"A Great Expansion that fixes many of the problems with original, but suffers from some new"

Along with Half Life 2, Doom 3 was probably the most anticipated PC Game of 2004. Hyped into the sky, the game was going to take you back to that night you grabbed the chainsaw for the first time and slashed your way through Imp`s and Zombies in the Depths of Hell. Did it deliver? Sure, but unfortunately not as much as it was hyped to do. It suffered from several problems, it was too dark most of the time, it had too many cheap scares and monsters constantly coming out from closets and places behind you and the levels became too repetitive.

But the game sold, and it was generally considered one of the finest games of 2004, and it revitalized the big daddy of FPS Games, so a expansion was inevitable. A little more than six months later, and Resurrection of Evil is released.

Story
Resurrection of Evil takes place 2 years after the incident on the Mars UAC Facility. The Portal was closed, the lone survivor rescued and the whole thing covered up. No big deal right? Leave it up to the UAC to mess things up again. In a second facility, focused on digging up ancient artifacts, a few marines out on a mission discovers a strange object. Curiously one of the Marines goes up and takes the Object, which activates the portal to Hell once more. Hell has more in store for humanity this time, and wants the Artifact back.

The story fits in with the original, but that is also one of the problems with it. It`s just too similar. The location, setting and characters are just so identical to the original that you feel you have seen it all before. A Bigger problem though, is the way the story is driven forward. Unlike the original, where there were several cutscenes and PDA`s with recorded voices to drive the story, there`s only a few cutscenes and hardly any voice PDA`s at all in ROE. This does not affect the gameplay, but it makes the motive much less and in the end, fails to give you a reason to go on apart from knowing you have completed it. The masterful voiceacting of the PDA`s in the original really was a highlight, and is sorely missed. No complaints about the voiceacting that`s in ROE, because its really good. Just a shame there wasn`t more.

Graphics
No noticeable upgrades to the Doom 3 Engine, some slightly new effects but still the same engine. It doesn`t matter, it looks really good. Sure, some textures look a little blurry, the cheezy vaporizing of the enemies are still there, but other than that, it`s just not possible to complain about the visual power of ROE/DOOM3. If you got a good enough machine the game looks totally stunning, with details in every corner. Pipes twirl behind fenced walls and into complex looking machinery, computer screens having a life of their own, smoke, dust and fire paints the atmosphere into a Inferno. It`s just too hard to not be impressed with the graphics. The new monsters also look good, and does not give you the impression that they are just "Expansion" mobs. They are complete with unique animations and looks and blends perfectly in with the original monsters. One simply cannot see that this is an expansion to Doom 3, in both a good and a bad way. It looks just as good, often better, but it also looks the same.

Sound
I`ve already mentioned the excellent voiceacting, and even while there are no professional and known actors doing the voices, they are incredibly convincing, just like the original. This really helps, since bad voiceacting can really ruin the mood of a game.

Otherwise, if you have played Doom 3, you should already know what to expect. Very little music, but alot of monster screeching and guns blazing and banging. And going out with a bang is what the guns do. The double barreled shotgun finally makes you feel powerful. It`s incredibly boom and reload sound is unlike any other weapon in the game. Even the Rocket Launcher doesn`t sound so powerful. It`s pure, guilty pleasure blowing the speakers with the Double Barreled.

Monster Sounds? Apart from the old ones intact, the new monsters have their own sounds that helps you identify them on a distance or out of sight. There`s really not much to add or subtract here, it works as it should and that is that.

Gameplay
The meat of the game. Sure, the graphics is the first thing that strikes your eye, and the new weapons and monsters are the interesting parts of an expansion, but the gameplay is the thing that makes or breaks the game.

Luckily, ID and Nerve took a good look at Doom 3, and most likely admitted that the gameplay was not as good as it should have been. So, for the expansion, they really did improve it. There are actually several positive things that makes Resurrection of Evil what Doom 3 should have been in the first place.

The Original had a big problem with Darkness. Yes the game was set on a desolate Mars Base, Power out and everybody`s dead. But that did not mean it should look like a closed locker, soaking dark forcing the player to swap the gun with the flashlight every fifth second. The scare-effect wore off really fast and it got tedious. So luckily they fixed it. The game is now much more playable without the flashlight, the majority of the game is visible enough constantly, and only some areas really require flashlight usage. I cannot stress enough how good this is for the gameplay. Now you can walk around with your guns loaded, ready for the monsters. This makes the gameplay less tedious, and much better. Less darkness means more visual power and more possibilities for pure, fun action. Yes, it goes dark sometimes, even almost pitch black, but when it does, its much more effective than in the original, when you all of a sudden gets ripped out of safety. After a few hours of ROE, you are not used to swap the Flashlight anymore, so when it`s required it works much better. Overall, a great improvement.

Another problem with the original, was the constantly popping of monsters behind you and on your sides, often from hidden lockers and walls, impossible to discover. This is another thing the game improves, and it uses far more visible spawning infront of the player than behind, so you are given a fair chance of reacting. The amount of times I was surprised from behind by cheap tricks can be counted on a maximum of two hands, a huge improvement. It does not make the game less scary in any way, it helps make those events where it really happens much more effective and surprising. The lesser something is used, the less you expect it, and the more you are surprised by it. This is a huge improvement, and it helps to drive the gameplay forward.

