Reviewing Doom 3's Xbox Port

Dim Through is one of those games that seems to divide opinions like Quake 2 and Quake 4. People seem to love it or hate it, developed by id Software and originally released in 2004, at the time it was a pretty brave reboot with a new edition . Motor Tech 4 and a lot more focus on the horror elements, updating the weapons in the enemy lineup that made them famous, but slowing down the combat and making it more tense and visceral instead of running around these big open environments where you face a dozen demons. once you run through much smaller, more confined spaces, half a dozen at a time, along with Half-Life 2, it helped push first-person shooters forward and breathe life back into the genre.

People often mistakenly refer to Doom 3 as survival horror, but that's not really what it is, it's more action horror, lots of shooting broken up into lots of little scripted sequences, but the game tries its best to scare you, at least. often succeeds. I've really come to love this game over the years and although it moves to the beat of a different drum. I still enjoy playing it as much as Ultimate Doom and even Doom 2016 by picking favorites, like asking someone to pick their favorite child or whether or not they prefer to wear socks on the left or right.

Footer, like many PC games at the time, a console

port

was also in the works, but this was at a time before the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, where the gap between PC and consoles was still quite large. this time around the console. in question was the Xbox and the

port

was made by a development team called Karis Visions and released in 2005, however, this time the port was quite good. I think I understand that Charis Visions has a pretty long history of porting games to other platforms with titles like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, GameCube and Star Wars Jedi Outcast, Xbox and Gamecube, so it's no surprise that these were the guys to those who were given the enormous task of making a game like Dhoom 3 work on Xbox, something that sounds like. impossible on paper, but somehow they did it and not only managed to pull it off, but they pulled it off very well, they even managed to include playable versions of the original games too in case you're playing Doom Three for some reason. but before you have played the previous games, I must say at this point that this is not a review of Dhoom 3 per se.

I already did, so if you want to know what I think about the game, go check it out. that this focuses more simply on the Xbox version, something that people have been suggesting I check out for a while and from that you can expect some spoilers here and there, so don't say I didn't warn you . I'm serious, don't say I didn't warn you. Incredible things will happen here soon. Just wait. I also have to quickly thank Ray Khan who is sponsoring this video now in case you don't know who. These guys are a company started by a guy named Ray J and they make super easy to use Bluetooth headphones that come in this really cool little charging case since some days I spend up to 5 or 6 hours on my computer editing and capturing images.

I really need something that feels comfortable in my ears and I find these to be pretty spot on when it comes to the fact that I have half a dozen external hard drives plugged in and USB hubs sticking out of my butt, so one less cable to worry about is always welcome. Cheaper than other back headphones on the market about half the price the sound quality is excellent and they have up to six hours of battery life which is pretty good the latest model is the e25 and there is a link in the description for Ray Khan comback slash g-man where you can go to get 15% off your first order and thanks again to rake on for providing me with a pair for this review, I really appreciate it now, let's get back to the video now.

I don't have much experience with console ports, right, that's a lie. I especially have it when it comes to shooters, but at least from my personal experience I think this is truly one of the best console ports I've ever played. if Arnold Schwarzenegger does three on the PC, then this Xbox port is Franco Columbu, Arnie's sidekick standing next to Arnie, he's not that impressive, but he catches him alone and is still a feast for the eyes, metaphorically speaking, metaphorically speaking, I mean, this version is even better than the BFG edition, that's for sure because despite the changes it makes, which are more or less due to the limitations of the console, there are no weapon-mounted flashlights or ammo increase and cheers, this is still a good old fashioned Doom Three, crushing, relentless and Dark Man is done, it really is amazing that they were able to pull this all off from a technical standpoint, just for starters it's obviously not running on a super high resolution.

I think the native resolution for Xbox was 480p, that's nice. It's like you're playing but wearing coke bottle glasses. I now play this on my emulated

xbox

360 which automatically upscales it to 1080p which makes it look okay from a distance but when you start looking closer it really shows. Like a dirty ass, this isn't the Xbox's fault, but I guess it's what had to be done to make it work in the first place. Here are some example clips side by side to give you an idea of ​​the difference, but I think. that despite having notable improvements in things like textures, lighting effects in the modeling of characters and weapons, they still kept the atmosphere of everything quite solid, it still retains its atmosphere of terror in that very stylistic aesthetic, which is what I think It still looks really cool, the dynamic lighting still plays a huge role in the overall experience and seeing the shadow of a demon across a wall before it even enters your field of vision or seeing the way the light reacts with an imp while charging a fireball.

