Yoshi's Complete Doom 3 Review!

[ForumAdmin]

Ok so,

The first impression I got of Doom 3 was from a friend of mine whom I've worked on mod projects w/ before. The dude's a godly mapper, as well as a unique personality (few ppl get their first name legally changed to match their online handle). He said the game's entire purpose was to be scary and that it did not do a very good job of it, due to the kinda-lameness of the monsters and the endless dark corners.

So, with my trusted friend's opinion in hand, I played.

The first couple of maps, I have to admit, are so-so on the scariness front. The story is weak but existing, at least in the beginning. It's not hard to treat the initial attempts at story in Doom 3 as another typically lame attempt on id's part to infuse some kind of depth to a gorefest.

And then about 2 hours of play later, you start to notice things.

Firstly, Doom 3 screams polish. By polish I mean they went above and beyond to make sure everything was perfect. The sort of polish Doom 3 exhibits, I personally tend to associate with Nintendo franchise games (think Super Mario Sunshine). Examples of this polish would be the UAC promo videos placed throughout the game or the fact that if you backtrack a bit to pick up that med pack you never used, out comes monsters in places you've already been, but there are no monsters poping out at you if you randomly backtrack to nothing.

Secondly, the scariness. The first few maps just completely lack any sense of true horror. Instead, they are filled with lame attempts at horror - the maps are excessively dark and thus attemps at horror are offset by how annoyed you are when come upon monsters that are 2 feet in front of you and yet you can't see them w/o a flashlight, which you can't hold and shoot at the same time. How do you come upon their monsters, you ask? As there is no skill involved in killing these monsters (more on that later), it can be best described like this:

walk up to room - flashlight to look into the dark corners, figure out where the monsters will spawn - switch to weapon - walk into room - monsters pop out - shoot the ones you can see - switch to flashlight, look for more monsters, find monsters - switch to weapon - shoot monster - switch to flashlight - pick up goodies

That is essentially Doom 3 in a nutshell for the first 3 or 4 maps. Thankfully later maps become well lit to the point where you can walk into a room and be able to fight monsters w/o having to switch back and forth between your flashlight for survival. Because of this, you can finally become engrossed in the game enough to get creeped out.

The creepiness of Doom 3 is mostly thanks to the absolutely amazing sound work. The maps in Doom 3 were VERY highly thought out from a monster perspective, it seems. But even moreso, the amount of time dedicated to putting sounds where they will have the most effect shows. The sound work is perfect. The music starts getting more stringy, you start hearing slight moans or grunts through walls and such as you come upon monsters. Additional sound effects of note are, during a monster-low area, you will be walking down a hallway and hear other people trying to make it out. You'll hear them talking to each other, running, fighting and dying. Random radio communications also help to erase the typically id feeling of being the only guy in the universe. Describing all of this here does not do the sound work justice as it must be experienced.

The story of Doom 3 is amazingly deep for id, well, for at least most of it. Through the use of an in-game PDA, you can pick up other people's (always dead) PDA's, read their email and listen to audio logs, which usually open up some other point of the story through that person's perspective (researcher, load master, maintainence crew, etc) as well as give you the codes to cabinets placed throughout the game which give you more goodies. While it is annoying to have to listen to an audio log that has zero bearing on the story just to get the code for a cabinet that gives you some armor shards, the level of detail put into the PDA system deserves note. Through cinematic clips in the engine help to move the story along and explain exactly what is going on. Ocassionally the game will give you an option that, at the time, seems rather large (which side to choose), however, the actual impact of these decisions on gameplay at this point is minimal - ex, no matter whether or not you decide to send the message via satillite, you still go to the Delta Complex the same exact way, the only difference is the sort of messages you recieve. This decision ultimately has zero bearing on the gameplay itself.

Now for the bitches and complaints. Despite being able to keep the tension high, at least in my opinion, the game quickly becomes repetitive and boring. As a matter of fact, the only real incentive to keep playing is to get more tidbits of information to, what at least I felt, was a mildly interesting story about a Mars civilization and its battle with Hell. However, despite that, the ending is typically id Software. Think Quake 1 ending and you pretty much get the idea. The final monster battle is also not at all intersting, instead more of the same repretitive stuff. I'll spare you the details on how to kill the final monster, but don't fret, it's terribly and and disapointingly dull, much like that of Quake 1 (who's final monster was killed by telefragging it).

As we're on the topic of monsters, the forumla they use for the monsters coming out of walls becomes so apparent after a while that you can flashlight a room, see exactly where the monsters are going to come out, walk into the room enough to trigger the monsters and kill them before they have a chance to even walk out of their cubby hole. It's easy because id decided to use the same exact texture for these moving walls. See the texture, aim, walk into room/trigger the monster, shoot, repeat.

The weapons set is standard fare - pistol and chainsaw that you never use, pump shotgun, machine gun, plasma rifle, chain gun, BFG9000, and grenades. I may be forgetting a gun, but that's probably because I never used it. If you play Doom 3 right you'll spend 90% of your time using the shotgun as at point blanc it can kill pretty much anything. Oh and speaking of weapons, HOW HARD IS TO PUT A FLASHLIGHT ON A DAMN GUN?! We're dealing with frickin inter-dimensional transport machines from Mars here and the combined minds of the Space Marines and the largest corporation known to man haven't yet figured out to duct tape a damn flashlight to the barrel of a gun? Give me a break. I understand the necessity, from a scare point of view, that if you had a flashlight on your gun you'd have it on all the time, thus making the game that much less scary and you able to see that much better, thus nulling all that hard work spent making the lighting (or lack thereof) perfect, but you can't have it both ways, id. Either it's Doom like the oldschool days and you don't bother with the story or you make a full blown story that's good and follow through with it. Doom 3 falls right inbetween and thus suffers from an identity crisis.

