New Review Posted: Doom 3

[Daniel Weissenberger]

Mike Doolittle reviews Doom 3, and has this to say:

"After plenty of delays, and months after the PC version has had time to make its mark on gaming, Doom 3 has finally made its way to the Xbox. An impressive achievement in audio and visual technology, Doom 3's visceral gameplay is a deliberate throwback to the original Doom from 1993 (appropriate, since the game is essentially just a retelling of the first). And for what creator Jon Carmack and his experienced team at id envisioned, Doom 3 is a resounding success."

That first paragraph was free. To get the rest, you'll have to click here.

[JackSlack]

Man. Mike Dootlittle gave an FPS a high score? I'm shocked. Shocked.

But unfairly. I went through his old reviews of FPS titles and got back what's actually a pretty fair set of reviews. If anything, I'd accuse him of geeking out a bit and grading too high on good FPS games, and who isn't guilty of something like that? (Within their chosen genre of choice, I mean.)

I'm curious what he thinks of Timesplitters, now.

An Analysis of Mike Doolittle's FPS Reviews

Total Reviews: 16
Average Rating: 7.5 (Exactly!)
Average Difference When Presented With Other Opinion: Negligible. (Actual amount: +0.214285714286)

Data follows:

The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay: 10. (Second opinions, provided by Scott Jones, 8.0)
Deus Ex: Invisible War: 9.0
Doom 3: 9.5
Halo: 10 (First opinion, provided by Dale Weir, 8.5)
Halo 2: 9.0
James Bond 007: Nightfire: 7.0
James Bond in...Agent Under Fire: 6.5
Quake III Arena (DC): 9.0
Red Faction 2: 4.0 (First opinion, provided by Gene Park, 5.5)
Serious Sam: 5.5 (Second opinion, provided by Scott Jones, 8.0)
Shadow Ops: Red Mercury: 3.5
Ghost Recon: 7.5 (Second opinion, provided by Keith McDonald, 8.0)
Rainbow Six 3: 9.0
Turok: Evolution: 7.0 (Second opinion, provided by Caleb Hale, 5.5)
Unreal Championship: 7.0
Unreal Tournament (DC): 6.5 (First opinion, provided by T.S. Vartanoff, 8.0)

[Nicato]

You're not the first to question Mike's review ethics...you won't be the last.

[JackSlack]

But from what I'm seeing, they're mostly groundless. He's given better reviews than others to FPS games, he's given worse reviews than others. He's given 10s, he's given 4s. There's a pretty widespread all over the map set of scores there, and the only thing I can see is that when he likes an FPS, he usually REALLY likes an FPS.

That's not so bad.

[Mike Doolittle]

Thanks for the kind words JackSlack. But actually I deliberately scored the game high just to make the GameCube look bad. Did I mention Doom 3 is now available on the Xbox?

But seriously... One thing that I liked about GameCritics.com when I found the site (by pure chance), and this is a sentiment I've mentioned to Chi on many occassions, is the openly subjective nature of the reviews. That's why Chi and Dale slap the picture of the writer on the review and do both second and public opinons--to drive it home that it's not "the official opinion of GameCritics.com" but the opinion of "That Dude in the Picture." How many other sites do that?

With that in mind, and being fully aware that Doom 3 has been often criticized for some of the very things I praise it for, I had two goals for the review: One, to offer a new angle on the game; and two, to make my pure enjoyment of the game clear so as to illustrate that this game was made for a person like me, but others may not share my enthusiasm.

Whenever I write a review, should anyone think that my enjoyment of a game (or lack thereof) clouded my reasoning, I am all for people discussing specific parts of my reviews and offering counterpoints or praise or criticism or what have you. But, and I know I speak for all the writers here, I hate it when I spend a week working on a detailed review and people just say "That number at the end is too high/low."

[JackSlack]

And for what it's worth, we all have our weak spots, the little things a game (or book, movie, music, anything) than can make us fall in love with it immediately, regardless of its faults. Anything suis generis usually makes me fall about helplessly. (I'm a sucker for the Icos, the Pikmins, and the like.) I'm also a mood and feel person above a raw gameplay person -- I concede, for example, that SSX 3 probably had a better actual gameplay than SSX Tricky, but the brash character that Tricky brought to play was far superior. (I mean, really: Break-dancing computer hacker, zen-buddhist surfer dude, and Afrolicious fashion diva vs. Avril Lavigne, 'Mountain man', and Swede. It's a no brainer.)

Erm, off topic. Anyway, your review has prompted me to the need to at least rent it. I hated Doom 3 on PC, but this was in large part because it was such a beast to actually run -- My brother's perfectly capable computer couldn't run it without dropping frames all over the place. If the Xbox version is smooth as you're saying, I may actually be able to like it this time.

