyone else. We're talking about us."
"Okay, then you're still insane because half of us is totally digging it. And that's all that matters."
He's right. He likes it and I have no business trying to dispute that. He's having fun and I'm being analytical. We might as well be speaking different languages. Besides, none of this matter because Doom 3 is going to make more money than God.
"So do you?" he asks.
"What?"
"Do you get to drive that car?"
"Do you really want me to tell you? It might give something away."
He is quiet.
"How far are you?" I ask.
"I just activated teleportation pad 2. I'm at the hydrogen storage transfer in delta 3."
"Jesus, I have no idea what that is. How do you know all that stuff?"
"I told you, it's right there on the screen. It's called paying attention. Besides, I've been fucking stuck here forever. I can't figure out this dumbass teleportation pad shit. I just want to shoot some more zombies."
"No, you don't get to drive the car. There's a freight loading train thing later on. It drives you about fifty yards and that's it. There are no vehicles like in Far Cry, no mechs like in the end of Riddick, nothing like that. It's just running and gunning, mostly just in that base. You don't get into a giant organic entity like The Many, there's no Xen, there are no twists. It's just that little bit of Hell and then another long slog through the base."
He's quiet for a moment. I feel like I've done a terrible thing by disappointing him. But it's not my fault. It's the game's fault. It's the hype's fault. It's his own damn fault for believing it, for being dumb enough to trust that gushing review but smart enough to know better when he actually plays the game.
"Are there any more parts with those sentries?" he eventually asks.
"Sentries? What are those, the zombie soldier guys?"
"No, those are zombies. Sentries are those little spider bots. Jeeze, are you sure you even played the game?"
"I didn't know they were called sentries. You should have just said spider bots. And no, you don't have any more parts like that. You've pretty much seen everything Doom 3 has to offer. There's a big boss fight at the end."
"Gaaah. Spoiler! Don't tell me anything else." He hangs up quickly.
He calls back in the morning, while I'm making coffee. "Hey, are you up? I left you a message. I have a question. How do you pronounce where you keep, like, weapons?"
"What?"
"What do you call it, where you keep weapons?"
"An arsenal?"
"No, no, like a place you'd store them?"
"What, a gun cabinet?"
"No, no."
"Is this about a Doom 3? Do you mean those lockers?"
"Yeah, but there's a word I want to know how you pronounce. You corrected me once in front of all the guys at Shoot Club."
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Do you say 'cash' or 'cash-ay'?"
"Oh, you mean cache. It's pronounced 'cash'. Cachet is like reputation or credibility."
"Ha, I knew it. On the audio logs, some dude -- I wrote down his name," I hear him flipping around some pages, "it's Robert Price. He says it wrong. He says something about a 'cash-ay' of weapons. I think they meant it as a joke, like he's this really smart scientist, but he can't pronounce the word."
Trevor's picking at minor things now. At some point during the night, he must have shifted from fun to analytical. It takes a certain amount of detachment to notice something like that. Taking notes probably had something to do with it.
He calls a few hours later. "Hey, did you notice how every time you kill a zombie, a brain pops out of him? They're like fucking Pez dispensers, but with brains instead of Pez. I thought that was pretty cool the first ten or twenty times. Now it's just stupid."
Doom 3 is losing him.
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