Doom³

Moby ID: 14320
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The third game of the DOOM series (now in full 3D) takes gamers through the depths of Hell, where technology and demons meet. But this time round, the game is more focused on horror elements than previous games in series.

Doom 3 is set in the year 2145, on Mars. You start as an unnamed marine soldier sent to the Red Planet, where a corporation named The Union Aerospace Corporation makes secret experiments based on ancient aliens' technology. People around the base are on the edge, & something is not right. You receive your first simple mission and when you depart, the game really kicks off.

This third major release of the Doom series is especially based on single player experience. As in most First Person Shooter games, you aim, you shoot, & you run... Enemies are zombified humans from the base or daemons straight from Hell. Doom 3 is much darker visually than previous games - you can use a flashlight in dark corridors, but you must choose between various weapons and the flashlight (the marine can't use them both in same time.)

The game has multiplayer with four game modes for four players.

Spellings

  • Doom 3 - Alternative spelling
  • 毁灭战士3 - Simplified Chinese spelling
  • 둠 3 - Korean spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

141 People (135 developers, 6 thanks) · View all

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Average score: 85% (based on 107 ratings)

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Average score: 3.7 out of 5 (based on 301 ratings with 28 reviews)

Doom is Reborn

The Good
In the history of the first person shooter genre, the one game that stands out more than any other as an icon is id Software's classic 1993 game, Doom. The game that truly defined the future of videogames, Doom was both famous and infamous for its violent action, demonic images and constant, non-stop shooting of the denizens of hell. The game's sequel, Doom II: Hell on Earth, was effectively more of an expansion pack, with new episodes that increased the monster count per-screen to levels only recently matched and beaten by games like Serious Sam or Painkiller.

Both games were well-deserving of their status as classics, and it obviously was regarded with both joy and immediate skepticism when id Software revealed that it was creating an all-new sequel. A mediocre game would never survive if it had the title "Doom".... Doom 3 ''had'' to live up to its lofty expectations while still bringing back the old-school, shoot 'em up gameplay as the original.

Just the opening of Doom 3 is like the beginning of a roller coaster, as you slowly arch your way to the peak; getting hints from everywhere that something is wrong on the UAC facility on Mars. You advance deeper and deeper down, immediately given a mission to find a scientist in the lower levels. And when you do....

All hell breaks loose. And this is when the game really kicks off.

While it might be hard for some players to believe today now, playing the original Doom back in its time was a terrifying experience, sucking you into the game's universe like no other before it. Doom 3 succeeds amazingly in bringing back this effect while retelling the original games story. While the monster count isn't anywhere near the prior games amounts, the monsters now will jump out from roofs, doors, anywhere and eventually begin teleporting in around you, killing one leading to the appearance of another. The sense of paranoia in this game is extremely well-created, as you constantly look around desperately in corners, vents and examine areas with your flashlight. A lot of this is due in no small part to the game's sound effects and graphics--- while usually I'm not really interested in cutting-edge graphics, its hard not to admit that the realism of the look in Doom 3 is a large part of the scare-factor.

The hellspawn that are going to be on the receiving end of your shotgun are all the same demons you remember from the originals, albeit reimagined for the new game. Imps, Hellknights, Pinky Demons and Lost Souls are all once again stalking the metal halls of the Mars base, the only notable absence being the Baron of Hell. The same weapons as the original games make a comeback too, from the chainsaw to the BFG. In addition to these are new favorites monsters like the Cherub, an undeniably creepy human baby with moth wings and legs, and the "Soul Cube", a new weapon which along with being fun to use becomes very important to the plot and climax.

The majority of the game is in the Aliens-esque UAC facility, which while eventually become slightly repetitive looking is extremely well-created, with background machinery and computer screens everywhere adding to the believability. Through these levels the gameplay is classic Doom, as the main goal is still the traditional "shoot everything that moves", bringing back the feel of the old Doom games in a way no ripoffs or imitations ever have. But the standout level of the game is when the player finally uses the teleporter to plummet straight down into Hell, which probably should have been saved to be the last level of the game because of the way it takes all the tension built up in the game beforehand to the boiling point.

The Bad
Doom 3 could have used several different types of levels to break up a little bit of the slight monotony that going through the UAC halls eventually caused. The few times you were outside on the Martian landscape were terrific--- that could have had potential as a level. Also, the scripted sequences of enemies jumping out at you should have stayed more like they were in the earlier sections of the game, instead of the way they spawn in from hell later on.

The redesigns of the monsters were inspired, but many of the demons were somewhat underused. The Pinky Demon in particular should have appeared more. However, the variety of enemy types does make up for this to some extent.

The double-barreled shotgun, many people's favorite weapon in Doom II, was unfortunately left out as well, but thankfully it returns in the games expansion, Resurrection of Evil.

The Bottom Line
Bringing back all the visceral action, violence and hellish imagery and creatures of the original Doom brought to life like never before, Doom 3 is a proud sequel to its lofty predecessors.

Windows · by Dr. Dude (2) · 2005

An artistic marvel that attempts the impossible, but fails gloriously

The Good
History has not always been kind to Doom 3. While it released in 2004, after a long period of delays, to critical fanfare and very impressive sales, it has since been viewed increasingly as a bit of a disappointment in comparison to its predecessors.

