Right, so apologies for the lack of posts this month, as I've been busy with other stuff but I thought I would get a quick post done before August comes round.
So, I've been pretty pre-occupied lately with my Nintendo Switch 2, which I got last month and I've been playing a number of older games on it and one such game I played was Doom 3, the BFG edition featuring the DLCs also. So, having done a review of this five years ago, I figured I would update it, as I've just finished replaying Doom 3.
So, let's take a look and see how this game fairs 21 years on from its original release...
And as I will mention some of the story a warning is coming...
PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
STORY
So the game is set in the year 2145 and it takes place on Mars, which
starts with an un-named marine, who arrives at the Union Aerospace
Corporation (UAC) base on the planet. Meanwhile a councilman from
Earth, Elliott Swann (voiced by Charles Dennis) arrives at the base to meet with Dr Malcolm
Bertruger (Philip L.Clarke) as there have been complaints about incidents that have taken
place on the base. Bertruger's research has involved unnatural
experiments with teleportation.
Meanwhile the marine meets with
Sergeant Kelly (Neil Ross), who sends the marine to find a scientist on the base who
has gone missing. The marine soon finds the scientist, who tells him
about Bertruger's experiments and the dangers involved and that he is
trying to send out a message to the UAC base on Earth to warn them about
this. However as a result of another teleportation, a shockwave hits
the base, and transforms the scientist into a zombie, who the marine
kills. The marine is then forced to deal with the rest of the base staff
and soldiers, who have mostly been turned into zombies as well.
As
the marine makes his way through the base, he also encounters demons of
different kinds, coming through portals, which he fends off with his
weapons. The marine manages to make his way to a comm system where he
receives a message from Kelly telling him to try and send out a distress
call to the UAC on Earth. However Swann has other ideas as he tries to
prevent anyone from sending out messages to Earth as he believes the
situation should be contained on Mars. Based on the player's decision
the marine will face the choice of either listening to Kelly, and
sending the message or to Swann and not sending the message, which is
where the game will go in two slightly different directions.
As the
marine progresses through the delta labs of the base, he receives a
message from Bertruger, who tells him that he is co-operating with the
forces from Hell, in order to prepare for the invasion of Earth. From
here the marine is forced to continue his battle against the hordes of
demons and against Bertruger in his attempts to destroy the Earth, as
the fate of humanity lies in his hands...
THOUGHTS
As
a long awaited sequel to Doom II, Doom 3 certainly delivered the goods,
as its complete graphical revamp of the series brought it up to date superbly.
The gameplay of course remains fairly faithful to the
original as the marine you simply run around, shooting anything that
moves, and picking up key cards to access new rooms, and to access vents
and lockers containing ammo and equipment. And one of the main
differences to the original games lies in its use of dark shadow and it
utilises enhanced
lighting techniques to increase the intense atmosphere of the game, as
alot of the game is pretty darky lit, it allows for the player to be
immersed in its creepy world, as baddies can be all around you and
wouldn't even know it, or you don't know it until you hear the groans or
screeches. And with that all in mind it adds up to a very intense and
unsettling experience and a real jump scare fest, as you never know who is round the corner.
GAMEPLAY
Gameplay wise the game isn't too different from the original games as
its a case of run round and shoot anything that moves with some very
cool weaponry. There are a few more aspects to the game this time however, so I will go into them more below.
MISSION OBJECTIVES
So, Doom 3 now has more explicit game objectives, which mainly comprise of finding key cards to open doors that require
security access, or opening vents to crawl through or talking to NPC's
to access door codes and key cards or to carry out other objectives. The objectives are quite basic in themselves and serve simpy as a means for progression.
PDA AND VOICE AND EMAIL LOGS
The game also features the use of a PDA (personal data assistant) system
where the marine will pick up key cards with personnel's names on them
and attached with that there will be audio logs that give background
details to the story aswell as codes for doors and storage lockers that
store health and ammo. So there are numerous key cards that can be used
by the PDA throughout the game, which he will need to pick up to
progress. You can also scan found PDAs for emails that may contain useful info as well such as codes for storage lockers.
