Turnabout is fair play, right? If I'm going to talk up Doom the First to the detriment of modern games with modern engines, I should certainly be willing to play Doom 3 right? It is scary games month and what's more scary than the slow, sickening decay of everyone who worked on Doom? You're thinking about Rage, right? But remember, Daikatana ties into this process as well! Daikatana is like a game version of the star wars prequels. I mean, the actual movies, not pod racing on your kinect or something. That analogy doesn't make overly much sense... Doom.
Anyway Doom 3 is a 2004 release into the Doom series and an actual new game as opposed to Doom 2, which was honestly just an overlong map pack with some additional small features - but no stage maps, and the lack of maps seriously worsened the game for me. I have no idea why that's such a big thing - Look at it, it's nothing! But Doom 2 didn't have it and I was sad as a fourteen year old. It kinda goes back to how world building mentally works when you're young, but it's entirely a thing.By modern conventions Doom 3 would probably just be titled Doom, given its status as a remake of the first game. There was a lasting complaint back then that Doom 3 was a horror game out of nowhere, but that just comes off as an issue of gamers not really comprehending what is horror at all. The original Doom maybe doesn't feel spooky when you're a hardened veteran of shooters, but show that shit to most people and it's pretty damn horrifying. I mean episode 1, episode 3 had entire walls made out of screaming people and so on being you were actually in Hell. Mind you Doom 3 went to horror school and picked up all of the tropes, but stuff like jump scares and lights going out when you picked stuff up were in the original game. Shit just moved so slow and randomly I guess people didn't really pick up on it so much as a horror thing. Maybe it's totally a gamer thing though. I see blood sprayed fire hose style across the walls and I think "did the demons like, do that intentionally? It seems like it would be a ton of effort". Whereas a little old granny would be like "AAAAAAAAAAAAAA"
It does go to show you how silly it seems to complain about developers and publishers addressing new games with their original title; Doom 3 isn't, on any level, a fundamental sequel and just calling it Doom would simplify expectations a bit. Or combine both elements and title the game "Doom: Horror Manshooter" then everyone would have known what they were getting into. Maybe just "Doom: Horror manshoot starring tiny flashlight"
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| unmodded Doom 3 (still looks ok!) |
I'm playing Doom 3 modded to bring the graphics engine up to date with modern graphical engine trickery, although I did start up the game before modding everything and it didn't really look that bad, which isn't surprising since if nothing else id understands making engines. The steps to update are outlined hereabouts. I should note that I am playing the original version of Doom 3, without the expansion, not the BFG edition which was some sort of bizarre console in, console out port.
Modified forward Doom 3 looks pretty nice, though much of that owes to the fact Doom's environments are constructed out of 'things' not so much just textures. It's a little weird saying that, but even right off the bat you get a very different visual comprehension from even Rage. I've read that game development especially as it pertains to three dimensional environs has increased in cost exponentially, but I'm sort of wondering what they're paying for given how much nicer Doom 3 looks than games that came out ten years later. Some of the bloodied industrial scenes compete with modern stuff both in terms of slickness and overall aesthetics. I can complain forever about how I wish it was less of a horror game, but the game does its visuals very well.
Admittedly the people look kinda weird and lumpy but that might have been intentional of them? It suffers a little in other ways as well, but in terms of how good or bad the environment looks it seems fine. That's even without pointing out it doesn't have some super gorgeous skybox, which honestly has started to feel like a bit of a cheat. (edit - There's an awesome skybox whenever you go outside actually)
I think the first stand out experience of Doom 3 for me, and I want to mention this primarily because it's so dumb on my part, is getting past the introduction segment and then immediately jumping off some random object to plummet to my death. Whoops! And then, suddenly and instantly, I remember Doom 3 does not have a checkpoint system on any level and I'm back 20 minutes of goofing around at the mid-point of the introduction. It's funny think how often I complained to myself or in writing about how goofy checkpoint systems are, only to remember very quickly they do have their advantages.
I also want to mention that I have an odd relationship with horror. I don't "frighten" but I do become uneasy outside of combat - I end up with this weird emotional state of wanting to throw myself into combat and abandon, rather than increase, in cautiousness. I guess it kinda works for me! One problem with this, though and it certainly reduces my enjoyment of this game, and say Dead Space, is I become really irritated with over usage of "horror audio".
