Suffer in Darkness No Longer, Let's Play Doom 3: BFG Edition

[Blastinus]

Our official introduction to Berserk is quite apropos, because this episode drove me insane. Between failed recordings and a general lack of interesting things to say, I decided to just go "Screw it," and vent all my frustrations, but in what I hope is an informative way. Don't expect this to be a constant thing. I'm not often angry.

One thing I failed to mention in the video is that all powers activate simultaneously for no extra cost when you use the Artifact. Both Helltime and Berserk are at our disposal, so any time we want to, we can slow enemies to a crawl while doing 4x damage with every weapon. Oh, and that also applies to self-inflicted damage, so that was why I was holding back on the rocket launcher for now. I've had rockets detonate on enemies that are still fading away, and that 4x damage went right up my nose. Not pleasant!

[Kibayasu]

Seems no one can make a particularly good Doom 3 boss fight. At least Berserk doesn't expose your own glowing weakpoint and having a quasi on-command punch power up seems fun?

[AradoBalanga]

So, does Berserk make you reload 4x faster as well, or do you still reload at the same speed as you would outside of Helltime?

[Blastinus]

So, does Berserk make you reload 4x faster as well, or do you still reload at the same speed as you would outside of Helltime?

Heh, I wish, but no, you reload just as quickly. Though speaking of reloading, one unusual consequence of Berserk is that suddenly the Super Shotgun is inefficient for anything smaller than a Hell Knight. The damage output is so great that you're killing more enemies with the shotgun's 8 shells than the Super Shotgun's 2, especially since they're so slow that it's no biggie to just get up in their faces.

That's right. It only took a giant damage buff and slowing the game to a crawl, but the shotgun has been redeemed. Hooray?

[Blastinus]

After the overwhelming negativity of the last time, this update brings nothing but smiles and cheer. Not only do we get our third (and last) Hunter fight, but we also encounter our third (and last) arcade game, including a very special offer from our friends at Martian Buddy. From this episode onwards, we'll be fighting with our entire suite of powers and we've gathered all but one weapon. The end of Resurrection of Evil is in sight, folks. Only four updates away, in fact.

For the record, there is nothing to be gained from winning at the previous two arcade games. The mere act of playing Hellanoid means that you've given up on winning.

[Mopey Dick]

Kinda weird how the weapon you're using in the Martian Buddy game is very explicitly the BFG... that fires little pew pew dots.

[Kibayasu]

Invincibility does seem a bit redundant but I guess you can just unload rockets into something without a care in the world.

[AradoBalanga]

Invincibility does seem a bit redundant but I guess you can just unload rockets into something without a care in the world.

Yeah, I would not be surprised if the Invincibility powerup came about because someone testing out Berserk accidentally blew themselves up with either a rocket or grenade due to the damage boost. That said, given how the crazy amount of spawns that some rooms have in Resurrection of Evil, having Invincibility is welcome because you don't have to worry about killing yourself by accident in the mad frenzy. You can, indeed, go ham with your entire arsenal and not care about the repercussions for a hot minute or two.

[Blastinus]

Nothing much to say here, just venting all the oxygen in the facility and guaranteeing the loss of all surviving personnel. Along the way, I put Invincibility through its paces and demonstrate the sheer absurdity of what is possible with a fully armed and operational Artifact. There's only one thing that still harms us, and that's falling damage, just to make sure that we don't end up somewhere where we shouldn't. Not even overloading a grenade can stop us now!

Before you say it, no, grenades that explode in your hand don't do any damage to surrounding enemies. I already checked.

[Kibayasu]

Are there any paces to put invincibility through? As long as it does what it says on the box I figure its probably good to go Moving super fast and doing quad damage is just a bonus.

Nice to see a pinky again but seems like RoE runs into the same problem as Doom 3 did eventually, for the most part they've found a comfortable mix of monsters that provides a consistent level of challenge and just stick with it no matter what. Vulgars flavoured with Revenants.

[Blastinus]

Yup, it's a double dose of nostalgia! Phobos Labs 4 and Delta Labs on their own would have been too short, so I cobbled them together. We also get to experience another gameplay change that BFG Edition ended up cutting out entirely, since Delta in BFG Edition doesn't have these constant dimensional shifts, even though they don't end up affecting anything and are just there to add spooky flavor. There is one last episode to go for Resurrection of Evil, and then all that's left is the Lost Mission and whatever bonus stuff I want to show off. I hope you're as excited as I am.