So, to conclude, if judged as an id Software game - meaning no story, just thrills and kills, Doom 3 is the best game id has made since Quake 1, or ever, depending on who you ask. However, if you dive right into Doom 3's weak story and view it as a direct competitor to Half-Life 2, assuming that all that it has promised is delivered, Doom 3 is a very distant second. The story, despite being an interesting aside adding some depth to what would otherwise be a pure and simple gorefest in a very polished manner, it does not compare to the story of the original Half-Life. Doom 3 style of delivery for its basic story, however, is the best yet. How good the game is, ultimately, is going to be decided upon by the expectations people have by playing it. Those people who harken back to the good old days of Doom and Quake, they will find this installment of Doom to be the most polished yet, even if it lacks the massive 30+ enemy battles of the original Doom. Those whose FPS standards are set by the likes of Half-Life, Medal of Honor or Deus Ex, are going to be sadly disapointed. Despite the excellent presentation, Doom 3's story lacks any real depth, originality and ultimately any kind of satisfaction. The story has absolutely zero bearing on the end of the game and proves only useful, for the sake of continuity, in giving a quick and dirty explaination on why the Soul Cube exists in the first place.

And with that said, I give Doom 3 a A-. I did not expect Doom 3 to have a story, instead I expected a bloody scarefest, which Doom 3 achieved quite well, even if the game was slightly too long for its own good. After seeing the amazing graphics and animation work in Doom 3, I now look more forward than ever to playing Half-Life 2.

Yoshi's Recommendation: Buy! Buy! Buy!... when it hits $29.98.

Amn Yoshi

[Xavier Zyrae]

Great review Yoshi! I've played it myself, and I agree with pretty much all you've said. =)

[DeathShroud]

I think the best point you made Yoshi was how extremely polished this game looks. You can tell the boys and girls at id Software were really hammering away at this game. I too can't wait to get my grubby little fingers on Half-Life 2!!

[dough]

It's a System Shock 2 knockoff. Pure and simple.

[ForumAdmin]

I agree with you completely on that. Lucky for id Software, not many people really remember System Shock 2, otherwise a lot more people would be saying that.

[dough]

Tell me about it. I found SS2 a lot more scary, too... I mean, just the whole loneliness in SS2 was enough to scare the shit out of me...

IMO the audio logs sucks in Doom3.. they're so 'perfect'. No static noises, no scared talking or anything.
Given the horrors they talk about you'd think they were just SLIGHTLY scared.
At least in SS2 the employees get more and more twisted as you progress...


Man I loved that game.

[Xavier Zyrae]

Doom 3 has it's similarities to SS2, but imo it's nowhere near as good in terms of gameplay or 'story', nor is it really trying to be the kind of game SS2 was. Doom 3 focusses more on great visuals and sound to try and be scary, and has some kind of story tacked on to explain what's going on. It's still a pretty run-of-the-mill FPS besides that though. SS2 however, I see as more of an RPG, viewed from the 1st Person perspective, with a story that drives the entire game.

The audio logs in Doom 3 aren't bad imo, but I do agree that the SS2 one's are still the one's to beat... the voice acting and SFX in those were just excellent. (Especially those with either SHODAN or The Many in them!)

[dough]

Doom 3 has it's similarities to SS2, but imo it's nowhere near as good in terms of gameplay or 'story', nor is it really trying to be the kind of game SS2 was. Doom 3 focusses more on great visuals and sound to try and be scary, and has some kind of story tacked on to explain what's going on. It's still a pretty run-of-the-mill FPS besides that though. SS2 however, I see as more of an RPG, viewed from the 1st Person perspective, with a story that drives the entire game.

The audio logs in Doom 3 aren't bad imo, but I do agree that the SS2 one's are still the one's to beat... the voice acting and SFX in those were just excellent. (Especially those with either SHODAN or The Many in them!)

SS2 was scary as hell -- it scared me more than Doom 3. Doom 3 became repetitive:

Enter new area
Wait for monsters to conveniently spawn behind you or to your sides
Strafe out of their path
Kill them.
Proceed.

[Tintomara]

Great review Yosh! I think I'm going to buy it. But what I want to hear is how good the coop side of the game is.

The cooperation mode was awesome in doom2. True joy. Something I really didn't experience till halo.


Hey all btw. Long time no see. I really like the new page and wish you all the luck. Cheers. /tinto, tti-oldie

[Elithiomel]

hey Tinto, nice to see you back
Still got that wasted, paranoid looking avatar i see

[Shazam0]

Hi Tintomara! good to see a freindly 'old timer' back on our forum.

[Tintomara]

Glad to be back! Yea, the good 'ole squirrle is back =)

[Andian]

Another Old face here just popping in to say hi to all at TTI.
Tinto...good to see you mate, ahh I remember all the work you managed to pass my way in Eve...good times.

I wish all the members, past and present, my best wishes. TTI was and should always be a Corporation of strong individuals. It shouldn't be any other way. 8)

[Shazam0]

I wish all the members, past and present, my best wishes. TTI was and should always be a Corporation of strong individuals. It shouldn't be any other way. 8)

Thank you Andian.

[Alstair]

I haven't played through it much but all I know is that I hate overly dark levels. Like Yoshi said, at least put the flashlight on the damn gun. Overly dark levels make the game unplayable to me cause you want to just turn up your brightness and contrast until you can actually see where you're going. What good is a game with great graphics if you can't fuckin see them! I'm glad to hear that they turn on the lights later in the game.

[mempheria]

yep great review. i must try it