Edit: Oh! And I asked about Timesplitters. Any thoughts?

[LordFarid]

There is now the situation that Doom 3 has a 9.5, Chronicles of Riddick has a 10 and some EA bond game a 9.5 and what is considered by the majority of the industry and its audience to easily be the best FPS in years, Half Life 2 (with Counter-Strike Source) gets a 9, placing it 4th on the list of best First Person Shooters at Gamecritics reviewed by gamecritics in the last year.

First of all, my experience with Doom 3 was rather good. Doom 3 seems to be a game that divides its audience into a group that loves the survival horror aspect and its atmosphere, and a group that doesn't and is therefore terribly disspointed in this game. I was with the first group, but like many Doom 3 players, the remembrance of Doom 3 totally dissapeared the moment Half Life 2 appeared. Thankfully, Littledoc does acknoledge this phenomenon when he says:

"Although, save for the visual technology, it does little to advance first-person shooters to new grounds in the way a game like The Chronicles of Riddick or Half-Life 2 does."

I can therefore only imagine that Littledoc would have given Half Life 2 a 10. Mind you, when it comes to doom 3 i would probably be giving it a 8.5 now, but primarily because i have played both chronicles of riddick and especially half life after it. Back at the time when i experienced Doom 3 i might have given it a 9 or even a 9.5. Looking back now on the superior products that came after it i can even understand the reasoning for people that give it "just" an 8.

This is therefore not a critique towards Littledoc personally but rather then towards the policy. Because this has nothing to do with Littledoc honestly, as see the problem accur just as much with other reviewers. The reviewers give their honest opinions about the game and in the end an opinion is an opinion.

It's the policy that confuses people, and that makes me say that despite the fact that I greatly value GameCritics reviews and love the site, they are NOT the best advice for actually buying a game. I understand reasoning of the gamecritics reviews policy but still somehow the review policy of Edge, which is practically the opposite makes more sense when you have to make a buying decision.

This is the difference. Chi tells person A to write a review about Timesplitters 2 for the GameCube. This person is a great fan of first person shooters, he loves them, but for some reason he ended up with only owning a gamecube.
Person A, truly enjoys the game from start to finish and slams a 9.5 on Timesplitters too. Chi then gives person B the Halo review. This person is someone who has enjoyed the occasional FPS, but not nearly as much as person B. The only first person shooter game he ever only enjoyed was Goldeneye and as a fan of traditional japanese adventure and action games, person B never thought much of Doom, Unreal and even Turok for the N64. Person B gives Halo a 8.5.

Now the list will say Timesplitters 2 9.5 and Halo a 8.5. It's fair and its honest, in fact its probably more fair and honest than Edge's review policy. At Edge, i would imagine, someone higher up would look at the reviews and then do some damage control. It makes no sense telling the world that TimeSplitters 2 is the better game while clearly the majority of both hardcore gamers and casual gamers would definatly find more enjoyement out of Halo. At Edge, and many other review sites therefore, i can imagine there is a structure to balance reviews according to their competition, even if the competition is on another gamesystem, and therefore when you see Edge give one game a 9 and the other game an 8, you can often trust that the game that was given a 9 is the better game.

Now you might say that i'm just whining about numbers, and to a large degree you are right. But its not always just the numbers that make the difference. Often the reviews themselves are different, where person B uses half his review to sum up every downside and nitpick there is, while person A finds the downsides of such small relevance compared to the total enjoyment of the product he just spends one small paragraph on them.

The difference is, and this is perhaps the tragedy, that GameCritics review system is honest. You get an opinion from a reviewer and thats his opinion, no point in battling the individual opinion of someone. Yet dispite this, and despite the fact that for example's Edge's review policy is undoubtly more political, Edge's review policy does seem more fair. See at Edge, i would imagine someone stepping up to tell them to tone their review, or perhaps they tell a person a or a person b to play the other game first before making judgement. Who knows what goes on inside the murky headquarters of Edge.


See reviewers are all humans, they may be able to write better than the average humans, and maybe they use some techniques that humans don't use when their doing their amateur review on a forum, but they are humans. Well most of them anyways. I can find one of my friends today that absolutly hates the GTA franchise and I can find one that things they are the best thing since pong. This is basically what is happening with gamecritics. What kind of reviews a game gets, doesn't depend on the game, but rather depends on the person who would happen to review it at the time. At Edge for example, despite the fact that dirty politics (as opposed to the honest opinion system of gamecritics) not the reviewer, but the game seems to dictate what kind of review you can expect.

That's why i feel despite the fact that i truly value GameCritics, and that i find that they definatly stand out as a website on the internet, I would advise a friend not to use GameCritics as a tool to make a buying decision.

