Doom 3 BFG Edition reviews: a loss of perspective?

What, a comment section featuring Erthazus going about superior PC players and how he played Quake in the days of non existent internet?

People went from art to computer toys and from faith to corporate zealosy. Shocker.

@49 A review should take into account many factors, and price should be at the bottom of the list, but it can’t be completely ignored, especially if an 8 years old game comes out at more than half the price it was originally sold at, and at a higher price than the previous collection that was there for everyone to buy it, until they pulled it. We’re not talking about “value for money” on a new title. We’re talking about an old game that gets the HD treatment and gets sold at 40 euros…

@Dan

All those big ideals and fancy words count for naught when you shove a numerical value on the end of whatever critique you’ve penned.

“I want reviews that explore whether a game succeeds creatively, if it moves its genre forwards, if it tells us something about games as an evolving entertainment medium.”

8/10

@53 That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Journalists aren’t responsible for other people’s laziness. If a person can’t be fucked to read a review, take in the opinion presented to them and come to their own personal conclusions as to whether it’s good value for money for *them*… that’s their issue. Not ours.

So why bother?

If you feel that strongly about the words that you pen then why appeal to those that don’t care about the content at all?

He’s not a journalist so anyway. It’s not his issues, and noone reads his reviews.

A person editing his posts from 2010 can’t be trusted in regards to software purchases.

@55 Scores have existed in critique for decades, long before the Internet and the realization that most people have non-existent attention spans. They’re not about “appealing” to any sort of person. They’re just a summary at the end of the review.

Which is there for…

Informing an opinion about spending money!

Which is nothing to do with a review apparently!

Huzzah!

“However you felt about Doom 3 when it came out, BFG Edition isn’t the best way to play it today.” – isn’t that all that needs saying, if that’s your view, and the experience with the game – http://www.giantbomb.com/doom-3/61-14537/reviews/?review_id=535 – informs on that.

@49: “I want reviews that..”
I want those reviews as well. I’d like to see considerations as to the art behind a game’s creation, but I think it’s preferable as its own feature.
In a review, I want to know what a game brings to the table, major shortcomings that harmed the experience (if any), and places where it differs from its peers, tries a different approach. But, I also need to know whether the reviewer had fun playing, were they entertained throughout, etc.
I like to see talking of that person’s time with the game included. Then, there’s the point of its achievements on its own and in its genre. Reviews can tell a lot.

Does a review of a re-release of Doom 3 need to, though? How much does that flavour coverage express, that’s not already been covered.

A loss of perspective for Id?I absolutely agree.

This is a kinda weird article. It’s being released as a new product and should be reviewed as a new product, simple as that. And let’s not forget, Doom 3 was always a highly flawed game. It is no classic. Take away the then awesome graphics, and it’s a decent shooter with extremely predictable (and questionable, at times) level design, that gets old long before it’s over.

There are three major factors which cannot be denied. These three factors show why PC users should avoid this like the plague.

- They flubbed the engine.

It’s basically a port of the console version for the PC, which is bizarre. The original game had more options. The only real addition options-wise was widescreen, but that could be added to the original with a five-second edit to a file, so that’s not a big addition.

Worse, the major feature of Doom 3 was dynamic lighting. You could use your torch and the dynamic lights and shadows would shift around in a believable manner, which would create a very atmospheric feel. Even the original XBox version had dynamic lights/shadows, at least at lower resolutions.

In BFG this was removed in favour of baked shadows, which loses almost all of the atmosphere and visual dynamism. It was obviously done so that on perhaps one console they’d get a better framerate, but for the PC this is absolutely meaningless.

- They’ve broken compatibility with all prior mods.

Due to the deep system changes (most of which were completely unnecessary and benefited only the consoles), the BFG edition of Doom 3 is incompatible with almost all mods. Including brilliant ones like The Dark Mod. So if you bought BFG in the hopes of playing that? Well, bad luck! You can’t!

And you’re at Id’s mercy regarding how much of this is fixed.

- They’ve removed the original Doom 3 from all digital distributors.

Bad move.

This basically means that the only version of Doom 3 available from digital distributors now is one with a horribly broken engine, and one that doesn’t support mods. Great. Fantastic. That’s a monumental dick move.

See, this is why I recommend just getting a retail version of Doom 3 on the cheap. You’re getting a better deal.

- So what does BFG bring to the table?

A ‘lost mission’ which is just a cheap rehash of the campaign with more reuse than Dragon Age II saw, and some ‘improved visuals.’ Let’s dismantle the idea of improved visuals, shall we? The thing is is that with mods, Doom 3 can look absolutely amazing. Can it look better than the BFG version?

Fuck. Yes.

