Doom 3

"You'll feel like you're in hell... in more ways than one."

I'm not going to stall here – Doom 3 is a scary game. Very scary. It's one of those games that's so scary, you'll actually enjoy it more if you play it alone, at night, with all the lights turned off. But Doom 3 is also a cheap game. Very cheap. So, cheap, in fact, that even if one were to actually be entertained by the game in the first place – and plenty are, for some reason – their enjoyment, I reckon, will be dampened but the utter feeling of cheapness. “Cheap” is a word you'll see quite a lot in this review, and I use it for emphasis. Cheap. Cheap. Cheap. Doom 3 is cheap. It substitutes gameplay for scares, and doesn't use a lot of brains to pull it off. It's a half-assed game, “scary” only in the sense that it features lots of monsters with red eyes making loud noises and jumping out of dark corners when you least expect them to (or even when you do expect them to). Doom 3's idea of fun is to place the player in a pitch-black room with five other demons and not give the player the ability to hold a flashlight and a weapon at the same time. Doom 3 isn't the worst game I've ever played, but it's certainly one of the dumbest and most thoughtless. It's a terrible game, one that I simply cannot recommend to anybody.

Doom 3 is essentially a glorified version of its predecessors, with near-identical gameplay, but enhanced with amazing graphics and a frightening atmosphere and tone. Doom and Doom II are both great games for their time, but obviously not as exceptional by today's standards. We're living in the age of Halo and Half-Life 2. Our expectations of artificial intelligence and level design are certainly much higher now than they were ten years ago, and with good reason. Yet Doom 3 mimics the gameplay of a ten-year-old FPS, only now, it's even worse. The developers have figured out that the Doom series should be adapted into a sort of survival-horror romp, and they attempt to scare us at the expense of playability. It works for a while. But as soon as you get used to the astounding visuals and grow weary of the cheap scares, there is absolutely nothing to this game. It's as straightforward and generic an FPS as they come.

In this Doom 3 world, you're a nameless, voiceless marine that has been sent to the creatively named Mars City on Mars. Obviously, things go haywire. Hell breaks loose. Demons run wild. And it's up to you to stop them! It seems to me that the architects who designed Mars City knew that an invasion of hell's demons was going to occur and decided to make the place as creepy and solemn as humanly possible. There are very few windows. Hallways are metallic in appearance and are poorly lit. There's a lot of weird-looking machinery around that serves no purpose other than to freak the player out. This game actually reminded me of The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. This means that Mars City closely resembles a prison. Spooky, sure, but completely illogical since no human “city” would ever look this, unless, as I said, the architects had a hand in hell's attack. Well, I suppose I don't need common sense in a videogame.

Of course, this means that just about every environment in the game looks identical to the last, which doesn't exactly lead to a lot of excitement when you get to a new level. Doom 3 is really just a series of boring rooms connected by boring tunnels. The designers used a lot of atmospheric details to get our hearts pumping, but it's mostly limited to flickering lights and messages written on the walls in blood, with the occasional upside-down-star-in-a-circle. They also throw in a bunch of “jump moments,” which include bursting vents and tiles that fly off of walls for no reason. These “jump moments” usually come from enemies, though – you know, like when a demon jumps through a door that you just opened, or flies out of a dark corner, or attacks from behind. The guys that made Doom 3 focused less on subtle, environmental scares and more on jump-in-your-seat shocks, which further increases the level of cheapness in the game's design. I have far more respect for a game like Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, which frightened players not by surprising them, but by messing with their heads.

Doom 3 is also one of those games in which a voice from an unseen source – in this case, he's Satan – chimes in to check up on your progress. He'll tell you that you're DOOMED! And that you will DIE SOON! And that you will JOIN YOUR COLLEAGUES! And that you will ROT IN HELL! He also just sort of laughs occasionally – not a chuckle, mind you, but an EVIL laugh, kind of like Ganondorf at the end of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. I don't see what's so funny, though, as he usually laughs when there are no enemies around and I'm perfectly healthy. I suppose he's alternating between watching me and reading a Far Side Gallery.

As I said before, most of Doom 3's big jump moments come when demons spring out of nowhere. Mars City is filled with broken lights (or, in some cases, lights that just seem to randomly switch themselves off), thus making it a dark and creepy place. You've got a flashlight button, and by pushing this button you can illuminate a dark area and reveal any enemies that may be concealed there. There are only, maybe, a dozen enemy types in the game, though imps and zombies are the only ones that appear frequently and constantly. Imps may in fact be the cheapest enemies I've ever seen – they spawn in and out of existence, and always seem to be waiting for you in places where you won't be able to react quickly enough upon getting attacked. They occasionally attack me from behind – meaning they're appearing in places I'VE ALREADY BEEN – but mostly, they'll just wait in dark tunnels or just kind of warp out of nowhere. It's scary when they attack, sure, but cheapness is evident. The zombies are just as mindless and boring as they always are. No wonder the Resident Evil 4 guys decided that the living dead are old news.

