Doom III Game Last Man Standing Co-Op review

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The face of the gaming industry slowly evolves, leaving behind the innovations of the past to embrace the next generation of the future. Though some games have tried to preserve it, cooperative game play has been nearly abandoned to the wind. Until now.

A purple demon is just ASKING for a Barney joke.

I'm never going to understand why cooperative game play is a dying breed.

I mean, what could be cooler? You and your closest pals fighting alongside one another, sweating blood and tears in a desperate struggle to stay alive against wave after wave of opposing forces. Not only is there a powerful sense of camaraderie here, but also the fact that a team of gun toting warriors can do a hell of a lot more damage than a single man, no matter what first person shooters the world over tell 'ya.

And really, this shouldn't be all that hard to implement, either. Game developers crank out dozens upon dozens of lengthy and engaging single player campaigns full of cool levels, destructive weaponry, and enough cubic yards of net code to fence in the United States. And with all of that together, building momentum as it grows bigger and more grandiose, why not throw in some cooperative modes? Would it really be that hard to spawn characters in multiplayer mode right into the single player campaign?

What could be cooler than experiencing that exact same awesome single player campaign, or a slightly altered variation, with your friends watching your back? Imagine racing through Ravenholm, using your gravity gun to create a barricade while your friends frantically reload their weapons, hoping in vain to stop an onslaught of zombies on the other side? Picture the incredible gun battles of F.E.A.R., with environments being torn apart in brilliant slow motion, blasting round after round into a platoon of cloned marines while your team mates cover you from behind.

Not the greatest odds I've ever faced, but...

The only thing cooler that experiencing the best moments of gaming is getting to do so with your closest friends at your side.

Yet the gaming industry, with each new game, seems to be pulling further and further away from this game type. Serious Sam had it, but when Halo got ported over to the computer, it disappeared. Sure, dozens of mods keep coming out to implement these features back into multiplayer, but few of them truly succeed at really pumping up the blood in the same way that the original creators themselves can do.

At least, until Last Man Standing hit the internet.

Last Man Standing is to Doom 3 what Sven Co-Op was to Half-Life: a rich and fulfilling new game play experience that takes a great idea, makes it fluidly playable, and blasts it back at you through a cannon. Though it isn't perfect, Last Man Standing is one of the best multiplayer experiences you can treat yourself to.

Assuming, of course, you are good enough to survive.

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Aw, but he's smiling!

While that may sound like a tough guy threat intended to make you recoil in anger, sending you off in a huff to prove just how well you can survive, thank you damn well very much, it's really a statement of fact. Last Man Standing is hard. While conventional twitch gamers should breeze through these levels with a sense of ease, those of you that have grown up on the slower paced Half-Life games might have a surprise or two in store.

Last Man Standing has a range of difficulty settings for you to play on, but unless you toggle the setting to "Pansy Ass," you are just asking for some punishment. This is a game dedicated to frantic, in-your-face game play that constantly forces you to run, shoot, dodge, and keep moving, less the forces of hell and damnation tear your arms off.

Most levels begin in a small room, sparsely decorated and devoid of the little touches of humanity that make it feel like a real place. Your health meter is full, your pistol is loaded, and you've only got one exit. So, rather than stick around in here being bored, you rush out into the next room, ready for anything, gun scanning the environment like a honeybee on speed. Here, the room is larger, maybe a big hallway, perhaps a wide room. A few doors sit on opposite ends of the room, inviting you towards them, while armor shards spin lazily in the half-light, a la Serious Sam.

Seeing as how you aren't invincible, your own mortality ticking in the back of your head, you move towards the shards. And that, to quote Jurassic Park, is when the attack comes, not from the front, but from the sides, by the two other raptors you didn't even know were there.

Probably time to upgrade guns...

Last Man Standing will start you in a match with little direction, little weaponry, and loads of enemies right around the nearest corner. It is not uncommon to begin the game and face off against an imp and three commandos within a minute of play time. You can always turn and run, but given the claustrophobic settings that Doom 3 generally sticks you in, there aren't usually many places to turn.

However, with plenty of friends at your side, this isn't a problem at all.

The number of servers out there may be limited from time to time, but the people that play this game are solid. Not since my first experiences with The Hidden: Source have I run into a community of gamers that not only know what they are doing, but play well and are fun to game alongside. Given the heavy emphasis on working together and covering one another's collective butts, this is crucial.

Also of tantamount importance is variety. As much as I would like every first person shooter to feature cooperative game play, there is only so many times you can play the same single player campaign without getting bored. Doom 3 is no exception. Luckily, the team behind Last Man Standing have taken this into consideration. This mod has dozens upon dozens of options, ranging from different maps to additional game types and even the inclusion of other mods into its collective fold.

Why is he running like Snagglepuss?

