Dooooooooom!
Recently there has been a game released called Doom3. Maybe you have heard of it? It's a small remake of an old game that was released some 10 years ago, called Doom. If you've never heard of it, don't feel bad, it was a small game which almost no one played, by a software company which didn't really go on to accomplish anything else. All kidding aside, Doom3 is a game which has some pretty big, albeit low-rez, shoes to fill. The original game could easily be called the father of all modern First-Person Shooters, and for people who have been big devotees of the original game, they expect a lot from this game. People like me, for example. In this day and age, I still have Doom installed on my PC, and I still play it regularly, so I felt that I was ready for whatever this game could throw at me.
Let me just start out by saying how wonderful this game looks.
The bump-mapping, raytraced lighting, specular maps, etc. that Id have put into their new engine makes everything look spectacular. I would say it's one of the best looking games I've seen this year, right up there with Farcry. They have dynamic lighting and light-sourcing that looks amazing in the game, and fairly high-polygon models that make me look forward to what other games being developed for this engine will look like. Unfortunately because of the bump-mapping they use on some textures make things look a bit plastic and shiny, but, all-in-all I give Id huge props for their game engine.
And how about the gameplay, you ask? Well… uh… have I told you about how good Doom3 looks? I did? Ok, well, then… Because it does look really nice. Really really nice.
Ok, no point in putting this off any further. How does the game play, you ask? Well, the game plays all right, nothing really to write home about. The guys at Id have never been known for complex plots, and this time they tried to do something about that, by giving us more than just 'Generic Marine going from point A to point B, shooting anything that moves', but in the end, that's exactly what they ended up with, plus several hours worth of boring email and voice messages. The plot of the game is this: You're a Marine newly arrived to the UAC Mars base, and you arrive just in time for the forces of Hell to start trying to make the place their own. Fans of the original will be familiar with the plot, as it is basically the same as the original, with a little bit more depth as to why the forces of Hell are currently on Mars, and what they want.
Several old friends show back up in this sequel, such as the Shotgun Guy, the Imp, the Cacodaemon, etc., and the biggest thrill anyone who's a big fan of the original game is going to get a big thrill out of looking at the new versions of their old friends and see how they've changed, kinda like a 10 year high school reunion. Some other friends have made it back to the reunion as well, such as your friend the shotgun, the pistol, the rocket launcher, the plasma gun, the BFG, etc. One or two have even brought along their kids for the trip, which was nice of them. One of the new additions is the baby son of the chaingun, the machine gun, and the daughter of the rocket launcher, the grenade. But, like all 10 year reunions, some things have changed, and not always for the better. One of my particular annoyances at the game was the new shotgun, which has such a wide spread that it's entirely possible to shoot around enemies without hitting them.
And then, there's the flashlight…
The flashlight was provided as a plot device, which will allow Id to make everything dark and moody, and to try to show how good the game looks when seen through a pinhole camera. There are several places in the game that are completely unlit, and you can only get through by using your flashlight. That may not be such a bad thing, except that when you have the flashlight out, you can't use any weapons. None. Not even the pistol. The only thing you can do is either pull out one of your weapons, and fight in the dark, or try to brain whatever your fighting with your flashlight. Either way, it's not fun.
Another new addition to the game is the various PDA pickups, which allow you to listen to voice messages and read emails from people in the complex to try to get more plot information and the occasional codes to open various supply cabinets. This is obviously a 'homage' to the critically acclaimed, yet virtually unknown System Shock 2, which seems to have heavily influenced the developers. But, while the voice mails in System Shock 2 were interesting, and drew you further into the plot, the voice mails in Doom3 are so dull they make me want to cry.
But one thing that did draw me further into the game was the new series of computer screens which Id has worked into Doom3. First off, the screens are large enough, and the text crisp enough, so they can actually be read in game, without having to fill your screen to display what is on a specific monitor. At first there are just some simple 2D interfaces that fluidly animate early in the game, but later on there is full motion 3D rendered on these surface, never has a game attempted to do this and make it look good. Some interfaces are reminiscent of a well designed Flash enabled site. And, more than that, you are able to interact with the screens by simply walking up to them. When you do this, your weapon lowers, and a mouse pointer appears on the screen. You can then point to various things and click on them, such as numbers for codes, or panels to activate machinery or doors, etc. I can only imagine how other games will use this feature in the future, but expect to see it in just about every Doom3-based game.
However, as far as the actual gameplay goes, the guys at Id decided they were going to go with a very predictable series of survival-horror based scares. Because of this, the game is fairly scary for the first thirty or so minutes you play it, and after that you realize that every room you go into, every health pickup or ammo pickup you find, will likely spawn enemies into the room. See that pack of rockets over on that bed? No one's guarding it, so it must be fine. The moment you pick it up, several enemies will teleport into the room and try to kill you. Find a perfectly normal empty room? The moment you get inside, either the walls will open or enemies will teleport in and start trying to kill you. The guys at Id obviously tried to create tension, with the flashlight and all, but tension means that occasionally something isn't there to try to kill you, and you have to guess when that is.
Luckily the game is very mod-friendly.
There are already several mods out there which will attach a light to one of your weapons, or allow you to use a flashlight AND pistol at the same time (just like any police officer is trained to do, apparently they don't get that kind of training in the marines), stop the bodies from disintegrating after they have been killed, replace sounds with sounds from the original Doom, etc. These are great, and will hopefully increase the life of the game greatly. The only problem is the multi-player deathmatch version of the game seems to have a very hard time connecting to servers if everyone isn't running the same mods on their clients. This can be fairly frustrating when you have to remove the mods you've installed manually, and let's not forget that most level packs are mods too, so if you don't have a level that someone else does, you can't play on that server. Hopefully Id will address this in a future patch.
So, in conclusion, I would say that Doom3 is a fairly good game. The graphics of the game are amazing, and the game certainly is longer than I expected, and most of the levels are quite large for how good they look, but there are various annoyances that make me shy away from giving this game a huge score. Should you buy this game? Definitely. With the modible content, we're sure to see quite a few fan-based games being made for it, and other content, which should mean that most of us will have this game installed on our computers years from now, just like Half-Life. The real question to answer is do you buy it now, at full price, or wait?
Final Score: 3 Shotgun Blasts to a Zombie out of 5
