I recently learned that Neil Manke, famed designer of the mods USS Darkstar and the They Hunger series of zombie-slaying mods for the original Half Life, is at work on a new mod for Source called They Hunger: Lost Souls. There are some screens up, but to be honest they don’t look that different from the Ravenholm sequence in Half-Life 2. One thing I remember about They Hunger is the difficulty – like the original Resident Evil, you’d be screaming at yourself for wasting bullets while zombies continue to shamble towards you. It was also clear that Manke spent a lot of time developing a tangible feeling of dread behind his well-designed maps. In a Q&A following the new mod’s official announcement, Manke assures gamers that this isn’t a continuation of the trilogy, but a brand new game that takes advantage of the unique gameplay aspects that have become available by using the Source engine. It will likely be offered as a paid product through Steam, adding to the growing number of independently developed modifications for Half Life 2.

I saw the trailer for Doom a couple weeks ago and I cringed. This wasn’t going to be pretty. I read the reviews as they rolled in after its release on Friday, which were more or less a bloodbath.

When I first heard that a movie was being made based on Doom, I thought it was some kind of industry joke. I figured that Hollywood would tack on the subtitle “Knee Deep in the Dead” and call it a day, letting fans wait a decade before the project fell into the overflowing pit of development hell. Then I saw that The Rock would be starring, which brought the movie into the realm of frightening possibility – it’s not like the guy has a reputable career to maintain. You can look forward to him starring in John Woo’s rendition of Spy Hunter in 2006.

Doom is a first person shooter that has no real story; the player is simply asked to single-handedly dispatch a horde of Hell-spawned demons that have overrun a base on Mars. This provides very little framework for a film in the traditional sense; naturally, the filmmakers have to fill in 95% of the movie with a manufactured plot to push the action forward. Which is why many were afraid this movie would have about as much to do with the original game as Super Mario Brothers did with its source material.

Unfortunately, when a producer sees a culturally resonant property like Doom they get all excited and want to shoehorn in as many references as possible that end up alienating the casual viewers as much as they annoy the ones that actually “get it” in the first place.

Getting back to creative liberties with the plot. There is talk of mapping the human genome on a distant science facility. A very timely bit of research, considering this was actually done last year. There are the expected character archetypes and accompanying clever nicknames for the soldiers in the team that are to take on the evil demons. There is a 15 minute “FPS” sequence that lets audiences experience the video game…without playing it. I think there is a scientist named “Dr. Carmack”. Was Doom simply intended to be pieces of fan service strung together as proof that they can create a film based on our beloved PC game?

The most important part of a “nod” to fans is subtlety. It’s key if you want to maintain credibility. You want the hardcore to feel special, because they’ll appreciate the effort you put into hiding it for them. Some of my favorite examples of this include the scene in X-Men 2 where Mystique is on a computer that shows references a few X-Men that aren’t in the films, and hints at some storylines from the comics. Or in Spider Man, where one of Peter Parker’s professors, missing an arm, is identifiable as the Lizard (and we learn he is in fact Curt Connors in Spider Man 2). Nobody makes the viewer process these kinds of things to get to the next part of the film – they’re in there to establish substance in the film’s world, not define it.

All the makers of Doom had to do was watch Aliens and they would get a pretty good idea about how to do it right. Why not copy this proven formula instead of falling back on a poorly written screenplay full of well-worn cliches that obviously discredit the entire film? Doom should have been the next great science fiction action movie. All the elements were there – no one said it had to be deep or harbor some overcomplicated storyline.

I’m not against movies being made based on games – I just want to see them done right. There’s always potential for great storytelling, as long as the game provides a solid foundation for a capable screenwriter to build upon. Take Alone in the Dark, for example. While its cartoonish graphics would never achieve the intended effect compared with modern entries in the horror genre, it provided a suitably creepy atmosphere for an adventure game at the time. It could have been a good movie had it been handled properly. Instead Uwe Boll – a man insistent on cashing in on video games as Hollywood’s great untapped resource – completely decimated this opportunity, and is contributing to the stigma of video game movies being instant failures.

Video games as a cultural force are still being absorbed by modern day society, so to see that movies based on popular games are being made at all is a good indication of its acceptance as a worthwhile undertaking. As the game industry matures, perhaps we’ll start to see them being taken more seriously as they are translated into other forms. Then maybe we’ll be given something worth our time, instead of the hastily constructed, throwaway films that simply act as a painful reminder of the big-budget development process for the games these movies are based on.

throw the walls into the fireplace