Doom 3

"A Great game With An Incredible Atmosphere and A Few Scares As Well"

Being a console gamer only during the era of the original Doom and Doom II, I was never able to fully appreciate what the Doom series had to offer. Sure I had sat down and played it on a PC at a friend's house before, but I never had the time to really enjoy one of them, aside from mowing down some enemies with a chainsaw for a quick thrill.

There were Doom offerings which came to the Playstation, but I was not a fan of console FPS controls, so I skipped them. With all that being said, Doom 3 for the PC was my first real venture into the series.

Upon it's release, I remember the game catching some flack for it's dark environments and old-school gameplay. However, the gaming press seemed to welcome Id's newest offering, and the game received some fairly good scores, despite some bantering from the gaming community.

Doom 3 was somewhat of a throwback to the old-school FPS shooter days of Doom and Wolfenstein. It has simple gameplay, lots of action, and you can carry enough weapons to slay an army. While some newer games in the genre, like The Chronicles of Riddick were going for more interactive gameplay, the Doom 3 developers at Id chose to keep things similar to their classic Doom games.

One major thing has changed though, and that being that most of the game takes place in the dark, and you will need to illuminate your surrounding environments with a flashlight to see around and explore. This is where a lot of the scares of the game come into place. You can't really attack while you have your flashlight out. So when an enemy leaps down at you from above, you must act fast, switch to a weapon, and take him out. It makes for some really suspenseful moments, but it also makes for some annoying and frustrating times as well. Most of the times, you'll just wish you could turn the darn lights on, or tape the flashlight to your gun. (You can with multiple mods)

In Doom 3, you will play the part of a lone soldier, on Mars, who is sent there on assignment by his command from the UAC. Things seem somewhat normal at first, and you will be sent to find a certain worker there, who ends up freaking out once you find him, and then all Hell breaks loose. You will then have to trudge back through the areas you first visited, but they will now be inhabited with monsters, and with that, the tension is set for this game, and I found the first mission of Doom 3 to be quite remarkable, and Triple AAA quality stuff. However, while the game is top notch in most categories, this game is stopped from being a perfect gem by repetition and some minor frustrations. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Doom 3 more than most FPS games I've ever played, so I urge you to take the bad that I comment on with a grain of salt.

Graphics 9/10

Simply put, this game looks great. I can't imagine how mind blowing this game would have looked to me if I would have played it 4 years ago. The game is a tad dated, but it has still aged pretty well, and at the time this game was released, it was the best looking game around. However, I chose to scale one point from the score since it's an older game. I ran the game at 1280x1024 on a Geforce 6800 256 MB video card, an Athlon XP 64 3200+ processor, and 3 gigs of RAM, and it ran beautifully. The only graphical hiccups I saw were the occasional close up explosions when an Imp or another enemy was in your face at the same time. The frame rate took a hit during these moments, but other than that, I didn't notice any glitches.

When you first enter the world of Doom 3, the detail of the character models and the environments will floor you. The faces of the character models received special attention and look especially good. The enemies are brilliantly designed and look wonderful. I'm pretty sure that most of the enemies are recycled from the previous Doom games, but as I said before, I've never played them in their entirety, so it was all new to me.

All of the enemies look great, and each one brings it's own style of fear to the plate. Visually, they are all represented well and you can really see the detail when they get up close, but you really don't want them to be close to you.

The environments go a long way to make you feel creeped out, and this is done through the lighting effects and the clever placement of corpses and blood. When you go into most rooms in Doom 3, you will need to use your flashlight. This will only light a certain portion of your view. You can see in the other areas, but it's not as bright, so you will get used to relying on it. While using the flashlight to inspect these areas, you will find corpses lying on the ground or hanging over benches and railings. You will find blood smeared all over the place, headless bodies, and even hear some supernatural whispers and talking in your ears. All of this will lead up to a demon or two appearing and immediately attacking you. Lots of times it will make you jump, but you will get used to it after a while.

So graphically, the game sets the mood almost perfectly, the problem is that Doom 3 is a very long game, and the environments get used over and over, so you feel like you're in the same level for about half the game. There are a few outside environments which you must sprint through since there is no oxygen, and they look nice but for the most part, Doom 3 takes place inside.

Story 8/10

The story in Doom 3 is not bad for an FPS game, in fact it's pretty interesting. The best thing about the story is that you can choose your own level of immersion. The story is told through cut scenes and your PDA. Your PDA stores emails, video disks, and audio logs, which can be found and downloaded from other people's PDAs. So you have quite a bit of information to listen to and read through if you really want to involve yourself in the story. On the other hand, you can simply watch the cut scenes, follow the objectives, and skim the documents for the information you need, and you will be able to get through the game fine.

