Battleangel

I’ve seen this floating around the net for a week or so. Can’t help being a little curious. According to the Suprnova Forums the story goes something like this:

DOOM III BETA 2
—————

Packaged By : MULDERLAND
Release Date : 2/11/2004
File Name : doom3beta2.exe

VERSION HISTORY
===============
- 8/15/2002 : DOOM III ALPHA 0.0.2
Doom III was leaked from the E3 by ATI. There was many bugs, and only 3 maps.
- 11/8/2003 : DOOM III BETA 1
We released this first beta, including patchs given by John Carmack. Nice Setup.
- 2/11/2004 : DOOM III BETA 2
This version contains all patchs, the DoomConfig, DoomEditor, many new maps, a nice setup and NVidia Drivers 41.09 for GeForce Users (to solve the problem of the grey screen).

Checking it out now … there are two archives available over at Suprnova. One being an unpacked version for those that think *.tar is a city in Bulgaria

Hopefully this can give some hints about the final game (which is due for this summer). As for leaking betas I don’t have a problem with this. And it shouldn’t be a problem for the developers either. Unless the game sucks of course, in which case a leaked beta will burst the hype bubble and provide prospective customers with an instant cold shower. In my experience, beta games are rarely so much off target that they will discredit the final product. Bad software is bad software even in beta and vice versa.

Edit: So basically it’s the same old alpha demo with a couple of new maps and some unnamed patches. Was it worth the download? No. Is the game promising? Yes!

List Of All Maps :

E3 2002 Map 1 (e3/e3_1.map)
E3 2002 Map 2 (e3/e3_2.map)
E3 2002 Map 3 (e3/e3_3.map)
DOOMED Map 1 (Doomed/Doomed_1.map)
DOOMED Map 2 (Doomed/Doomed_2.map)
DOOMED Map 3 (Doomed/Doomed_3.map)
Bathroom (fred/e3bathroom5.map)
Bigbox (johnc/test_bigbox.map)
Credits (johnc/credits.map)
Empty (empty.map)
Intro (e3/intro.map)
Multimap (e3/multimap.map)
Onan (onan/onan.map)
Ouch3 (ouch3.map)

So, yes, the release stinks of 14 year old haxor attitude. But the game itself, even if there isn’t much in there, is breathtaking. There is something about the feel that just tells me that this game will be good. And as so many before me have pointed out, it can scare the crap out of anyone. Really. I guess fans of horror games like Resident Evil think they have seen it already; the haunting sound effects, the creepy and dark hallways and the zombies coming out of the mist to eat you alive. But unlike RE, this is a real first person shooter game. And it features some stuff so horrid that there is no comparison. Zombies are only cannon fodder in an army of Imps and Hell Knights.
The only drawback is that I’m more of a Starsiege Tribes / Planetside kind of person. I’ve had my share of cramped corridors. Hopefully Doom3 will cover both.
As for playability on my system it seems to run pretty well considering the beta state. 1024×768 will be achievable, but just barely. Maybe. It is pointless to speculate.