It's important to note, especially for folks who weren't old enough to pay attention to it at the time, that the game set out to do exactly what was in fashion for the industry at the time: graphics showcases that showed off lots of shiny real-time lighting and bump mapping and a very tight, on-rails FPS experience a la Half-Life.

The hype around Doom 3 was immense, dating all the way back to the year 2000 with John Carmack's famous .plan update which explained how id's owners had been reluctant to return to the same franchise for yet another FPS, and in return the staff had threatened to walk out if they didn't get to do another Doom game.

I loved Doom 3 back when it came out and still love it today, though I can acknowledge that pretty much all of the popular criticisms of the game are on the nose. It is a mediocre shooter and a mediocre horror game with dated graphics and gameplay mechanics that weren't strong enough to age gracefully, but man does it have some fantastic production values. Part of the allure when it came out was to just see what a Doom game could look like were it to be reimagined with the period's contemporary technology, and on that front the game excelled.

Some of the reasons for the game's drastic shifts in direction from previous entries were obviously decisions dictated by technology concerns. The real-time stencil shadows offered by the engine looked harsh and sharp, so the setting was dark and metallic to lend well to this effect. The engine was not capable of drawing convincing-looking outdoor scenes or areas with natural lighting, so the game barely features any. Most machines of the time couldn't render a scene with more than five or six actors at a time, so surprise, that's what you get. And of course, rendering scenes with wide open spaces and lots of detail was hard on the hardware too, so you're in cramped corridors full of tight corners and doors that automatically close after a few seconds.

The call to take the game's design in a horror-oriented direction would've been the natural one to make. The original games were commonly thought of as being rather scary in their day, even if they seem quaint by modern standards. But in the id Software board room, there were other concerns.

"Well it's a Doom game, so it's gotta have the demons and shotguns! And the chainsaw too! Gotta have lots of shooty shooty stuff 'cause that's what Doom is known for!" Tim Willits says, upping the irons. "Heavy metal and pentagrams! SLAYER!"

"But it's gotta be dark and scary and tense because that's where the technology works best, mmm!" Carmack retorts, his vocal tic aggravated by the lively debate.

Todd Hollenshead leans in to look at the two, brows furrowed, his luscious locks dangling at the sides of his head. "So which way do we go? Big, stupid and fun, or dark, serious and scary?”

"BOTH!" The room erupts into riotous cheering. "Both at the same time!!!”

After watching the opening cutscene, you're given some time to trudge around in a safe place with no enemy threats, filling the shoes of your nameless protagonist (we can call him Doomguy, or maybe we should call him Kevin, since his visage in this game is modelled after artist and id Software co-owner Kevin Cloud's visage, not to mention it's Kevin's arms holding the guns in the original games, and it's Christmas time as I write this so Home Alone has been on TV like fifteen times already this month). Doom 3's increased focus on horror and a slowed-down pace lends itself well to establishing a fantastic sense of place in the environments.

There's no 'use' key, but instead the game offers rich interactive screens. When you approach one, your gun drops away and your crosshair becomes a mouse cursor, that you can click on the screen's elements with. Interactive terminals in FPS games are nothing new, but the implementation of this mechanic in Doom 3 is incredibly slick, maybe the best I've seen in a shooter. Your view doesn't lock into the screen or take you to a menu or anything, you can just walk up to it and start using it just like any touch screen in the real world.

Things like that serve as small elements of what makes up the game’s greatest strength, its presentation. Even in 2019, Doom 3 looks fantastic, and it’s not because it’s got bump mapping and stencil shadows, it’s because the game is a lovingly crafted work of art. The environments are lovingly brought to life with details and movement. Machines run through complex procedures, carrying glowing tubes of blue liquid from place to place. Pistons pound up and down, consisting of complicated arrays of individual moving parts. Often, nearby monitors and terminals update to reflect the cycles of the machinery around them. These landmarks aren’t static meshes that see repeated use, either – they’re handmade, one-offs that you’ll see once and probably never again. Lights flicker, spark and move about from place to place, making the shadows dance along the walls and floors. Computer terminals are crammed with scrolling text, animated graphs and charts, many of which are interactive even if they don’t actually affect anything in the game world.

This isn’t even covering what it looks like when you get to hell, either (sorry, spoiler warning: this is a Doom game, you go to hell). The representation of hell in Doom 3 is fantastic, filled to the brim not just with fire, brimstone, skulls and pentagrams, but also with some truly weird architecture and lots of cool scripted events.

Other games had beat Doom 3 to the market with some of its banner engine features (Deus Ex Invisible War, Far Cry and even fan projects like Tenebrae for Quake already had the per-pixel lighting implemented) but Doom 3 is seemingly built from beginning to end to make full use of its engine’s features in an artistic capacity. Even if modern engines show Doom 3 up with soft shadows and physically based rendering and vastly increased poly counts and texture sizes, Doom 3 still manages to hold its own based on the quality of the artwork alone.