Speaking of zombies, something really annoyed me in Doom 3. Well, a lot of things annoyed me in Doom 3, but here's one of them. One of the first times I ran into a zombie in Doom 3, I had my shotgun handy. Good, I say, as shotguns are always effective against zombies. I stood two feet away from the sucker, aimed at his head, pulled the trigger… and he just kept on walking. What the hell? Doesn't this break some sort of zombies-in-videogames law? If I stand two feet away from a zombie and shoot him in the head with a shotgun, I expect him to die. Plain and simple.

Also notable is the fact that, while zombies are plentiful in Doom 3, there are only, like, three zombie models. So, the same three guys keep showing up throughout the game: The fat guy, the old guy, and the mechanic. Hell apparently has some sort of zombie assembly line.

The rest of the game's enemies, revealed one-by-one as the game progresses, resemble a sort of freakshow in which the developers decided to throw as many twisted-but-uncreative creature designs at you to see which one damages your nerves the most. Here's a skeleton with twin rocket launchers! Here's a soldier with a tentacle coming out of his arm! Here's a demon with a chainsaw! Here's a BURNING SKULL! Despite looking different, every demon utilizes the same braindead AI and attacks with the same bad tactics. Most monsters just run up to you and try to claw you to death, with no strategy whatsoever. The ones that shoot at you will simply stand in place like frozen targets and fire repeatedly. The AI literally has not changed at all since the first Doom, and with over a decade of progress in the world of gaming, it's just unacceptable, especially after games like Halo have shown just how advanced AI can be. Enemies don't even react when attacked – if I blow a demon's head open with a shotgun, he doesn't necessarily have to die immediately, but he should at least, you know, fall down or get pushed back or something.

If you really want a concept of just how unbelievably dated Doom 3 is, just shell out some extra dough to get the special Limited Edition set, which comes in admittedly cool, Halo 2-ish packaging. This version comes with the original Doom and Doom II. Play those first, then play Doom 3. The graphics are obviously worlds apart, but aside from that, do you notice ANY difference in basic design?

The only scares that come from Doom 3 are in its ability to take you by surprise, and this often hampers gameplay. If I open a door, there could be an imp waiting on the other side. And when I open that door, the imp will jump through and hurt me before I'm able to shoot or get out of the way. That kind of thing will scare the hell out of you, sure… But you just lost some health, and were unable to avoid it. How is that fun? Enemy cheapshots are never a good thing, and here, they're only used frighten you, and gameplay is made worse as a result. And remember that flashlight button? Well, you can't hold a weapon and your flashlight at the same time, which means that you often have to choose between being able to see your enemy but not kill it and blindly firing until you hit something. Eventually, a tension is created in Doom 3's air, and that tension is created by the fear that an enemy will surprise you again and cheaply damage you. Most games have this, however. It's called challenge. Play Halo 2 on Legendary and tell me if you don't get just a little tense every now and then from the fear of getting shot down and killed. Same thing here, only there's really not a lot you can do to prevent it. Being a “good player” means little in Doom 3.

Everything else is so laughably archaic that it's difficult for me to imagine why anyone would enjoy such a game in the first place. The level design is really just a set of rooms that really aren't that different from one another and only serve as battlegrounds for one of many firefights. Puzzles and situations that require thinking are all but nonexistent. It's impossible to get stuck in Doom 3, as the only means of progression is to simply find the one door that isn't locked. Unlocking secret items is simply a matter of checking through e-mails and audio logs for a code to unlock a door or cabinet. The finished game is so mindless that I felt absolutely nothing upon completion. It was, despite its pretty exterior, just another game. The Xbox version of Doom 3 does have online co-op – take that, Halo 2! – but I have no idea why anyone would want to make the game less scary by eliminating that sense of isolation that contributes to making the game so scary in the first place.

Only in the game's climax, when the player descends into the depths of hell, does Doom 3 become so impressive in its attention to detail that I was able to briefly look past the game's gargantuan shortcomings. The last few levels are almost worth the hours you have to put in beforehand if only for their look alone, despite the fact that they are just as obnoxious and cheap as the rest of the game, if not more so.

Pros

+ It is, to be honest, a very scary game.
+ It's also perhaps the best-looking Xbox game to date.
+ The finale is pretty cool.
+ The Limited Edition set features some great extras.

Cons

- Unimaginably archaic in design.
- Cheap, jump-in-your-seat scares are really all this game has.
- Literally some of the worst (and cheapest) AI I've ever seen.
- Environments all look the same, leading to nonstop repetition.
- “Puzzles” are limited to looking for unlocked doors and searching for codes.
- Online co-op only takes away the sense of isolation.
- Zombie headshots =/= kills? WTF?

Overall: 2/10

Well, people like Doom 3. Maybe some people like cheap, jump-in-your-seat shocks. It's the reason so many folks go to see lame horror movies like Darkness Falls and The Omen. And hey, if that's your thing, go for it. So many critics enjoyed Doom 3 that I almost see myself recommending it just on the basis that you'll PROBABLY like it, even though I certainly didn't. If you don't mind playing games that feel like the original Doom with upgraded graphics and lousy scares, then Doom 3 may just fit your demands. I, on the other hand, live in the twenty-first century, and I expect far more out of my games. Doom was a great game for its time, but if the game had only just been released today, would you like it? Probably not. That's how I feel about Doom 3.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 07/10/06