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Doom 3 VS Half Life 2
- Thread starter TaySan
- Start date
I finished Doom 3 BFG for the first time recently. I played a bit of vanilla Doom 3 when it launched but horror games just make me way too anxious/uncomfortable so I quickly gave up. Without the pitch black presentation and having to choose between your weapon or your flashlight, BFG ruins what might otherwise be a tolerable experience. It too heavily relies on surprising you with enemies hidden away in dark nooks and crannies, hidden monster closets that reveal themselves after you walk past them, or just dropping monster behind you via teleportation. This probably worked as a tension device in vanila Doom 3 but I have a feeling even then, you'd grow exhausted by the same three tricks happening ad nauseam. Guns also don't have the same punch you come to expect from a Doom title, but that's not exactly HL2's strong suit either. I've always felt Half Life 2 was incredibly overrated but at least the gravity gun was neat and Ravenholm was a neat location.
Far Cry's AI ruined the game as did that arena full of mutants with rocket launchers. Riddick was interesting and I really need to play through it again. I wish we could expand the conversation to 2005. The AI in FEAR was wonderful.
Far Cry's AI ruined the game as did that arena full of mutants with rocket launchers. Riddick was interesting and I really need to play through it again. I wish we could expand the conversation to 2005. The AI in FEAR was wonderful.
What? The AI in FC was one of its biggest strengths and selling points. It was the most impressive AI we've ever seen in a fps.
You must've not played any of these games until much later. Maybe you played Far Cry with the AI bug that has enemies see you through solid walls.
Bad assumption. At launch on PC. All the pretty foliage of the jungle and enemies never lost their b-line sight to you.
Obviously Half Life 2 but Doom 3 as dated as it became still was a tremendously huge influencer and the way it was so 100% invested in delivering it's horror atmosphere was and still is impressive. Also while games like System Shock were doing it long beforehand the whole checking PDAs and audio logs thing really seemed to blow up big after Doom 3.
Riddick is honestly my favorite lol. Such an amazing game. I think between HL2 and Doom 3, HL2 is the better game. There's way more variety in the level design.
Doom 3 is really terrible. It wasn't great at the time but playing it now is a pretty wretched experience. Bad to non-existent plot. Awful, generic villain. None of the guns feel very satisfying to use nor does killing an enemy feel rewarding. Every enemy encounter involves basically the same strategy of strafing around projectiles and moving backwards.
Most of the environments blend together making it monotonous to play for an extended amount of time. The 'scares' are almost entirely of the jump variety. Loot placement is never clever or interesting to find. 'Secrets' are almost entirely passcodes for keypads that you find through uninteresting PDAs. D3 does the same tricks over and over and over again and none of those tricks are impressive.
Half-Life 2 feels a generation apart from D3 and Dead Space took a similar aesthetic and pulled off the horror aspect infinitely better.
Doom 2016 is like a checklist of doing everything this game attempted, doing it well and then adding a bunch of features that elevate the series. I can play that game for hours on end and not get bored. Playing 90 minutes straight of D3 is like pulling teeth.
Most of the environments blend together making it monotonous to play for an extended amount of time. The 'scares' are almost entirely of the jump variety. Loot placement is never clever or interesting to find. 'Secrets' are almost entirely passcodes for keypads that you find through uninteresting PDAs. D3 does the same tricks over and over and over again and none of those tricks are impressive.
Half-Life 2 feels a generation apart from D3 and Dead Space took a similar aesthetic and pulled off the horror aspect infinitely better.
Doom 2016 is like a checklist of doing everything this game attempted, doing it well and then adding a bunch of features that elevate the series. I can play that game for hours on end and not get bored. Playing 90 minutes straight of D3 is like pulling teeth.
of course they did. Ive even watched videos presenting this over the years, from people playing at the highest difficulty. The AI, like i said, was one of its most lauded aspects.
I remember thinking Far Cry was more impressive than all of them, but ultimately I would pick Half-Life 2. All four are great, though.