It’s also worthy to note that compared to other titles at the time that ran on bleeding-edge technology, Doom 3’s engine is solid and stable. Aforementioned games like Deus Ex IW and Thief 3 are janky, having significant trouble even running on a modern computer. Not the case with Doom 3. Not only does it run on today’s hardware, you will find performance is consistent, maintaining a good 60FPS rate on most mid-range hardware at native resolutions. It might take a bit of fiddling with the console to get your desired resolution (use CTRL-ALT-~ to bring up the console, set r_mode to –1, then use the r_customheight, r_customwidth and r_aspectratio commands to fix this). For people with a monitor supporting higher refresh rates, it’s important to note that the Doom 3 engine’s tick rate is locked to 60Hz. It will not render more than 60 frames per second, no matter how much power you throw at it, which is disappointing for folks like me who run a 144Hz screen and care about the difference. This also results in some slight audio quirks like how rapid fire guns like the machine gun and plasma gun seem to ‘hiccup’ and miss as they fire, and the player’s footsteps sounding like the Doomguy is occasionally tripping over his own feet. It’s ironic that this had to be done when the Carmack’s reasoning was to ostensibly prevent exploits and cheating in multiplayer games, when Doom 3’s multiplayer is a clear afterthought with very few features. The BFG Edition goes a good way to alleviate this unfortunate quirk by allowing you to double the tick rate to 120Hz.

For a first-time player, the introductory levels are a gripping experience, as you see things go quickly from bad to worse while the demonic invasion takes over. Stuff is blowing up, people are dying or being possessed left and right, imps are crawling out of the freaking walls and your radio is screeching with screams, men yelling orders and gunfire. You heft your shotgun and open a door to come face to face with an imp. He screeches a dissonant shriek at you, rearing up to pounce and take your head off. It’s great. The game throws almost its entire bag of horror tricks at you in the first couple of hours, and I found it genuinely scary at a few points... to start with, that is. More on that later.

The story is hardly any more developed than the original game but the dialogue is well written and well-acted, making use of a wide cast of veteran voice actors to record the various NPCs you interact with (for like, five seconds, before you have to proceed without them or they get killed) and the various audio journals you listen to.

The quality of the level designs throughout is consistently good, and the game maintains a deftly paced, hypnotic rhythm of exploration and combat. Level layouts are less linear than later FPS games, still coming from the boomer shooter school of design, though they are more streamlined than in previous id titles. Like Half-Life, the game knows not to keep you doing the same thing for too long, alternating between corridor crawls, spooky bits, heavy combat, set pieces and the odd breather moment.

The Bad
Doom 3 has a problem being comfortable with itself and deciding what it wants to be, though, and that’s what makes its gameplay the weakest of any instalment in the Doom series.

With the technological conceits and weaknesses that it is clearly designed around, id had the opportunity to incorporate some survival horror sensibilities into the game. And they did, too, but it’s ultimately the sense that they had to make it an action game too, that holds it back. Doom 3’s horror is only skin deep and doesn’t go into the gameplay mechanics, save for two features: the flashlight and the weapon reloading mechanics. Every other mechanic is standard FPS fare centred around combat, and the combat is never particularly great. Sorry guys. It’s certainly serviceable and balanced, but it’s far from thrilling.

Why? Well, it’s too easy most of the time, for one. Ammo and health are extremely plentiful, if you just remember to look around behind things. Demons may often lie in wait behind some of the pillars, pipes and crates you may pass, but even more often it’s caches of health, ammo and armour that lurk in the dark. And those storage lockers that you have to read emails and listen to audio logs to get codes to? Just ignore them if you like, aside from getting the odd weapon a bit earlier, they almost never have anything that you can’t easily get by without. If you’re playing the BFG Edition re-release of the game, the need to manage your ammo reserves goes from trivial to non-existent, by way of it doubling the ammo received per pickup, and adding even more ammo pickups to each level. Resident Evil, this ain’t. If you're looking for a game offering frantic moments where your blood is pumping while you sprint down the hallways trying to get away from a relentless pursuer after feeling the dread-inducing dry click of your empty gun, keep on looking.

Because throwing too many enemies on screen would be a performance concern, you’re extremely unlikely to ever be in danger of getting overwhelmed. You’ll round a corner. A wall opens up or a teleport happens and a monster comes in. You shoot him dead and immediately turn around to blow away the guy behind you, because it’s been three hours and you KNOW by now that every single bloody time a monster spawns in front of you, they place one behind you as well. Teleporting in is by far the most common way that enemies are introduced to the scene, increasingly so in later levels, and teleport are telegraphed by about almost two seconds of sound and visual cues before they actually appear. When they do, they also are frozen in place for a bit under a second, unable to attack you. Imps, maggots and wraiths, three of the most common enemy types, all come in this way and can be dealt with using the same tactic: make a beeline for where they’re about to spawn in, stick your shotgun in their mouth and pull blow them away before they can even activate. You keep expecting the game will finally catch on to this and maybe try a different trick, but it never does. It just happens more frequently, and occasionally with bigger bad guys as you go, like cacos and revenants. But the strategy never changes and it never fails. It’s boring.

