Doom³

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
The original Doom is on my all time favorites list, as I suspect it is for millions of other people who have, say, touched a PC within the last decade or two. So needless to say that Doom 3 is (or rather, was) going to be a big hit no matter what anyone said about it. Of course, when ID Software has their mojo on (as opposed to Quake 1, where they didn't) you are in for a fine time, and quite fortunately they were in top form for Doom 3.

I rather like the "Episode 1" style of Classic Doom level, and though John Romero is long gone from ID, the braintrusts in Mesquite took that "Techbase" format (used for about 80% of the game) to the next level. While normally I would consider the persistent use of a certain theme or style repetitive, the architecture is so skillfully planned in Doom 3 that you really don't even notice that the textures are vigorously reused. Every area has a different feel, a different atmosphere, and looks suitably constructed and destroyed. Later on, Hell (sorry for ruining the "surprise", such as it was) takes things even further, and is one of the most effective depictions of that locality I've seen in a game. Certainly better than Episode 3 in the first game, at any rate.

The gameplay is pretty solid, about what I would expect from ID. Responsive controls, quick movement, and intuitive key placement. The difficulty isn't too bad, though the health sapping on Nightmare can lead to some tight situations at times (but hey, it's Nightmare). The arsenal, a combination of weapons from Quake 2 and the original Doom games, is quite varied although the lack of a double barreled shotgun is a conspicuous absence.

The storyline is actually pretty good, something ID put quite a bit of thought into for this release - a big step up from "blow up the Big Gun, plus some other things" from Quake 2, let alone the 'avenge your bunny' plot from the end of Ultimate Doom. Atmosphere is also a strong component in this release; while I personally was not scared by this game at all, I knew some people who had nightmares stemming from this title.

The graphics, amazing upon release, hold up to the test of time incredibly well half a decade later. The use of the hard (real-time) shadows really heightens the horror-themed experience. The sound production is also excellent. Though there isn't a whole lot of music, the title theme is appropriate for the series.

The Bad
There's a lot to like about this game, but (and this will sound a little strange) Doom 3 isn't as "solid" or "legendary" as the title that spawned it. Don't get me wrong; it's been in my Top 10 favorite games, so it is by no means a bad title. But despite the fact that is an excellent game, it just feels a little...mechanically predictable, in a way. In the original games, while the AI perhaps was not as sophisticated, the action was fast and you were ambushed frequently. Outside of roughly knowing where the monsters were for the most part (if you were a veteran mapper), you could still get thrown a curveball every once in awhile. Here, when you get used to the tactics of a monster, opponents of that monster type generally start to present no challenge, even with inferior weaponry. Despite the big writeup, though, I really don't consider it a major problem, just a noteworthy thing to mention.

I also have some minor quibbles about plot sometime falling to cliche's and the aforementioned lack of music, but nothing I feel like writing at any length about presently. Although I will mention quickly that, in reference to the review title, that sometimes its a little too dark in some spots, making it harder to navigate through some areas (in normal situations where darkness shouldn't be a factor, mind you; I'm not complaining about the scenes where you have to follow a light source to a destination, those are generally fun).

The Bottom Line
I really can't think of any reason why you wouldn't buy a copy of this game. It's good fun from ID, with a lot of meat on the bones with which to chew. If you are looking for a classic swarming monsters experience then perhaps you would be better served by the Serious Sam series this time out, but if you want a nice solid game that you can cut through in a few days time, look no further.

The Good
The atmosphere, graphics, enemies, almost everything!

The Bad
It's way too short.

The Bottom Line
DOOM 3 is the first FPS that I played using a gamepad. And one of the first games that I played using a gamepad, be it a Xbox one or another. In the end, I managed to handle it quite well if bragging is allowed. :)

Before playing on Xbox I've already tried the game on the PC but after 15 minutes of gameplay everything seemed so boring. Switching from a 17" LCD monitor to a TV with a 94 cm plasma display had a great impact on the overall game feeling for me. Even though PC graphics are way better, the game was still looking damn awesome. I immediately liked just about everything regarding graphics and the atmosphere induced by visual themes and effects.

The game is dark and the sound effects keep you under pressure, especially Betruger's continuous taunting. Enemies look and sound horrifying enough, especially if you're taken by surprise and some are really hard to kill while others seem to be too easy. Anyway, they usually show up in multiple waves or just one with a large amount of targets for you to shoot so you shouldn't think lightly about any of the demons around the UAC buildings.

I have played the game on medium difficulty (the first sentence in this review states as to why I did this) and it was fun enough. Not too easy and not too frustrating, just right. Being a DooM game, its action is pretty straightforward. Go there, kill that, open that door, kill some more enemies etc. The game also features some puzzles, none too difficult. I found one a bit frustrating, it involved a lift and some jumping over a fence of some sort. The puzzles seemed enjoyable to me in the end, a nice pause from the killing.

The main title (also, credits) theme is really great. I'm still listening to it and will surely listen to it occasionally from now on. Unfortunately, there's no other notable music in the game. That's a big minus for it. I'm pretty much a soundtrack maniac and a bit disappointed because of the lack of music in DooM 3.

The weapons available are really interesting and vary from the classic pistol to the DooM Exclusive BFG. The BFG is really easy to find towards the end of the game. More exactly, you pick it up from a dead boos. My favorite weapons are the Shotgun and Plasma Rifle. The shotgun is great for close quarter combat (you get those like, a lot) and the plasma rifle can explode enemy launched projectiles in mid-air while causing serious damage to most enemies making it my favorite long-range weapon.

I've complained a bit earlier about the game being too short. I spent around 8 hours before hitting the end. I really liked the game. I wish there were another 8 hours to play after the final boss (a Cyberdemon, which was really nicely modelled/drawn; something like a space Balrog (Tolkien)). I guess getting the expansion pack won't hurt at all. Maybe it will be just as fun. :)