Doom³

The Good
I've been a huge fan of Doom ever since the original came out back in 1993. For me, the Doom experience was always about just a few points:

• Visuals to rival everything the market has yet seen
• Sky-high production values
• Solid level design
• Thousands of challenging monsters and locations

Ladies and gentlemen, it took 11 years, but Doom 3 delivers. Oh boy, does it deliver. The shivers of excitement started the second I clicked on New Game and didn't stop for a minute. Doom 3 owns.

Visually, the game is not merely beautiful, great or even amazing as Half Life-2 was; it's nothing short of astounding. It's been well over half a year and I haven't seen anything even remotely close to the level of visuals I experienced in Doom 3. Everything looks so astoundingly detailed, right down to the rubble around the caves and the prickling hairs on the marine's fingers; the character models compare favorably to that of any game out there with the exception of HL2 - but whereas in HL2 the only genuinely impressive characters are the chief ones (Alyx, G-Man and three or four others) all character models in Doom 3 are extremely detailed and convincing. Despite claims to the contrary the locales are actually very varied (industrial-horror constructions, offices, dig sites, alien caverns and of course two kinds of hell) and all of them are ridiculously well-modeled and textures. I also readily state that the stones that comprise the final levels of the game are certainly the most realistic I've ever seen.

While I readily admit taking Doom 3's side on the classic "Doom 3 vs Half-Life 2" debate, it still astounds me that a lot of the HL2 proponents cite Doom 3's "lack of variety in enemies" as one of their chief arguments. While I always wish for more variety, Doom 3 definitely has a huge range of enemies: two kinds of marines, five or six types of zombies, imps, cacodemons, lost souls, arachnids, maggots, bosses and more (full list); the enemies inevitably become stronger and more varied as you progress in the game. Adherence to the classic FPS dogma is not necessarily a bad thing, particularly not in an oldskool game like Doom.

Another aspect of Doom 3 that resulted in a lot of consternation is its generous use of dark areas, so much so that Glen created the so-called Duct Tape mod for the game a few days after it was released. I first played the game with the duct-tape mod, and let me tell you: it detracts from the game horribly. I just finished playing the game a second time, this time at the highest difficulty level and without the flashlight mod, and it is so much more fun this way: more challenging, scarier and also quite a bit longer. The first time I played through the game I finished it in two 6-hour sessions; this time instead of taking less, it actually took me about 30 hours to finish the game. Do not play the game with the duct tape mod! Instead, put on your headphones, turn off the lights, crank the volume way up, make sure no-one disturbs you and play into the night. You'll enjoy it far better, I guarantee it.

The architecture and level-design is extremely impressive. A lot of the areas are obviously specifically designed to give a sense of urgency and claustrophobia; the open spaces are even worse (Doom games always tended to make you fear the quiet even worse than the turmoil). The various types of architecture make sure you never get bored with the surroundings, and if you're anything like me you'll find yourself spending minutes just staring out windows, or reading miscellaneous text off monitors, simply because it looks so damn good. The variety I mentioned earlier also means you have to adapt to various kinds of combat with various enemies: mostly shotgun and chainsaw for close quarters combat; automatic weapons outside; be extremely conservative with the way you waste ammo, use grenades judiciously, always use the least powerful weapon for any given task. At the high difficulty settings the game does pose a challenge (although not as difficult as I'd prefer) so it's important to get a feel for the game rather than running around shooting at things randomly: you may survive a couple of battles that way, but the next time you'll be facing a hell knight and you're out of ammo, well, sucks to be you.

The sound design is amazing. The music (though there is relatively little of it) is very appropriate, the constant background noises are simply magnificent: machinery hums, electricity buzzes, and certain areas that are obviously references to levels in the original Doom games even sound the part, albeit that much more detailed and spooky. Weapon sounds are minimalistic but appropriate, the monsters sound as you'd expect. Voice acting is surprisingly good, even (and maybe particularly) for the background characters - some of the voice logs are downright eerie.

Also, the plot does work. Yes, it's simple. Yes, it's minimalistic. But it works, and works well at that. The various PDAs and monitors are loaded with background information to help you get a feel for what's going on around you; admittedly I found it unnecessary in the original Doom, but in Doom 3 it really helps build an atmosphere.

Lastly, the game captures the Doom spirit perfectly. I was worried (particularly considering the rumors that the monster count has been drastically decreased) that Doom 3 will not feel like Doom; it's difficult to explain the distinction, but the way things behave and the game "feels" is absolutely Doom, which is absolutely a good thing. Playing Doom 3 has been one of the most satisfying gaming experiences I've ever had.

Here are a few final tidbits I couldn't really build a paragraph on:

• Considering what the engine does, it's astoundingly fast. It runs very well with antialiasing on my machine (AthlonXP 2800+, Radeon 9800XT, 1GB RAM) and with slightly reduced details it runs impressively well even on older machines (and even a friend's Radeon 9600-equipped laptop).
• The loading times are not awful, and a 30-second level load will last anywhere from 10 to 90 minutes of gameplay, which is damn good considering the immediate competition... *cough* HL2 *cough*
• I have seen ZERO bugs on the game's first release. I bought it as soon as I could, played the first version start to finish and it was absolutely stable (both technically and as far as gameplay is concerned).
• The game is certainly every bit as linear in nature as Half Life 2, but still "feels" a lot more open-ended; you never have to blast your way through a hardly-visible wooden barrier, or run through a corridor with 9 locked doors out of 10.
• Doom 3 is not actually scary. Yes, there are a lot of "jump out of your chair" moments, but it's not genuinely claustrophobic nor genuinely scary. The only game to ever rate that in my scale was System Shock 2.
• AI is weak, but is not expected to be anything else. Check out my response to A Gamer's Manifesto which goes into this in more detail.

The Bad
I have very few qualms with Doom 3. The primary concern is with its length; the first time I played the game it felt very short, but if you read this far you already know that turning off the duct tape mod has considerably increased replay time. The only issue that remains is that, because of the somewhat abrupt ending, the game feels more like Episode 1. I haven't played Resurrection of Evil yet so I can only hope the extension is appropriate.

The double-barreled shotgun is sorely missing, which also proves my previous point that the game feels more like the first in a series; another shortcoming that's supposed to be remedied by RoE.

The Bottom Line
The long-awaited sequel to Doom delivers and more so. It is one of the most enjoyable games I've played in ages, not to mention the most visually astounding game yet seen on the PC. Play it.

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
Well, It's basically Doom. Lot's of enemies, ammo and fights. This is a game that revives the old classic in a modern way.

The Bad
A good lightning, but with an excess of dark. It's really boring to walk around all the time with the flashlight... Some really nice enemies make just a few appearances (pink demons) while others appear all time (imps).

The bosses are too easy, and there isn't much more to do once you finish it.

Another bad thing is the usual lack of variety in the levels. When I reached Hell I was amazed, but after that, the game went back to the dark base theme. Pity!

The Bottom Line
Id, more than anything, likes to make engines. Their great blockbusters are always, like some say, tech demos. This game is no exception. It does have a feeling that Id tried to do something better, but it relies too much on their old concepts to be a something different.

Despite that, it's still a good old school shooter and you should be pleased playing it.