By the way, that’s not to mention the cheap ambushes the game occasionally throws at you. That imp behind the door I mentioned earlier? Every fifth door has an imp behind it, waiting to do that same pounce. You can’t get out of the way, you can’t interrupt him with a non-lethal hit and you can’t back up quickly enough to get out of the range of his leap. Most of the time you’ll just have to take the hit if he doesn’t go down with your first shot. But most of us FPS veterans know to take doors on a narrow angle to divide and conquer the threats behind it... so you stack up on the side, nudge the door enough to open it and... the imp pounces on cue, and warps around the side of the doorway, in brazen defiance of the laws of physics, to hit you in the face anyway! Come on, man!

The weapons feel chronically underpowered, even though they’re actually not. Almost all of the way through the game you’ll be sticking with your melee weapon, the shotgun. Yes, I know what you’re thinking, don’t try and correct me, Doom 3’s shotgun is absolutely a melee weapon, being completely ineffective from any distance outside of three feet, but utterly devastating when used at point blank. I understand that this ludicrous degree of spread is to create situations where other guns are more appropriate, but this method of doing so is not practical and doesn’t even work. Almost all of the game’s combat is close quarters, with most rooms not more than a few metres in length or height, so the shotgun is almost always the superior choice, even with its insane spread. Why not just make it fire way slower, so it’s no good for groups? Make shotgun shells a little harder to come by, so you’re not reaching for it with every encounter? Yes, I know I’m spending a whole paragraph moaning about a shotgun, but when it’s your standby gun for pretty much the whole game, these problems with it tend to compound.

The other guns are better-balanced, each having a particular situation where they can come into their own, but all share the problem of having some incredibly weak audio-visual feedback. They sound like nerf guns, with the pistol, shotgun, machinegun and plasma gun being particularly problematic in this area. Enemies and the environment alike do not react much to being shot by them. I’m surprised that such a core part of the game, the shooting, sounds and so pithy and flaccid when the sound design, in every other respect, is great.

Okay, now let’s talk about the flashlight. Yes, the infamous flashlight mechanic doesn’t make sense and doesn’t add tension. That said, it’s not as bad as people tend to make out – instances where it is genuinely dark enough that you just can’t see at all without the flashlight are extremely rare, and there are actually a few moments where it is played to good effect, where you are constantly being attacked in pitch darkness, with a moving source of light that you must stick close by and defend so that you can proceed without having to put your gun away and expose yourself to attack.

I do believe that having a gun-mounted light with perhaps a more limited cone of light would be a better compromise, and those scenes designed around the sparse lighting could be mitigated by simply knocking your light out (there is already one sequence that turns your flashlight off anyway).

The BFG re-release of the game makes this situation worse by not only providing you with a shoulder-mounted lamp, but it also assigns an ambient base light value to levels, making it so there are almost NO dark areas whatsoever. For a game which tries to add tension by the idea of threats lurking in the shadows, this is a crippling blow to the game’s already hit-and-miss efforts at frightening you.

The other ‘horror’ mechanic I mentioned is probably a total accident: you cannot interrupt weapon reloads, save for the shotgun. If your gun runs dry in the middle of a fight and starts reloading, you have to sit and wait for it to finish while you are getting pounded on instead of being able to switch to another. Mercifully, the ‘auto-reload’ feature for weapons can be disabled, so you can pick your moments to top up your guns. With it working this way, I actually like the way it feeds into the rhythm of the game – after a firefight or before entering a new room, you get into a habit of checking your weapons to make sure they all have full clips before proceeding.

Aside from these two techniques, there really aren’t any horror mechanics to speak of. If you want a first person experience that’s actually designed to scare you, go play Amnesia or Alien Isolation – Doom 3’s horror is, for the most part, a cosmetic affair. You’ll walk down a hallway and a loud CLANG rings out and a panel of the wall flies off. You’ll walk down another hallway and a dead body will drop from the ceiling and a ghostly voice will say “Help me”. You’ll walk crawl through a vent and you’ll see a shadow flicker past the wall. And of course, there’s plenty of monsters hiding in closets that are seemingly designed to do nothing but store monsters in them – you’ll be walking along and the wall opens up suddenly, and yet another spring-loaded imp comes flying out at you. Of these examples, only the latter one is a moment that puts you in any actual danger, and even these are no more than minor threats at best.

While these tactics certainly worked on me at first, the game very quickly gets to the bottom of its bag of horror tricks and doesn’t find any new ways to unnerve you. Once you realise the scary spooky stuff poses no physical threat to you, it ceases to be scary. It will simply keep resorting to the same tricks, becoming less creepy with each use. By the latter end of the campaign, the game has more-or-less given up on the horror angle and devolved to a pure FPS with some spooky atmospheric trappings. By consequence of you retaining your arsenal from the old games, by the end you’re armed to the teeth with rocket launchers, plasma guns and the obligatory BFG, as well as the soul cube that can heal you (and largely supplants the game’s use of health pickups). The only possible way this can go is to favour the combat over the horror, and when the combat is solid but not particularly exciting or tense, that is how Doom 3 becomes as well.

