Microsoft
Doom 3
By Ryan Newman
May 23, 2005, 10 :37 pm

There was once a time when the gaming world was infatuated with a certain green armor-clad marine.  This lone soldier came to the rescue of humanity and pushed back invaders bent on the destruction of mankind.  Then came Bungie, and their pesky armored soldier Master Chief.  Poor Doom Marine. The only time our beloved green grunt was mentioned after Halo’s release was in congressional hearings and by media pundits.  After years of fan-championed resurrections, the Doom Marine is finally back in a revision of his original, nightmarish encounter with the spawns of hell.

An ordinary morning on a Martian space station is turned into a slightly less-than-pleasant afternoon for an unlucky newcomer.  At the start of the day you find yourself going about your daily duties, ala Half-Life, meeting new people, getting your basic gear, and getting your orders.  Unfortunately for you, some scientists have been doing some experiments that result in portals opening all over the station that allow demons from hell to come through.  It’s always something.

From the outset, it is evident that quite a bit was changed from the PC version of Doom 3.  For one thing, I noticed much more ammo and armor - there are items in practically any accessible nook and cranny.  The levels were also altered; some areas made larger to service two players (Co-Op over Live is supported), and some spots seem to have been completely revamped to involve less searching in favor of more action.  The changes weren’t for the bad, and I prefer the game this way.  One of the major advantages of the console version is that the controls are, strangely enough, better fitted to it.  Since the game doesn’t need precise controls, the keyboard and mouse combination always felt like overkill - almost like the reverse of Halo's multiplatform experiences.  The changes make Doom 3 feel more natural, putting the speed and white-knuckled action from the original Doom back into the remake.

For those who never tried the PC version, Doom 3 is a fairly basic run-and-gun first-person shooter.  The defining factor here is that the game is extremely dark.  The darkness means that you cannot see what’s behind you, on the side of you, or right in front of you.  To properly make out anything around you, you need to put your gun away and take out your flashlight – and, no, your trained marine on a Martian space station cannot use a flashlight and gun at the same time.  The darkness forces you to take things in at a slower, more methodical pace.  For the gamers out there who never tried Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, it’ll also mean taking a gander at some lovely graphics with rich detail and fantastic lighting; for those who tried Chronicles, well, it’s still kinda pretty.  The slower pace also allows time for the surroundings to sink in, making the situation feel more foreboding.

The flashlight doesn’t reveal everything, though; the developers are big into the “boo!” variety of scares.  These are the kind of scares that nearly put every child in the world in cardiac arrest after his first experience with a jack-in-the-box.  Your mileage on the fright factor will vary.  Myself, I’m a skittish person, and even though I know a scare is coming, I still jerk and lose my breath, which made my Doom 3 experience one of frazzled nerves.  If you aren’t prone to such scares, then you will probably go through the game fairly quickly.  There is also quite a bit of back respawning, meaning enemies will appear behind you and give you a good what-for.  Since your only defensive maneuver is a strafe – no melee attacks, which I consider a last-ditch defensive move – that can be more trying than frightening, though it is done well in some areas.

It’s a good thing that the music is sufficiently creepy, with random screams and the low hums of zombies and machinery, because it really picks up the slack for the monster design.  The environments are unsettling, but a bit too pristine for my tastes.  Yes, the blood smeared on the floor is eerie, but when I walk through it and it doesn’t budge, or I shoot a window and it doesn’t break, this horrible deformed world doesn’t seem so real anymore.  Some of the monsters are also pretty silly looking.  The standard imp is a good villain, with insect-like movements and a nasty fireball, but the spiders with the weird faces and a few others look too fake – yes, too fake to be in a game about demons showing up on Mars.  The death sequences for the zombies, which are just the bodies falling apart into an invisible pile of bones, aren't nearly as satisfactory as I had hoped. When I kill an undead person, I want the world to know I mean business, with plenty of evidence.

There are other small touches that add to the atmosphere, though.  Random bouts of rage and insanity suddenly spring up, with a red tint coming over the screen and muffled sounds giving way to fisticuffs that send zombies exploding in blood.  There are also items found on PDAs aside from the codes to unlock doors, which include audio logs, video clips, and random notes that did a great job giving the game a richer history: messages of real-life in-jokes, in-game in-jokes, random chit chatter of everyday life, and codes to unlock chests of weapons (and even a URL to a website that offers more codes).  The more low-key touch of involving characters you never see or interact with, aside from possibly stumbling onto their corpses, is more effective than quite a few of the generic creepy crawlers spread throughout the game.

The game won’t have you feeling uncomfortable with life like a Silent Hill title, or weary of space stations like System Shock, but it did a sufficient job of keeping me on edge -  so much so that I tended to limit my times of play to just a half hour to an hour at a time. The sturdier of you out there can go back through any of the completed maps and select a difficulty level appropriate to your awesomeness.  Then there is, of course, the online play.  Deathmatch is deathmatch, but co-op is the real star here.  Having a flashlight buddy is a big help, and it’s always great to share such an experience of slow insanity with a pal.  I caught a bit of lag, more so than in other games, but since games are rarely lagged for me over Live, I attribute it more to my end.  I do have a few minor complaints: there are quicksaves (nice), but no autosaves (bad), and the pause menu has quitting the game as the first option (why?).

Overall: 8.5/10

Doom 3 is an adventure that is gory, violent, and fairly straightforward.  When I have to kill demons and zombies, this is how I want it to be.  There are a few missed opportunities, to be sure, but the game isn’t anything less than a solid first-person shooter that translated very well to the world of consoles – and one that also happened to make me jump more than a few times.