Doom³

The Good
The graphics engine is awesome. There's hardly anything original as far as visual effects are concerned, but it's definitely something never seen in a computer game before. The human heads and the lighting engine is particularly worth noting.

Level design is superb. While there's not much room for fantasy (most of the game takes place in a high-tech labyrinth filled with computers and other hardware equipment), there is a lot of high-quality architecture work, strategically positioned pentagrams, blood splatters, dead bodies, and some kind of spooky demonic protoplasm seeping through the walls. A short trip to Hell is a welcome break from steel and plastic, but I'm sure you'll be glad that you got out of there eventually - I was expecting a boatload of hell knights to drop on my head every moment.

Old foes are back, with only a couple missing; the weapons have been mostly redesigned, and their design and balance is completely different, but that's okay (BFG's here and it works the same, so I'm happy).

The Bad
Scares get old really quick; most annoying ones include an imp jumping at you soon as you open the door, and a steam jet blowing in your face as you pass by. There are a few good ones, but you'll be very unlikely to get scared as soon as ten hours into the game.

There is hardly anything that you haven't seen in Half-Life or System Shock 2. In fact, the game feels like a complete rip-off of that stellar pair. I know it probably won't bother a lot of people, but when similarities are so blatant, you start to get annoyed.

The game is so dark it's hampering the gameplay. Sure, a dark room here and there is cool and fun, but when it's dark ALL THE TIME, you throw up your arms in desperation. A flashlight is helpful, but not by much; besides you can't fire with a flashlight on. A common "close quarters encounter" means switching from flashlight to your primary gun, firing a few rounds in the dark, then turning on the flashlight to see if it's dead, and moving on. That darkness and repetitiveness annoys a LOT of people I know.

The Bottom Line
Get it if your computer can handle the graphics and if plagiarized gameplay doesn't bother you. If you want a scary shooter, look for System Shock 2 instead.

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 must be one of the scariest games ever, The first time i played, Was at 2 in the morning, with headphones, and nobody at home, The really only time you can play the game :). The game looks stunning, The textures are not great, But the detail in lighting and environments is super, it looks photo-realistic. The story is great as well, Having cut scenes ever so often telling you about the mars and other bits. The sound is excellent as well, With plenty of freaky ambient sounds guaranteed to scare the socks of you! It really messes with you! The weapons are great to, Like the original, You have your fists, grenades, flashlight, chainsaw, pistol, shotgun, chain gun, mini gun, plasma gun, and the BFG!

The Bad
The only thing i did not like about doom 3 was there is no cooperative!, Which would of been great, But hopefully in the expansion they are bringing out they will provide this option.

The Bottom Line
Its like being in a scary movie! Only with demons and Plasma weapons!