And finally, there’s just one more missed opportunity for making a scary game: character development and story. Doom 3, with its barebones narrative (if well-written), features no clever twists to provoke any sense of shock, disgust or surprise in you. It features more-or-less maybe four main characters. There’s Sarge, your guy who gives you objectives over the radio, Swann, a guy who is always a few steps in front of you, Betruger, the bad guy who laughs a lot, and yourself, a silent protagonist with no history or personality.

The audio logs fare no better, with every PDA filled with recordings and emails of people talking about how the UAC has bad work culture and Mars is very spooky and they have a bad feeling about this or if Bill Lumberg took their stapler again they’d burn down the base. Remember System Shock 2’s audio logs? Do you remember following the stories of Diego, with his submission to the temptations of evil and subsequent redemption? Polito, your ally with a seemingly split personality and packing one of the best plot twists in video gaming history? Bronson, the security chief who chose to stand up for her morals even if she died for it? The lovers Tommy and Rebecca? Doom 3 features none of this kind of characterisation of anybody, despite having more content present in it and a campaign of similar length. It’s a total wasted opportunity, devoting its energies to world building in a world that doesn’t have much that can’t already be explained to you visually.

Sarge is perhaps the one person who you might feel some rapport with, if only for being your only company during most of the game (and even then, only as a voice-over), but it’s not like anybody in the game has a character arc or anything. With developed characters, you can feel empathy and attachment to them, and when they’re thrust into a dangerous situation where they could die at any moment, your fear for their safety can be as real and tense as for your own. Rather tragically, in Doom 3, you won’t ever care who lives or dies and you’ll pretty much never be looking out for anybody besides number one.

The Bottom Line
I find myself holding a weird sense of cognitive dissonance about Doom 3, because while there’s plenty about it to criticise, I still very much enjoy playing it, and have come back to it every year since 2005 when I first got it. Its problems can generally be traced to its attempt to execute on two mutually exclusive goals: to maintain the fast-paced action and irreverent tone of the old Doom games and to create a dark, engaging and deep horror experience. The efforts of each is undercut by the other, a problem that Monolith would also struggle with a year later with their game FEAR, and garnering similar results (though FEAR perhaps fared a bit better by being a new IP with no baggage, and keeping its combat and horror largely compartmentalised).

Id Software’s final parting gift has been with the open nature of the game engine and assets – Doom 3’s mod scene is surprisingly still rich and active, boasting several mods that hint at what it could’ve been if it had gone for a full horror direction (and the other way). I particularly enjoyed ‘Overthinked Doom 3’, which while in need of significant polish, shakes off Doom’s action roots and ratchets up the tension by making increasing the rarity of ammo and the lethality of enemy attacks, while also making weapon handling require increased concentration.

The rebellious spirit of id still lives on in this title, although it certainly isn’t what it used to be. With the legacy of the Doom brand looming large over it, Doom 3 is in many ways afraid to go all the way in any direction and that works to its detriment. Its spectacular 2016 follow-up serves as a perfect counterpoint when id decided to fully embrace the spirit of the old Doom games without any compromise or shame.

While I did touch on this here and there in this review, I cannot recommend the BFG re-release of Doom 3 from 2012. In its misguided attempts to reconfigure Doom 3 into an action game, it strips the horror elements to the point of total ineffectiveness and removes all the tension from the combat by making an already-too-easy game even easier.

Doom 3 is not particularly important in the pantheon of first-person shooters, it’s certainly far from id’s best game and yet I love it all the same. The A+ presentation, lovingly hand-crafted world and solid core gameplay elevate Doom 3 above its confused identity and fundamentally compromised design goals. There are no rough edges here – everything in the execution is quality and polish, all the way, and it’s absolutely still worth your time in 2020, even if it’s just for a single run.

Windows · by Ian McLean (21) · 2019

Hell ain't a bad place to be

The Good
Ahhh... Doom is back among us. After years of alpha leaks, mouth-watering promo videos and assorted demos the game that change the face of pc gaming returns once again to set the standard. And believe it or not, it didn't do a bad job at all!

The importance of Doom as a videogame landmark cannot be underestimated even by the most jaded old "grandpas" in the scene. Thus it made perfect sense for id to ride its golden pony once more as a way to promote their new graphic technology by way of a remake (or "reimagining" as Tim Burton would say) of the greatest game ever (sic.). Once again you are placed in the shoes of the ever present Space Marine (tm) who has to fight his way through a demon-infested colony in Mars fighting for your life through many dark corridors and hellish landscapes and once again the technological boundaries have been pushed further.

If the original Doom became famous for being the first game to really bring home the sci-fi tension and suspense of the Alien films, Doom 3 will be remembered as the game that took that feeling and made it actual physical reality (in your monitor of course). There's no overstating just how well the graphics in the game work. I saw most of the demos and was determined not to let them impress me by the time I got my hands on the game but as soon as I found myself exploring the dark corners of the station I forgot all about the pixel-shading effects, motion blurring, specular shading, bump-mapping and stuff like that. Because id pulled me once again in their dark sci-fi world this time thanks to a level of graphic realism never before seen on a videogame. The living quality of the environments is simply amazing. Not only do you get the gritty feel of being on a dark space colony, but also you get the feel that the place is entirely "man-made" as it were due to the fact that very few places are made of "just" textured walls and instead feature all sorts of modeled pipes, panels, wires and moving gizmos. The detail poured in the level design is simply amazing and coupled with a superb photographic direction that maximizes the engine's ability to dramatically light scenes (complete with true 0-light darkness) and an amazing sound design filled with eerie sci-fi cues and sfx that take full advantage of surround setups, the end result is an experience like no other. I vividly recall hooking the computer to my 29" TV, shutting off the lights and cranking my stereo with 4 friends the night I first installed the game and blabbing nonstop about how cool everything was until we got to the infamous "mirror scare"... boy you could hear a pin drop after that let me tell you!