Those sections where you're guided by one of those little droid robots that shine their flashlights straight ahead or that moment where that poor UIC scientist is trying to guide you through a pitch-black area still look impressive. wolf with a flashlight, I'm serious, it still looks cool this whole dynamic lighting thing really is a bit of a dying art. I mean, we don't see it much in games anymore, at least it's not really a focus of the overall presentation back then, although it seemed like every game tried it. To introduce this into Ranjin in a moment about things like the deadly shadows of the thief from Splinter Cell and even the FARC, certain points, what I think also mitigates the Xbox port is that the loading times are quite fast, I mean, They are not instantaneous, but rather reloading a new level or an old save file is fast enough to not be a hassle, the game can even maintain a stable frame rate which is awesome.

I mean, there are other games that run on inferior engines that run much worse. It really is black magic. The only problem is that if you are familiar with making three and have played it enough times, you will notice how part of the campaign has been removed and even if you didn't notice it well, your brain did it to begin with. The whole intro where you land on Mars and then walk through the body scan is now fully rendered. Well, let me start. The cafeteria area is also missing and there seem to be fewer NPCs moving around towards the end as well.

Our city where you first run on the surface of Mars for a short period of time has been completely removed and this is probably the only one I have a problem with just because this was supposed to introduce you to the mechanics of how your supply works of air. works in a low risk environment and emphasized how you were limited as to where you could and couldn't go throughout the base, but I guess it got the advantage instead of faster loading times and better performance in alpha lab , since that is being broken down. in four sectors is now known simply as alpha labs east and west and as a result alpha labs sector four is now missing entirely; that was the level in the original game where you could choose between taking two different passes forward, one that was faster but more dangerous and one that was longer but supposedly safer, still they were still part of this, where you have the boss fighting the bakery, which is still terrifying in nightmares, but as a result, alpha labs in general.

It's considerably shorter, the same when you finally reach Delta's labs, as if this entire area has actually been scaled down, making it much more linear. There was a whole secondary offering here where you could go through a bunch of offices and holding cells doing some reading. of the backstory before arriving on Mars, but was hit again, here's another one: When you first arrive at the elevated monorail bridge, instead of everything collapsing and throwing you onto the surface of Mars, you simply cross the bridge directly. and in the recycling sector, but I think the area that definitely suffered the worst is central processing and data banks.

The last few levels of the game, when you come back from hell, like that really cool part when you get scared trying. what crawls across the monitor has completely disappeared, there's a cool scripted sequence of Campbell killing an arc filed with the BFG that I don't think was ever in the original and in the game's defense, in some rare cases they've tried give me back I mean it's not all about just taking Sector 4 of Delta Labs before facing those two barons from hell. There's a creepy little scripted sequence where you see these images of the chainsaw-wielding zombie before he finally shows up again in Sector 3 of Delta Labs. a quick scripted sequence where you say some poor UAC employee was gunned down by a Z SEC, which I don't think was even in the base game during the beginning of the hell level when you get trapped in that cage and then you plummet to the surface, they've added all these spiral souls that move around the player and if I'm honest it's creepy as they also added your mother to the hell level as an NPC banished there for eternity for sucking up as many dead bodies now that I could.

I spent an entire video going through all of these little changes until I believe it, but I don't think there's really any of them that changed the game in a super negative way, so I don't think they're really worth complaining about, but I'll say that Perhaps most importantly, these level design changes make the game much shorter, but it's already a bit of a bloated campaign anyway, so tweaking everything isn't such a bad thing. I think I understand something. One of the biggest problems is trying to play a first-person shooter game designed for PC or console. I mean, a keyboard has about a hundred buttons, the controller has like ten total, although most shooter games have done pretty well with the controller, thanks. to how fluid aiming and moving with the left and right sticks tends to be, as this was back when shooters had no weapon limits, although you do have to deal with swapping around ten weapons at a time and the lack of a keyboard. and its number keys are definitely a hindrance.

One solution to this that they've tried to add is that you can bind weapons to the d-pad buttons, so instead of having to switch each weapon until it finds the shotgun you can bind it to, you know, right on the d-pad. pad, it's actually quite useful and I think everyone will have their personal preferences on what weapons they want to link here now, it's not a perfect solution and a weapon wheel would have been awesome, but it's the only possible solution, it makes the most sense, so Otherwise it controls quite well and they've mapped buttons to the controller in a way that feels perfect, as any good console shooter should.

Make Three has a really handy lock on system, nothing innovative, just point it at an enemy, start shooting and the lock does the rest. You still have to be aware of your surroundings and strafe left and right to do your best to avoid taking damage and if you run. It breaks the lock, but it's a really simple way to integrate PC controls into a controller and it handles superbly. You'll be dodging fireballs in no time. Now let's wait and not suck the game's dick too much because there are To start, I also noticed some oddities. I really think shotguns have been nerfed somewhat because there are times when when fired at point blank range it doesn't kill an enemy in one hit when it really should be able to do so again.

