I have to retract what I said about Doom 3 being a mediocre game. Once I’d upgraded my video card so it ran well, I started to really get into it. Now, the game mechanics are same as they’ve ever been in FPSers. In fact, the game has really no ‘modern enhancements’ like leaning out around corners or cover moves or anything. Very basic controls.

But they’ve used the nifty graphics engine, and great sound as well, to craft an experience that becomes genuinely creepy the farther in you get (well, at least as far as I’ve gotten). The storyline is pretty thin and the whole motif has been done a zillion times (heavily armed marines on another planet fighting evil invaders) but now that I can see everything clearly (due to a decent framerate) it just kinda works.

I *strongly* recommend you get one of the flashlight mods, though. I suggest Pistol Flashlight Mod. It lets you see and still shoot without totally changing the balance of the game (since as often as not the pistol is a last ditch weapon). I just find switch flashlight to weapon and back constantly really got tiresome.

Anyway, I kinda dissed Doom 3 the other day and now I can’t stop playing it, so credit where credit is due, and all that.

I dunno if you folks have been following this rather fun viral campaign. At the end of the E3 Halo 2 trailer, were the odd words ilovebees. Well Halo fans immediately ran off to http://www.ilovebees.com/ which is a “hacked” site of some girl beekeeper. There’s all kinds of detective work being done on this, and folks have decided the hack message is an anagram saying there is a Halo 2 demo coming, and there’s a counter counting down to August 24th.

Linked to from the site is the blog of the owner of the site who is trying to figure out why someone hacked her site. And it gets better. Someone did a domain lookup for the owner of the site (not sure how..I’ve not managed it) and got a phone number. Calling this number gets an answering machine of the girl writing the blog talking about how she’s going far far away, and “mom, I know you call just to hear my voice…I love you too.” and so on.

Suffice to say that the mystery is gaining real traction. I lot of what I just told you I found out from G4TV.Com’s coverage of it. Soon enough the mainstream press will get wind of it…

Brilliant marketing, if you ask me.

And btw, in a somewhat related note, Doom 3 has puzzles in it that you have to go onto the web to solve, too. You’ll find urls in the game that are ‘real’ on the web, and that hold clues. Pretty neat stuff.

Doom 3 Graphic Novel (with tongue firmly in cheek) by Gamespy’s Fargo.

So it had to be done. Even though I’m almost never impressed by ID’s games (their 3D engines AMAZE me but their games are generally fairly generic) I had to follow the herds and buy Doom 3 even though it was over-priced ($55).

And guess what? So far its been fairly generic. And sluggish as hell on my GeForce FX 5600 card. So out I went today to plop down $250 more for a Radeon 9800 PRO. Happily for me, the next-gen cards (ATI’s X800 [er, or is it 800X?] and nVidia’s 6800) are harder to find than an honest politician, so I didn’t have to resist the temptation to spend $400 on a danged video card.

That said, Doom 3 sure looks pretty, and already people are starting to Mod it in interesting ways, so in the long run I imagine I’ll be happy to have it. But I can’t help worry that I’ll be thinking “This experience cost me $300” when I’m playing…

New info: here’s a hefty forum thread full of Doom 3 tips and tweaks

EA inks sponsorship pact with Dodge

Interesting new twist on the whole advertising via video games kick that’s starting to take off. A pretty savvy move for Dodge, I think. A lot of Madden freaks will no doubt use this service and the Dodge name (and I wouldn’t be surprised if they pushed the Jeep brand…isn’t that part of Dodge/Chrysler?) will get in front of plenty of eyeballs.

Much better to do it this way than by injecting advertisements into the games, IMO.

More data, nothing really stunning, but still.

Police reject game link to murder UK police say that robbery was the motive for the killing, not the game.

They added: “We can confirm the game was not found in Warren Leblanc’s room, it was found in Stefan Pakeerah’s room.”

ELSPA ISSUES OPEN LETTER TO HOME SECRETARY ELSPA looks to be the British equivalent of the Entertainment Software Association in the US.