I'll take my experience playing the game over the videos you watched. *shrug*
Maybe I should revisit the game. I've had that thought a few times. That idea quickly gets vetoed internally when I remember the mutants. Sure was a pretty game though.
I enjoyed Half-Life 2 much more than I ever enjoyed DOOM 3, even if I don't feel that all aspects of Half-Life 2 have aged particularly well. That said, in terms of game play, Half-Life 2 brought so much more to the table than DOOM 3 did. While DOOM 3's lighting arguably gives it the edge graphically, I think the texture work in Half-Life 2 holds up much better.
never played riddick (although i've often read very good things about it, so i should probably change that sometime) and haven't played far cry in a looooong time, so this is between half life ii and doom iii for me, and half life wins it hands down.
also, isn't the original painkiller from 2004 too? might be worth a mention, i remember it being really good.
also, isn't the original painkiller from 2004 too? might be worth a mention, i remember it being really good.
As someone who didn't play them on release, I found them both average-boring to play. I never finished Riddick, but what I played I enjoyed more than the others.
sure. But even if foliage didnt brake line of sight. I thinks its a non issue in a game with that good of an AI for today, let alone then. We've never seen anything like it. Foliage definitely breaks line of sight for the AI.
Doom 3, Half-Life 2 and Riddick are all awesome games but Half-Life 2 is on another level of awesome.
I'm totally meh on Far Cry.
I'm totally meh on Far Cry.
riddick's much worse than all three of them actually.
I feel HL2 visuals aged the best out of the big three, especially with the episode 2 source enhancements. It just has that realistic look and feel to its world
HL2 was a beast for moving interactive storytelling forward in a number of ways such as hq motion capture + character animation, and still has one of the best physics models in a game period, but as a game and compared to the original I was pretty underwhelmed. The initial E3 demo that is still legendary status was a bit smoke and mirrors for things like the supposedly dynamic AI that could problem solve their way to your location if you blocked one of their access points. This sadly wasn't a thing in the release build.
Also cut scenes from the E3 demo like the encroaching Citadel wall that looked like it was eating away parts of the level gave the impression of an overall more dynamic world that was operating on levels beyond your actions. What we got was mostly scripted sequences and some pretty dull and overly long vehicle sections. Episode One and Two were much stronger wrt general pacing and environmental exploration/gameplay.
Don't get me wrong some of my goat games have heavily scripted moments, it's just for a game like HL2 that presented something so seemingly revolutionary in terms of world reactivity in the E3 demo what we got wasn't really that revolutionary beyond the visual sheen and physics toybox. OG HL was a much bigger deal with its firsts than HL2's imo.
For 2004 I definitely found Far Cry more impressive overall with its at the time huge open levels, far lod enemy engagements, and their aggressive AI.
Also cut scenes from the E3 demo like the encroaching Citadel wall that looked like it was eating away parts of the level gave the impression of an overall more dynamic world that was operating on levels beyond your actions. What we got was mostly scripted sequences and some pretty dull and overly long vehicle sections. Episode One and Two were much stronger wrt general pacing and environmental exploration/gameplay.
Don't get me wrong some of my goat games have heavily scripted moments, it's just for a game like HL2 that presented something so seemingly revolutionary in terms of world reactivity in the E3 demo what we got wasn't really that revolutionary beyond the visual sheen and physics toybox. OG HL was a much bigger deal with its firsts than HL2's imo.
For 2004 I definitely found Far Cry more impressive overall with its at the time huge open levels, far lod enemy engagements, and their aggressive AI.
I'm replaying Doom 3 right now and I'm surprised at how much love and care went into the world. HL2 has so many largely flat and empty rooms, with naked walls, floors, and ceilings. Sure, they did a good job with the textures, but it's just so boxy and empty. id on the other hand seems to have decided that nothing could be empty. Every surface has been given detail. Beams, pipes, indentations, screens and machinery. And so many parts are in motion, and it's all lit with stark shadows providing contrast and mood.
Riddick may play like shit, but that doesn't stop it from being better anyway. And it's not like HL2 and Doom 3 play well either. They're all games where the experience > gameplay.