[AradoBalanga]

You know, now that you mention it, the chaingun in Doom 3 vanilla sounds like it fires faster compared to BFG Edition, and the firing sound effect is much...deeper(?) in BFG Edition. In other words, BFG Edition makes the chaingun sound more like an anti-aircraft gun firing, while Doom 3 vanilla's sounds more like, well, a rapid fire chaingun.

[Kibayasu]

I looked up a video of what the level looks out and wow that's a change. Removing an oxygen meter in one section of one level is one thing but this is a pretty massive change. I have to imagine the original effect just wasn't possible when the moved it to the newer engine version.

[Blastinus]

A marked improvement over our original jaunt through here, Resurrection of Evil's version of Hell leaves out all the dumb haunted house stuff in favor of a straight shot through hordes of enemies, capped off with a much better boss fight against the giant ham himself.

My explanation in the video was a bit rambling, so here's the rundown: Maledict has 7500 HP, divided into two segments of 2500 and 5000 respectively. During the 2500 phase, he flies around, shooting fireballs or dashing past at high speeds and leaving a trail of fire. In the base game, he would also occasionally summon Forgotten Ones to harass you and keep you distracted from what he was doing. Once the 2500 is depleted, he silently resets to 5000 HP and adds a new attack where he perches on the giant skull and summons fast-moving meteors. Both the fireballs and the meteors can be caught by the Grabber and hurled back, but there's so many coming out at any given time and Maledict moves around so much that trying to fling one back is impractical at best. Unlike fighting Sarge in the original with the Soul Cube, Betruger here is actually tuned towards the player having three charges of the Artifact, so the fight is legitimately challenging and will tax your resources. I really enjoy it and it's a great sendoff for the game. Just don't ask me about the ending. It's a little weird.

One last expansion to go, the Lost Mission, and this one was cobbled together in 2012, so surely they'll have figured this whole thing out in the 7 or 8 year window. Right?

[AradoBalanga]

I'm trying to understand the mindset behind BFG Edition. On the surface, it's a simple re-release of an old game for then-modern consoles. But when you look under the hood, you find this utterly bizarre mishmash of "giving the player a less frustrating experience than the original" and "cutting content because ????". I can maybe understand changing resource spawns/locations, but now we've had several levels where actual gameplay content was cut out. And this is on top of other small changes like audio tweaks (like the chaingun) that really didn't need to be changed. There is no explanation outside of

[Mopey Dick]

As underwhelming as that was, still a better bossfight than the cyberdemon.

[Kibayasu]

That cut Hell section is what I sort of expected the whole game was going to be once bullet time, and eventually quad damage and invincibility, started up. As it was it was just Doom 3 but... easier? Once again I wonder if it was a technical issues that cut the hell section because it just doesn't seem like something that should have been.

Still, never played RoE myself so even if it wasn't the original it was nice to see.

[Blastinus]

Another day, another expansion. The Lost Mission was developed as an add-on for the BFG Edition's release, a sort of incentive to entice people into spending money on what turned out to be just a slightly upscaled HD port with VR. While, yes, Id Software was responsible for developing it, the company was owned by Zenimax at the time, so I'll be pinning all the blame for it on Bethesda because it's funnier that way.

Our protagonist for this outing is a nameless, faceless member of Bravo Team who mysteriously survived the slaughter at the beginning of the EnPro Plant. Considering the unexplained circumstances of his survival, I'm forced to conclude that this whole experience is just a feverish dying dream as he imagines himself being super cool and saving the day. It makes just about as much sense as the game itself.

[Mopey Dick]

Wow. This really looks like Todd Howard's Doom.

[Blastinus]

Wow. This really looks like Todd Howard's Doom.

It's not Todd Howard's doom until we start outright stealing elements from better games. Speaking of which...





EnPro 2 hands us our two favorite weapons from Resurrection of Evil, the Super Shotgun and the Grabber, but there's a problem. The corridors are too tight to fling explosive barrels and all the crates are immobile set dressing. But hey, 1 out of 2 isn't too bad. There's also a brand new mechanic involving the Grabber, but time will tell if it ever becomes relevant again.

