Games

Big jumps in game technology usually occur when a new generation of consoles or video cards comes out, but the current crop of video games is basically last generation’s games with a slight graphic upgrade. Remember the difference between the SNES and the Playstation when it came out? There was a huge jump where all of a sudden 2D had become a genre like black-and-white photography instead of a technology, and 3D games found their niche. But that kind of jump sort of passed this wave of consoles over. Sure, there’s been a few groundbreaking games, specifically GTA3, but GTA3 was groundbreaking because of the gameplay and not necessarily the graphics (although the graphics were pretty damn cool). You could even argue that GTA3 is basically Zelda 64 with gangsters and hookers. So what’s next? Doom 3 is what’s next, and in a really big way. The first screenshots have surfaced, along with some video footage, and everyone is literally peeing their pants. Doom 3 stole the show at E3 this summer, taking home five of the most prestigious awards: Best of Show, Best PC Game, Best Action Game, Special Commendation for Sound, and Special Commendation for Graphics. Not bad considering id, a company consisting of 17 people, was going up against the best that Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft had to offer. id is promising the most technologically advanced game ever, and from the looks of it they are going to deliver. It’s also going to scare you shitless. Add to that that its predecessor, Quake 3, became an industry standard for 3D game technology. The only problem is nobody in the world is going to have the hardware to play this game. It’s simply too much to handle. I did some rough calculations and estimated that on my PC (equipped with a 64mb ATI Radeon 7200 and a P3 900 Mhz) I’ll be able to play Doom 3 with all the effects turned off, at a very low resolution of 320 x 240. To put that in perspective, I can play Quake 3 at 1600 x 1200, and most games on the PS2 run at at least 800 x 600. Most people’s computers will be obsolete the day Doom 3 comes out. All the new iMacs with the sweet little flat screen won’t be able to handle this next wave of games. The GeForce 2 cards they come with won’t be able to handle Doom 3. They just barely handle games now that run the Quake 3 engine. The same can be said for most of the new PCs coming out. Even the totally fucking cool Sony Vaio PCV-RX750 won’t be able to play Doom 3 at decent resolutions due to its mediocre video card. So what’s a thrill-seeker to do? Well, one option is to lay down 400 bucks or more on a high-end GeForce 4, or one of the new ATI cards and cross your fingers. Doom 3 comes out sometime next year, so who knows what hardware will be out by then? Then there’s the consoles. Will they be able to handle this game? It looks like the X-Box will hopefully be able to play it half decently, but the X-Box is gross. The Gamecube might be able to handle it, but who has a Gamecube? Mostly kids, which aren’t exactly id’s key demographic. The PS2, on the other hand — the most widely adopted console of the big three — probably won’t be able to handle it graphics-wise. And that sucks. It seems like the next big wave of video game technology might pass the current generation of consoles by. It’s too bad, since once id licenses out the Doom 3 engine to other game developers it will likely become the de facto standard as a game engine, in the same way Quake 3 has become the developers’ engine of choice. In a way, it’s like 1999 all over again, when Quake 3 was released. The consoles that were out at the time (N64 and Playstation) didn’t have a hope of handling the game, and it wasn’t until the Dreamcast came out that console owners got a taste of the dope shit. Watered-down dope shit, but dope shit all the same. Only the 1337 few could really appreciate the magnitude of what was going on. My prediction is that PC owners who like to stay on top of the games situation will have no choice but to lay down some serious bucks and upgrade. People with the new iMacs will be bummed and the huge majority of gamers, those that have Playstation 2s, will probably not get a taste of the action, at least until the next wave of consoles comes out. Inventing a Playstation 3 seems to be the only solution.

We’re at the point where software is moving way faster than hardware and we’re all going broke trying to keep up. Like a heroin dealer that keeps raising his price, we junkies are going to reach a breaking point where we just might kick the habit for good.

Classic Game : The History of Doom 1991 - Wolfenstein 3D
id software and John Carmack release Wolfenstein, considered by many to be the granddaddy of the first-person shooter genre of video games. 1993 - Doom
On December 10, 1993, id software unleashed Doom and games were never the same again. Doom was like the Pac-Man of action games, and took the engine that powered Wolfenstein to the next level. It’s been estimated that over 15 million copies of Doom have been downloaded off the Net. 1994 - Doom 2
Better graphics, more complex levels, and multiplayer death matches. This was to Doom what Champion Edition was to Street Fighter, or Ms. Pac-Man was to Pac-Man. One look at that first level with the misty mountain in the background and most people were hooked. Doom 2 also set the trend for id to start licensing out their technology as an engine for other games. 1996 - Quake
Finally a true 3D action game. While the Doom games were technically “2 1/2 D,” Quake was truly 3D and had full Internet multiplayer support. Online gaming got the shove it needed to really break out, and the single-player experience was really fucking cool. The creature and level design were second to none, and the Trent Reznor soundtrack added to the overall creepy experience. 1997 - Quake 2
Quake 2 drastically improved the multiplayer aspect, allowing up to 32 players to compete online. Support for OpenGL 3D cards, 16 bit textures, and real-time lighting effects essentially defined what a 3D game should look like. Many games used the Quake 2 engine, most notably Valve’s classic Half Life. This game was so the shit that people were going out and buying new systems just to play it, a trend that Doom 3 designers are literally banking on. 1999 - Quake 3
A pure online game. Quake 3 didn’t really have a single-player mode, as it was designed as a multiplayer death match game. People are still playing Quake 3 three years after its release as it is still one of the most fast-paced addictive first-person shooters on the market. Many game developers have used the Quake 3 engine as the basis for their games, most recently Max Payne, Jedi Outcast, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and Allied Assault. Many video card manufacturers still use Quake 3 as a benchmark for performance and framerate because it kicks ass. The question is: How much ass can an asskicker kick if an asskicker runs out of cash?