Maybe that's a fundamental misunderstanding or miscomprehension of what horror "is" to me, but Dead Space did all sorts of stuff like making gurgling sounds or playing annoying music at me, and Doom 3 just gets on the noise train right after the demons start bursting out. Radios play, ambient noise goes off, stuff screams in the background and it just sort of puts me off. I really like that Doom 3, much like Dead Space, feels a ton like you're in a facility that actually does things so I don't mean noises like that. The other stuff, cliche horror ambiance stuff, I just find very grating. I've always found it a little weird, since horror to me relies on observing sudden changes, and constant undercurrents of noise just seems to make you tune it out or find it irritating. Like I said, maybe I just don't get horror, but I find I get slightly frustrated and more violent.
Doom 3's lack of music is pretty surreal when the music was such a big part of the original Doom. It's hard to really articulate why Doom's music sounded so good, given how simple it was, but it worked incredibly well and quoting directly "got you PUMPED". It makes sense given the more overwhelming horror mentality going into Doom 3's design but you really have to question it. Like I said, I recognize Doom itself was a horror game in some ways limited at the time by what it could do, but no one really remembered Doom for that. So if you're building the early stages of the game and someone points out like, hey, we're entirely omitting an element people remember fondly to work within the framework we're laying down doesn't it sort of flash up a big warning sign?
Voice acting is pretty good though. It's a little weird, several of the voices are very familiar, Hell the guy who played one of my favorite transforming robots does a bit part in here. I guess the VA industry is pretty stagnant and I just never really noticed. Much like Splinter Cell: Conviction, you get this very weird feeling as a decent voice actor delivers a bizarre ass line but most of the dialogue in Doom 3 is pretty reasonable given circumstances.
The story, or those circumstances, is ... Not intrinsically good. One of the biggest issues is the fundamental twist. Using a twist in a re-write of a known story is just bizarre. I mean if you ask people now "what happened in the first Doom" they won't really know, but it was basically just - teleporter accident unleashes Hell. But I'm sure when people first played it they kinda clued into what was going on, then forgot, because who cares? Much of the later game's atmosphere is informed by the original game's labeling and ideas that maybe didn't quite come across given you were essentially running around primitive 2d boxes with ugly brown textures. In that sense, I mean Doom 3 looks how Doom 1 probably looked in the original team's imagination. The levels in early Doom were all very science-y "The Containment Area", "The Refinery", "Nuclear Plant" and "Phobos Lab" all come off as science inspired, which Doom 3 ran with much to my delight. So you get the idea that they wanted to go back and redo stuff that didn't come across originally, but the end result takes away a little.The other thing is that the original Doom didn't need an antagonistic structure within the narrative simply because Hell is both such a pervasive and explicit threat. In storytelling you create a "big bad" within the plot to give the protagonist something to work towards that feels threatening. You don't need to personalize or antromorphawhatzit demons to create bigger or scarier ones; you make bigger or scarier ones. Stuff that seems ridiculous or unnecessary has no bearing on demons - Make it the size of a house, put drills in his finger tips and mouths where its knees should be - Seems fine. It's a demon. Doom 3 has a doctor bad guy who is a bad guy and does bad things, but he's totally unnecessary and of no concern. I'm not saying I don't like the storytelling elements, I just feel like they're a wasted resource. There's also some sub-plot where there's a like, lawyer who is investigating the base, but the bad doctor who does bad things is so obviously against the lawyer being there it's impossible to dislike him.
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Either Doom 3 should have given you longer to familiarize yourself with Mars City or it should have given you no time at all. Shuttle crashes, base has already been overrun and everyone you communicate with is creepy in someway. Maybe time travel. Like they think they're talking to reinforcements but you're actually six hours behind in time. It works because spooky demon magic. As is, the story is entirely serviceable and doesn't incite laughter or eye rolling from me, but I don't really overly care. I did like the usage of a framing device as to why you're going where you're going, but I feel like it could have been a bit more horror influenced. "I am attempting to catch up to people but I can't quite make it" doesn't really scream horror to me.
It's a shame in two parts - I really love Doom 3's early level design, or basically any of the 'industrial slash research zone' areas. Even if it does the Dead Space 'Blood on every surface to the point of surreal wondering if that much blood was even available', it still feels like it "is" something rather than just corridors ad nauseaum, though those have a certain Hellishness created through monotony of their own I guess? Heck there are chest high walls here and you can take cover, but the terrain feels like someone actually thought about where shit should go and so on. The other shame is you can tell effort went in, but it's all very forced and constrained by what came before it. I almost feel like the original design document for Doom was looked at and used as a framework with the original game straight up setting the mold.
