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Twoplayer Comic: My Eyes! Arrrrrgh...
comic
game: Doom 3
posted by: Aaron Stanton
publisher: Activision
developer: id Software
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date posted: 12:43 PM Mon Nov 7th, 2005
last revision: 12:44 PM Mon Nov 7th, 2005


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Click here to read this week\'s twoplayer game comic:


A few of us here at GamesFirst went to see the Doom movie last week, ignoring the low reviews, and the obvious stigma that video game movies - at least so far - always suck. I actually enjoyed it. Knowing in advance that the movie wouldn\'t be good, I found a fairly entertaining action movie with solid production values.

Had I been expecting something good in the traditional sense, I\'d probably have been less happy.

Regardless, the movie is full of classic Doom-isms, meaning little things that are both odd and unique to the world of Doom. If the movie hadn\'t figured out how to put flashlights on the guns, for example, that would have been a true and direct translation of a Doom 3 truism, mainly that special forces are incapable of handling two manual tasks at a time. Flashlight + gun are difficult for even the best of us to manage.

Apparently, though, the movie producers thought that having their actors stop every time they heard a noise, put down the gun in order to use their flashlight, and then get eaten... well... even the experimental BFG found in the research lab appeared to have a flashlight attached.

There are some Doom-isms that made it in, though. For example - and this is a problem that existed with the Doom 3 game, too - has anyone ever noticed that there are no light fixtures? I mean, yeah, sure it\'s dark. The lights are out. Emergency power only. But when you\'re wandering a dark hallway with only floor lighting to see, have you ever stopped to wonder for a second where the light was supposed to be coming from? I mean, if the power were on, of course.

They don\'t seem to be there. No light fixtures. If there were full power, those hallways would still be dark; no one has bothered to hang a 60-watt bulb in there. That\'s the problem.

Other elements are just matters of bad story writing, and we touch on them a little in the comic. At one point, the special forces team is looking for five scientists. After they search the entire facility, they declare some of the poor doctors missing... until a bad monster thing reminds them that, oh yeah, there\'s like a huge catacomb of sewage systems underneath the complex. Hmm... how\'d we miss that?

Once down in the dark sewer, you find a waist deep water system. For a complex of like 70 people. That\'s total. And that\'s stretching it - the research facility over the sewer system doesn\'t hold near that many, since it\'s supposed to be isolated from the rest of the research complex.

Sometimes, other moments are just sort of humerus. At one point, one of the soldiers accuses the other of being high on drugs because his eyes are dilated. This would make more sense if they were not in a near pitch black sewer, where your eyes would be dilated in order to see. Hmmm...

Luckily, the other soldier, who happened to be high on drugs, didn\'t think to point this out, or he might have faced a beating.

But you see, I\'m a person that can\'t stand technical errors - blatant technical errors, at least - in my movies. I\'m picky that way. At least two of my friends thought it was a great movie.

And I enjoyed it, too. Like I said, it was fun. I\'m just glad I didn\'t expect too much in the way of quality.

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