important
than they've ever been.
It's interesting
to note that the first two Doom titles were all about throwing colossal
amounts of enemies at the player - a trend that seems to be picking up lately
with the likes of Serious Sam and Painkiller - whereas a considerable
portion of at least the first half of Doom 3 is focused wholly on creating
an atmosphere of increasing and almost tangible dread. Given, you'll square off
against your fair share of baddies, but not in ridiculous, nearly epic quantities
- not at first, anyway. No, Doom 3 is more like a suspenseful horror movie,
content to drag you slowly through its dark passages and claustrophobic hallways,
gradually building upon its initial unsettling feelings of "Something's not right
here", where you'll occasionally come across a couple of zombies, or an imp. In
these earlier stages, the premium is on cinematic feeling and atmospherics, and
the point is not necessarily to toss you into combat, but to scare the pants off
you.
With the lights off and the sound up, the scare factor rises fairly
high (if you're prone to that kind of thing, that is), thanks in no small part
to one of the major characters in the Doom 3 universe: complete and utter
darkness. Only in the rarest of circumstances will you not be engulfed in pitch
black, the flickering and failing lights of the doomed Mars research facility
forcing you to use a flashlight throughout the vast majority of the game. This
omnipresent darkness does a fantastic job in heightening the tension, and breeds
a definite sense of dread; after all, you never know what manner of hellspawn
might be right around the next corner, waiting to chew your face off. What's more,
the dull, intermittent lights of the station will occasionally highlight a monster
creeping down an elevator shaft, or briefly highlight some indefinable thing in
your peripheral vision, which, by the time you turn and look, is obscured by darkness.
As a result, you'll come to cherish the small beam of light emitted by your flashlight
and the tiny amount of comfort that it brings. In little time, you'll be nervously
flicking the beam around every corner, searching every new room for whatever hidden
enemies may be there.
However, what little confidence it brings is often
dashed by the fact that you cannot wield both the flashlight and a weapon simultaneously.
This means that, should you manage to throw some light on a nearby enemy, you'll
actually have to put away your precious flashlight in order to be able to put
a few rounds into him. This works well in terms of making it that much more nerve-wracking
to maneuver the station: if your flashlight was the only thing illuminating your
foe, then you're going to be firing at it practically blind, with only its unholy
growls and occasional glowing eye to guide you. It does wonders for the atmosphere,
but logically, it makes absolutely no sense. Why would the Marine's high-tech
suit incorporate such things as a limited oxygen supply and armor, but no infrared
or light sensor? Why would you be sent to a remote, off-planet station with pre-existing
lighting problems, armed with little more than a flashlight? This is nitpicking,
of course, but it's a design choice that defies any sense of logic - in either
the game or real world. As a logical decision, it makes absolutely no sense; however,
as a gameplay feature, it works incredibly well, and ultimately, that's what truly
matters, as off-putting as it may sometimes be.
As previously mentioned,
the early bouts of slower, cinematic-style tension are somewhat unlike the Doom
that gamers have come to know and love, which isn't to say that it's unwelcome.
The storyline has always lent itself particularly well to this kind of approach,
and it's great to see that the developers have taken full advantage of this opportunity.
What's more, the survival-horror style that's so prevalent in the first half of
the game is done exceptionally well; from the pervasive darkness to the ominous
nearby growls to the endless string of creepy emails and voice logs, you're left
with a richly textured impression of a distant facility gone horribly, horribly
wrong. There are also any number of small scripted sequences which act as cheap
but effective scares, which are but a few of the numerous small details that make
up the experience, which is as rich and full as one could ask for. However, without
giving anything away, any number of these elements appear to have been inspired
by other, more recent "survival-horror" type games, such as Undying, System
Shock 2, and Aliens Vs. Predator 2. Fortunately, the sheer quality
of the presentation itself and the strength of the atmosphere are often more than
enough to carry through any sense of déjà vu that experience players may have.
Eventually, Doom 3 moves on from its slower, tenser beginnings
to reach a shrill, fevered pitch, where every corner hides some new batch of horrors,
and every bit of progress you make is marked by death and destruction. Good thing,
then, that the game's monsters are brilliantly conceived. Just about every enemy
from the first two Doom titles makes an appearance here, re-tooled and
re-invented. No longer are imps mere blobs of brown pixels that simply emit balls
of flame; they're now slavering, agile masses of incredibly detailed demon flesh
that climb on walls and ceilings, in ventilation ducts, and lob their signature
fireballs with the fluidity of a professional baseball player. This kind of creative
change has been applied to every monster in the game, and longtime fans of the
series will gain just as much joy from recognizing the updated creatures as they
will from turning them into smoldering heaps of ash.
The infamous Doom
arsenal also makes a comeback, but unlike the monsters, there's no re-invention
here: just the same, straight-up tools of destruction you've come to know and
love. Everything from the shotgun to the plasma gun and even the chainsaw will
find its way into your hands at one point or another. What's more, each one possesses
the same general advantages and disadvantages as it did in the original titles,
so series veterans may already be aware of how to use them in their combat strategies.
