Doom³

The Good
2004 was, at first glance, a fantastic year for the first-person shooter genre. Spring gave us the unlooked-for treat of Far Cry, summer brought the release of the long-anticipated DOOM³, and Valve finally completed their work on Half-Life 2 by the winter. While all these titles made significant advances in graphical rendering, they represented more of a technological advancement than an evolution in gameplay. But first, let's look at what's right about DOOM³.

The first thing that stands out is the atmosphere. It is dark, but the lighting is dynamic and very realistic. In fact, superior lighting is the biggest advantage that DOOM³ has over its main rival, Half-Life 2. Now, John Carmack, the brains behind id's game engines, has said that in order for DOOM³ to run properly, the basic color scheme of the gameworld needed to be black, black, and more black. And this is the dominant feature of DOOM³ -- the levels are dark, claustrophobic, and poorly-lit. After trapezing around on bright sunlit tropical islands in Far Cry, the dark, tight corridors of DOOM³ are more than a little disturbing. But the DOOM series is all about fear, dread, and horror, so all this gloom is both appropriate and immersive. But, if you like things bright and cheery, this is not the game for you.

Moving on: the gameplay is solid, though it lacks any innovation. The run-and-gun philosophy behind the prior DOOM games has been tempered somewhat. Instead of blasting your way through a dozen demons, DOOM³ requires a more cerebral approach. You'll need to move forward slowly, patiently, listening for every sound, checking in every corner, creating a mental schematic in your head in case you need to turn heel and run away from some horrific cybernetic demon-dog.

The bosses are impressive but for some reason lack the personality of their counterparts in DOOM. I really hated that Cyberdemon and Spider Mastermind in classic DOOM, but the bosses here are just too menacing and overwhelming to give me a chance to loathe them. I just frantically pumped round after round into them, loaded time after time after getting wasted, and eventually polished them off. Still, they are quite memorable. Regrettably, though, the final boss is more of an RPG encounter than a real challenge. You can only hurt it with one weapon, the SoulCube, which is homing. So you just strafe around in circles, keeping your distance from various yard trash enemies, and the boss (a different incarnation of the Cyberdemon) will never hit you with his rockets. Your homing SoulCube takes four or five deployments to kill the big meanie, and that's it, game over.

The Bad
The plot of DOOM³ is a bit muddled and uninspired. I get the feeling that id was far more concerned with creating a graphical masterpiece than a dramatic one. Still, three years after Bungie released the compelling and story-driven Halo, it would have been nice if id had aspired to create a more coherent and sensible storyline. Perhaps they did aspire to this: but the bottom-line is that they failed. The demons of Hell don't appear to have any reason or purpose to their existence: they are just mean and ferocious and aren't driven by an intelligent force like the Spider Mastermind in the original DOOM.

Furthermore, the chief antagonist of DOOM³, Dr. Betruger, appears to be such a wicked and hateful human being that he'll sacrifice the entire human race in his quest for power. I find that a bit unrealistic -- nobody is that evil.

The Bottom Line
DOOM³ is a graphical triumph, but it offers little in the way of gameplay innovation. Still, if it ain't broke don't fix it, right? DOOM and its sequel were big hits, so I don't blame id for keeping it simple and just focusing on their technology.

The Good
Doom 3 is a spectacle (I know it's DOOM3 but that's not even English, let alone proper English) . It puts itself forward as the benchmark of its time for graphics, sound, design and presentation. No many games have the gloss and shine of Doom 3 (what with all those spectacular lighting and shadow effects). As audacious as it is, it succeeds where its ambitious lies. It really does look and sound great. As you progress through the levels and admiring at how cool it is, you'll be inspired to continue the drudgery of looking at a black screen for the next cool thing to amaze you eyeballs.

Humanity is respented by the three major races (I didn't see any Hispanics, Jews or Arabs though; maybe they're all getting along on the love planet, Venus), nice to see the future really is a bowl of neopolitan ice cream--though when they become zombies there becomes no difference. The interface with in-game computers is innovative, gets you back into the action quick.

