DOOM3 is essentially a remake of the original DOOM, though series fans will find re-imagined versions of almost every monster from both DOOM and DOOM II in the new sequel. You play as a nameless, voiceless 22nd-century space marine called by the Union Aerospace Corporation ( UAC ) to its Mars research facility plagued with mysterious problems.... ( the forces of Hell, to be exact ). You'll end up single-handedly fighting back legions of hellspawn using weapons like shotguns, machine guns, and rocket launchers. As in the classic DOOM games, your foes here are liable to strike at any time... often just as you round a corner or when you grab a much-needed power-up, or set foot into a new area. So, while your enemies will materialize without notice and may occasionally startle you as they leap out of the darkness, DOOM3 cannot easily be described as scary or suspenseful. On the contrary, it's very predictable, and more or less it just goes through the same types of paces that you've probably gone through before in any number of other similar games. The first one or two times the hellspawn come out of nowhere to attack "may" cause you to jump out of your seat though....

Over the course of the game, you'll fight your way through a series of linear levels filled with locked doors, and you'll gradually find new weapons and occasionally meet new types of monsters. Early on, your apparent goal is to meet up with your squad, but as you might expect, you'll never actually get to fight alongside any human forces. Despite the game's cinematic trappings, it follows a formula that generally lacks drama or tension. Occasionally, the game presents to you a shocking or surprising scene ( a hallucination or some hellish, otherworldly image ). These moments are effective, but are too few and far between in the context of a single-player shooter that's of above-average length ( somewhere between 15 to 20 hours ). Fortunately, the campaign definitely picks up during the last several hours, once you finally reach ( and keep going past ) the point when you confront the enemy on its own turf. Getting to that point may be your primary motivation for trudging through some of the repetitive middle portions of the game, though. The area I am specifying is the base itself where you explore the tight woven confines of the corridors. I found the corridors a bit too narrow and tight for my pleasures when a hell spawn attacked and you needed a bit of breathing room to counter attack it with your firepower.

Part of the issue is that DOOM3's storyline and narrative technique are ineffectual. Since the main character has no identity whatsoever ( for whatever reason ), the game tries to get you interested in " everyone else " on the base. You'll frequently find voice recordings and e-mail from various characters ( through a personal PDA ), but not only is a lot of this stuff bone dry, having to stop and read or stand around and listen to a rambling monologue jarringly disrupts the flow of the action. Unfortunately, if you choose to focus on the action by ignoring the seemingly extraneous story elements, you'll find that some of them aren't optional--you'll need to sift through those e-mails and listen to some of those voice recordings to get passcodes for locked doors and storage chests. I found that aspect of the game to be somewhat tedious. Especially if you missed the PDA card on a table somewhere. You'll need to backtrack your steps to find it or you'll won't be able to get pass a locked door to continue with the game. 

For what it's worth, the game's premise seems very fleshed out, and the game gives an amazing first impression. As you explore the UAC base, eavesdropping on various conversations and observing great, little details here and there, you'll get the impression that DOOM3 takes place in a fully realized world. Of course, all hell quickly breaks loose, and from that point onward you'll encounter scarce few creatures that you won't want to instantly shoot. The premise of the game will continue to unfold through occasional cutscenes and the aforementioned e-mails and recordings.

As DOOM3 is set in the future, a number of questions arose that made the game seem lame in some aspects, such as :

- Why would a 22nd-century space marine be sent into action in a darkly lit area without night vision goggles of some sort, or even a helmet?

- Why wouldn't any of his weapons have light-amplification modules built into them when even today's weapons frequently do?

- Why, instead, is he stuck carrying around a very weak flashlight with unlimited battery life?

- Why is he unable to hold a gun and the flashlight at the same time?

- Why are the UAC's small, spiderlike sentry drones so incredibly powerful?  [ You'll see these helpful little guys rip through droves of hellspawn even faster than you can ].

- If the base's defenses are so tough, then why is everyone so worried, and why is everyone getting killed?

DOOM3's central gameplay conceit simply doesn't fit in with the premise of the game, and this is a problem only because DOOM3 chooses to try to make you feel like you're in a believable, fully realized world. DOOM -inspired shooters, such as Serious Sam and Painkiller, wisely followed the classic game's arcadelike gameplay and simply focused on run-and-gun action. So it's ironic that DOOM3's ambitions to be a story-driven game mostly just end up getting in the way and weakening the overall experience.

