Doom 3

"Hype really can sell games"

GRAPHICS : 5/5
GAMEPLAY : 3/5
SOUND : 4/5
MULTIPLAYER : 3/5
BUYING VALUE : 3/5
OVERALL : 3/5

After many months of hype by its authors and much gnashing of the teeth by gamers everywhere in frustration at the wait, Doom 3 has finally been released to the masses. The third edition of a game that practically started the first person shooter, the name "Doom" is as symbolic to gamers as the word "God" is to Christians.

And has it all been worth the wait and the hype? Has the game continued to set new standards and levels of gameplay. Does it live up to its birthright set by Doom 1 and 2?

In a word...no.

You look shocked. You ought to be, I certainly was. Years in development by those masters of pixel mayhem ID Software, the people who created the original Doom and Quake series of games has resulted in nothing more than a generic run of the mill shooter that happens to look quite nice but doesn't seem to have anything at all in the way of gameplay. Lets try to figure out why.

Doom 3 is essentially a rehash of the story behind Doom 1. If you never managed to play Doom 1, then it goes a little something like this...You are a space marine sent to a Mars scientific outpost where experiments are being conducted that somehow open a portal into hell, allowing its minions to escape into the outpost and kill everyone and everything but you. You must kick some demon ass and send them back through the portal and close it by destroying hell itself. Simple enough! The plot is very much an afterthought, ID Software where going for old school on this one, instant fragging. The story (If you can call it that) is told mostly through your radio or the ever so useful PDA unit you carry around with you in a series of emails and video disks.

Starting with the games most attractive and powerful aspect, screenshots of this game do not do the graphics justice. They are, quite simply, amazing. Easily the most graphically intense first person shooter on the market at the time of writing, the detail on the monsters, environments and weapons is breathtaking. With all graphical bells and whistles turned on, you would be forgiven for thinking you where taking part in a Max Steele movie. The environments are so finely detailed that computer screens and signs or writing are easily readable.

Here's the flip side...this game requires a computing rig that's probably on par with a super computer or two at NASA. Seriously. Not that I am against it, after all times need to change, but unless you happen to own the most cutting edge graphics card on the market and oodles of processor and RAM, playing this game at full graphical glory will require you to lay out a lot more cash than just the games price tag. And heres a technical tip...the game strongly favours Nvidia graphic cards!

As most of you probably wont have the kind of rig ID Software envisioned you to have, I tried the game on a few less powerful hardware setups. Now you may have read at other certain popular review sites that the game works quite well on middle end systems. And it does...if you count running in 800 by 600 with choppy graphics to be "working quite well". On the plus side, the graphic degradation when you bump the quality settings down don't have a massive impact on the environment or make you lose any enjoyment in the game which is a bonus (Although make no mistake, the difference between the best graphical setting and the lowest is like comparing chalk and cheese).

The game takes place in the previously mentioned scientific base on Mars and during the game you will mostly travel through it (Apart from the occasional trip to hell, what fun)! In Doom 1 and 2, the gameplay was wide and open, allowing you to move about with freedom in large rooms. In Doom 3, this is no longer the case, partly because the graphics and setting is far more realistic. Now you are in the much tighter confines of the base which gives the game a much more claustrophobic feel. It becomes even more so because a fair proportion of it is in the dark or extremely poor light, making you very reliant on a torch. And here is where the gameplay takes its first step in the wrong direction. You can't use the torch and your weapon at the same time, even with one handed weapons such as the pistol.

Practically every Doom 3 review/preview or commentary I have read has said it and I refuse to make an exception. After playing the game for an hour or more I too begged the question "Why didn't ID Software make the torch an integral part of the weapons"? It gets annoying having to swap from weapon to torch and vice versa every time you come face to face with a monster and for me I felt it removed a large part of the fun. It would have been far more satisfying to have your touch and weapon equipped at the same time, or at least given us the choice of having a game option to have it so. Some players will probably enjoy the sense of vulnerability and danger this brings to the game but its bound to be a minority. Despite this awkward feature, the gameplay is scary and at times intense. Monsters spring out at you from behind as well as in front resulting in some encounters that did actually make me jump in my chair. Other encounters where far more chilling in that the monsters did not attack directly, instead they waited till you came close to them or until you saw them under the spotlight of your torch.