And that's before you start meeting the nice denizens of hell and make a trip there yourself. Fans of horror games will be happy to know despite the imposing brimstone and lava intro to hell, that the game has let go somewhat of it's heavy-metal band inspired inferno and now favors a more Clive Barkerish design, which means more brutally dismembered corpses, ritualistic stuff and trans-dimensional horrors a-la Lovecraft. By far Doom 3 will remain in my mind as one of the most impressive depictions of hell ever, if only for the visceral effect of it all. As for the monsters themselves they are all reworkings of the same baddies featured in the original games only with the same Barker-inspired updates. For the most part all of the creatures gained with the changes (particularly the Imp, who looks far more menacing, and has gained an Alien-like agility) although the revenant looks far too "plastic-made" for me. One of the most impressive creatures in the game however, is an original creation whose name escapes me, but which looks like a cross between a moth and human baby... yes, a cute human baby. One of the most deliciously shocking and disturbing moments in the game is when you first hear the crying moans of a baby approach you and you later see his chubby face and bright eyes coming for you... with no legs...!

Anyway, moving from the visual design of things for a bit we have the gameplay. Let's see, where you betting on it being a straight up, simpleminded shooter? Well good for you! Here's your cookie boy.

Yes Doom 3 is a straight-to-the-point action-heavy visceral shooter just like the original games, but that's not to say that it hasn't picked up a few new tricks itself. While the gameplay revolves around shooting baddies and collecting keys the game plays as a unified whole (without any "levels") and has you following a distinct set of objectives and even asks you to make a choice a couple of times along the way. The game also uses darkness and poor visibility to augment it's emotional punch and believe me that it works. Few things bring such a primal fear to your heart as not knowing what's out there in the darkness, and the limitation of not being able to hold both the flashlight and a weapon at the same time while irritating at first makes sense in the context of the game and adds to the thrill factor.

Doom 3 also makes heavy use of scripted events to increase the survival-horrorish feel. Interaction with the gameworld is, as expected, paper-thin but it's there. I remember cringing in fear of another "Quake" when word got out that Carmack had decided to do away with the "use" key yet the end result is far more classy and innovative than I could have imagined. Basically you interact with computers, panels, etc. with your mouse, the way it works so charmingly simple and well-thought that it's a wonder nobody thought of it earlier. You just walk up to the screen and once you enter the correct "use" distance you loose control of your mouselook abilities in favor of controlling a pointer on the screen. You interact with the thing as in your basic flash-made web interfaces and once you got what you wanted you just walk away! Simply beautiful! I can't wait for other games to start including interfaces like this.

All of these nice features also help the game from a storytelling point of view. Sure, all of us well-adjusted individuals understand that we really don't need a story to enjoy Doom, but there's no denying that it enhances the experience quite a bit. So yeah boys and girls, there's a story here! Yeah! Can you believe it? It's no masterpiece of literary fiction as you might have guessed, but it's still pretty entertaining fare and par for the course as far as fps storytelling goes. id also made the right choice of forgetting about some of it's design mantras and adopted some ideas from previous games like Half-Life and System Shock. With a long-intro in which you can chat with npcs, explore your surroundings before all hell (literally) breaks loose, a few surviving npcs and scripted events that move the plot along as well as clues and logs which you can save in your PDA and which expand the gameworld and help build the atmosphere as in SysShock.

The Bad
There is no point arguing the finer technical flaws in the game because they take us to a level of anal retentiveness reserved only for film CG talks. The truth of the matter is that the game is technically brilliant and a landmark of 3d gaming. Trolls everywhere in forums make it a point to pit D3's engine against HL2's Source engine but while it's true that the later can push more polys (Doom 3's models when closely inspected are revealed as quite blocky) the overall shading quality in D3 far surpasses any shortcomings in its modeling. If there is one real shortcoming with the engine is that it really requires a monster system to play with all its bells and whistles. I can play Riddick: EFBB and HL2 at max detail and 1024x768 but D3 still chugs like a bastard if I attempt to go over 800x600. Physics are adequate for the game, without the overkill that is playing through Half-Life 2 and with just enough to satisfy the average player (with such hallmarks as bodies falling down and realistically piling over each other). The AI has taken some flak from some people and I agree that it's pretty predictable at times, but quite frankly I can understand hellbound monsters acting like you know... uhm... monsters, instead of spec-ops operatives!