Strangely, the weapons don't seem to have nearly as much visceral "oomph" as they
once did. Sure, a shotgun blast to the head will wipe out nearly anything on two
feet, but it doesn't feel half as satisfying as it should. This is arguably due
to the lackluster weapon sound effects, which feel rather underpowered and are
a definite letdown, failing to make you feel that you are truly an avatar of demonic
destruction. The poor muzzle flashes aren't exactly helpful either, barely illuminating
a foot or two in front of you. Grenades are equally questionable, in that they're
easily the bounciest projectiles you've ever seen in any game. It stands to reason,
given that the lightweight grenades are being tossed onto metal floors and walls,
but it's an off-putting phenomenon nonetheless, and hurts the general effectiveness
of the weapon. When you're in pitch darkness, surrounded by enemies, and relying
upon little things such as these to help you along, these types of things matter.
In an interesting throwback to a simpler time, none of the weapons in
Doom 3 have an alternate fire mode, leaving you with a singular straightforward
option: point and shoot. This simplicity is symptomatic of the game as a whole,
which eschews virtually all of the revolutionary interactivity and complexity
of first-person shooters of years past for an incredibly basic approach. This
means no leaning around corners, no complex manipulations of your environment,
and no creative solutions to problems. Just run, gun, and collect PDAs, which
are this Doom's equivalent of keys. That's it, that's all. This design
decision is almost definitely an homage to the legacy of previous games in the
series, and while some will argue that this stripped-down gameplay leaves Doom
3 as little more than a big, fat demonstration for John Carmack's beautiful
new engine, but the enjoyment derived from the game isn't exactly ruined by its
uncompromised simplicity. Given, it's a little distracting at first, which is
to be expected when later generations of shooters have incorporated all manner
of innovations and interactivity. Within the framework of the powerful atmospherics
and amazingly glitzy presentation, however, the basic gameplay flat-out works.
Now, the reliance on tension and scare tactics could potentially mean that the
game might not hold up quite as well in subsequent playthroughs, but it's such
a fantastic, breath-taking experience that you're not likely to care.
Finally, no discussion of Doom 3 could possibly be complete without discussing
the graphics, which, quite frankly, leave this game as the single greatest graphical
achievement ever. This is no hyperbole: John Carmack and his team have put together
a thing of such intricate visual beauty that it will be years before anyone manages
to catch up. Texture, depth and shadow work together to create an unparalleled
graphical experience that often makes you feel as though you've stepped into some
sort of cinematic, an experience that comes as close to advancing the genre towards
true progress than anything that's been seen for a long, long time. Words and
even screenshots can't possibly begin to do justice to the full effect; you have
to see the game in motion, with the fluid animation of the various monsters proving
to be every bit as dazzling as the tricks of the light that play off the bloody
shoulders of the superb character models. It's a gaming reality that previously
could only have been dreamed of, and it's a reality that can now be seen and lived
within Doom 3. What is every bit as impressive as the visual aspect of this feat,
however, is the sheer accessibility of it. The optimization is so astoundingly
good that, when set to low quality, the game can run and look fairly good on 64MB
video cards with almost dinosaur-age processors. Even a moderate P4 2.4Ghz with
a Radeon 9800 Pro can play at medium quality; with an 9800 XT, that same processor
can even touch upon the drool-inducing high quality, albeit with a frames-per-second
range of 20-30. With the newest video cards, players can expect to achieve framerates
that double even those numbers, making Doom 3 not only a fantastic graphical
experience, but one that's accessible to virtually everyone. Simply amazing.
Overall:
9/10
Doom 3 is a landmark phenomenon, no matter which way you look
at it. In terms of sheer graphical brilliance, the game is simply unmatched, and
will likely continue to be the reigning king for some time to come. The incredible
level of detail is jaw-dropping, and the ability to scale it for playability on
even the lowest of the low-end systems is a glorious miracle of optimization.
Thankfully, this graphical beast is used to its full potential, creating an incredibly
dark and appropriately creepy experience that truly does justice to the Hellish
nature of the storyline. The gameplay may be stripped-down and simplistic, but
this is Doom, where all you can ask for is an arsenal to wield and demons
to kill. Doom 3 gleefully provides both, and in so doing, pieces together
one of the most impressive and entertaining action-oriented FPS titles in years. [
top ] |
Martian
research stations. Portals to Hell. Armies of unholy monsters. Among it all stands
a solitary nameless Marine, armed to the teeth and knee-deep in the dead. Any
gamer worth their salt already knows the story behind the original Doom
titles, which, despite having been released some ten years ago, still stand as
the benchmark for first-person blastfests. With their non-stop action and prodigious
body counts, both Doom titles carved an unholy, bloody and truly distinct
mark in the gaming landscape, one which players today still look to as the be-all,
end-all of the genre. It's then no major surprise that the release of Doom
3 has become the gaming phenomenon of the summer, with a flurry of hype and
a decade of anticipation powering it along. 