The story ends up revolving around a mad man named Dr. Betruger, who is performing biological experiments on creatures on Mars, and is trying to open the gateway to Hell. You basically want to find him and stop him, and the Mars base and all of the areas you explore are just the way to get to him. The story is mediocre, but I like that you can choose how involved you get, and that earns extra points for the game for a touch of originality.

Sounds and Music 8/10

The sounds and music of Doom 3 are another essential part of the atmosphere that Doom 3 tries to create. While walking through the dimly lit corridors, you will hear screams and enemies in the far off distance. Sometimes you will even hear sounds which seem much closer, but end up being nothing.

When enemies show up, you will know it. It's usually either with a dramatic scream and a lunge at you, or they appear from a lighting based dimensional gate and start attacking. The sounds are really all you need to know, since you will more than likely be running away to ready a weapon to dispose of the newly spawned enemies.

There is not a whole lot of music to speak of. It's pretty quiet for most of the time when you are not being attacked, so some light music is all you will get, and it soothes you well for the most part.

The sounds and music make for a great atmosphere, however, the weapons seem to be on the wimpy side. All of your guns just don't sound intimidating at all. While playing, I wondered: Why does my machine gun sound like a toy gun? Some sound okay, but most of them just don't sound right.

Gameplay 9/10

Well, I'm not going to lie to you, I have a slight bias here since I really like this style of game. Hardcore shooting action is just my favorite. Having a great story and some downtime to explore multiple areas and what not is fun, but I always crave getting back into the action. This is why I liked Doom 3 so much in the gameplay department.

You will pretty much be constantly running around the environments, looking for things to kill, or the passage to the next area. Doom 3 really does not have any mind bending puzzles. If you see a door that you can not open because of security clearance, you can be sure that there is a PDA lying around somewhere close that has the clearance data you need. In fact, if you stay on the main path, and explore areas that you simply have not been to yet, you will come to almost all of your objectives and get to the places that you need to be. It's kind of nice.

When you first start Doom 3, you will only have a pistol, but you will get more guns soon enough, and soon you will have enough to stop a tank. It sounds great, but it almost makes things worse. Since you need to have your flashlight out most of the time, you will need to cycle through your inventory to get to a weapon when an enemy appears. Now, the more weapons you have, the more cycling you will have to do to get to your desired weapon. I just wish I could have dropped weapons to make it easier to get to my desired weapon.

Another gripe I had with the game was the darkness. I understand it was for making the scares more suspenseful, but does the game have to be dark 95% of the game. I'm sure there's some area on Mars that has a light or two. The darkness can get old after a while and so will the supposed “scares” that the developers have set in place. Seeing an enemy try to surprise you the same way 5 times just doesn't have the same affect.

On the interface side, everything shapes up pretty well. Standard keyboard and mouse FPS controls take center stage and work wonderfully. Things were kept pretty simple for Doom 3, so there are not a ton of buttons to consider, which is nice, you can mainly focus on the action. My only gripe with the interface was the whole inventory cycling thing I talked about a few paragraphs up.

The objectives are usually something pretty simple, like “Go find a certain item for a survivor” or “Get through the labs”. Along the way, you really can't deviate all that much, so there is an interesting environment out there but it's limited in what you can do with it. It's mainly a backdrop for violent gun battles vs. the Hell demons.

So Doom 3 does a few things new, but it mainly brings together the many things that make the FPS genre great and refines them to a wonderful gaming experience for those that can tolerate a few minor annoyances.

Longevity and Re-playability 7/10

Well this is where Doom 3 falters a bit. Doom 3 has a really, really long single player campaign. Quite possibly the longest I have ever seen in an FPS game. However, things do get a little stale after a while since the levels all look kind of the same, and once you finish it, there's really no need to play through it again. You've pretty much seen everything this game has to offer. I didn't try the multiplayer modes, but I hear they are not very good, and the game is mainly for a good single player experience.

So basically, the single player campaign is incredibly long, and will keep you entertained for weeks, however, once it's over, there's not much to do.



So why would someone want to play a game like Doom 3 when they could be playing something more recent? Simple, IMO it's already a classic, and should be played by any FPS fan. You will have a great time, and some of the early on scares will really make you jump. Oh yeah, Doom 3 gets pretty intense later on too, especially in the Hell level, so keep that in mind as well.

My review score 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/12/08

Game Release: Doom 3 (US, 08/03/04)