This is definitely a love letter to the first Doom. This act of revisionism will cause us nostalgia-prone 80's babies to live over once again that initial "whiz-bang"-gasm that got most of us into gaming in the first place. For the most part it succeeds in replacing the first Doom in areas like graphics and presentation; however, revisionism is always a tricky thing...

The Bad
Doom 3 is a spectacle, just like the way your aging mom dresses twenty years her junior and tries to flirt with your friends. It's difficult to look away from a car accident, especially when it's the most amazing car accident at which your gawking eyes can look.

Doom 3 simply didn't have to happen. I think I heard a story somewhere about how those id(iot) guys approached senior management after completing Quake IV and dropping a ultimatum along the lines of, "We want to make Doom 3 or else we all quit!" Well, the world or even the world of videogames is not better for this.

The original Doom is a cool game, an influential one that many will remember fondly upon. The operative word here is "remember". I myself remember going over to a friends house to play it into the wee hours of the morning, scared to death at those (at the time) cutting edge graphics. Cool factor MAX 10 vector five.

But you can't go back. What is called "Doom 3" is really Doom 1.5; it's just an updated version that is less than the sum of the first one's parts. When it's the exact same thing done all over again and not the third in the trilogy (not much of a trilogy either, wasn't Doom 2 like an expansion pack idea?) you have nothing new to say. So it becomes 15 hours of gameplay of nothing.

I will clearly say that I like the first Doom much more than this one. Who cares if you can look up and down? Who cares if you can jump? Who cares if you have the best graphics in the world? The first one played so much better than this one. The two crucial gameplay elements to the first one are missing here: puzzles and being in mortal fear of your life.

It's rather sad: there aren't any puzzles of note. This is one brainless shooter that offers you no choices, really. In actuality you're quite simular to the zombies: there's no thinking. Most sad of all is the fact that id designed such a marvelous interface with which to interact with everything; you can hang onto the mouse without breaking up the action. Honestly, there's no point to all this worthless reading of emails and messing about with PDF's.. what a scam. Please don't dress up your aging mom in sheep's clothing.

The wonderment of the first Doom is the realization that there are new places to explore, you just have to be smart (or diligent) enough to find them. You see where that imp is sniping you from that balcony? You can get there... you just have to figure it out. This idea of having secret areas puts in an adventure element that has you enjoying looking around the level and not just looking to flip a switch and advance.

Doom 3 is not a scary game. It might have been back in 1990, but this is the po-mo world that we live in; "Scream" the movie pointed this out to the masses so we can't turn a blind eye to this. Nothing is scary here. When you play through a game where it is dark all the time, this effect of fear is lost. You would get scared in the first Doom when the lights turned off because the lights were on in the first place! No contrast, no effect.

The use of scripted events are very lame. When there is a darkened hallway in front of you, your first instinct is, "hmm, looks like an ambush, better get out my shotgun," and your instincts are always correct. Something will always jump at you from the darkness. Now I know everyone is a genius, but the reason why you know is because id is simply too predicable. This game is exactly the same from start to finish.

There's nothing wrong with being influenced, but shouldn't you game companies try to hide it a little bit, or even try to have different influences? Aliens was a great movie, so great that I'm watching it every time a play a contemporary videogame. (but as unicorn b lynx pointed out, at least the computer screens aren't green). This game is exactly like Halflife, exact that Halflife has the enviable position of coming out about 10 years earlier (speaking of which, yet another game with many influences that doesn't try to hide it--but which also made it everyone's grandmother's favourite game).

By the way, if this is the future and people have money and the ability to build on Mars, why is it so ugly? This is the main thing I think about as I'm squinting at the screen; I try to imagine the place with the lights on and people walking around, but I can't imagine that people in the future share the same design sensabilities as modern Chinese. It looks cool for us "game tourist" who are visiting this world, but it just isn't real.