If there is one flaw in the game that really annoyed me was the heavy-handed use of scripted events. It seems id really loved those moments in Half-Life, System Shock and similar fps where you walk down a corridor and as soon as you step on the correct place a monster falls down from the ceiling instead of just being there. However instead of carefully planning each encounter and set-piece as in those games, they filled the maps with dozens of cheap scares which work in the same manner: walk down a corridor, hear a door opening behind you and wham! See a monster emerging from a secret room! Ha-haaa, got me there id! The first 100 times at least, then it just becomes boring not to mention incredibly stupid as you start wondering just what the hell was the monster doing waiting for you to pass by while stuck in a closet? There are some nice, original scares but they get downplayed by the cheap-o "Peekaboo!!" scares that literally haunt the entire game, and that's a real shame.

As a minor bitching note, I could have used the double-barreled shotgun and the Mars surface areas are extremely well done (those are actual rocks I tell you!!) it's a shame they are so short.

Oh and yeah, it doesn't exactly "evolve" the genre into any direction and if you want multiplayer action D3's flimsy 4-player deathmatch mode doesn't exactly cut the mustard. D3 is, for what it's worth, a singleplayer game.

The Bottom Line
Intellectual bitching aside (duuuh!! It's just a shooter, there's no character development and you just kill things!), techie-geek bitching aside (duuuh!! I already saw stencil shadows on "X" and engine "Y" gives better framerates with comparable looks!) there's no denying that Doom 3 is one hell of an interesting game.

Yes, when you look at it closely it's a game that takes incredible technology and adds to it some already explored (and better realized, really) design ideas to try to rejuvenate its stagnant gameplay, but does that matter if the end result is one of the most intense and thrilling experiences in recent memory? We all knew Doom's shortcomings even before we played it, and the fact that even after that it manages to be a fun experience to play is proof positive that it's not even close to being a bad game.

If you have the computer and nerves to play it (I myself avoided playing the game for more than 30-40 minutes straight due to the intensity of it all) you just have to give Doom 3 a try. It's not the second coming or anything, but it's one hell of a good ride and really, that's everything Doom has always been about.

Windows · by Zovni (10504) · 2005

[ View all 28 player reviews ]

Trivia

1001 Video Games

DOOM³ appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Board Game

This game was loosely adapted into 2004's DOOM: The Boardgame.

Budget

The budget for this game was US$15 million.

Cut Content

Original concepts for the game included: * Longer outdoor excursions that got scrapped mostly due to engine considerations. Their removal being quoted as the final nail in the coffin for the inclusion of a railgun (the weapon from Quake was originally going to be in the game as the long-range/sniper weapon). * More female personnel in Phobos, including a never confirmed female receptionist and an apparently complete topless dead female modeled by Kenneth Scott that was to be found on an autopsy table later in the game. * A flamethrower was at one point considered, and the PDA was going to include a map feature like in the original DOOM games. * Finally, (and most infamously) the game's initial concept called for a use key like in the original, but this feature was removed by head honcho John Carmack who called the feature "just a gimmick".

German Release

In Germany, the game was released unlocalized and uncut, both which are very unusual.

Language

The name of the doctor responsible for the disaster is Dr. Malcolm Betruger. "Betrug" is the German word for fraud or deceit, which is exactly what the doctor does.

Narrative

The Doomguy speaks only one word in the entire game. That word is "God..." as he sees the Cyberdemon. Incidentally, this is the first time the main character in a DOOM game talks.

Novels

As of 2009, two novels based on the game have been released, Doom³: Worlds on Fire, and Doom³: Maelstrom. Both were written by author Matthew J. Costello, who helped writing the story and dialog on DOOM³ and its expansion pack, DOOM³: Resurrection of Evil.

References: General

  • In a certain section of the Delta Complex, the player comes across a whole area of employee offices. The names on the door are names of actual id Software employees.
  • On Site 3 and the Excavation Dig Site, there are four stone tables which the archaeologists had found. One of these is showing the ancient hero in a battle against the forces of hell. This ancient hero is actually the Marine from the original DOOM, and the stone tablet looks almost exactly like the front cover of the original US DOS DOOM box. Other examples of hidden images in the pentagram are the UAC (Union Aerospace Corporation) logo and a Moon symbol (probably referring to the moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, but it is not sure whether this really is a reference)
  • At one point in the game, the player comes across a nearly-dead soldier named E. Webb. This is most likely a reference to id Software monkey Eric Webb.
  • At certain points within the game, magazines with various covers can be discovered. One of them, called Booty actually sports a picture of Hunter's (a female character from Quake III: Arena) lovely backside.
  • The game's intro (text and voice-over) and story bare an uncanny resemblance to Resident Evil: The Movie.
  • Among the many names the game uses for owners of the PDF pads are Seamus Blake and Ben Wolfe. Besides being laborers who have turned into the undead, these people are also renowned contemporary jazz musicians.
  • The logo of the Super Turbo Turkey Puncher 3 mini-game is a parody on the Street Fighter Alpha 3 logo.

