Doom³

The Good
When id software released the original Doom, it soon caught the attention of gamers for its frenetic gameplay and great graphics. Rumour has it that some people bought computers just to play it. Call me crazy, but Doom struck me as being way overhyped, its immense popularity more due to a clever marketing plan by id than merit on the game’s part. Its brain-dead, million-kills-a-minute gameplay and a “story” that you could write on the back of a postage stamp might not have impressed me, but Doom’s still-large fanbase must have convinced id that doing a third game in the series would be worthwhile. So, after four years in development, we find ourselves looking at Doom 3.

The game is a remake of the original Doom. Just as a recap, you’re a crack space marine in the 22nd century, who has been sent to Mars with a rapid response unit to help protect a research station there. The research station is tampering with the very fabric of space and time, and a rift between our world and somewhere else has opened. Soon, monsters are pouring through the portal, and and the station is utterly decimated. All of your buddies are killed (and turned into zombies…we must not forget that), and it’s up to you to stop the tide of hellspawn before it spreads to earth.

On all levels, the game is graphically stunning. Surpassing even Far Cry in this department, Doom 3’s unfalteringly dark, claustrophobic enviroments are a treat to look at. Blood-splattered walls and eery dripping pipes crank the mood up considerably. Both humans and monsters (you’ll see far, far more of the latter category) are rendered well and look almost real. The game also has a good physics engine, you’re able to push stuff and throw it around the room. And don’t let anyone tell you that you need a top-of-the-line graphics card to play. I was able to play quite satisfactorily with a Rosewill Radeon 256MB card on the highest resolution.

The level of player interaction is superb, especially for a shooter as generic as Doom 3. You have a thing called a PDA on which you can receive voice mail and instructions. The PDAs of slain personnel can also be viewed for more information on the backdrop story. There’s a good deal of black humour in many of the PDAs, which have messages from employers pompously asserting how “immune to attack” the research station is, and how they are ignoring the deaths of workers near the portal to hell. Some PDA messages are irrelevant but funny, such as spam advertising for online RPGs and sexual adventures. Talk about satire.

The Bad
Doom’s graphics might be cutting-edge, but its gameplay is at least eight years out of date. Doom is reminiscent of the early days of the FPS genre, where no game passed its beta testing stage without the required quota of blood and gore, gameplay consisted of running around shooting heaps of enemies, and the “story” was a paragraph somewhere in the manual. Doom fans would probably say that id is trying to recreate the feel of classic Doom. Doom haters would probably say that the game’s simplicity can be chalked up to laziness on the part of id. Actually, I think that it’s a bit of both.

On one hand, it’s refreshing just to play a run and gun shooter without having stuff like a story impede you. On the other hand, it stands at variance with the whole atmosphere id has tried to weave into the game. It is hard maintain a scary claustrophobic aura and a chillingly realistic setting when the player spends most of his/her time shooting at tomato-headed monsters.

Doom 3’s story is IMMENSELY unsatisfying. Not that id has ever placed much priority on a game’s plot, but this time around it’s different. Id has obviously tried to create an interesting story, tried but failed miserably. At least the original Doom had no pretensions about the experience it meant to deliver, but Doom 3 starts off with cleverly-plotted cutscenes, an ominous atmosphere, and a number of interesting developments that leave the player wanting more. But as the game progresses, the game turns into a generic kill-‘em-all shooter and the plot is left largely undeveloped. It’s as if id intended to do a story-based game, but halfway through they lost interest in the idea and just turned Doom 3 into a mindless monster fest.

Critics are hailing Doom 3 as “a masterpiece of horror” and “one of the scariest games ever.” Humbug.

Doom 3 relies heavily upon the “BOO! Scared ya!” kind of thrill tactics that have been done to death is countless Resident Evil clones. Sure, you might be shocked the first two or three times a pink, jelly-like monster lunges at you from out of the shadows, but shocked is all you’ll be. The trouble is, there are so many monsters in Doom 3 that you spend most of your time pumping iron into them and hoping you don’t run out of ammo. It becomes extremely easy to predict where monsters will next strike. “Okay, see that extra clip lying over there? I bet that if I go to pick it up the door over there will burst open and a zillion monsters will attack me.” The monsters themselves look so downright absurd that they elicit laughter more than fear.

It’s things like this that spoil the atmosphere id has so painstaking added to the game. And for a game so bent upon realism, id apparently hasn’t done their homework. Come on! You’re a crack soldier in the 22nd century for Heaven’s sake! How come you’ve got such primitive armour? Shouldn’t you at least have a helmet? How come the marines have brought chainsaws to Mars? Why can’t you hold a flashlight and a gun at the same time?

Multiplayer mode was clearly added only as an afterthought. It supports four players (by comparison, it is fast becoming industry standard for 26 and even 32 player support in mid-range FPS titles), and while several fan-made mods hope to fix this, the game out of the box definitely is definitely not going to please Quake III fans.

The Bottom Line
Dare I say it, but Doom 3 is but another continuation of id’s trend of placing visuals ahead of playability. Once the wow factor wears off, it is actually a pretty mindless and generic shooter with not a lot of content.

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.

The Good
Doom 3 starts out well, I have to say. You just can't help not to notice the technical brilliance such as the millions of little details in graphics, great animation and particularly the impressive audio design. I recommend everyone to play this game alone in a dark room with headphones. The calm, action-free opening reminds me of better games such as Half-Life 2 and Escape from Butcher Bay, and even in the beginning, you still get the feeling that something will go down. The game did manage to scare me in some parts and the pacing is somewhat good, with new gameplay elements introduced little by little.

The Bad
But it's just not worth all the hype. Though it's definitely longer than the average fps, most of it is incredibly repetitive action in narrow, dark corridors. Super-detailed graphics and cool lighting effects aside, the game looks rather bland, even Hell seems like a somewhat boring place to be. Okay, demons, flying skulls, fire, nothing we haven't seen before. The gunplay feels monotonous due to extremely underpowered weapons - there are mods to fix this, but to me, that hardly made the game worth of a replay for me. While monsters in the original Doom swarmed in huge numbers, now they come just a few at a time at maximum.

The original Doom invented the gimmick of turning off the lights while enemies creeped at you. Back then, that freaked me out - now, it frustrates me, as Doom 3's flashlight can't be wielded at the same time as a weapon, leading to many jokes. Fortunately, a mod has been made to fix this, too. Speaking of the horror elements, Doom 3 just overuses its few gimmicks: darkness and monsters jumping at you from closets or appearing behind you. What scared you once will just bore you in the end. Even the creepy voices you hear are just looped and you just eventually phase them out.

The single player experience just didn't seem worth the money, not to mention the effort of getting the game to run back then. Even the final boss fight was lame. The story is just a rehash of the original, and while it's good that they kept the forgettable storyline on the background, the fact that you have to browse through logs and stuff to find out what happened seems old-fashioned. This isn't System Shock, guys.

The Bottom Line
A mediocre shooter that's Doom in name only. id tried to make the original, adrenaline-filled fast-paced shooter into a slower-paced horror game and failed, so the whole thing just ended up dull and monotonous. Good visuals and sounds can't hide the fact that the gameplay blows.