HL2 is gonna win by a landslide cuz y'all predictable. Mainstream opinion gonna run away with this.
As a huge fan of HL1 and HL2 I will say HL2 is pretty screamingly overrated.
I'm not 100% sure this is how I truly feel at the end of the day, but lately (especially) I've been thinking Doom 3 is better than HL2.
It may not be as ambitious in some respects, but I find it a hell of a lot more cohesive, polished, consistent, longer, better visuals and sounds, etc.
Something intangible (and tangible) has disappointed me hard since the day it released. It is certainly no HL1. HL1 is 10x the king Mufasa was -- I mean 10x the game HL2 was.
I could write a book about all the problems with HL2 that 99% of people just fucking ignore. It is a fantastic game, but people always overlook its massive flaws, make the insane claim that it's better than the first, and that it's a perfect game. When I hear shit like that it makes me feel the game is overrated.
Anyone who says HL2 is better than HL1 in any way besides perhaps story, setting, and graphics is fucking delusional. HL2 is such a massive step down from 1 it's not even funny. HL1 outclasses it in nearly every way.
As a huge fan of HL1 and HL2 I will say HL2 is pretty screamingly overrated.
I'm not 100% sure this is how I truly feel at the end of the day, but lately (especially) I've been thinking Doom 3 is better than HL2.
It may not be as ambitious in some respects, but I find it a hell of a lot more cohesive, polished, consistent, longer, better visuals and sounds, etc.
Something intangible (and tangible) has disappointed me hard since the day it released. It is certainly no HL1. HL1 is 10x the king Mufasa was -- I mean 10x the game HL2 was.
I could write a book about all the problems with HL2 that 99% of people just fucking ignore. It is a fantastic game, but people always overlook its massive flaws, make the insane claim that it's better than the first, and that it's a perfect game. When I hear shit like that it makes me feel the game is overrated.
Anyone who says HL2 is better than HL1 in any way besides perhaps story, setting, and graphics is fucking delusional. HL2 is such a massive step down from 1 it's not even funny. HL1 outclasses it in nearly every way.
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While the actual tech was very impressive for 2004, the artstyle is what makes it worthwhile to play to this day. At high resolutions it can still be a looker, D3's doesn't do it any favours.
Well, except for Highway 17 lol, did the combine remove every spruce and fir along the entire coast?
Doom 3 is peanuts next to HL2 and this poll is a shining example of that. Plus, I said mainstream opinion.
half life 2 is more overrated than doom 3. i can't be bothered to decide which mediocre corridor traversal game i was less disappointed with (HL2s corridors have fewer walls, but it's still just corridor traversal with some scripted easy shooting)
far cry was more enjoyable than both in terms of gameplay
far cry was more enjoyable than both in terms of gameplay
Absolutely, Viktor Antonov and all the other artists whose names weren't pushed as much forward as his (and who maybe didn't help make Dishonored) have done something amazing with this game. When I said genre-defining, I meant indeed not just gameplay but also narrative, story, design, art, sound, pushing all these areas forward with exceptional work.
Lol. Mismatch of the year.
Doom 3 is pretty good, but it's nowhere near the god like level of HL2.
Doom 3 is pretty good, but it's nowhere near the god like level of HL2.
its not a mismatch. Far Cry, Doom 3 and Half Life were the three big fps games of 2004. More than big, they werent ordinary hyped games. They were unique titans. Both Doom and Half Life dominated they're respective E3's and were mega anticipated.
Each of these three games have different focuses and deliver different experiences.
Mismatch in my eyes. Yes, they were the biggest FPS games released that year, but in terms of quality HL2 is leagues above the rest.
HL2 is considered one of the greatest games ever crafted. The others are just good games.
I think Doom 3 is probably more consistent in quality than Half Life 2. But Half Life 2 has higher highs. Both have fantastic atmosphere. Doom 3's gunplay feels way better but Half life has more variety.
Riddick is definitely the real answer though. That game has so much more to it than either Doom 3 or Half Life 2.
Riddick is definitely the real answer though. That game has so much more to it than either Doom 3 or Half Life 2.