One thing I do want to mention, I guess, is that Doom 3 suffers this weird issue - again possibly borrowed from the original - where it has odd very out of place feeling jumping puzzles. The original had running and jumping puzzles here or there, which were probably way less annoying back then. The platforming is really, really weird in Doom 3 when played in the modern day - everything else feels a little off in parts, sure, but here you just feel totally fish out of water, what is going on, why are you doing this to me. I died on the jumping puzzles a quarter into the game more than I did previous. Actually that barely even means anything, I died more on the jumping puzzles six times over. Three dimensional movement is just strange in Doom 3 and it's super difficult to figure out where you can or can't go until you hurl yourself off things. I guess if I'm going to talk about weird issues I should mention "the flashlight". For those uninformed, Doom 3 uses Darkness a ton and gives you a tiny little flashlight that you have to use in the place of your weapon in order to illuminate darkened sections.
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| ah yes, the grabby arm fps puzzle trope |
Lighting issues in general are more of a nuisance than anything in Doom 3. After a while you will get sick of shit being dark for no reason, or rooms having flickering, stupid looking shit. I fully comprehend that's part of the setting, but please rethink your design options when "is really annoying" is a big part of your setting. Mind you the lighting engine is really good - I'm not sure how much of that is modded in or is their original work. I'm consistently impressed with Doom 3's engine and art assets for a ten year old game.
Gunplay in Doom 3 is very satisfying most of the way. Aiming is precise, bullets go where you tell them, and enemy behavior creates a sense of tension in combat. They're not exactly erratic or random, but they have movesets and dodges, leaps, so on. Sometimes you circle strafe and take not a point of damage, other times you get stuck in a bad spot or the enemy gets in close for murderin' time. The weapon selection really brings me back to the just-finished Hard Reset: There are too many guns and too many buttons and ugh. Grenades take up a numbered slot and the melee key (1) doesn't bring up the chainsaw once you have it. Why would I ever punch when I could saw? While I like the addition of the machine gun slash really it's an assault rifle, it's pretty weird that you seriously get the rapid firing machine gun, the rapid firing chain gun and the rapid firing plasma gun all in a row. Other than just having too many weapons yet still never enough ammo to use the ones I want to use, there's two big issues with the gunplay. Well one big, one little. The little one is enemies are knocked around by your weapons when you kill them, but they take hits without flinching up until the point they die.
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| snacks |
The only weapon I'm really disappointed with are the grenades. They're useful but confusing and ill-positioned. For one, they use up a weapon slot, rather than being a "grenade" slot as in other games. So you have to switch and throw them, leading on the most part to them being simply too slow to deploy in most combat.
In that vein I have a big complaint that combat can feel kinda random in much the same way Hard Reset does - the difficulty of a skirmish is less to do with your planning and consideration, more with where you happen to be positioned when enemies teleport in. Here I mean literally, the floor has trigger points where enemies just ... Now teleport in. Often with spooky laughter! Whereas in Hard Reset it was kinda surreal (where are all these robots coming from!?), it actually really clashes with the horror theme of Doom 3. I mean yes, a jump scare is "A Thing You Do" but 15 jump scares per level, coupled with teleporting and false walls and so on ... And the combat starts to feel something more haunted house oriented, less fps, less horror game. You also don't get much time to Scout and Assess an upcoming combat scenario, meaning the few cerebral elements of shooters is just totally missing here.
I just get this mental image of going through a haunted house and on my fourth jump scare just punching everyone else who does it in the face. I'm not scared anymore, I'm annoyed and now I hit you.
I'm not necessarily saying I want to go all Arma 3 or military sim style on shooters, but the moment before the run and gun where you glance ahead, think about the layout of the room, where the cover is and where enemies are is something I like. In Doom 3 you just ... Run into rooms, because enemies just teleport in literally or figuratively, so there's so much less legitimate tension. It's more stress and fickle, less caution. Like I said earlier, I'm not really sure making me reckless and trigger happy quite works into a horror setting? It's really hilarious thinking about that against the modern regenerating health thing, since you'd have to make the monsters do five times the damage or it'd just be a complete joke.
