- Joined
- Jul 28, 2003
- Messages
- 2,790
When I was a lad of perhaps 5 or so, I'll never forget the day that I went to my Uncle Pete's house with my dad on the way home from his work, where I would go each saturday. He was playing DOOM, and I'd never seen anything like it. Watching him blow away zombies and imps absolutely fascinated me. Sensing this interest, Uncle Pete got the game for me, as well as some cheat codes, three of which I have permenantly memorized:
iddqd: toggle god mode
idkfa: all weapons/items
idspispopd: no clipping mode
I spent pretty hours per day for years playing this game with my friends, with an without cheat codes (mostly with, because I'm the kind of gamer that buys GTA games and just messes around and never goes on missions).
Then came DOOM III, and I didn't get it. I kind of figured it would be like the late 80's/90's Ramones, the new Star Wars, or anything else: horrible and soulless. Nevertheless, I found myself with my dad and friend Matt (who I usually played DOOM with) sitting it the 4:00 showing.
The movie starts out with some exposition, light character development, and a backstory. This was a little weird, because I seem to remember being dropped into the original DOOM game with nothing but brass knuckles and a pistol, and a natural aversion to the undead and firespitting creatures of our universe. But I guess for cinematic purposes, such build-up was necessary.
The first thing I noticed was that the feel of the movie was all wrong. A lot of people have made the Resident Evil and Alien comparisons, and they're right. There's too much sterile metal. The games were filled with Earth tones (or should I say Mars?), as well as the technology, and allowed the player to not feel claustrophobic, allowing movement outside of the complex, and the lighting was good in most of the levels. In the movie, the corridors are all dark with eerie lighting, which helps to build the suspense, but really doesn't capure the feel of the game, and one would think that capturing the feel of the game would be objective. Think again. The atmosphere consists of little more than slime, darkness, sweat, and blood, and I really can't say I caught many glimpses of the baddies. In the DOOM games, you actually got to see the creatures, but apparently not seeing the monsters makes them scarier. Whatever. The tight shots add to the feeling of entrapment, but DOOM was never about that. It was filled with huge rooms, large outside areas, and a cool variety of places, whereas the movie puts the characters in a bunch of boring space lab-esque rooms.
The monsters were OK, but they had absolutely nothing to do with DOOM. Sorry, but I don't remember any neck-biting worms from my version of the game. What happened to the fireball-shooting imps? They were the coolest part of the game next to those sweet flaming skulls/demons and the goat/human creatures. These monsters were a bunch of CGI, CQC whimps. I want fireballs!
The weapons were also mediocre. As I remember it, the weapon list of DOOM consisted of:
1) Brass Knuckles/Chainsaw ( I don't think you could use the knucks' after you got the chainsaw)
2) Pistol
3) Shotgun
4) Gatling Gun
5) Rocket Launcher (if you shot while running and strafing, you could see the side of the rocket when it's launched. Awesome).
6) BFG
7) Does everyone forget about the cool, wide silver gun that shot the green plasma that annhialated everyone in the room?
The only cool weapons I saw were the chainsaw, gatling gun, and BFG. The rocket launcher was my favorite weapon, because everytime you used it, you created this portal of vital organs that quickly collapsed to the ground.
And as far as the plot goes, it made little sense to me when I tried to contextualize it with DOOM, although it may be based more on that icky DOOM III. Whatever happened to the one-man army going in to clean up a mess that everyone made for him? I felt like I was watching the Hive quarantine in Resident Evil. I'd love if they could get a cool actor (not the Rock, his acting range is pretty limited, and although he kicks plenty of alien carcus, I think we could find a cooler actor for these movies) to just start out like we did in the game and go from there, instead of creating a whole new plot. Vin Diesel is also excluded. Bruce Willis could work, but he's getting a little old. Otherwise, he's pretty awesome. The acting was OK, the guy who played Reaper probably pulled his weight the best.
The first-person sequence was cool, but it looked extraordinarily fake, like the gun had a gyroscope in it or something. It just swayed around like it did in the games. If you're going to try to capture something from the games, don't try to capture a limitation of graphics.
