Doom³

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.

The Good
Doom 3 has great sound. Even though there is no music, the environmental sounds are of good quality and positioning is excellent. If I had to name one area where the game succeeded that would be sound. It's not without its problems, though. The weapon sounds are widely agreed to be crappily weak and need to be replaced by one of the mod packs. The scary noises are quite pointless really, especially in a room where you just killed everyone.

Speaking of graphics, there actually is one great aspect - the modelling and animation of the monsters. It's probably good - probably because you don't have a chance to see them - monsters are either in the darkness or disappear after their deaths.

A nice feature is the interactive displays - I was happy to finally see decent quality video and interfaces on the ingame displays. Unfortunately, it is not used to its full potential by id.

The Bad
Once the initial aural excitement is over, the problems rear their ugly heads. And there are lots of them.

First, graphics in Doom 3 are overrated. The technologies are not really revolutionary - polibump was done before, physics was done before and even stencil shadows were done before, even in budget titles (Secret Service from Activision). Perhaps, when the game is run on X800 or another top-of-the line card the engine would shine, but on everything else it looks like crap. No, the picture is somewhat nice, but only before you consider the quality of other games such as Far Cry and Painkiller. Those games managed to create extremely beautiful and detailed environments while still running at acceptable framerates at high quality settings and in hi-res. Another fault of Doom 3 is that it uses very low-res textures for no apparent reason. The sad thing is that 95% of what Doom 3 shows us could have been reproduced on CryEngine or any other recent game engine much better. The unified lighting is great, but the same scary atmosphere could have been done with traditional lightmaps and individual character shadows.

This leads us to the second problem. Doom 3 atmosphere is not a result of good lighting, but lack thereof. Levels are very poorly lit, leading to many jokes about the most powerful corporation in the world failing to install adequate lighting on its base. You also can't use the flashlight with your weapons, adding to both scariness and annoyance, and leading to another joke about duct tape missing on Mars.

The gameplay is very boring after some time. Yes, it's scary, but in a very bad sense, like when playing an old console platform arcade where you need to repeatedly execute pixel-precise jumps or risk falling to lava and starting over the level. Monsters are constantly teleporting in around you and jumping from secret rooms. Coupled with the pitch black darkness that makes your heart beat faster, but after a few hours you start questioning whether it's worth it and whether it's actually fun.

All levels are completely linear and your missions are too. Very often you don't really understand why you are going somewhere and need to "use interactive controls" (press buttons) to do seemingly random things, because the level designers failed to introduce you to the problem first (such as having you close a valve before you realise there is a leak somewhere). The world is completely non-interactive and there are almost no objects that have physics enabled. All other modern FPS games, including Max Payne 2, Far Cry and Painkiller (presumably Half-Life 2 too) used physics much more extensively and creatively.

There is no AI in the game to speak of. The monsters are completely stupid and rely on spawning behind you and quickly jumping on you. They do not walk or do anything else on their own - you come only to find them waiting for the scripted event to start. The NPCs are almost non existent and the only thing they usually do is die right after you find them. This is extremely annoying and you quickly stop caring about "the rest of the team", despite constant radio updates. Alien vs. Predator 2 did it much much much better.

There is some story in Doom 3, but it's quite boring and the designers didn't really make an effort to make you care about it (unlike Half-Life, for example). Because of this, they had to lure you into reading the e-mails and listening to audio logs by inserting there codes unlocking ammo cabinets. Quite stupid, actually. Speaking about ammo, another annoying practice is throwing some ammo beside your path and scripting an enemy appearance when you pick the ammo up. Stupid and utterly predictable, because the element of surprise is taken away after the first 30 minutes or so.

The Bottom Line
Get this game if you have the latest video-card and need to justify the money spent on it. Get this game if everyone around you plays it and you want to fit in. Get this game if you are just curious and want to see for yourself how bad/good it is (but you better rent, download or copy it, to not be disappointed later). But don't get it expecting to see a masterpiece. It's quite average, actually.

The Good
Doom 3 is basically a remake of the original with added spice. Id software took a classic game and tried to basically fit it in with modern shooters. What they did was add some good small time innovations. For e.g. You can walk into a usable screen or elevator and your crosshair turns into a mouse pointer where you can interact like u were using a computer. Other additions include taking the basic plot of the first game and expanding it by adding more depth to story not forgetting some key characters. A PDA which you use to check your missions and audio/video logs you pick up.

The story is quite simple. You're sent to Mars to work with the UAC, a very advance technological company which deals with weapons research to teleportation. On your first mission, things go bad and hell invades the base possessing most on-board.

The game's major selling point was it's hyped up graphics engine. Doom 3 would have been the best looking game that year (2004) but it was surprised by long time friend Half Life 2 and new comers Painkiller and Far Cry.

But when it came to lighting Doom 3 takes the crown here. Even other aspects like Character modeling and animation were done well. The animation of the monsters are well done from the creeping walk of the imps to the run cycle of the Pinky demon. The game heavily relies on it's dark lighting reflecting shadows all over the place, it creates and interesting approach to environment design.

As for the levels they're not close to being excellent but passable as good. There are some good details here and there especially when it comes to creating a dark and creepy environment. This can be seen in the Hell level and also in the levels at the latter half of the game. You tend to travel on the surface of Mars to reach the other facilities. You don't get to see much though since you need to run across before your oxygen runs out.

The Bad
This is where the review really starts.

Doom 3 as a game overall is terrible. It faces a multiple personality disorder. They've taken run and gun and mixed it with something out of a Silent Hill game. I'm facing dozens of monsters and I'm not really in a mood to open up a PDA and listen to a freaking audio log for key-codes to open a cabinet for ammo.

