I fully agree that we need to present old games to a younger audience, but at what cost? I couldn’t believe that the BFG Edition could be worst as I’ve imagined. The people responsible for it changed so many minor things that we now have a game that doesn’t deliver the magnificence of this once future-changing franchise. Here are my nerd facts about the things I noticed while testing the re-release.
You need to know that I consider myself as fan of IDsoftware (not the crazy type that needs to insult people that say something against their opinion) and as Doom3 got release so many years ago I just loved it. The lightning was excellent for its time, the graphics groundbreaking while the gameplay delivered the same run-and-gun action fans knew and love from the early games in the series. It later got ported to console while the release for PC got improved by mods made in the community. The mods exceeded the ultra high quality setting the game got shipped with and still let he current improvements of the BFG edition look shoddy.
Okay, let’s leave the mods out of the question and just take a look at vanilla Doom3 and BFG Doom3. The ultra quality setting of the original Doom3 looked awesome. BFG Doom3 doesn’t have a good options screen. You can’t pick Low, Medium, High or Ultra Quality anymore. That means the game gives you a preset graphics setting. And guess what? The graphics setting you get looks like the original Doom3 on Low Quality. Furthermore. The viewpoint when playing the game got fixed so it fits perfectly on a HDTV, which is the biggest failure of the PC version. Doom3 veteran players like myself maybe notice it: the players view looks like as if the player holds down the zoom button all the time. The viewpoint of Original Doom3 was wide and now it’s close and narrow. It takes some time to get used to it. The once high-res wall textures from the original Doom3 look pixelated in BFG Doom3 because of the increased brightness to light out dark areas better on a HDTV. At times I asked myself if they just ported the from PC to console ported version back to PC and implemented this poor options menu?
One important gameplay change is the now completely removed flashlight. The flashlight is now part of the Marines armor. This removes one great survival-horror aspect of the game. In Original Doom3 the player couldn’t use weapons when putting out the flashlight and was vulnerable during that time. Maybe people will tell you that you can deactivate the mounted flashlight in the options menu. They lie! You can switch it on and off, but you can’t switch between the original Flashlight and the mounted one. I also noticed that the Shotgun got reduced firepower, but that’s nothing important for ordinary gamers. Only for nerds like me that live in their own world. Ha Ha Ha!
At last let’s take a look at Doom1 and 2. I noticed changes in the Nightmare difficulty. On Nightmare, when Imps shoot their fireballs with the same speed as they do with lesser difficulty. In the original, they’ve shot their fireballs 50% faster. Furthermore. On Nightmare, Pinkies should bite the player to death in less than 2 seconds. They don’t anymore. I’ve heard there is a topic about this changes to Nightmare in the official Bethesda forums for quiet some days without reply from official side. So why this changes? To make the game easier for todays patronized FPS players? I could understand the changes if there is an achievement to finish the game on nightmare, but there isn’t. Fans of the games, including me still hope it is a mistake. If no, then why this changes?
As always. It is up to you! Buy the BFG Edition of Doom3 if you never played it, if you’re an achievements hunter or if you want to have the tree games for a cheap price. Console gamers that wish to own the game on their XBOX360’s and Playstation3’s go on. It worth the money! I only suggest my fellow PC gamers to buy the original Doom3 and to use graphic mods if they wanna know how magnificent the game once really was. It’s even cheaper and delivers a product of much higher quality than BFG Doom3.
I fully agree that we need to present old games to a younger audience. But at what cost? By giving them an adjusted version they can handle? By reducing difficulty to make games easier for them? Does the industry have so less trust in younger gamers abilities? It looks like it.
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watching your blog for a while man nice post keep up the good work oh by the way your link from youtube to your blog doesnt work says its inactive. :)
I was about to play doom 3 bfg edition for first time (but I’ve already played the original) and I couldn’t install it on my PC. Then I read your post and can’t believe the graphics are even lower than original. And like you said, so sad that industries can’t trust in the player’s skills. Nice post.
Unfortunately, in my experience, modern games do need their hands held.
I remember showing my friend Wolfenstein 2009, and he got lost because the doors to where he was supposed to go DIDN’T GLOW, even though the doors that he couldn’t go to clearly had a big ass lock on them. And here I was thinking Wolfenstein 2009 was a bit too easy and actually modded the game with the Retrostein mod to make it more in line with RTCW.
It was at this point that I instantly forgave all the hand holding BS that developers put on us, because it’s clear that the gamers themselves are at fault.
In fact, I think we got lucky with Doom 3, as we still have the vanilla edition to play with. Most of the time nowadays, we don’t have the choice to have a more hardcore version.
I think that both, those that play games and those that create games or gaming platforms are responsible for handholding games. It has to do with the “customer needs”. Today customers want something that is easy to get used to (another reason why for example PC gaming is still falsely accused being cumbersome). Games are now available for a much wider audience too. Nintendo for example continued to target children while expanding their customer base to your parents & grandparents while ignoring core-gamers. They created a consumer base of people that never before would’ve bought or touched gaming platforms. Products like handhelds (PSP, DS) and mobile platforms (smartphones, tables, etc) further increased the customer base of people that weren’t per se core-gamers, thus (even though I don’t like to call em that) dumber than those growing up with a passion for gaming. These are the two sides of a coin that explain the, how core-gamers would say, thumbing down of gameplay for a wider audience. The industry can only be as good as the demand of its customers and vise versa.
The thing is, while that may be the case for the rise of casual games (after all, if you can get grandma and baby brother, who never played games before, to become paying customers, you get more money), but that really doesn’t explain why “core” games like Doom are also getting dumbed down like this, other than the fact that modern gamers in general are just worse at gaming. Grandma is never going to buy a game that lets you chainsaw demons on Mars (and if she does, then she’s an awesome grandma), only the “core” gamers are going to, so the fact that a lot of core games are becoming dumbed down is indicative of modern gamers’ (lack of) skill.
OH PISHAW, DUDE. This review is so biased that I could run rings around the flaws in logic – the PC Edition is very cool, and you can mod it liberally to be exactly like Doom 3… but better. It’s fine! This is just a matter of opinion, but seriously – give it a second chance. Making absolution is never a good idea.
This is not about what the game become, this is about what Bethesda (or ID) did to it. Well if you accept downgrading of a good game into this mess then it’s your problem not mine. Sure there are mods now for it, but why do we need to finish the developers work, huh? The original release had far better graphics in vanilla state. (vanilla means the game out of the box without any modifications) The BFG Edition got downgraded visuals in vanilla state. This is unacceptable. They released the game with half the possible visuals that were possible in 2003. If you want to defend this business practices, sure do it. Nevertheless, the gameplay (besides the stupid flashlight idea to reach a wider audience to get even more money of this cash-in) is the same and Doom3 is fun as ever.