Making Doom 3 is making a statement that the first Doom never existed, that by updating this game, Doom is finally the game it is deserving to be through use of modern technology. But worse of all, more so than being brainless, is being heartless. Doom 3 has no soul. Besides it being cool, there's nothing to like about it. You don't identity with anything in the game, so you never get past it's superficiality.

In the original Doom you see the marine's face in the HUD, and it worsens to a bloody pulp as you get beat up or grins maniacally when you pick up a chainsaw. No, you might not be this nameless guy, but he's like you. He bleeds when hit by demonic fireballs and likes his weapons pick-ups to be more and more powerful. What's there in this game? He's just some guy, a Gordon Freeman stand-in; you never find out why he does all of this stuff.

This game takes some effort to explain some things but not others. I might understand how a nixup might lead a shipment of chainsaws to Mars, but why can't you put a flashlight on a gun? Why doesn't this guy just go home after awhile? Why is he compelled to fight the Cyberdemon? Who are the ghostly (female) voices in the game? Don't people know when a stockpile of weapons is amassed that one day those weapons will be ineviably used? What happens to this guy in the end? Because our hero doesn't talk, you don't know what he thinks about anything but even sadder is that you just don't care.

The Bottom Line
Doom 3 (or "Dooom" as the Romans would say) is bloated sign of our bloated times. This game happily supercedes presentation and spectacle above gameplay and substance.

The id that made Doom was a bunch of talented upstart rockstar hooligans who dared to mess with the rules.
The id that made Doom 3 is a group of bloated unimaginative millionaires who just want to keep their tenative position as the king of FPS's. It draws exactly the same paralells as Saturday Night Live; once a daring and funny show (remember the "Not Ready for Primetime Players"?) it's now the vehicle of choice where movie and music stars plug their latest movie or CD by reading off a teleprompter. SNL is a 90 minute commercial that stopped being funny twenty years ago.

Most telling is that this game is just like Quake IV. There are some thematic changes (like going to big outside settings and use of group combat) but you still just go and kill things in a splendid way. You're still a space marine who has to endure level after level of the ugliest space stations designed after the first Star Wars trilogy. It's funny, since the demise of the Star Trek franchise space stations have been butt ugly.

I think the bottom line is that Doom 3 is a punishing game that challenges the player to be as macho as the game is but never rewards the player. Doom 3 is the shallowest and longest puddle in videogames

The Good
Even in 2009, Doom 3 still is visually impressive. There are a lot of great shadow and texture effects that make for a great and often scary atmosphere. The game does a good job of making metal surfaces and fleshy surfaces look quite real. There is a good variety of weapons to blow demons back to hell with. Doom 3 will provide you with some new types of monsters to kill as the game progresses so you never get bored and will have to develop new strategies to fight. Often something would jump out of the shadows and scare me and I would be swearing out loud. That might sound like a bad thing but it was fun in the end. There is much more health and ammo in this game than you will likely need, giving it an almost arcade like feel.

The Bad
There were a few things that I did not find so hot about Doom 3:

• Eventually you get tired of the enemies popping out from hidden rooms that make no sense to be realistically.

• Your character moves very slowly and you have a limited amount of stamina for running.

• There was no native widescreen support. I had to edit the games system files manually.

• You can not wield a flashlight and weapon at the same time... And some rooms have you in complete darkness.
  
  The Bottom Line
  Having purchased Doom 3 as part of the ID software Super Pack on Steam, I would say it was worth every penny. ( The package also includes the expansion to Doom 3, all the older Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein 3D Games, and a lot of other games). 5 Years later this game still looks great and was a blast to play. At times it might have been a little TOO scary, but i took my courage pills and finished it. I would have liked some Co-op multiplayer but I hear that it is only in the Xbox version. Overall, its a great shooter and lots of fun.