Doom 3

"The Doom 3 engine's for sale! (Oh yeah, and there's a game here too or something)"

I was a big fan of Doom and Doom II, though mostly because of the novelty of the games rather than their quality. Doom was the first real 3D game (or 2.5-D as they're sometimes known) and you really couldn't call it scary... more like campy. Some of the monsters, like the big pink hovering meatball with one eye for instance, didn't exactly make me pull the covers over my head at night. But until that point, the only thing we PC gamers had were yawn-inducing games like Wolfenstein and all the homogenous side-scrollers. Doom was a new and exciting experience, despite its paper-thin plot, horrendously pixelated graphics, and monotonous level design.

Then came Duke Nukem 3D and Doom was forgotten like the birth control pill after a broken engagement, at least by me. Duke took the 2.5-D game formula and made it actually fun... unlike Doom's anonymous space marine, Duke Nukem had a snappy personality (Bruce Campbell's, in fact) and got to stomp through levels varying widely from amusement parks to alien spaceships. Also, the graphics used SVGA, meaning that stuff in the distance wasn't just a blob of unrecognizable pixels. And while I tinkered a bit in the third-party level editors of Doom, Duke came with the one the design team used to make the game itself, and I spent many a wasted hour making my own expansive, eclectic worlds.

Soon, though, the true-3D game scene burst open with the introduction of Quake and Unreal... 3D shooters reverted back to the dark, dank, monotonous style reminiscent of Doom, and my attention waned. Promises of a sequel to Duke Nukem 3D, ironically called Duke Nukem Forever, turned into the longest running joke in the gaming community ever: it's literally taking forever! My passion turned to console-based platformers, which are generally much more varied in terrain and style, and online RPGs. I've continued to dabble in subsequent PC shooters now and again, including a stunted attempt to become an Unreal level designer in the hopes of getting a job somewhere, though it always left me feeling dissatisfied. The engines are designed for the games they're made with: all pretty much dark, dreary, and monotonous.

Which brings me to Doom 3: the 3D gaming world has come full-circle. Here we have a much more graphically impressive, fantastically realistic Doom game that's still easily recognizable as Doom. Meaning it's dark, dreary, and monotonous, but on a whole new level. Area after area consists of nothing more than poorly-lighted corridors and ominously glowing machinery, with monsters and demons of ubiquitously menacing character leap out in front (and quite often behind) you. For the first hour or so, it's utterly gripping, but it soon becomes a treadmill marathon: go to room A and get the keycard, take it to door B, shoot monster, find room C and get keycard, shoot monster, ad nauseum. How many dark, creepy rooms can you trudge your way through until you start getting sick of dark, creepy rooms? And do any of the designers at these game studios ever get tired of using right angles?

The high quality of the level design is consistent, though, and the attention to detail is superb. And despite the monotony, it maintains a moderately successful level of suspense through the use of 3D sound effects, fascinating cut-scenes, and a subtly creepy soundtrack. And how can you not be stunned at the sheer wizardry of the engine, which renders complex and dynamic lights and shadows in real time, and still manages to look incredible on three year-old video cards? In fact, it leads me to believe that this game was created less as an attempt to set another milestone in PC gaming, and more as an exhaustive engine demo for potential game developer customers. There's tremendous money in licensing game engines these days, and with the release of Doom 3, the aging Unreal and Quake engines look even more dated. If selling fantastic engines rather than fantastic games was indeed their ultimate goal, then I think they've hit the bull's eye.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 08/03/04