Doom 3 is dark, etc. Also, an imp develops a unique method for dominating humanity and two zombies have a dialogue about respect.

Catching up with MacHall, I saw Ian's recent post regarding Doom 3 that should provide a counterpoint to the largely positive reviews now available - you won't need to look hard to find them, indeed, you can simply look at the content from this site a couple days ago. For my part, Doom 3 calls to mind Resident Evil: Director's Cut for the Cube, which managed to create a new experience that invested my (by now) amplified memories of the original with something genuine.

There's really no argument to be made regarding how dark the game is - this is a factual statement. And, just as in Doom, the game will often punish you for grabbing health or armor by spawning enemies. Those are both real things, but the value you can associate with each of them varies - for whatever reason, they didn't manage to wreck it for me. I cried out on more than one occasion, and eventually came to appreciate those surround sound headphones. I actually enjoyed checking the corners with the flashlight. I enjoyed activating a person's audio log in my PDA, and then letting its cautionary tale run while I explored the facility. Everybody who was going to buy it probably owns it now, so the phase where I try to convince you is over. You know for yourself whether or not using a flashlight constitutes an onerous burden.

The thing that doesn't quite rise to the level is the multiplayer, which just isn't very ambitious. They've been preparing us for that though, going on multiple years, so while we can be disappointed by the situation we can't really claim any surprise. The UI is rife with odd inconsistencies, for example it seems to think we have thirty LAN games currently running on our three computer network. It hasn't been very stable for whatever reason on Gabe's machine, but in the moments before the full system lock we typically enjoy ourselves a good deal - it's the sort of thing we might have experienced during the Quake 2 LAN games we used to initiate with great regularity. Honestly, the multiplayer portion of this game is only the dias upon which genuine multiplayer experiences will be created by mod authors, and I never really thought otherwise. Having already completed and enjoyed the single player portion, any enjoyment I'm able to squeeze out of the game in multi fits squarely into the Icing category.

Something else to note - if Doom didn't turn your crank, or perhaps did not turn it one complete rotation, it's starting to sound like you won't have long to wait for Half-Life 2. Valve just announced that on the 17th of this month, the Half-Life 2 "Pre-load" will begin, consisting of art and audio assets that won't change before release. I wish that I'd just said it a day earlier, because then I would have the universal affection of my peers - but I'd heard that review sites are already being contacted by PR about getting a copy over Steam for their articles soon.

(CW)TB out.

some crazy bastard wants to hit me

I just uploaded my sketch dump for the week. You can see it right here if you’re interested.

-Gabe out

The parts of this Beyond3D "interview" that aren't absolutely unintelligible to me are very interesting.

It should be noted that a power function is a strictly empirical approximation of a surface's specular response, so other specular approximations shouldn't be looked at as just approximating a power function.

Well, yeah. I mean, no duh.

God, I love John Carmack.

(CW)TB

Six boxes full of tiny Spider-Men clix just came from WizKids, one of these will get thrown the bag you get when you come in the door.

Also, can you sign? We have a couple attendees that might have need of your services, and we'd absolutely like to accomodate them. We'd be happy to get you in on the free, or work it out some other way - please drop us a line.

(CW)TB

I told you all I’d post the drawing that Stan Sakai did for me at SC Comic Con and here it is.

It’s so awesome!

-Gabe out

Have you guys heard about The Ship, for Half-Life? Gabe and I played a variant of this game called Assassin in high school. Of course, I doubt this is the sort of game you can get away with in the halls these days.

(CW)TB

If you'd like to check out the new Counter-Strike on the Half-Life 2 engine, they have it at the Bellevue Lanwerx. I'll try to get up there later this week and check it out. This is for you Seattle locals, now - if what I've been reading is correct, there might be a LAN center close to you that has it as well.

(CW)TB