Oh yeah, and we're being hit with Arch-Viles in level 2. That's somewhat alarming. Somewhat.

[Blastinus]

So I've got a problem with this next update: it's boring. Like, even more so than usual. Just a long loop around in order to unlock a single door. Would anyone object to me just speeding through it and moving on to the next level?

[Mopey Dick]

Hell no. To be honest this expansion makes Doom 3 look better in retrospect.

[Shei-kun]

Go right ahead with the speeding through.

[Kibayasu]

We've already seen about four dozen rooms that consist of hallways surrounding a smaller lowered section.

Interesting to see that many archviles this early. It does go to show that even with that shotgun regular Doom 3 can be at least a decent action game with enough light.

[Blastinus]

I think it says something about this game's narrative design that they can weave a tragic tale about the loss of a crewmate and I feel less emotionally invested than I do protecting a sentry bot. I think it mostly relates to the fact that they're actually trying, unflinchingly facing off against things that are in another league altogether so you feel like you want to save the courageous little guys. When you factor in all the apathetic scientists who get killed by a stray breeze, the marines who repeatedly show themselves to be spectacular failures at their job, and the actual essential NPC's who do nothing but bark orders in your ear, it's hard not to see the humans in this game as being anything other than different flavors of worm food.

By the way, would you believe that we're already only four updates away from the end? If Resurrection of Evil was brief, the contents of the Lost Mission would struggle to fill the space of a pamphlet.

[Kibayasu]

It's kind of... funny I guess? - not sure about the right emotion - how at least 1 sentry section appears in every game. Almost like they were trying to make it a mascot. The way I always remembered them from the original game was that thing which shot monsters for me so I didn't have to go back and forth with the flashlight.

Never realized they had health though, did they even go up against Revenants before?

[Blastinus]

It's kind of... funny I guess? - not sure about the right emotion - how at least 1 sentry section appears in every game. Almost like they were trying to make it a mascot. The way I always remembered them from the original game was that thing which shot monsters for me so I didn't have to go back and forth with the flashlight.

Never realized they had health though, did they even go up against Revenants before?

Yeah, there were some Revenants in the RoE tunnel sequence. While it's unlikely for the sentry bot to bite it in the original Doom 3, the monsters RoE throws at you can actually take down the little guy if you're not contributing. They've only got 3x the amount of health you do, and they don't really try to dodge anything.

Though technically in the case of Lost Mission, I could have hoofed it back to the deployment station and gotten a replacement, that just doesn't feel right.

[Blastinus]

So, this is Exis Labs, where the recycling really becomes apparent. I've combined the two levels together for length reasons, and it becomes super obvious how many environments, enemies, and objects have been lifted wholesale from Doom 3 and RoE, including features that were cut from BFG Edition but were in the original release. See if you can spot them all!

[Kibayasu]

Making and texturing two whole doors for an airlock is expensive!

That video disk must be a heck of a retcon because otherwise, uh, what's the point? We already know what happened, from Doom 3 itself. And if its a summary for people who haven't played Doom 3 kind of late isn't it?

[Blastinus]

That video disk must be a heck of a retcon because otherwise, uh, what's the point? We already know what happened, from Doom 3 itself. And if its a summary for people who haven't played Doom 3 kind of late isn't it?

As it turns out: it's basically parroting Ian McCormick's format. Like, to a funny degree.





This is it, folks. This is the end of the game. I could have broken it in half, but everything I had to say in part 1 would have been essentially repeated in part 2. There are a couple of bonus updates that I still want to do, but otherwise, we're basically finished with an expansion that actually makes me yearn for the creativity of the original. I wish that I hadn't done Lost Mission as the last part, because it ends the LP on a bitter and resigned note.

Overall, I think that BFG Edition is only worth it if you have VR. I've heard nothing but praise for the game as a virtual reality experience, but taken on its own, it's retreading old ground in a way that basically tore the original game's intent apart. I came into this thinking that the flashlight was an improvement, but it ruined all the atmosphere and made the scares into jokes. Add onto that all the unique mechanics that were ripped out of Resurrection of Evil, and it feels like an inferior port for many reasons. I'm glad to have gone through it though, because I've been wanting to do Doom 3 for a long, long time, and it's something that not everyone has played. As I said, there are a couple bonuses that I'll be doing, and then we'll be finished. Hope that this has been entertaining, or at least a bit informative.

