ID Software

The dark dungeons of Doom1 have come back to haunt you again in ID Software's new Doom3. The monsters are bigger, better, meaner and scarier and as has been the ID tradition, they have far surpassed all expectations. When you look back into the days of Castle Wolfenstein, you could say that 3D first person shooter games have indeed come a long way in the arena of computer gaming. Castle Wolfenstein was by itself a revolution in the computer gaming industry with its concept of the FPS. Then came the DOOM series, which caused a great stir among the gaming circles. The UAC chambers, the exploding barrels of gunpowder, intelligent aiming, the new monsters and the poison pools enhanced gameplay to an extent never before thought possible. This was later follwed by Doom 2, and for once it felt that the rate of development of computer games was going to exceed the rate of development of the microprocessor.


All school kids got hooked onto this new game that signified the demise of the older 2D games such as commander keen, Bio-menace, prince, GP-Bike and Bricks. The era of computer games with mind-blowing graphics had just began. There were various firms that tried to cash-in on this opportunity, but games like Duke Nukem, Half-life and Hexen have by no means been able to keep up with the creative minds at ID. Just when you though that there could be no further improvements, came the quake series. Better graphics, an increased number of monsters with different weaknesses and huge levels designed to engross a mind for months together and the introduction of a wide range of guns to fit different situations now demanded more skill and creativity from the player. Quake 3 was another revolution. This time ID made Quake open-source and thanks to this, passionate gamers the world-over have written their own extensions and mods to the game. Another development here was the rise to popularity of techniques such as rocket jumping, strafe jumping circle jumping, plasma crawling - all used very extensively by the online gaming community. Mods such as defrag have created another area of interest for those ardent gamers. These modifications required a high degree of skill involved in the co-ordination of mouse movements and keyboard strokes. This game also brought the rail gun to the zenith of its popularity, where running around the levels without a railgun in hand was a passport to a sure and explosive death for the gamer.

Quake 3 was a game where all its bugs were exploited to the utmost degree. Strafe jumping started out as a bug, but no one has cared to correct it because of the popularity it brought to ID software. Strafe Jumping is still considered to be cheating in Half-life and many patches have been developed in an attempt to ban it. For me, Quake 3 has been the game of the decade, especially because playing it on the LAN brought forth all its excellent features. It could easily count as one of the wonders of the modern world. Some of the very important traits for an online gamer - aim, co-ordination, intelligence, alertness, timing and creativity were now called into action to an extent unfathomable and a slight mistake could result in a disastrous defeat which neccessitated an additional trait - perfection.

The recent Doom3 has again created the stir that is characteristic of any ID release. Here is the concept of a story-line which unfolds as the game progresses. You are called in as a marine on a facility in Mars and then things suddenly start going wrong. People begin vanishing and monsters appear as the gates of hell are opened. This time, the creators decided to add an element of fear and this they have been successful in doing. The strange voices caught on the marine's radio, the eerie laughter, sudden appearance of new monsters, noises of faraway growls of monsters and the dark rooms could any day give the opportunity for a person with a weak-heart to rest it forever. This would not be an easy death with fears of a similar hell awaiting them. The "Hell" level is the best level in the game. The discovery of the 2 PDAs with descriptions of the monsters and the fate of the people to whom these PDAs belonged sets the stage for a really scary time of gameplay. The pounding stone in this level, the cries of tortured souls, cages with deadbodies of the monsters and flowing pipes of flesh add a bizzare atmosphere to this level. The soul-cube at the end of this level is another unique addition to the previous versions. All this has ensured that Doom3 is another masterpiece from ID Software and I shall play this game for a few more years though I have already finished it about a year ago.

Now waiting for Quake 4 and Doom 4.