As mentioned, DOOM3 is set in backdrop of a very dark and brooding atmosphere. There's rarely a moment when your entire field of vision isn't predominantly shrouded in thick, black shadow. This contributes heavily to DOOM3's creepy, claustrophobic feel and it does indeed give the gameplay a distinctive quality. However, the constant extremely dark settings conspire with the frequently repetitive level design to contribute to gameplay that can often feel monotonous, especially since the action itself is very straightforward. What's more, the game's levels will occasionally require you to backtrack through dark hallways without clear markings, so rather than constantly blasting monsters, you may end up spending an undue amount of time just trying to get your bearings ( yeat another tedious task I found displeasure in taking ) There's a sizable arsenal of weapons to be found here, but none of them are completely satisfying to use. Pretty much all the guns are direct-fire, point-and-shoot weapons with no alternate firing modes and no close-range melee attacks; they do look impressive onscreen, but they all sound surprisingly tinny and subdued, rather than loud and powerful. Sound effects from your weapons are weak. Very weak.

The game's few melee weapons are mostly useless ( though the chainsaw is at least fun to use ). The grenades and the rocket launcher are liable to damage you just as much as they will damage your foes, since most of the game's battles occur at close range. Most modern shooters now seek to balance their weapons such that different tactical circumstances call for different measures, but DOOM3 takes the old " bigger is better " approach, for the most part. The main consideration in deciding which weapon to use at any given moment will be how much ammunition you have remaining, and to its credit, DOOM3 forces you to be pretty conservative with your ammo ( you'll often feel the need to make every shot count ). Furthermore, your marine has no special abilities to speak of. He can move about fairly quickly, he can jump about two feet high, he can crouch, he can sprint, and he can carry every weapon at once, but that's it, don't expect him to be able to lie prone or lean around corners or anything like that. This isn't that kind of game.

This also isn't the kind of game in which you should expect to be fighting against ruthlessly intelligent foes. Some of the former human marines you'll face will use basic combat tactics against you, and other foes at least do a fairly good job of giving chase if you try to flee from them. But, in general, your enemies follow the same sorts of predictable patterns that you may remember from previous DOOM games. By the halfway point of the game, you'll have little trouble avoiding your enemies' attacks when directly confronting them, so you'll instead be concentrating on predicting the expected ambushes around every corner. Also, one of the drawbacks of DOOM3's richly detailed graphics is that you'll rarely face more than a few foes at a time, and as you kill them, their bodies instantly disintegrate into ash. id software incorporated this effect to reduce the workload of your CPU and RAM. I would have rathered they left it in ( by default ) so you could use the bodies as a guide when you are forced to backtrack through certain map levels. It's disappointing that the colorful death animations and seas of monster corpses from past DOOM games are nowhere to be found here ( though, in exchange, you'll pass through countless corridors chock-full of smeared blood and human remains ).

As a result of all of the above; the predictable level design and enemies, and the simple but effective weapons arsenal, DOOM3 does turn out to be a challenge at the normal difficulty setting and above. It's nice to see that you can quick save and load on the fly anywhere in this game. Something I have always valued and cherished and should be incorporated into ALL games. The creepy atmosphere and frequent ambushes will likely cause you to use this option more often than you need it, and as a result, the game's suspense and tension can be dimished somewhat. If you can resist using the quick save button as much as possible, you'll be rewarded with a more intense gameplay experience.  As it stands, shooter veterans shouldn't have any problem blasting their way through the game at the middle difficulty setting ( at least up until near the end, anyway ), and they should therefore consider the hardest available setting for their first attempt. "Nightmare" difficulty is unlocked after you finish the game, and in it, your health constantly dwindles down toward a danger zone, which means most players aren't going to find it much fun.

So what makes DOOM3 special if it's just a basic corridor crawl in which you shoot anything that moves?

For one thing, the foes you'll face ( while not terribly smart )are a decidedly impressive and wonderfully animated lot. Doom diehards will recognize most all their old nightmarish favorites, and will spot a number of vicious-looking new ones. Sometimes your only tip-off to the presence of enemies will be their gleaming orange eyes peering at you through the darkness, which is another great touch. Most enemies have both ranged and melee attacks, and when they hit you, your perspective will often shake violently as blood fills your field of vision, disorienting you and making you feel like, well, some demon from hell just hit you in the face. Interestingly, this effect is more pronounced the less health you have, which makes for some nerve racking firefights.

The stifling darkness of the game " does " work to good effect during most of the battles. As you explore with your flashlight in hand, you'll suddenly hear the chilling groans and growls of nearby foes, so you'll switch to your weapon of choice and whirl about trying to find signs of movement. The action unfolds quickly and violently. Enemies will often lurch right at you, giving you a clear shot of ( and a clear shot at ) their ghastly physiques. That is to say, what DOOM3's battles lack in complexity, they make up for in eye candy. Even after you've fought countless imps and other demons, you'll still be impressed by some of your close encounters with them.