Manhunt Lawyer Speaks He sounds slightly less like a ranting loon this time out. But only slightly.

The funny thing is, in many ways I agree with this guy. I do think its important to keep M rated games out of the hands of kids. But ranting and raving like he does isn’t going to convince anyway. This is an issue that only time, I think, will take care of. Its a lot harder for a kid to get ahold of a XXX video (hard copy…let’s leave the ‘net out of this for now) or a bottle of scotch than it is for him/her to get ahold of an M rated game. But as today’s gamer generation matures and understands the issues, I think this problem will fade away.

Remember the story from a day or three ago about the kid who murdered his friend with a hammer? The media claimed it was because he was obsessed with the videogame Manhunt.

Well here’s a fun twist. MCV is claiming that it was the victim who owned the game, not the killer. Oopsie! Maybe the kid begged his friend to bludgeon him with a hammer because he wanted to be just like a Manhunt victim. Or not…

New twist in Manhunt controversy

But it gets jucier (thanks to Slashdot for spreading this link around):
Florida Attorney on Manhunt for Rockstar

This Jack Thompson comes across as a nut-job in this interview:

GD: You are going to target Rockstar North?

Thompson: Not just Rockstar, another target will be Sony. The tie-in between Rockstar and Sony is rather firmly established.

GD: What is the ultimate goal here?

Thompson: To destroy Rockstar.

GD: What does that mean in terms of…

Thompson: (cutting in) So they don’t exist anymore.

and

GD: You don’t see any other way, such as the ESRB jacking up their ratings?

Thompson: They are a joke. They are a deceptive joke. Doug Lowenstein makes Saddam Hussein look like a post-reformed Pinocchio. [emphasis mine -dc] He will say anything to protect the industry and his annual salary. It doesn’t matter what they say or do anymore. So, you destroy people and their institutions who have such a track record of not caring about human life and who will lie through their teeth to protect their P&L statement.

GD: Thanks for your time Mr. Thompson and good luck in your struggle.

Thompson: Thanks. We don’t need luck. The vectors are locked in, these people are dead meat.

Sounds like Mr. Anderson has been staying up late playing Doom 3 to me…

CNN.com – Video game ‘sparked hammer murder’

Here we go again. The old “Videogames turn kids into killers” saw. You knew it was coming when Manhunt was published.

And honestly, while I certainly don’t think that this kid went apeshit on his friend because of playing Manhunt, I also don’t see the need for games that are this violent.

I’m not saying the company doesn’t have a legal right to make and sell them. I’m just not seeing the need for this much glorification of violence, personally.

Yes, it was rated for mature audiences but the facts are, at this stage of the game, its still too easy for kids to get ahold of mature-rated games to push things this far. It shouldn’t be that way, but we don’t live in a perfect world.

Tech giants go for the games

Interesting piece, but in some ways these guys still don’t get it.

“Sharding” is a commonly accepted technology limitation now, he said, but “I’m not so sure consumers are going to be willing to put up with that in the next generation of online games.”

Sojourn’s Cerra agreed that improvements in server and networking technology will change what consumers expect from online games, with larger online worlds and faster responses becoming key. “Things like having a no-sharded world will be real differentiation factors for a successful multiplayer game,” he said.

I’d love to know what they’re basing this ‘wisdom’ on. Among my friends, I can’t recall ever hearing “Gee, if only all the players were on the same server.” In fact, I hear quite the opposite. Some people want to play on a designated RolePlay server, others want to play on a Player-vs-Player server, for instance.

People complain a lot about crowding now. This isn’t just about the network connectivity. If you have an audience of 10,000 users spread over 5 servers, your gameworld only has to support 2000 people; I’m talking content here. You need quests to keep 2000 people happy. You need enough geography for 2000 people to fit on. On the other hand, if all 10,000 of your users are on one server, you need to build 5 times the quests and supply a world that has 5 times as much geography, or else you’re going to be crowding players.

And crowded players are unhappy players.