My point is it's very hard to mix these 2 formulas together. Doom is not Deus Ex nor is it System Shock, it's Doom. It's about blowing up monsters and making it fun doing so.

The game first and foremost follows the new Id Software rule of making everything bulky and macho looking. The weapons look like toy guns and are a snooze-fest except for the chainsaw and Plasma gun. To top things off the sound effects of the guns are weak, so weak that they have mods to replace the sounds. As for balance? Well let's say you'll never find use for the pistol after an hour of playing.

Another ridiculous idea is your light source is a flashlight. Now Doom 3 is extremely dark most of the time. In fact you don't need to play the game to even know that, it's like the symbolic figure of Doom 3.

Now the problem with the flashlight is not because you need to put down your weapon or that you can use your left hand to hold it up. It's just that it does not make any sense at all with the plot. You're in one of the most advanced facilities in the world. They manufacture teleports and advanced laser weaponry and they can't even make a gun with a attached flashlight on it? Did I mention the UAC have set up a facility on Mars where humans can reside that's to produced oxygen etc?

You can even use the Flashlight as a weapon, yeah bonk a monster on the head with it. But as a trained marine I would be embarrassed to do something like that even with half the base dead and not watching.

Getting away from that, you collect PDAs which contain peoples emails and audio logs. You need to listen to them to get a grip on whats going on as well as cabinet key-codes which normally contain health and ammo. You'll need to stay in one place to listen to these as the next room will spawn a dozen monsters and you'd be distracted.

It also lets you know you're objective which in the early half of the game was find bravo team. And when you reach them they're dead. From there it's get from point A to point B. It may say “Activate backup power supply” But if you're smart enough you'll know it translates to get from point A to B and hit a switch over there.

The main aspect, that is the action is terribly dull and boring, leave out a few moments. You're faced with a lot of monsters in a very cramped up environment. After finish them off you hear that sound “Ashawashabasha” and boom more of them spawns. There is a huge array of monsters but 80% of the game is you fighting Imps.

Speaking of which most of the monsters lack the scary attributes they did as 2d sprites in the first 2 games. Imps look and sound like aliens instead of demons. The only good revamps are the Pinky demon and Hell Knights. In fact these 2 were the only monsters which made me use the backpedal key, coz they actually were intimidating. Some in fact remain quite true to their original appearances. These being Revenant, Mancubus and my Doom 2 favorite “The Archville”. Sadly i can't believe the 2d sprite had more personality than this incarnation in Doom 3. I remember the Archville had a creepy as f**k sound when he spotted you. And when he's searching for you he gave out this sinister soft laughter only to have one of the most epic attack animations ever. All this is as usual not present here, he walks slowly summons Imps instead of raising the dead and shoots a small firewall. There are some new creatures like Cherubs, Trites and Ticks. None really interesting. Boss fights were terribly boring except for Vagary which had some interesting way of attacking you. This idea was probably suggested by someone not in the development team like the Game tester as Id Software don't have creative brains anymore. Look at the last boss, the ever famous Cyberdemon. I almost fell of my chair laughing at him. What happened to that Baptomet like massive creature which had a torn, morbid stomach? This guy is just huge and has some strange hunch like walk with some backpack kinda thing on him. Seriously Id what were you guys thinking?

There's also some “plot” in the story which involves a weapon created by the ancestors of Mars known as the SoulCube. This special weapon is a terrible addition here, you kill 5 monsters and you can fire it to drain the health from a monster and give it to you. Berserk power up makes it's way back and it's honestly represented quite well.

Finally the main reason for failure is that even as a horror game Doom 3 has absolutely no scare value leaving out the first 15 minutes of the game which is actually interesting. Throughout the game you're face with mainly cheap scares. Pick up gun and a monster jumps out, pick up ammo same thing. You then tend to wonder if it's really worth picking up anything in the game. To make things worst, the sound effects are abysmal, the scary sounds end up cheesy. Good example is that laughter which is supposed to be sinister but ends up sounding like someone coughing with his mouth closed into a mic. Room turns red in color some weird screaming sounds or laughter and once everything goes back to normal some idiotic Imps spawn. Trust me you get tired of these things. Getting to the point, sound is an important aspect of Horror games. Also Doom 3 lacks those depressive and energetic action tunes which were present in Doom and Doom 2, no music here just ambient sounds. This was obviously done because of the modernization of the game.

The game tries to act cute by throwing in 1 or 2 puzzles....and I'll just leave it till there.

The Bottom Line
So what to make of Doom 3, A game I've been anticipating for years? Well it takes 2 formulas that need a lot of good planning in order to work well together and butcher both of them quite well. This can come off as either a fancy tech demo or a really bad attempt at action horror. The game doesn't keep things interesting, boring shooting mechanics, overdone spawning of enemies and trying to fit the whole adventure style game-play of reading and listening to logs which really didn't work well with the games overdose of action. It's really boring to stay still in one room until the freaking audio stops playing. Doom 3 also has some good innovative features like using screens and consoles real-time, clever use of lighting. The lighting makes you forget that they've used low resolution textures almost everywhere. Not to forget the fluid and quite authentic looking character animations.

But the problem is the game is nothing more than a run and gun trying too hard to look like a deep shooter. I wasn't play Doom the game about destroying the army of hell in the isolated Mars base, I felt i was playing Doom: The not so scary alien shooter with NPC. Id software stick to engines, let other people handle creativity.