DOOM3 has some other great details. You'll frequently be able to manipulate computers and other terminals, and you'll do so just by walking right up to them and using your mouse to click on them. It's a subtle yet impressive touch. The text on these terminals is clearly legible when you're standing near them, whereas other games in the past have required you to switch to a separate screen ( and thus get taken out of the main experience of the game ) to read these types of messages. DOOM3 also sports some realistic physics, though many other action games have already done this in the past year or so. Even so, DOOM3's physics are handled well, resulting in some excellent moments when enemies get sent flying from the blasts of your weapons, simultaneously bursting into ashes. You'll also happen upon some grisly or creepy scenes that are certain to stick in your mind long after you've fought your way past them.

In the end, DOOM3's single-player portion is well worth the exertion necessary to get through it from start to finish. At this point, there's no clear cut reason to revisit the campaign, since the action itself will have practically outlived its welcome by the bitter end of your first time through. So it's a one trip pony. This leaves you with DOOM3's threadbare multiplayer features to consider. Out of the box, the game supports only up to four players on a handful of maps and in a small number of different deathmatch-style modes. DOOM's biggest fans could probably make excuses for how this is a throwback to the good old days, and the game's player community will do more with it, but it's simply not a competitive multiplayer game compared to current standards. I say, play through the single player campaign and be satisfied with that. This game is a bit dated now, so if you "were " to try your hand at multiplay, rest assured you'll be in your online map Solo. 

Again, though, in spite of its shortcomings, DOOM3 certainly is a beautiful-looking game, so much so that simply running around in the environments becomes a pleasurable experience in and of itself. The environments offer little interactivity; you can knock over certain boxes and, as mentioned, use certain computers, but you can't damage most objects you see and you can't manipulate them in any way. And that's a shame, as it really deters you from being more engrossed into the game. But they're all really, really pretty.

The game's character models looked to me as though everything is made of plastic. The flesh doesn't look like flesh, but more of a manican. The monsters up close even looked more unrealistic.  Impressively enough, the game runs well even on systems closer to the minimum system requirements, as long as you set it to low detail ( in which the colors appear more washed out, but the dynamic lighting effects and incredibly crisp textures still manage to shine through, and at a surprisingly brisk frame rate ). There actually isn't much genuine creativity to be found in DOOM3's visual design, which resembles any number of other sci-fi, horror-themed games or movies. But the execution of the visuals here is absolutely unmatched, and it truly needs to be seen in action to be fully appreciated. Initial load times of the game when first started seems to take an eternitity. Very slow. Even on my 3.4 GHz system. Once loaded and the the quick save / quick load is in action, it does reload the map pretty quick.

 

 

As for DOOM3's audio, it's also quite impressive overall, but not nearly like the graphics. For one thing, DOOM3 has no soundtrack, apart from a heavy metal tune that plays at the title screen and a few rhythmic ambient tracks. This questionable design choice certainly does amplify the game's effective, believable, and often truly creepy ambient sounds. You can probably think of many games whose musical compositions and actual musical cues contributed heavily to the atmosphere of the experience; but DOOM3 balked at this opportunity. Some of the actual sound effects in the game also aren't that great. Your marine's footsteps sound bland and rather loud, and as mentioned, most of the weapons sound disappointingly underpowered. On the other hand, most of the monsters' shrieks and roars are just as menacing as their looks, and the voice acting that can be heard throughout the game is of generally high quality. For good measure, if you happen to have a 5.1 surround sound speaker system for your computer, you'll enjoy the audio that much more while gaining a tactical advantage against all those imps spawning behind you. Having an up to date soundcard will also enhance your gaming experience in the audio department. I recently purchased the Auzen X-Fi Prelude 7.1 soundcard to supercede my Creative Audigy2 ZS card and the sound quality now in DOOM3 is mind blowing!

Some game players will tell you that graphics aren't everything. And others will tell you that, on the contrary, graphics  " are " truly important for a game. DOOM3 makes a compelling case for both sides of the argument. On one hand, its gameplay has noticeable shortcomings, and its multiplayer mode ( which is the focus of most of today's shooters, thanks in large part to id Software's own contributions in the past ) seems like an afterthought. On the other hand, DOOM3 is a spectacular game in the purest sense, and it is therefore by all means worth experiencing by those with an interest in witnessing just how far the technology of gaming has come along. Fortunately, the actual game itself ( while not as remarkable as the technology that fuels it ) is put together well enough to make DOOM3 legitimately great, all things considered.

The game is worthy of it's initial pricetag, although now you can more than likely get it in the " used " game dept. for a fraction of the cost. If you are like me and enjoy this style of old school gaming and you finish this game and are hungry for more of the same, then you are in luck. An expansion pak to this game is available. It's called DOOM3 : Resurrection of Evil. I picked up this title for $19, but you'll need to hunt around a bit to find a copy of it.

Overall, this game is pretty decent and sound to play. Even with all it's pitfalls, it's worthy of ownership it in your gamebase library.

I rate this one a solid 7.5/10.