[Kibayasu]

I still think there's a decent action game in Doom 3 but the BFG changes do clang hard against Doom 3 (which I kind of changed my mind on being good even with the original design). RoE feels like it might have been limited by the engine or something because for all its magic powers it doesn't really have any more monsters than the original. Lost Missions drops any attempt at atmosphere but then you've just got Doom 3 without the atmosphere which a slightly higher enemy count helps with but there's only so much that can be done.

But probably because I don't think the original is that good I'm not too down on Lost Mission.

[Mopey Dick]

I suspect the answer to most of the "what if?" questions is simply that it wouldn't be Doom without being an unstoppable killing machine. I find it more suprising they went with the jumpscare direction in the first place, but that's easy to say in a post-DOOM2016 world; 2004 was in a generally shitty period for FPS games and I guess they just tried to take a different direction from stuff like CoD and Halo series.

AFAIK, Rage has nothing to do with Doom 3 apart from heavily suffering from developer indecision about the direction they wanted the game to take. Probably just an easter egg.

[Kibayasu]

Rage is a whoooole other story when it comes to bad id games.

[Blastinus]

Before I draw this LP to a close, I wanted to tidy up a couple loose ends. The first of them is Nightmare difficulty, which I mentioned right at the start but then I didn't ever go into detail on it.



In a nutshell, Nightmare gives you more power in exchange for keeping you constantly teetering over the edge of death. Thanks to its miniscule damage reduction, armor's only use in this mode is turning something that would have killed you into something that only mostly kills you, assuming you're not at the baseline 25 HP, in which case most enemies will kill you no matter how much armor you have. It's an interesting challenge, and I'd highly recommend this speedrun if you want to see the entire original game played through like this.

Next update is going to be mods, and I'm going to be focusing on things like modifications to weapons and the flashlight, changes to the campaign, and some original content. I haven't finalized the stuff I want to show off, so if you have any suggestions or requests, I'd be happy to hear them. This'll wrap up the LP, so I figure I'd go out with a bang.

[Kibayasu]

I like to imagine they initially thought to make Nightmare drain your health right down to 0 before implementing it and playing through the first part of Doom 3 and going "Oh yeah, this part."

RoE forcing a very calculating use of the full power artifact is neat but I think you'd probably spend half of your magic time just waiting for the demons to spawn from their teleporters which I imagine is a bit more aggravating when you really need that invincibility.

[Blastinus]

Alrighty, pardon the wait, but this marks the final bit of content that I wanted to go over for this LP. As I said in the video, these are all Doom 3 mods, not BFG Edition, since modifying BFG Edition involves a bit more work compared to just downloading a file and dropping it into the folder. Doom 3 was very mod-friendly, as is only appropriate, considering the Doom 1 and 2 modding community, and as a result, people have managed to pull on the moving parts and expand it out in a number of exciting ways. Granted, there are a number of useless or lousy mods as well, but we're not looking at those, because I don't like to mock people's work too much.

Links to the content are as follows. Some of them require both Doom 3 and Resurrection of Evil, but the last one: the Dark Mod, requires neither. It's a standalone game at this point.

Doom3CC - (https://www.moddb.com/mods/doom3cc)
Duct Tape NoObEvEr - (https://www.moddb.com/mods/duct-tape-noobever)
Overthinked Doom^3 - (https://www.moddb.com/mods/overthinked-doom3)
Classic Doom 3 - (https://www.moddb.com/mods/classic-doom-3)
The Dark Mod - (https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dark-mod)

And that will be basically it for me. I'll be taking a break from LPing for a bit, but I've got a few ideas for what I could do next. Thanks for sticking through it, and have a great day!

[Kibayasu]

The duct tape mod I remember using I think stopped giving flashlights to anything above the chaingun. I also appreciate those transparent pinkies in classic Doom 3. Overthinked almost makes it feel like the modders precognitioned the Doom 4 that was cancelled. Or did we know about that by this point?

Anyways I hadn't thought about The Dark Mod for a while but it blew me away back when it come out. It was obviously a mod but such a massive shift in genre was quite the feat, most "total conversion" usually keep mostly the same gameplay after all.
Considering it has gotten an update and new release just back in July I should probably revisit it.