The third problem with the original, is unfortunately still present in ROE. It looks the same. Every level feels like the last one, with corners and rooms looking identical to each other. There are whole parts of levels in ROE that gives a Deja Vu feeling back to Doom 3, and when you later in the expansion actually visits a part of the old facility, it does become a bit too obvious how repetetive it becomes. It starts excitingly, with some geniously designed cavern levels, but then it unfortunately ends up doing the same tech levels over and over, walking from one level to the next without any clear sense of where you really are, or what the levels mean. The lack of motivation from the story makes the problem even worse in ROE, whereas in Doom 3 you had a more clear sense of goal and reason for what you are doing. Some of the levels manage to look new though, a sewer area gets the blood pumping as you hunt oxygen canisters while making your way through the toxin infested tunnels filled with nasty monsters. Unfortunately, parts like that are too few, but they make the game more fun and varied when they kick in.

When it comes to the expansion, there are some new additions that makes it feel fresh. Of course the new weapons help alot, especially the fantastic Double Barreled Shotgun. It`s incredibly powerful, and not many monsters survives a head on direct hit from it. Combined with the Berserk powerup from the Artifact, it can kill a Hellknight and a Mancubus in a single shot. Even without it, it can take down Revenants and about every single weaker monster in one hit. Add the thunderous boom it makes and the click-clack sound from the recharge, and you have the best weapon in the game, just like how it was in Doom 2.

Then, there`s the artifact. This Heartlike organic object works like a portable powerup. When you activate it, it will Slow Down Time, Increase your damage with insane amounts and make you invulnerable, at least after being upgraded. It starts without any ability, but as you progress further, the three abilities are added to it. To survive, it becomes an absolute necessity, and some of the boss fights are almost(if not) impossible without using it correctly. Don`t worry about it, it`s a great tool, and by the end of the game after one shot killing Hellknights you`ll want to kiss it. The catch is that it has to be recharged by human souls, and while there`s usually some corpses around, its not enough to overuse it. You will often have a serious problem if you are not able to pull it up at any time, so beware about overusing it. Good for balancing the game though.

Then we have the grabber. If the expansion had been released half a year earlier, nobody would have suspected its origin, but unfortunately such a comparison to the famous Half Life 2 weapon is now impossible. Nevertheless, it is a fun but slightly flawed weapon. The basic idea of it is quite good, catching the fireballs and projectiles from enemies and throwing it back at them sounds quite fun, and when it works, it does work quite well. Saves alot of ammo too. However, it`s often hard to catch the projectiles, often you don`t have the time to swap your original weapon into the grabber, often you are under attack by several other monsters jamming your aiming. Even if you can grab the fireball, it will cover quite a huge part of your crosshair section, making it really hard to see if you are aiming at the monster or not. This is the biggest problem, and in some of the boss fights this is directly frustrating. In fact, the most useful purpose of it is to instant-kill the small monsters like Lost Souls(Now replaced with flaming skulls) and the small spiders. You don`t even have to grab them for long, just a quick hold and release will instant kill them, even on a long distance.

When it comes to the new monsters, there are four of them. First there is the new Imp like monster, which looks very similar to the Imp, it has a long range projectile attack and it claws you when it gets close. This is one of the most common monsters in ROE. The intended way to kill them is reflecting their blue projectiles back at them, but due to the nature of the Grabber, this usually cause more trouble than it fixes. The standard one shot kill with the shotgun is recommended and was the way I used most of the time to deal with them. Might makes right.

The second monster that is much more rare, but among the most powerful of the normal ones are the hulking freaks with a monitor as their mouth. They pack a lot of punch and takes a huge amount of damage before they go down, making them among the deadliest of all the monsters in the game. Tactical warefare is almost a requirement to surviving them, and while the double barreled shotgun seems tempting, getting close enough would be suicide. Rocket Launchers, Plasma Cannons and BFG is the name of the game, and it spices things up.

The third monster is the new type of Lost Soul. Much more alike their Doom 1 type, they are flaming skulls that seems to rush towards you much faster than the old ones. Luckily, they are easily killed, and recommended weapons are either the grabber or even the pistol, due to the precision and few shots required to take them down.

Then, it comes to the bosses. Called The Hunters, these tough looking beasts are a whole other game than the old Doom Bosses. They usually require some unique strategy to be beaten, and they are quite hard to defeat. By the time you reach them, you must be somewhat skilled using the Grabber and the Artifact, because if you aren`t, you`ll probably watch the reload screen several times. Nothing wrong with a challenge, but some of them are a little too tough, especially when the grabber causes the problems. The third bossfight is the best example of this, but in order to not spoil the bosses too much I`ll leave it at that. It had to be mentioned though, so you should be aware of it.

Summary
Experienced Doom 3 players, especially those who loved or liked Doom 3, will probably blaze through this expansion in one night. It took me not more than six hours of constant playing from start to finish, which in my opinion is way too short. Sure, it`s just an expansion, but for the stiff price one should have the right to expect something longer. The replayability is not really that high, the repetetive levels are once again part of the problem. There`s nothing really spectacular about it, apart from the graphics and some parts of the levels. That`s not to say its bad in any way, because it`s not, but there`s just nothing special in the expansion that wasn`t already in the original.

And that is both a bad thing, and a good thing. Because if you liked Doom 3, you will most likely like ROE. And if you did not like Doom 3, you will most likely not like ROE either. If you thought it was okay, but was slowed down by Darkness and irritating traps, ROE is worth a look since it does fix those things and spices up the gameplay more while keeping some of the scares and mood.

Personally, I loved Doom 3 despite of the bad things, and in the end, I had a blast playing ROE. In fact, ROE is how Doom 3 should have been from the start, and that can only be a good thing.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/14/05