It would be a fine stand-alone movie, but to call it DOOM is a little insulting to anyone who knows that DOOM was a revolution of a genre, not the rehashing of one.
iddqd: toggle god mode
idkfa: all weapons/items
idspispopd: no clipping mode
I spent pretty hours per day for years playing this game with my friends, with an without cheat codes (mostly with, because I'm the kind of gamer that buys GTA games and just messes around and never goes on missions).
Then came DOOM III, and I didn't get it. I kind of figured it would be like the late 80's/90's Ramones, the new Star Wars, or anything else: horrible and soulless. Nevertheless, I found myself with my dad and friend Matt (who I usually played DOOM with) sitting it the 4:00 showing.
The movie starts out with some exposition, light character development, and a backstory. This was a little weird, because I seem to remember being dropped into the original DOOM game with nothing but brass knuckles and a pistol, and a natural aversion to the undead and firespitting creatures of our universe. But I guess for cinematic purposes, such build-up was necessary.
The first thing I noticed was that the feel of the movie was all wrong. A lot of people have made the Resident Evil and Alien comparisons, and they're right. There's too much sterile metal. The games were filled with Earth tones (or should I say Mars?), as well as the technology, and allowed the player to not feel claustrophobic, allowing movement outside of the complex, and the lighting was good in most of the levels. In the movie, the corridors are all dark with eerie lighting, which helps to build the suspense, but really doesn't capure the feel of the game, and one would think that capturing the feel of the game would be objective. Think again. The atmosphere consists of little more than slime, darkness, sweat, and blood, and I really can't say I caught many glimpses of the baddies. In the DOOM games, you actually got to see the creatures, but apparently not seeing the monsters makes them scarier. Whatever. The tight shots add to the feeling of entrapment, but DOOM was never about that. It was filled with huge rooms, large outside areas, and a cool variety of places, whereas the movie puts the characters in a bunch of boring space lab-esque rooms.
The monsters were OK, but they had absolutely nothing to do with DOOM. Sorry, but I don't remember any neck-biting worms from my version of the game. What happened to the fireball-shooting imps? They were the coolest part of the game next to those sweet flaming skulls/demons and the goat/human creatures. These monsters were a bunch of CGI, CQC whimps. I want fireballs!
The weapons were also mediocre. As I remember it, the weapon list of DOOM consisted of:
1) Brass Knuckles/Chainsaw ( I don't think you could use the knucks' after you got the chainsaw)
2) Pistol
3) Shotgun
4) Gatling Gun
5) Rocket Launcher (if you shot while running and strafing, you could see the side of the rocket when it's launched. Awesome).
6) BFG
7) Does everyone forget about the cool, wide silver gun that shot the green plasma that annhialated everyone in the room?
The only cool weapons I saw were the chainsaw, gatling gun, and BFG. The rocket launcher was my favorite weapon, because everytime you used it, you created this portal of vital organs that quickly collapsed to the ground.
And as far as the plot goes, it made little sense to me when I tried to contextualize it with DOOM, although it may be based more on that icky DOOM III. Whatever happened to the one-man army going in to clean up a mess that everyone made for him? I felt like I was watching the Hive quarantine in Resident Evil. I'd love if they could get a cool actor (not the Rock, his acting range is pretty limited, and although he kicks plenty of alien carcus, I think we could find a cooler actor for these movies) to just start out like we did in the game and go from there, instead of creating a whole new plot. Vin Diesel is also excluded. Bruce Willis could work, but he's getting a little old. Otherwise, he's pretty awesome. The acting was OK, the guy who played Reaper probably pulled his weight the best.
The first-person sequence was cool, but it looked extraordinarily fake, like the gun had a gyroscope in it or something. It just swayed around like it did in the games. If you're going to try to capture something from the games, don't try to capture a limitation of graphics.
It would be a fine stand-alone movie, but to call it DOOM is a little insulting to anyone who knows that DOOM was a revolution of a genre, not the rehashing of one.
