Mailbag

Anyone have any questions about Doom 3?

How dare you to give such a classic game an 8.9! you know what that means to the PC gaming community!? its an outrage! its an insult for us. Now every lil' kid in the world will think that Doom 3 the most claimed PC game to come this year was a let down. The game truly deserved a 9.0+ ... I feel sorry for the kids which are now thinking for a possible way to commit suicide because of you 8.9 score...I mean how hard can it be to add 0.1?? Think about that.

-- Dan's #1 Hater

Not half as sorry as we feel for people whose lives are so pathetic that they'd actually kill themselves over something like this.

-- Steve

What a class act you guys are. I just love the Doom III readers first impressions article.

This first sentence is great in so many aspects

"While we have yet to find a store selling early copies of the game anywhere in the San Francisco Bay Area (and trust us, we've spent about 83 man hours on the phone or traveling from EB to GameStop to Target to Wal-Mart to Best Buy over the past few days), some of our lucky readers already have the game in hand and have been playing for a few days."

First you guys acknowledge the fact that no one should have the game! then you pretend to be oblivious to the reason these people have this game. "gee what store did they get this?? we cant find out!!" Next you go on to say these people are lucky! what is so lucky about pirating a game?

I can't belive you guys are actually supporting the people who pirate games! This is coming from a company that charges for JPEG's!!

-- Pistol Pete

It's not piracy; it's retailers breaking embargoes. I imagine it's probably hard to see the difference from way up there on your high horse.

-- Steve

As it stands, I can't say that I'm at all suprised by the rave reviews that DOOM 3 has been receiving in the gaming media. However, it is also quite obvious that the number one BIG reason that DOOM 3 has garnered such praise is due to its nifty next-gen graphics. Every single review I've read tends to point out that in regards to the actual gameplay, DOOM 3 is hardly the most advanced or creative first-person shooter.

With this in mind, I can't help but feel that - in a few years time - DOOM 3 will be looked back on as a game that was simply average. Extremely overrated. If its current saving-grace is its graphical presentation, then there won't be much going for in when other next-gen games start arriving on the platform with not only jaw-dropping graphics, but also the gameplay to match it.

-- Mike

Sure, but you could say that about most games. Heck, you could say it about any art that's associated with technology. While the special effects of Jason and the Argonauts or Star Wars may look "average" today but, judged by the standards of their time, they're simply amazing. The same is true of Doom 3. It's the cutting edge of graphics and deserves to be rewarded for that.

Though we acknowledge the history of the PC catalog, we're reviewing today's games for people who want to play games today. It'd be ridiculous for us to criticize a game's amazing visuals and overall presentation simply because we can imagine someone doing it even better in three years time.

I mean, it's not like you're suggesting that people NOT play Doom 3 because it won't look so great a few years from now, right?

-- Steve

Here's something interesting to consider....

Dan adams mentions that the art in Doom 3 reminds him of Event Horizon. Event Horizion was in many ways a blatant rip off of the original doom's backstory. Event Horizon was directed by Paul Anderson. The opening of Doom 3 is a blatant rip off of the Resident Evil movie, directed by Paul Anderson. Think about it!

-- Mark

Event Horizon was a blatant rip-off. Let's just leave it at that.

-- Steve

Hey there Dan, i just purchased Doom 3 today and i have been having issues with the game, the GAME ROCKS and is the best looking game i have ever seen but besides that i have been having the game freeze on me after about 20-30 min of gameplay. I am currently running a machine with a P4 3.2 gig/radeon 9800 pro/512mb ddr400 ram/sata harddrive. Ive tried lowering the resolution to 800X600 but it does the same thing! Do you have any suggestions? With my setup i should easily run the game besides the ultra high mode or whatever. What do you think i should do? If you have any suggestions send em back! Thanks!!

-- Josh Donley

The new generation of video cards has significantly higher power requirements. You may not need to upgrade your PSU, but you will want to make sure the video card's power cable is *not* connected to any other device. Other problems may include the CPU or videocard experiencing heat issues. If this is the case, you can often temporarily solve the issue just by taking off the case's side panel. Make sure your system fans are pulling air in from the front and pushing it out the back. If your power supply is less than 300 watts, though, it might not be able to give your system enough juice, contributing to lockups and reboots.

-- Tom

OK, I was actually smart and RESERVED my copy of DOOM 3, but I am having a major problem. My entire computer freezes whenever I play it. The game will run for about 3-10 minutes and then freeze up. The wierdest thing is that this happened once before and the other title, Call of Duty, was also an Activision title. I know it can't be system reqs, since I am running a 3.4 GHz Pentium 4 with an ATI Radeon 9700 and 1GB of RAM (Dell XPS). I was wondering if you could help me solve this problem. I realize since this is a specific case that it would usually be ignored in the mailbag, but PLEASE I BEG YOU TO HELP ME! I NEED MY DOOM 3! Thanks - Jared. You guys rule blah blah blah *Yes I am Kissing @ss* PLEASE HELP!