References: Internet

  • id Software registered www.ua-corp.com, making it look like the homepage of the Union Aerospace Corporation.
  • The player will receive e-mails on their PDA that advertise for Martianbuddy (the greatest company ever conceived!). It is a jab at the annoying Bonzibuddy. When visiting martianbuddy.com, the player will receive the cabinet code 0508, which can be used prior to the end of Alpha Labs to unlock the chaingun and at the end of Delta Labs 2 to unlock the BFG9000.
  • The player will get a message on their PDA that refers to the famous 419 Nigerian scams. The sender, John Okonkwo, is not a random name, just read this.

Secrets

  • Near the end of the game, there is a clickable brick on the wall bearing the id Software logo. Click it and a wall opens. Inside, a secret PDA can be found, with messages from the id employees thanking everyone for playing the game.
  • The character who supplies the protagonist with the PDA turns back to typing after doing so. If the player takes a look on the man's screen, they can see him typing an e-mail about the main character being rude for watching over his shoulder.
  • In the very first levels you can see UAC employees that can not be reached normally. When using the noclip cheat code and going through the walls to reach the unreachable areas, it can be seen that all of these employees share the name Joe.
  • Try one of the old cheat codes from the other DOOM games; in addition to the obvious "unknown command" reply, the message "your memory serves you well" will also be shown.

Super Turbo Turkey Puncher 3

After arriving in Mars City, go to the kitchen. There the arcade game Super Turbo Turkey Puncher 3 can be played. The game looks like a previous DOOM game, except for the turkey of course. And so it plays (playing the Marine while he is in Berserk mode). After having punched enough turkeys and reaching a score of 25,000, the player receives an e-mail via their PDA saying: "Your parents can rest easier knowing they have raised another shining example of humanity. Due to the incredible amount of time you wasted punching poor defenseless turkeys, your vacation time has been docked two days."

Technology

  • The game refuses to run not only if CD/DVD emulation software is installed on your computer (CloneCD, Alcohol), but certain burning software as well (Nero).
  • According to the promotional video G4 History of Doom when DOOM³ was first demonstrated at the E3 Expo in 2002 the E3 Judges had to offer people to play a part of the game or to play the game themselves in order to show that the game being demonstrated on the screen was in fact real. People were that impressed by the graphics.

User Created Content

  • While most new FPS games have outrageous minimum system requirements, especially for video cards (at least 128MB, Texture & Lightning required), the Doom III engine is, despite the hefty overall requirements, quite scalable. Some users have developed a small patch that makes the game compatible with the Voodoo 2 card, among others in the Voodoo line. These are some of the very first 3D cards and they often do not carry more than 12MB. The game does not look better than Quake II with such setup, but it still is a fine piece of programming.
  • Within approximately 1 day of release, there was already a game modification which added a light to the pistol. In the game itself, players must swap between the flashlight and a gun.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • March 2005 (Issue #249) – Best Sound of the Year
  • GameSpy
    • 2004 – Special Achievement in Graphics Award (together with Far Cry)
    • 2005 – #5 Xbox Game of the Year
    • 2012 – #7 Top PC Gaming Intro
  • Interfaith Center of Corporate Responsibility
    • 2004 - one of the Top 10 Worst Violent Video Games of 2004
  • Golden Joystick Awards
    • 2004 - PC Game of the Year
    • 2004 - Ultimate Game of the Year
  • PC Powerplay (Germany)
    • Issue 03/2005 - #4 Biggest Disappointment

Information also contributed by AHO, bobthewookiee, Hamish Wilson, Karthik KANE, lasttoblame, lvnvgmb, M4R14N0 Maw, piltdown man, Pseudo_Intellectual, Sciere, Silverblade, Steve ., Tiago Jacques, Xoleras, Zack Green and Zovni.

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Related Sites +

  • A Guide for Beginners
    IMG's introduction to playing Doom 3.
  • Doom 3
    Official website
  • Doom 3
    Official game page on id Software's website
  • Doom 3 HQ
    A well-rounded Doom 3 fansite, with custom levels, game info and a forum.
  • Doom 3 Portal
    Comprehensive fansite for all things Doom 3 from fan art and fiction to a mod index.
  • Doom 3 on Win98
    A quick and easy to follow tutorial on running Doom 3 on Windows 98
  • Doom Wiki
    A Wiki site for the Doom series.
  • Doomworld
    Website with classic Doom and Doom 3 news and forums.
  • Hints for Doom 3
    Question and answer type solution guide gives you nudges in the right direction before revealing the final solutions.
  • Lord FlatHead's Homepage
    Hasn't been updated since Doom 3's release, but contains a lot of interesting articles about the technology behind Doom 3 and some speculation.
  • Once More into the Inferno
    An Apple Games article about the Mac version of DOOM³ (February, 2005).
  • PlanetDoom
    GameSpy's Doom Website

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 14320
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Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Lexicon Dominus.

Macintosh added by Corn Popper. Xbox added by Sciere. Linux added by Iggi.

Additional contributors: James1, Unicorn Lynx, Lord FlatHead, Jeanne, Michael Dionne, Guy Chapman, Sciere, Jack Lightbeard, Silverblade, Maw, xy xy, Zeppin, Cantillon, lee jun ho, Patrick Bregger, Titan10, FatherJack.

Game added August 9, 2004. Last modified March 6, 2024.