It’s no secret that the First Person Shooter genre has become quite crowded. There are hundreds of "me too" games nowadays, a lot of which owe their existence to the original Doom and it’s huge mod community. However time has not been kind to the original hell based shooter. Eleven years have passed since the game came out. While groundbreaking at the time, it’s graphics are primitive today, and the game play, again innovative at the time, is considered among the most basic ever in the genre. Doom 3 does a great job expanding one of these areas, but does nothing in the other we haven’t seen before. The strange part about this is, what one would normally consider the more important of the two, is actually the one that matters less.
Doom 3 is a technological masterpiece. Simply put: it’s atmospherically the best game I’ve ever experienced. Everything about the presentation in this game is top notch and done with precision like we’ve never seen before.
"...it’s atmospherically the best game I’ve ever experienced."
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Maybe these screens look good to you, but you don’t even know the half of it until you’ve experienced this game in action. When you get to the station on Mars, you feel the despair. You feel the desolation. It hangs in the air. When you talk to the other inhabitants you feel their disdain. They’re not happy about working in a factory with less than favorable conditions on a planet that isn’t their home and they don’t hide it. Even the way the character models move (i.e. body language) gets that across. In some ways it already feels like hell. It’s an industrial setting to the very last detail. Large imposing machines mindlessly go about their tasks as you walk past them, chasms extend into the nothing, far below the narrow, and seemingly rickety catwalks you walk across, it’s dirty, it’s greasy, and this is all in the first segment before anything even happens. It’s the lighting sets the mood off perfectly, though.
The lighting is probably the single most impressive thing in this game. Most of the time it’s a complaint to play a game that is this dark, but Doom 3 was designed to be so intentionally, and it works extremely well. When hell breaks loose (litterally) the station goes into an emergency mode, and blinking red lights mix with complete darkness to created a terror cocktail like none before it. It’s frantic, it’s frightning, and it’s truly scary. You’re left on a space station, on a foreign planet, alone, with nothing but a flashlight and a gun to take on zombies and hellspawn. The flashlight will quickly become your best friend. You’ll need it to scope out pathways, look in conrners for secrets, and also for monsters, since they’ll attack you if you don’t see them first. Obviously it’s a very important item; you’ll just need it to get around, point blank. The way the light reflects off surfaces, and the way it bends over character models and other objects creating shadows is astounding. And when the rooms do have their own lighting, prepare to be amazed at the way they’re expertly done as well. Maybe they’re blinking because the room has been pretty much destroyed, or maybe they set an onimous mood, but either way you can rest assured the mood will be perfectly set.
If you can’t gather the mood from a strictly visual sense however, the game aims to freak your ears out as well by pairing some of the best sound effects with the amazing graphics. The two put together are simply an experience not to be missed. The environment, as I said before is industrial, and the noises made are perfect to help to solidify the fact that you’re alone. There’s nothing human about your surroundings. Machines are always clicking, or making whirring noises and they make grinding noises constantly. Electrical noise can be heard, and sometimes the rare complete silence itself is, pardon the pun, golden.
"With such an amazing environment, it really doesn’t seem like such a shame that the game play and story are both kind of basic."
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It can also be downright creepy at times, when you start hearing whispering voices, which may ask you to evil things, or warn you about the evil that’s about. While these sounds help draw the player into the environment, and the feeling of solitude, the enemy noises really put the final nail in the coffin. They’re really high quality, with growls and roars of all types, and while mostly what you’d expect, they are just as imposing as your deepest fears would make them out to be. The gunfire may be the only negative aspect, as they aren’t as "booming" as they could be, but it’s such a small issue in such an amazing package you probably won’t even notice.
With such an amazing environment, it really doesn’t seem like such a shame that the game play and story are both kind of basic. You, alone, on a space station, with the creatures of hell basically make up the story. It’s told very well, through cutscenes, and some nifty PDA video and audio samples, but it’s very basic. id Software was trying to replicate the way the original Doom played, and they were definitely successful. Maybe they accomplished their goal, but it really doesn’t stand up as the stand out feature of this title. It’s not to say that it’s bad, it’s just very basic, and uninspiring. The AI is most likely the reason for this. It’s not terrible, and definately knows how to kill you, but the demons of hell never do anything one would call "smart." For example, the Imps have the ability to climb up walls, but never do so during battle. That’s weird, because it would have added a nifty feature to some basic combat, and believe me, you fight a lot of Imps. The demon troops (possesed guys with guns) use cover to hide, and duck around corners, but that’s about all they exhibit in the brains dept.
Basically the game boils down to this: you enter a room, enemies spawn (sometimes in front of and behind you), you clear the room, search for items (usually ammo) and then you move on to the next room, repeat, rinse, repeat... you get the picture. Rarely do you get to do any puzzles, and even then they’re very basic. There’s an escort mission at one point, but by itself it isn’t enough to add what one would refer to as variety. It’s a little repetative, but it’s still fun. Sometimes you get hit with a cheap shot (hidden enemy in the shadows you didn’t see for example), but you’ll hardly complain with an environment so well done. It’s the enemies themselves that can add variety however. You’ll come across some you’ve seen before (Imps, Cacodemons) but some will completely blow your mind. The Hellknights are as imposing as they are deadly, and some of the enemies will simply blow your mind.
"...multiplayer is a very basic affair..."
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The multiplayer is a very basic affair as well. Servers are limited to 4 (but a lot run 16) and it’s mostly just a frag fest. If you’re into what will feel like some oldschool multiplayer gaming that feels like it’s from the days of QuakeNet, then you’re in for a treat, but if you’re looking for something more Unreal Tournament will be where you should turn.
Honestly, Doom 3 is so technically impressive, that all of it’s shortcomings and other downfalls are completely swept away by it’s beauty. Gamers looking for the next Half Life will want to look elsewhere (well duh, Half Life 2) but those looking for something to showcase their PC’s muscles, or those that are in for the best update (read: facelift) the Doom series has ever seen, look no further than this title.