See, tommorow a game gets released, lets call it Starfight. Starfight seems from all indication and hype to be expanding the limits of the genre with many evolutionary and even some revolutionary. Now if Starfight truly pushes the genre forward and is as great and deep as the many previews on sites like IGN seem to indicate, the game will almost certainly get rewarded for that in Edge, not just by a high score but also by their actual review. At GameCritics however, and I'm sorry to say this, whether or not the game gets is praise depends on the reviewer playing it. Indeed no dirty politics are in play, like at edge, you get honest opinions. But you don't get the best buying advice. There seems to be no balancing force that eliminates personal preferences for genre or gamesystem. Therefore in a way, a GameCritics review is a lot like an opinion on a forum, with the difference of course that they are much better written and explained than the average forum opinion. Now to some extent this is true of Edge reviews too, but with Edge the personal grudges or dislikes for things that most people wouldn't share with the reviewer...or...on the opposite the overtly enthausiasm for a product thats obviously been bettered by a product on a different gamesystem, seemed to be erased by the murky politics system of Edge. To some degree one could even say the same goes for IGN and Gamespot too.

Therefore i've come to read GameCritics reviews as good personal opinions by obviously smart gamers, but not much more. This may be the intent of Chi with his GameCritics, but its not good buying advise for a person that wonders what game to buy next.

[Kin Korn Karn]

A quick quesiton:

How much would a gamer who doesn't have any experience with ANY earlier FPS's, who owns Halo 1 and has yet to get through four chapters of it, enjoy Doom 3 on the Xbox?

I'm intrigued, but I'm thinking that I may not enjoy it as I have no basis for comparison, really.

[Daniel Weissenberger]

Interesting post lordfarid - one thing though: Everything or Nothing isn't an FPS.

[YOU]

wow, I can't believe you gave this game a 9.5!!

I found this game to be ridiculously monotonous. I really, really wish I hadn't spent 60 dollars on it. no offense to your review, of course. I just wanted to let people know how I felt.

[LordFarid]

Originally Posted by GC_Danny

Interesting post lordfarid - one thing though: Everything or Nothing isn't an FPS.

Ah well, i didnt even read that review to be honest, i just assumed that everything or nothing was another EA bond shooter. Anyways, I still think i'm right, but understand this is not personal against any critic, more against the system. If i where a gamecritic myself right now i would probably give world of warcraft a 10 and grade all other games between 1 and 3.

[Mike Doolittle]

Originally Posted by Kin Korn Karn

A quick quesiton:

How much would a gamer who doesn't have any experience with ANY earlier FPS's, who owns Halo 1 and has yet to get through four chapters of it, enjoy Doom 3 on the Xbox?

I'm intrigued, but I'm thinking that I may not enjoy it as I have no basis for comparison, really.

Well, I suppose that depends on how much you liked what you played of Halo, and what aspects of it you enjoyed. Doom 3 is faster and more deliberately paced through the narrative than Halo. Doom 3 is more of a briskly paced survival horror with old school shooting, whereas Halo is a slower paced war epic with its own set of new school contrivances.

[Mike Doolittle]

Originally Posted by LordFarid

Therefore i've come to read GameCritics reviews as good personal opinions by obviously smart gamers, but not much more. This may be the intent of Chi with his GameCritics, but its not good buying advise for a person that wonders what game to buy next.

What EA Bond game did we give a 9.5?

GameCritics.com reviews aren't supposed to be buying advice. That's what the consumer advice column is for.

[technomancy]

Originally Posted by LordFarid

Now the list will say Timesplitters 2 9.5 and Halo a 8.5. It's fair and its honest, in fact its probably more fair and honest than Edge's review policy. At Edge, i would imagine, someone higher up would look at the reviews and then do some damage control. It makes no sense telling the world that TimeSplitters 2 is the better game while clearly the majority of both hardcore gamers and casual gamers would definatly find more enjoyement out of Halo. At Edge, and many other review sites therefore, i can imagine there is a structure to balance reviews according to their competition, even if the competition is on another gamesystem, and therefore when you see Edge give one game a 9 and the other game an 8, you can often trust that the game that was given a 9 is the better game.

Then that is bullshit. *I* would rather play TimeSplitters 2 over Halo, so to adjust a score to what people other than the reviewer think a game should have is to do me, the reader of the review, a disservice.

I like that the reviewers have their own tastes and that the particular reviewers of a game are clearly identified. Yeah, I don't agree with many of Mike's -- but I know that if I'm looking for a gee-whiz FPS for the XBox, I'll turn to his reviews. Similarly, if I want a challenging game, I'll avoid Scott Jones' reviews


The only downside to this kind of system is that it's difficult for new readers to come to terms with as they wouldn't be familiar with each reviewer's likes and dislikes. But, fuck em.

[JackSlack]

I'll also repeat an observation of Roger Ebert's: The role of the critic is not to express the public's beliefs. It is to educate them.

I believe that.