Click that link. No, really, click it. By comparison, the BFG is a massive embarrassment for Id because it doesn’t come nearly as close to looking good as those mods make the original Doom 3, and this is part of why the original Doom 3 disappeared.

Think about it.

They realised that people could get a far superior experience with the original Doom 3, so they took that purchasing decision away from you.

- In conclusion.

Get Doom 3 (and its expansion) at retail for a fraction of the cost of the BFG. Get the Sikkmod, get the Wulfen/Mox texture packs, get The Dark Mod, and have a hell of a lot more fun than you’d have with the BFG edition.

For PC users, this is the only sensible recourse.

If there is something that XBLA/PSN/Wiiware games did show me/taught me this genereation in particular, especially the updated version of old games (insert any prefered name), is that the review process is somewhat a pretty accurate one, i found that the great games of the past are great the games of today,i found much joy with any of this games, like i do with games of this gen, of course they have been lifted up a little bit on the graphics department, but the core gameplay mechanics has almost keep intanct and the same, so for me is safe to say that review process, and the games that were good in the past are going to be good forever, and that is a very nice thing and speaks a lot of good about this industry as a whole.

I don’t know what happened here, but the ffirst comment up to at least the 26th comment start with surely the wrong @number, because otherwise they are speaking to themselves o.o

@DanWhitehead

“Criticism – of any medium, be it games, film, music or whatever – should be an end unto itself. It should be the start of a conversation, about that particular creation or the medium as a whole. Whether people take that as a recommendation or not is secondary.”

Well done, sir, it turns out you are a big part of the problem.

EVERYBODY reads reviews to decide whether that game is worth buying, whether you write them that way or not. If your idea of a game review is that, “It should be the start of a conversation, about that particular creation or the medium as a whole,” you need to stop, have a little think, then punch yourself in the balls.

As a game reviewer it’s not your remit to use game reviews to vent your insecurities about the medium through the discussion of games as if they’re comparable to perceived ‘high literature’ or to the explosion of impressionism in the mid-Nineteenth century. This isn’t the fucking renaissance and games aren’t high art. They’re – mostly – tits and cars and guns and as much as that depresses me, I certainly don’t see it as my remit to go around starting ‘discussions’ on the matter as if we’re looking at literature’s next New Wave. If I want a deep discussion about narrative and the nature of the human condition, I’ll re-read some Hemmingway and talk about that.

The best game reviewers are the ones who understand this; who understand their place: report the facts, give us your opinion: is it worth buying? That is all.

The worst game reviewers are the ones who think it’s their job to talk about how the sprite in that ‘Arty-farty-du-jour’ indy title is ‘locked into his own proto-bohemian existential crisis’. It’s bad writing, bad journalism, bad reviewing and a complete misunderstanding of the job a reviewer is being paid to do. Worse, the people who are most guilty of this type of pretenitous, misguidedly aspirant drivel also seem to carry along with them the misapprehension that anybody at all gives a fuck who they are.

We don’t care. If we can get to the end of the review without having to look at the citation, then trust me, that’s a good thing. It means you’ve done your job. Also…

“Reviewing something based on “value for money” assumes everyone has the same criteria for what that means.”

This is ridiculous. Money is money and to buy or not to buy is the question, not how much it costs. You’re right in a sense, that this game is twenty-five quid instead of fifty doesn’t cure it of its aggressively malignant gameplay, but it doesn’t make it any better either. You’re missing the point here: games cost money, and to say reviewing has nothing to do with that is the standpoint of somebody who has spent far too long getting his games for free. It’s arrogant, ignorant and abhorrant.

Problem is playing Doom 3 was no one’s cherished memory and Id never realized it. I only remember harsh criticism back when it came out, did I miss something?

These AAA studios keep sawing away at gamer’s expectations and the gamer’s just keep gobbling the shit up.

“But isn’t it a bit silly to slam a re-release of an old game in this manner?”

I understand this article is half a year old now, but as its on the internet for all to see and I was one of the people ripped off by D3 BFG I feel it a duty to comment on this for the benefit of perspective buyers.

It would be silly to slam a re-release of an old game for being dated yes, but nobody’s doing that. D3 BFG is NOT a re-release of an old game, it is a PC port of a console game (D3 BFG) which is an update of an old console game (Doom III) which was a port of the PC game Doom III. The problem is that because of that convoluted journey, the PC version of D3 BFG is actually notably graphically inferior to the original PC version of Doom III.

Add to that Doom III supported “mods” and the have been numerous community made mods over the years adding High resolution textures, HDR, Bloom, SSAO, and more. And D3 BFG was DELIBERATLY made incompatible with those Doom III mods, it IS a complete rip off and IS one of the worst games I have ever played.