Anyway, while it doesn't take away from the game completely, it doesn't couple well with a horror setting in spite of how much horror games do it. I want to be cautious and thoughtful, but I can't, so the game just pushes you to dick around and stop giving a shit. I mean, what's the plan on your first pass when there's no clue or evidence as to where enemies are going to appear? Just run in! It's also really grating when coupled with how painful enemies are in melee, but I guess that's a challenge factor? Basically, the game could have gone with some horror but mostly been a shooter and gotten 99% of its scare effectiveness, but instead there's long stretches where you forget you're playing an id shooter and instead feel like you're playing some goofy pop up lightgun game.
Enemy design has to be mentioned as well. It's largely fantastic! The zombies have tons of variety and different looks, the Zombie Security dudes just the same. Different weapons, changed up models, they're great. Most of the returning Doom enemies are either much better or only slightly worse. Imps have a larger range of moves and feel very nostalgic but brought forward. I'm a little disappointed with the Lost Souls, which have too small a hitbox and tend to like, bounce randomly around while doing damage to you for glancing off your ass. Also the Demons (known as pinkies) are just too fast and just tend to spawn right in your face, but they look absolutely fantastic. Nearly a decade later and they all still look great. The Barons of Hell analogue "Hell Knights" feel like big powerful imps, which is probably fair to what they've always done, but here the game's horror actually works - Seeing this hulking demon lurking in shadow is intense whether or not it scares you.
Melee enemies in general suffer from the horror thing and it's a shame. Because most encounters tend to start with enemies teleport in, beside or around you at near melee range, you never really get the high intensity "fighting fifteen guys while cartwheeling around the room" feeling that the original Doom gives out in spades. There's this feeling when you switch to the shotgun at midrange and you see every pellet connect because there's a wall of bodies bearing down on you that Doom 3 has far too little of. It's very frustrating, because none of this is the fault of the enemy design, it's entirely down to level design and spawn placement, which is lame.
When you do get to fight the melee dudes or mixed skirmishes in more interesting settings I found the game really still has that classic run and gun firefight action that I miss when I play most other shooters. Enemies have a sense of urgency to them even on normal. I admit I probably should have played on veteran, but remembering I disliked elements of this game before I just wanted to punch through the game. Of the "new" enemies I'm not a big fan of the cherubs, primarily because they're "dumb" horror but I find them really tricky to fight. Still unlike the Lost Souls I feel like that's more an effect of not getting their pattern down as opposed to trying to hit a bowling ball as it careens towards you. Dead Space at least justified the presence of 'horror babby monsters', Doom 3 just has tiny annoying demons because horror game.
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| could also complain you never get the jeep |
Also it feels kinda weird that Zombie Commando enemies, which are supposedly made from your marine brethren, are summoned in via demonic portals - Aren't they already planetside? That's an odd little nitpick but I don't understand the break up of theme.
To conclude, let's talk about me playing Doom 3 years ago and my more recent experiences, because it's sort of uncanny. I remembered before re-buying it I'd gotten through 'a couple hours' of the game and eventually got sick of it. Like I said earlier, horror games kinda work on me albeit in a weird manner, but in this case Doom 3 had just over-horrored its proverbial welcome, with some dumb bit where you get built up to a scare and then an imp appears. Just an imp - which isn't even all that threatening - I actually remember just being like, seriously id? That's it? Fuck your game.
For the first couple hours of replaying it I was seriously thinking like, why did I hate this enough to stop playing? The engine is solid, I like the neat science-y levels, gunplay is decent. And then it starts to get more and more horror. Which isn't scary on the most part, a couple bits made me jump or tense up, but generally jump scare #38b just made me groan, it's just grating and frankly tedious. I start thinking to myself, I don't really want to play much more of this and then I realize I'm almost back to where I'd left off!
Basic truth here is this: Doom 3 is still an excellent shooter, and when it's being just a shooter, it's a great game. Problem being is it's sometimes not a well made shooter, but instead a mediocre horror game with teleporting enemies and frustrating level design that come at the expense of the shooter. I'm not saying the horror stuff needed to all go, but stuff like:
- Flickering, throbbing or miscolored lights
- Jump scares
- Boxed in, forced near melee encounters in an fps game
- Spooky noises and spooky voices
- Barrels that explode and kill you because you didn't spray ammo into every room
I really hope id (and I guess future people who want make old school shooters) learn the lessons of Doom 3 and RAGE: Make a shooter. Don't make a horror game, or a car combat or a weird RPG, just make a shooter. Doom 3 had all the necessities to be a great manshooter, but instead ends up feel like some jump scare avoidance test. It also has that same weird thing Darksiders 2 does, where I can never really settle into a long play session and often find it hard to stick with the game for more than twenty minutes at a time.
