Jimbo_N
Jimbo_N's last update: Jimbo_N needs to buy a THIRD plastic drum kit. Just broke the GH Kit and refuses to go back to the Rock band crap.
If you notice any bugs, please give us a shout in the forums.


Summary About Me Blog Images Wiki Subs Reviews Forum Topics Lists Guides Trivia Achievements
Added by Jimbo_N on June 30, 2009

Bought Doom Resurrection for 75 SEK today and here´s my initial thoughts on this Carmack pet project / Doom offshoot.

What it is and what it isnt

Doom Resurrection is NOT a port of Doom 3. It uses the Doom 3 engine (which really shows how scalable that engine is) and the game takes place on the same space station. But you´re a lone survivor of a marine squad on the base rather than a lone marine that has come to investigate the situation. He looks just like the guy from Doom 3 tho. The levels are new and not patched in from different parts of Doom 3, at least not so far anyway.
The engine was reprogammed by John Carmack and the game itself is developed by Escalation studios under the watching eye of Carmack himself.
It is around 70mb or so and installed without problems without the absolute latest update on my iPod touch.
The game is not a standard shooter however. It is a guided shooter or "on rails" shooter if you wish, with alot of added functionality both to the genre and to the device you play it on (the iPod Touch in my case).
So let me break it down for ya: You automatically walk through the enviroment, you have a virtual shoot button, a reload button, a cover/dodge button and a menu button on the screen. You tilt your device to steer the crosshair on screen and you touch items (healthpacks / ammo) in the 3D space with your finger to pick them up.
You are sometimes promped by visual cues to take cover from enemy fire or dodge an income projectile. The button in the lower left change to adapt to cover or incoming fireballs from imps.
On the whole its a very complete handheld shooter package that feels very adapted to the iPod / iPhone. When i´m playing I really feel how frustrating this MIGHT have been had it been done differently. Its designed very wisely to crank out the most fun while being accessable and easy to pick up. As long as you sit up that is.. I tried playing both lying down and sitting up and it seems the game dosent like you holding it in a lying down position. You want to sit straight up with the device horizontally aligned with a flat surface to get the most out of the controlscheme.

Presentation & Story
As I said the game uses the Doom 3 engine. It dosent look as crisp as Doom 3 of course but it still looks very crisp and clean for a 3D shooter on your small screen. Its
pretty much what I first experienced back in the day when I didnt really have the computer to play Doom 3 when it came out but wanted to do so anyway. Its the D3 engine in low resolution, without most of the extra texturefilters, with low AA and very reduced decal and particle detail.
Where you to play this on a PC it would of course feel dated but this engine feels just right for a more hardcore experience on the iPhone in 2009.
Sound is very barebones. There isnt much ambient noice to speak of. One of the things that made Doom 3 one of the 10 best first person shooters ever made was its spectacular sound design. You can still hear som creepy noices here and there but overall the sound feels flat and to the point.
I have yet to encounter any music in the actual game but the main menu still rocks the same song that was rocking your socks off in Doom 3. Its a fantastic piece of heavy bass work, crushing riffs and unsettling Doom noices and the perfect mood setter every time you start the game up. It seems the song havent lost much in translation when it comes to soundquality either.
The game also starts the campaign (which has 4 difficulties) off with the same female voiceover work as in the beginning of Doom 3, explaining some of the things that went on with the Union Aerospace Corporation on Mars. But the story itself is very barebones and if you want the complete narrative package you really should play through Doom 3 first.

Closing thoughts
This is totally Doom. Its stripped down, barebones presentationwise and dosent really deliver much of an atmospheric experience. Buts its a kick ass shooter in your pocket. You can tell that careful designwork went into designing it for the iPhone platform. As long as you sit up it works great (the game autocalibrated to how you are holding the iPod/iPhone at the start of each map but it dosent seem to work very well) and the feeling you usually get while playing a guided shooter experience dosent really creep up on me, not so far anyway.
Its important to approach the game with the right mindset tho. This is a small petproject and a bit of an experiment and expectations should be on a handheld level. Do not expert Doom 4 here. The interest for John Carmacks enginework and pet projects should also be in the back of your head for maximum enjoyment here.
Its a neat distraction and a reason to go back to the UAC Mars station once again and you´ll be surprised how well it holds up once you force yourself to get into the controlscheme.

Also, just to wrap this all together with the genius himself, here´s a new video I just enjoyed listening to with John:
  