The Doom Three shotguns have always been kind of a shooting machine, but the way the pellet spreaders work, who knows, but I think there are some weird things going on with this gun in this port. Ammo is also much harder to come by, which I think could simply be because they have removed a lot of the side bugs in all of these levels, this sometimes becomes a problem and I found that I had very little plasma rifle ammo and rocketseven towards the end of the campaign. a problem because both weapons are really suitable for dealing with both revenants and Chain Gun commandos.

The plasma rifle is excellent against Revenants because it is the only weapon that can destroy their homing rockets and rocket launchers. Excellent against Chain Gun commandos. who generally like to just hang back and shoot you from a distance like idiots who lack the right type of ammo to take on two of the game's toughest enemies most effectively, can make some of the late game sections a pain. really complicated. I find it really interesting how this port handles save files. Now the way it works is you can manually save them whenever you want, just go into the menu and create a save file that maybe takes 5 or 10 seconds and that's it, but there are no checkpoints or anything like that.

If you ever die, you have to reload from your last save file or from the beginning of the current level. This may not seem like much, but it is a very strange thing not to do. include in the game Return to Castle Wolfenstein came out for Xbox in 2002 and had multiple checkpoints per level. They managed to cram all of this stuff into the Xbox port. They squeezed blood from a stone, so to speak, and got the Tech 4 engine running on a console, but somehow they just couldn't include the checkpoints. I mean, when did the basic convenience of a checkpoint mechanic become such a complicated inclusion?

However, one of the best features this Xbox version had is that you could play games. in co-op, but unfortunately there is no split screen option for this, you can only do it through Xbox Live or through the system link setup, which requires two copies of the game along with two televisions and look, I really wanted to give this in full . You can try, but you see the problem with being an adult is that getting one of your similar-aged adult peers to come over with the mere idea of ​​playing three co-op campaigns isn't really that realistic, oh, really out of the ordinary.

On top of that, there's actually a really good co-op mod for Doom 3 on PC called just open co-op and if you can get a server and a couple of friends together to play it well, it's a lot of fun and you also get to play the entire campaign, not just an abbreviated section like on Xbox, oh aside from all this we also get the same treatment for the Resurrection of Evil expansion pack and it works pretty much the same with a few differences here and there but overall it's a pretty good port of the version for PC to a console.

One of the main things I noticed now was that instead of the flashlight you have a light mounted on the end of the gun, which means you're not completely defenseless now. However, through weapons it can be a little more complicated with the expansion pack because you're about to have to worry about the grabber on the artifact, plus the grabber is that weapon that looks like a gravity gun that can be used to interact with physical objects and enemy projectiles. The artifact is that beating heart that gives you superpowers because you're going to be using both of them quite a bit, you want to assign them two buttons on the d-pad for quick access, which in turn means you'll have to skip assigning other weapons to the d-pad. -pad instead is not a big problem, but it can make switching between weapons more painful on the sphincter.

I don't know if it really matters, though considering this expansion pack has the damn super shotgun and this thing is so awesome that you'll probably spend 99% of your time using this thing anyway because of all the things they got wrong with this expansion pack. and all the things I don't like, this whole forgiving thing every time I'm using this, what's also very useful is that now boss fights have health bars so you can tell if you're really doing damage, considering these Bosses have tricks that you must recognize before you can damage them. This is quite a useful addition so that you don't end up wasting ammo unnecessarily because let me tell you, if there's one thing I hate it's wasting ammo unnecessarily and cockatoos, I mean those things are so annoying, the only thing I would complain about is the performance it seems a bit stuttery compared to doing three, although this could have been a result of me emulating it through my

xbox

360.

Also, when you use the artifact, the game looks like an idiot because they used some kind of weird pixelation filter when time slows down. at a snail's pace it seems like they just reduced the resolution by half; otherwise this works just like Doom. Three fast loading times, generally decent controls, and fun and enjoyable gameplay. I have to say, all things considered, if this was the first and only one. way you were able to play Doom 3 and the expansion, well it could have been a lot worse, you could have played the BFG edition first and accepted all that flashlight propaganda.

Now look, let's clear this up right now if you prefer the mounted flashlight. the real traditional handheld flashlight well you're dead to me i must say there are a lot of people dead to me at the moment as you would probably expect dream three on xbox is not a perfect copy of the pc version but like i said Before whatever it removes is removed due to limitations rather than some sort of forced design choice, the cornerstones of the game itself are still present and that's what matters most. Combine that with a mostly stable frame rate and it's all you can really ask for.

The only thing the game doesn't do is give me a peek under the table while I play it, so as far as console ports go, Dhoom 3 for Xbox is fine in my books. I just can't find a good enough reason to dislike it and I'm very happy and proud that they managed to make it work in the first place. Now, if they can run Doom Eternal on Xbox, that's when I'd really be impressed.