I gotta say though, the Doom 3 engine, thanks in part to the upgrades down by Sikkmon (who I think maintains Sikkmod) and the improved textures still really looks fantastic. It's pretty amazing that an engine ten years down the line feels so modern with some updating. There is some oddity with texture warping in the modded version but somehow the walls appearing to be liquid screaming stone didn't even occur to me as a bug til late in the game.
Changing gears and past the point of the review itself, I want to talk a bit more about Doom 3's story. Everything past this point is spoilerific, so if you plan on playing it and you think you'll care, no need to keep going.
When I first played the game years ago I didn't read anything on the story and ended up quitting right at the start of Delta Labs. Up until about this point, the game's story feels very close to the original Doom's but with deeper explanations. The big initial 'oh shiiiiit' line is right at the first, you find a missing scientist and he tells you "the devil is real - I built his cage".
That sounds so sick. It's just a really awesome line and gives you this feeling that the Delta Labs was secretive and silent in regards to its projects because things had gone horribly wrong. They had tested a new technology and now were enmeshed with containing THE DEVIL. That being said, this element almost immediately starts to get confused, with clips and ads asking people to 'volunteer' for work in the Delta Labs and so forth - I guess that sort of works either way, but it's kinda odd. There's also this weirdness insofar as the lead antagonist and how he seemed to be quite keen on whatever they were doing.
So what were they containing? The game never returns to the 'devil' and/or his cage, at least not in a way that satisfies that original bit of hype. As you get into Delta Labs (which as an aside has more survivors in it than other areas) you begin to find more clues about their research. Not only did they stabilize portals which were not intended originally to enter Hell and somehow modify them to just send you to Hell, they started doing research on like ... Going to Hell. There's audiologs about how they were excited to go to Hell, how they doctored tests to make things 'appear safe' for the purposes of going to Hell and how everyone was really keen on this whole exploring Hell thing.
I mean, really? Just stop. No seriously, stop for a second. We've all gotten accustomed to the whole madness of science, what has science done, you monsters blah blah tropes. Doom is partially inspired by Alien/s and that element is all through the shit. The corporation wants the xenomorphs to weaponize them, and let's be honest, they're pretty freaky weapons.
But this is a new high. The scientists, having discovered they can in fact go to Hell are ... Eager to do it? To do what? Where's the huge, profitable breakthrough here? It's straight up like discovering you set your kitchen on fire and you want to recruit other people to build an even bigger greasefire. There's nothing useful in it, it's FUCKING HELL. They describe how everyone who goes in GOES INSANE and the property value, I mean shit, what do you think the mortgage is like on beach front real estate on a lake made of screaming, burning blood? I mean re-read that earlier bit. One of the main researchers doctors reports to re-classify the technology as safe for humans to use, to visit Hell.
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| raise your hand if the science excites you |
So instead of the story being something about scientific oversight and mistakes were made etc, it's a story about how people figured out how to enter a realm filled with screaming, shrieking demons and rivers of blood, then having arrived there decided we should keep doing this. There isn't even really much discussion as to what they were actually getting out of it. People go into the portal, you get some ... Demons I guess? Then everyone involved dies, either via demons or killing themselves later.
Worse, it's super confusing how the plot even works at all. The lead scientist eventually decides to go into the portal by himself and then comes back unharmed. This is ... Like really? Wouldn't people be like 'how did you do that' 'why aren't you on fire?' or just 'THE FUCK?' Apparently he comes back changed by the experience as if this is unique or ... The fuck. Weirder, they implied they were shipping security officers into the portal to fight the demons to bring them back. How did your superior not notice all his guys coming back dead? I mean yeah, they're not marines (maybe? I'm not sure), but they implied a ton of dead bodies just going into the meat grinder and security command seems rather nonplussed about the whole matter.
What a bizarre ass story. Even odder, there's a main plot point where your Sarge wants you to send a signal to "the fleet" and there's a question of whether or not he's a BAD GUY cuz the bad guy wants to send that same signal. If you choose not to, the bad guy appears on the screen later to let you know - He sent it anyway. So why was this in the plot at all? I mean seriously though, the game heavily implies that Mars City is essentially a wall to wall sausage fest (I guess the sexism didn't seem so quite insane in 2004) so the demands on the sublight network alone for pornography dropping to 1% would clue them in something had gone horribly wrong.
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