Added by Jimbo_N on June 16, 2009

So my experience with Fallout 3 last fall was less than ideal. I am a huge Bethesda fan and I hold Morrowind as maybe the best open world RPG ever made. Still, I never really got into Fallout 3. The wasteland didn´t click with me, the story felt was less engaging than those in Bethedas previous titles and the game managed to constantly get totally and utterly lost so that I didn´t know how to get to my destination. I also had some other games craving my attention aswell as some stuff going on in my life at that time that just created this hate whenever I looked at the Fallout 3 box.  I got way too sidetracked and after 20 hours of play I hadn´t gotten anywhere in the game.
2 days ago I decided to change this. I´m currently right in the middle of my vacation and I have loads of time to spend on epic games. I rebought Fallout 3 through Steam and started a new game. 9 hours later I had completed the main story. I didn´t do any of the sidemission, didn´t allow myself to get sidetracked and I used the fact that I was playing the PC version to my fullest advantage. Unlimited ammo and godmode. Yes, cheating made Fallout 3 way more satisfying for me. It made me able to play the game like a shooter with infinte ammo Rocket Launchers and Miniguns.
The story actually took my by surprise and I after getting past the point where I was before it actually got interesting. There are quite a few nice twists in there combined with some unique and cool locations.
Somehow both the Fallout 1&2 nostalgia the old Morrowind madman in me woke up and now I think its nice to wander through the wasteland. Without the constant worry of dying and knowing that I´ve completed the main story I´m now really into the exploring.
I think back to the old Fallout days and suddenly I wonder why I disliked the game so much the first time I played it.
Its still no Vvardenfell but I´m actually into Fallout 3 at the moment. Something I didnt think was possible.
Im currently working my way through the Broken Steel DLC and after that i´ll probably jump into Operation Anchorage or The Pitt.
Somehow Fallout 3 hooked me this time around and somehow I managed to evade the gamebreaking problems I ran into last year.
Sometimes its a good think to give games a 2nd chance. Its also nice to feel that you can change your mind about a game like this.
Now I´m thinking about going backwards in the Bethesda catalogue and actually starting up the Game of the Year edition of Morrowind again.
Open world RPG summer here I come ! Its really the perfect vacation games.


Added by Jimbo_N on June 12, 2009

One of the best titles of the year might turn out to be played on my iPod touch. This is kinda ironic since the iPhone/iPod touch has been mocked as a gaming platform since its birth. The thing here tho is this... John Carmack might be the greatest genious on the planet when it comes to seeing strenght and weaknesses of an individual gaming platform and he´s been hard at work on this exclusive new part in the Doom universe. Its tailored to play great on an iPhone and judging by this radical trailer it looks great aswell. Doom Resurrection seems to borrow heavily from the setting and graphics of Doom 3 but judging from what we see here its NOT the same game shrunken down. It´ll be very interesting to grab a hold of this and give it a try when its released.


Added by Jimbo_N on June 6, 2009

This is the special categories list of my E3 list. Here I will make up categories for games that I feel deserve a mention but that didnt make the Top 10 for one reason or another.
--------------------------------------------------

Game I wanted to see but that didn´t show.


The Elder Scrolls 5

I really wanted to see something from a next Elder Scrolls title this year but I guess it makes sense that they will keep focusing on Fallout 3 and the other games they are publishing for now. Still, a bummer..

Game I´m really intrigued by. Show me more !

Milo

The whole Natal project seems super Sci-Fi but putting it in the hands of Peter Molyneux AND making him Creative Director of Microsoft Game Studious EU is probably the best thing Microsoft could do. Milo dosen´t seem like much of a game right now but the concept behind it is something I really want to see for real. Its one of those Sci-Fi things thats always been in the back of any hardcore gamers head. And with Lionhead behind the wheel I have alot of trust in it.

Game that will make me way too emotional.

The Last Guardian

I´m not an Ico OR Shadow of the Colossus fan. And frankly I think Colossus was an insanely unpolished and horrid game controlwisel. But Team ICO knows how to create a bond between a boy and an animal. I see the potential for this to be cranked up to the MAX in the last guardian. The creature in this game is crazy cute. And I see the potential for a very beautiful and a very emotional experience.

Game that will blow life into a stagnant genre.

DJ Hero

The live demo I saw of this game was what finally made this game make sense for me. Seeing the guy work his crossfader and turntable like crazy looked really really cool. Seeing DJ Hero at E3 made me totally unwillingly come to the conclusion that this might actually totally reignite the Hero franshise and get it going for another decade. Looked smooth, really fun and it seems to have some kick ass tunes for you to mix. Also, guitar support on some tracks! Looking forward to that Co-Op experience.

Game that will without a doubt be one of the best gaming moments of 09

New Super Mario Bros Wii

A new 2D Mario platformer AND it has 4 player simultanious play. Will probably be everything Little Big Planet wasnt for me last year. Kind of a dream come true for old Nintendo fans.

Game that will probably get me into Metroid again.


Metroid: Other M

Team Ninja Metroid.. I´m letting the words sit in my mouth for a while before I say them and I realize that this is probably exacly what it takes to get me into Metroid once and for all. I´ve always loved the conept of Metroid and Samus but I´ve always had a very hard time completing a single Metroid game. This is the direction I need to finally embrace all that Metroid goodness.

Game that might take me by surprise and be totally radical.

Singularity

Loads of time controlling crazyness in a first person shooter is a concept that really sits right with me. Thats the reson I bought TimeShift when it came out. Singularity might be fulfilled in all of the areas TimeShift failed.

Game that left me yawning...yaaaawn..

PixelJunk Shooter

Looks exceptionally dull.. PixelJunk Eden steered me away from these guys a bit being more of a pretentious art project rather than an actual fun game. Sadly this seems to continue the trend even further. PixelJunk is not for me. Not until the talked about Dungeon Crawl game anyway...

Game that didn´t get enough attention and that still looks COOL.

Dark Void

Game kinda passed us all by during the E3 days. I went back and watched some footage and a live stage demo of it and yea.. for everytime I see this game it looks even more fun than last time. I really want to play Dark Void. The guys behind it seems to really love what they´re doing aswell. I adore that.

Special Mention: Kevin Van Ord of GameSpot.com

For being the best host of the GameSpot Stage Show during these days. Good Job !