Ah, I remember the halcyon days of looking at every new fancy screenshot, every new driblet of information slowly being leaked out about the epic second coming of FPS’s Jesus. Sure, Quake was a great series, Unreal came and did its (great) thing, but we were talking about muthafuckin’ DOOM here—the game that gave you chainsaws, zombie soldiers, and demons. All in one package! And to be sure, those screenshots (like the newly redesigned “Pinky” monster eating that fat guy in the bathroom, wow!) felt like they were another massive step towards photorealism. My only dismay was that I flat out *knew* back then that I wouldn’t have a sweet enough rig to run that puppy anywhere near as pretty as it deserved.

Teh hotsex!

But yeah, that was 3 years ago—I finally played through it a year and a half, maybe two years ago once the hardware came down, and I’m recently trying to force my way through it again. Now the only question I have is: why? I remember this being heralded as at least an 85% in most reviews, which means a hell of a lot of people thought it was some hot shit. On my last play-through of it, I’d have maybe given it an 80% myself—good thing I didn’t, because then I’d have to travel back through time and smack myself upside the head for putting down such a high number for such an average-at-best game. Yes, I’m serious.

Pros:

• Overall the graphics hold up decently—the enemy models are cool, and the environments are rendered pretty well, complete with nifty lighting effects. Oh yeah, and the concussive blast shimmer effect that explosions in the game have is also cool.
• The game’s also got some good sound effects, although the ambient noises are mixed a little too high in some areas. And the jump-out shocks, at least for the first maybe hour, are good to give you a quick jump in your seat.
• It’s nice to see the reinvention of so many of the old favorite baddies from the elder Dooms, too—the Imps, the Pinkies, the zombies (gotta love ‘em), the Pain Elementals (or what my D&D-addled brain used to know only as “those wannabe beholder-looking guys), and the obnoxious-as-hell (lolipun!) Revenants.
• I also remember the last boss fight as being pretty epic, and since I’m not sure I’ll be able to care enough to get to him again, I’ll leave that in the pro column for potential future retcons. And speaking of . . .

You might ask yourself: has chainsawing zombies to death gotten even a little bit old since ’93? What are you, insane? FUCK NO.

Cons:

• You remember that time you were playing Resident Evil, and the zombie dogs suddenly jumped through the window and tried scarfing down your head? Or when you were walking by those boarded up windows in Resident Evil and the zombie hands busted it in and tried to grab ya? Cool little shocks, right? Okay—now imagine something like that happening, oh . . . roughly every five minutes or so. Suddenly it’s less “cool” and more “tiresome.” That’s pretty much every new room or corridor you walk into in Doom 3.And this doesn’t even touch on the magical dearth of duct tape or its futuristic equivalent on Mars—having to use *either* a flashlight *or* a gun is stupid. I imagine their rationale is “darkness is scary,” but PLEASE.It can still be dark if all you have is one beam of a flashlight guiding you through your hundredth tunnel with smoke rolling around in it.
• On another subject, do you remember that time in Serious Sam when you saw that powerup (ammo, armor, or whatever) and *knew* that the game had trained you to fear it, because as soon as you grab the goodies like a hundred enemies will spawn, but you grabbed it anyway ‘cuz you needed it and anyways you were laughing the whole time as the enemy hordes came charging. Doom 3 is a lot like that, too, only instead of hundreds of enemies swarming you in a clearing, it’s 2 or 3 obnoxious ones spawning immediately behind you in a corridor nickel-and-diming you to death. One friggin’ clip of machine gun ammo is NOT worth that. Serious Sam had the decency to give you an assload of all your ammo, and it didn’t matter if you ended up using almost all of it since you could run and strafe and go crazy and it was, well, fun. In Doom 3, if you back up you get hit, and if you strafe, you get hit. If you somehow remember to use the counter-intuitive sprint button, you might not get hit, but the OTHER enemy that spawned behind you that way will hit you instead. That’s not challenging, it’s cheap, sad, and boringly predictable. It’s not even Serious Sam hard, either, just annoying and repetitive.
• And as far as the weapons? Yeah, you pretty much just need the shotgun—the machine gun feels like a popgun (the pistol IS a popgun), the chaingun just spits ammo much faster to sometimes less effect than the machine gun, the rocket launcher’s great if and only if you like nailing yourself with splash damage since every enemy either spawns right in front of you, right behind you, or lunges at you getting in your face the second you open a door. They decided to put hand grenades in the game but forget to make them useful except for killing yourself (see above re: rocket launcher, only add the annoyance of having to find the “sweet spot” for holding down the fire button to get the right power behind your throw). I guess you’ll need the plasma gun, if only because the Revenants fire a couple of heat-seeking missiles that you’ll have to shoot out of the air since you basically can’t dodge—if you strafe, you get hit, if you strafe and run forward, you get hit, and . . . well, you get the point. And who really uses the BFG except for a laugh? But I will say that chainsawing zombies to a second, grisly death doesn’t ever seem to get old.
• And my last big complaint with Doom 3? I hope you’re sitting down for this: I think it’s too friggin’ long. I’m usually the first to rant about the shortness of games, but in this case I think if you’ve run out of good ideas, say, four hours into the game, making me fight the same 6 enemy types in the exact same way for another (what feels like) twenty-four hours is maybe pushing it just a bit. Just maybe.
  

  Good job there, Corky. At least you'll be able to say that it wasn't the S.S. Doomtrooper that got ya.

Final Thoughts:

Am I hater? Are my skills not l33t enough to handle the endless chain of baddies that constantly spawn around me? Or am I just burned from playing too many *good* FPS games (like F.E.A.R., Far Cry, Serious Sam, and Half-Life 2)? Nothing EVER changes in Doom 3, you might meet a new enemy every now and again, but you’ll fight them under the same predictable circumstances every time, and you’ll still get cheesed out of life and armor every time. Does that really sound fun to you? You decide. For me, however, this is one dead-ass god, and probably not worth getting even though you can pick this and the expansion up for maybe 20 bones nowadays. Buy Far Cry instead. Seriously.