February 25, 2005 - When John Carmack, John Romero, and several others teamed up for Commander Keen fifteen-some years ago, no one knew their potential, let alone how wildly fast gaming would evolve from there. But Keen was just a test run, in retrospect, and id Software blew the doors off with Doomin 1993 after grabbing us by the throat with B. J. Blazkowicz's Nazi-killing mayhem. And while technology eventually afforded us scarily realistic visuals and drenching surround sound, the game at id has stayed the same. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, since they're very good at crunching, punishing action.
And although they're one of the major forces in popularizing online gaming, they decided to come full circle, back to their roots, to the sequel-that-isn't--to make a game that 1993 couldn't let them make. Doom 3 isn't a sequel so much as a re-imagining of the original that harnesses the horsepower of today's technology and takes advantage of our less intolerant views towards games involving demons and Hell. Some people understood back then that the point was killing the bad guys, not glorifying Old Scratch. Sandy Petersen, one of the people on that team and a card-carrying Mormon, said as much.
As is typical with id Software expansion packs, Resurrection is the creation of a third party with whom id has a pre-existing relationship. Quake had Dissolution of Eternity by Rogue Entertainment and Scourge of Armagon by Hipnotic Interactive, and Quake II had The Reckoning by Xatrix (AKA Gray Matter, who went on to make Return to Castle Wolfenstein). Resurrection is the product of Nerve Software, who did the multiplayer portion of RTCW. It's a big family down there in Texas.
Although id is not coding the game themselves, you wouldn't notice the difference. At first, at least. The makes sense, because an expansion is supposed to, well, expand the game, not change it significantly. But are differences. First and foremost, the environments are a lot more open. This is a relative thing, given the dark claustrophobia Doom 3 conditioned us to.
But now there's a little room to roam, which is always a good thing. And you can actually see where you're going most of the time. And, at least in the sections we played, there weren't any hokey sections where the lights suddenly cut out. It should tell you something when a mod to put a flashlight on your weapon comes out within days of your game being released and enjoys wild popularity throughout the height of the game's popularity. Id told us that the shadows were realistically rendered and distributed. We told them it was really friggin dark.
Since this is an expansion, though, we get to the action a lot more quickly than before. The setup is that you're another Marine who's sent in with a team to investigate the single emergency distress signal the first guy sent out before the Mars base was destroyed. There are other structures on the planet, however, and you stumble upon an abandoned excavation of what appear to be ancient ruins. It becomes clear, however, that this structure is not of Martian origin when demons start flying out of the shadows and laying waste to everyone. You're quickly separated from your group and transported into another facility, but your mission to find the single survivor and figure out what happened still stands. So into the depths of evil we go, gung-ho.
As is typical with id Software expansion packs, Resurrection is the creation of a third party with whom id has a pre-existing relationship. Quake had Dissolution of Eternity by Rogue Entertainment and Scourge of Armagon by Hipnotic Interactive, and Quake II had The Reckoning by Xatrix (AKA Gray Matter, who went on to make Return to Castle Wolfenstein). Resurrection is the product of Nerve Software, who did the multiplayer portion of RTCW. It's a big family down there in Texas.
Although id is not coding the game themselves, you wouldn't notice the difference. At first, at least. The makes sense, because an expansion is supposed to, well, expand the game, not change it significantly. But are differences. First and foremost, the environments are a lot more open. This is a relative thing, given the dark claustrophobia Doom 3 conditioned us to.
But now there's a little room to roam, which is always a good thing. And you can actually see where you're going most of the time. And, at least in the sections we played, there weren't any hokey sections where the lights suddenly cut out. It should tell you something when a mod to put a flashlight on your weapon comes out within days of your game being released and enjoys wild popularity throughout the height of the game's popularity. Id told us that the shadows were realistically rendered and distributed. We told them it was really friggin dark.
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Since this is an expansion, though, we get to the action a lot more quickly than before. The setup is that you're another Marine who's sent in with a team to investigate the single emergency distress signal the first guy sent out before the Mars base was destroyed. There are other structures on the planet, however, and you stumble upon an abandoned excavation of what appear to be ancient ruins. It becomes clear, however, that this structure is not of Martian origin when demons start flying out of the shadows and laying waste to everyone. You're quickly separated from your group and transported into another facility, but your mission to find the single survivor and figure out what happened still stands. So into the depths of evil we go, gung-ho.
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