And how fine do those monsters look. At times it seems almost a shame to shoot them. All your old favourites from the original Doom games are back and looking quite sexy if sexy is the right word to use. The Imps are truly something to fear now, having morphed from what used to look like a pissed off monkey to a creature that really does make you fill your pants. Gamers who played the original Doom will enjoy identifying what the monsters look like in this series. There are some new enemies as well but for the most part you will be running into revamped old ones. Unfortunately you wont be killing them in swarms this time, this time monster encounters usually involve fewer numbers of them, and when you kill them they vanish into dust so don't expect to litter the place with their carcasses. I have a feeling that this has more to do with the graphical intensity of the game than anything else, less monsters and bodies on screen the less processing is required. While they might be looking better, they certainly aren't thinking any better. The A.I. does not seem to have changed from the days of Doom 1 because all the monsters, apart from some of the zombie troopers will mostly rush you rather than using cover and their superior movement to try and take you out.

And shooting them is not quite as fun as you might have thought it would be. The weapons are mostly restyled from Doom 1 and they all feel...well...weak! There is no real balance to them at all and they are quite underpowered in that most of them require a large number of shots to get rid of even some of the less powerful enemies. They are very generic too so don't go expecting to find any powerups for them or addons or alternative fire buttons that are common in first person shooters today. There are a few new weapons to be found but they don't really take your breath away. I did rather enjoy the return of the chainsaw though and had to suppress a smile at ID Software's attempt to explain their existence on a remote space base on Mars, a real touch of humour there from ID. The chainsaw also brings instant destruction to a monster if you can use it without getting hit and this time your not the only one wielding one!!

The other excellent element of this game is the sound. And it's all about sound effects here as apart from the start sequence there is no real soundtrack to speak of. The sounds of battle coming over your intercom at the beginning of the game really do set the scene. At one point I was even beginning to believe that I would be getting some NPC buddies to fight alongside me and any minute now I was going to run into them although I was quickly let down. The growls of the monsters and the background effects of the base all work well together to keep you on your toes and for once in a 3d shooter I found myself acting as I would in real life in that situation...constantly spinning around the room looking, looking, looking for anything that might creep out the shadows.

In a throwback to Doom 1, you must still find keys to get around different parts of the base, but now they are in the form of PDA units belonging to dead staff who had better or different security clearances than you that you add to your own PDA unit to pass the security doors located all over the base. The levels are quite straightforward, definitely nothing to get you lost in this game.

Doom 3 comes with multiplayer but its something of a letdown and its gameplay is quite definitely a slave to the graphics engine. Players are limited to a maximum of four per game which almost certainly has something to do with the graphical intensity I'm sure. It doesn't get too bad because the relative tightness of the map means you never feel like your all alone but playing over the internet can be something of a nightmare during busy periods as you try to find a game that isn't full. One element of the multiplayer game that I would have liked to have seen was the return of co-operative play or the ability to deathmatch in the large expansive single player maps like you could in Doom 1, where on some of the bigger maps you felt that someone could run around the corner any second now. In truth though modern map design often rules out co-operative or deathmatch play on the single player maps because they tend to use a lot more scripted actions and dynamic map changes which would often ruin things, such as doors jamming shut behind you or a bridge falling down and so on, which is why co-operative play in single player has been a declining feature of third person shooters.

So should you buy this game? That really depends on where you set the bar for a game to be worth buying. Rest assured that this game has only two outstanding points about it...it's graphics and the fact it is part of a legendary heritage of the Doom series. In all other respects it is a fairly mundane shooter that while being satisfactory to play, introduces nothing new and contains nothing that you wouldn't find in other 3d shooters on the market out there. If that's enough for you then go get it.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/30/04