-- Jared

Try putting the video card's power connector on its own cable. If that cable is also powering a hard drive or some other device, you can experience issues, particularly since Dell may use a power supply that puts out less juice than a comparable brand. Hope that helps! You can try putting in a new power supply, but the Dell PSUs have proprietary connectors. Then again, you may be able to get an upgrade directly from them.

-- Tom

I am wondering whether or not my computer is capable of handling Doom 3 and was hoping you guys could solve my problem. My computer is a P4 2.GHz, 512 MB RAM and I have a Radeon 9000. The only thing that is bugging me is my video card. If I could run it smoothly, even on low, I would be happy. What do you guys think?

-- Jean-Guy LaFleur

Since there's a guy in the office playing DOOM 3 on a GeForce4 Ti 4200 with only the occasional hiccup, I'd say you're fairly safe. There are some areas later in the game that will put your card to the test, however. The rest of your system is more than sufficient. You may want to consider upgrading to a GeForce FX 5700 or Radeon 9600XT, depending on your budget.

The "sweet spot" for price-to-performance ratio is the GeForce 6800GT, though ATI's next set of Catalyst drivers is supposed to have a significant OpenGL boost (DOOM 3 is OpenGL, not DirectX), which makes the Radeon X800 Pro another good choice. They are not cheap, nor are they particularly easy to find at the moment, but they are, in my opinion, your best bet.

-- Tom

Hey, great website. I just upgraded my computer in order to play PC games (mostly 1st person shooters). I was wondering--which is better to play with, mouse and keyboard, or controller? And also, I upgraded my graphics card to a Radeon 9200 and was wondering--is that good enough to play today's PC games? Thanks a lot.

-- Paul

For FPSs, the keyboard and mouse combo is pretty much the best you can find. The WASD keys for movement are highly recommended over the arrow keys, as the keys near WASD will already be pre-set for a bunch of essential things like reloading, switching weapons, throwing grenades, jumping, crouching, sprinting and team communication. Also, you'll want to get the hang of "circle strafing," with the A and D keys set to make you strafe left and right instead of rotating left and right (use the mouse to rotate instead). Circling a target while keeping your crosshairs on it is The Way to Go.

Moving the mouse forward and back will make your head tilt forward and back; some games will use "airplane" controls, where pushing forward will lower your POV (Point of View), and you'll find yourself getting used to either one way or the other. "Invert mouse" is the option you'll need to select in order to switch back and forth. Other games may also invert left-to-right movement as well, although those are typically not FPSs. Some of this info may not be new to you--I just want to cover all the bases :)

The Radeon 9200, is, unfortunately, an entry level card at this stage. It will play today's games just fine, but the beefiest games just on the horizon and just now coming out--DOOM 3, Half-Life 2, STALKER (and Far Cry, for that matter) will call for something with more horsepower, like a Radeon 9600XT, GeForce FX 5700, and the like. If you choose to upgrade again in the near future, I would steer clear from the "SE" and "LE" variants. There are so many variations these days that I could write an entire article on what particular flavors to avoid and which ones you'd want--and I just might do that anyway--but for now, your 9200 should do you fine. DOOM 3 turns out to be a very performance-flexible game, and Half-Life 2 is supposed to be pretty ATI-friendly.

-- Tom

My emails are perfectly good emails, yet u never answer them. u could at least email me back perty please. cuz i really want to know the answers..Anyways, here's yet another question: Can Doom 3 run on a nvidia quadro FX 500 card? and if it can, will it look like crap? Thanks...Now is when u answer my question.

-- Mike

I'm sorry we haven't gotten back to you earlier. We *do* read all the email that comes through here, but sometimes we can't make the time to respond to many, unfortunately. The Quadro4 FX 500 is, from what I understand, basically a GeForce FX 5200 with some high-end bells and whistles geared towards professional graphics production. The FX 5200 is the entry level FX card, but it's still pretty solid for DOOM 3. One of my co-workers is playing the game on a GeForce4 Ti 4200 and says he's only experienced a couple slowdowns. So I wouldn't worry about visual quality or performance. It won't be ideal, but you won't be wasting you're money playing the game on that card. Hope that helps!

-- Tom

So I Heard this Doom 3 Game is Coming Out

Yeah, so I was in France starting Sunday, and today was my first chance to get my hands on the damn game. And wouldn't you know--I download the latest vid card drivers, hang around while the game installs, boot it up, change settings, restart, boot it up again...and it's as dark as a fat man's armpit. So I was like, "Hey, does anybody mind if I turn the lights down?" and one guy was like, "Yeah," and I was all, "What the eff," and he goes, "Whatev," and I'm like, "Sigh." I had the same problem with Deadly Shadows. So I have to wait until I get home to play it. More waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

Waiting.

Anyways, have a spiffy weekend, kids. I know I will, now that I finally have the goods in my hot little hands.

And please send us more email asking if DOOM 3 will run on your computer. If you have to ask, then the answer is (1) No, or (2) Maybe. Glad to help!

-- Tom McNamara