In a decision of pure brilliance, the Last Man Standing team has allowed support not only for Resurrection of Evil Co-Op, but also for the Classic Doom 3 mod as well. If neither of those thrill you, which they should, you can load up some different modes of play. Kill-Fest is your basic last man standing match, where everyone attempts to get the highest score of monster kills while remaining alive the longest, while defense tasks you with protecting a given person \ place \ thing as long as possible from wave after wave of incoming enemy forces. Both of these mods feature numerous user and team created maps to give you plenty of places to battle it out in.

While there is nothing quite like shooting your way through the forces of hell and damnation with your online buddies watching your back, some of the levels just failed to engage me. Though I've been told differently by the game creators themselves, it seems as though half of the enemies focus their efforts on the central target while completely ignoring the player. At one point, I loaded up the fan-favorite level Radio Tower, where you must defend a central radio dish from repeated waves of enemies, which plays out rather like the Fort scene in Starship Troopers.

In a scenario like this, you would think I would be scared, thrilled, in definite danger, seeing as how I was the sole thing standing between these demons and the object of their animosity. Yet the only time I ever got hit was when a stray fireball, presumably aimed towards the dish, hit me near the edge of the building I was circling. I literally stood aside for a while and watched countless imps wander past me without so much as a "Hello" and proceeded to attack the tower. Had I been so inclined, I probably could have just sat there and picked them off without fear of reprisal, since they were all so occupied.

I've since gone back and replayed it on higher difficulty modes and have found that some of the demons will go after you specifically, but it is still not uncommon to circle a level and come back to find fifteen imps or so whacking away at your target without paying you any heed. Still, this forces players to constantly be on their toes and within eyesight of the entity they are supposed to be defending, less it be annihilated behind your backs.

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Pretty big door. Wonder if you can go through it?

Many of the user created levels also suffer from slightly stilted game play. There were several occasions where I would find myself wandering around in a small room with a few catwalks, doors I couldn't enter, and a constant flood of enemies who didn't seem to so much be summoned into the room as they did just magically appear in droves next to doorways that refused to open under any circumstances. Without anywhere to run, the only sense of progression to be felt from such rounds was my constantly escalating score, which doesn't exactly inspire you to keep pushing forward, when you only have the one room to look forward to.

And really, this becomes a bit of a problem the more I played the mod. What is the lasting appeal here? While the numerous maps, game modes, and additions to the core game are nice and help to flesh this mod out far more than many I've played in the past, I spent far too many levels accumulating points with little real positive reinforcement for doing so. Sure, you can level these criticisms at most multiplayer games out there, but there needs to be something tangible for those people who are seriously kicking butt. When you play Unreal Tournament 2004, the entire arena is alerted to you "Dominating" when you at playing at your finest. Why couldn't something that simple be implemented here to make your high score feel worth the effort?

But then, that's contrary to the whole idea of twitch gaming, isn't it? It isn't grandiose adventures, tightly woven stories, and leaps of innovation that matter: its excitement and impossibly high body counts. And on this, Last Man Standing certainly delivers.

Monster mash!

As far as graphics and sound goes, Last Man Standing doesn't do anything startlingly different. The majority of the sound effects have been carried over from the base game, which keeps things familiar, though you'll have to contend with the somewhat lame sounding pistol and shotgun sounds from the original game. What is new are the music tracks, which add a nice heavy metal beat to dispense death to. And while these tracks don't have the same adrenaline quality that the Classic Doom 3 remixes do, which should reverberate through the soul of any true gamer, and they definitely enhance the mood.

Most of the same models and textures are carried over from the base game, which is both good in that it looks nice, and is disappointing in that you won’t find much variety to the environments. While a few monsters have been colored differently (a purple imp comes to mind), there doesn't seem to be much in the way of new models, minus the double barreled shotgun (for those of you not playing the Resurrection of Evil add-on pack).

Hey, dudes, where 'ya goin'?

The new levels included in the game are well done, but they lack a bit of polish and embellishment that would have gone a long way towards making them feel more tangible and real. Sure, they are serviceable for the game, but they feel like they were made with a simple design goal in mind. To refer back to the level with the communications dish, you have a valley with one open end to allow the monsters in, a building that serves as an outer wall with a gate, and a central hub with the dish. Period. The end.

Why not some clutter lying around? Or some cables snaking away out into the wastes from whence the demons come? Or a shed a little ways off? Small, practical additions that add nothing to the game play, but simply serve to makes these places feel like more than just thrown together arenas for a given game type?

But, while there are complaints to be made and things to be improved upon, you can't argue with Last Man Standing when it works.

When the enemy begins to crash its way through on all sides, forcing you and your teammates to huddle in the center of a room and open fire in all directions, you'll understand why this mod is worth your time. While cooperative game play is a dying design, Last Man Standing makes it worth your time, with a huge wealth of options to keep you busy, entertained, and hopefully, gunning right alongside your closest friends.

Pros:

• Great sense of teamwork and atmosphere


• Lots of variety and options for players to choose from


• Incorporates Classic Doom 3, Resurrection of Evil Co-Op and the normal Doom 3 campaign levels for more to play with


• Supports both multiplayer and single player

Cons:

• Somewhat uninspired level design


• Spotty A.I.