WEAPONS
The games arsenal is also quite impressive as you have pretty much the same array of weapons from the first two games, but they look great graphically and are easy to use. The weapons feature a hand gun, shotgun, machine gun, minigun, plasma rifle, rocket launcher and of course the BFG (and we all know what that stands for!). There is also plenty of ammo strewn throughout the game so you will never normally run out of ammo in a hurry, although the baddies can come thick and fast so there will be times will you might run a bit low on ammo so you need to be careful at times but you should usually not go short on ammo
SOUL CUBE (KIND OF SPOILER!)
The game also features a new weapon of sorts in the form of the Soul
Cube, which the marine can access later on in the game once they have
travelled to Hell, which is easily the best level of game and is
refreshingly very different looking from the other levels. The Soul Cube
is acutally quite an OP (overpowered) device in that it can demolish
any single enemy in one foul swoop, which makes it very handy indeed! It
also kind of helps that the cube has a pretty sexy female voice in a
way even if it does sound a little creepy too but I never got tired of hearing it say "use us!" whenever the prompt to use it pops up.
FLASHLIGHT
The marine also has access to a flashlight that will let him see in the
dark as there are plenty of dark and dimly lit areas for sure in Doom 3!
However in the BFG edition of the game, the flashlight is now mounted
onto the marine's shoulder as before you had to swap between your light
and weapon to use it, which was a bit annoying, so its a welcome change
to use the light and both your weapon simultaneously. The only drawback
is that the flashlight in the BFG edition has limited charge and does
drain quickly before you let it recharge again.
ENEMIES
Then of course we have the enemies that feature many of the original
foes in Doom I and II and the have been brought back really well
starting with the imps, who hurl fireballs at you like they are throwing
a baseball, who have a high pitched whine. There are also the
Cacodemons (who still give me the creeps from the original!) who also
fire big fireballs at you (a popular weapon in hell I'd say!) and float
around. And then we got much stronger enemies such as the Hell Knights,
who are massive and probably the toughest of
the enemies in the game and they can seriously chunk your health!
Other enemies also feature the Revenants, who are walking armoured
skeletons
with rocket launchers attached and the Mancubus who are large blobs with
attached flame throwers who featured in Doom II. Some of the new
enemies feature mutated soldiers, who have a long retractable arm that
can attack you, large head spiders who can lash out and attack you and
freaked me out more than any other enemy in the game. Then of course
there are the babies with attached wings that jump out at you, who are
without a doubt one of the most horrible baddies in any game! I'm sure
John Carmack, the creator of the Doom series is a decent guy but I don't
know what he was thinking when he made THIS enemy!
However it definitely has to be said that Doom 3 has no shortage of enemies and there is plenty of variety too.
GRAPHICS
As for the game's visuals well even 21 years on, Doom 3 still looks
pretty awesome for the most part with nicely textured environments and
great looking (or creepy) enemies and its use of lighting is very
effective also.
The only real drawbacks to the graphics are some dated looking gory
details such as bloodied body parts lying about that look naff and of
course the character models for the humans look a bit daft and very
unrealistic! In fact you could argue that humans in the game look far
weirder than the enemies as they have somewhat flattened heads and weird
eyes! So while certain aspects of the graphics look a bit dated, Doom 3
still looks great for its day and holds up quite well today.
MUSIC
As for the music, Doom 3 has a pretty good score, which is largely very creepy and atmospheric sounding by Clint Walsh and ex-Nine Inch Nails drummer, Chris Vrenna,
who composed the excellent theme tune for the game. Walsh wrote the
soundtrack along with Vrenna as the two of them together were members of
the band, Tweaker although it was originaly planned for Trent Reznor of
Nine Inch Nails to write the soundtrack, which never came to fruition.
Despite this though, it is still a very good score that nails (non pun
intended!) the tone of the game perfectly.
VOICE ACTING
And lastly there is of course the voice acting of Doom 3, which is very
good overall as the voice cast all do a fine job. Of course it has to be
said that the marine you play does not have any dialogue whatsoever, so
it comes down to the other NPCs in the game to deliver the game's
dialogue.
Starting with Neil Ross who does very well in his role as Sgt
Kelly, who is the marine's commanding officer, who the marine keeps in
constant contact with throughout most of the game. Philip L. Clarke also
delivers an excellent performance as the sinister Dr Bertruger, who is
the mastermind behind the demon invasions on Mars and main antagonist of
the game. Last of all is Charles Dennis who is excellent in his
role as Counsellor Elliot Swan, who is opposed to Bertruger's evil plans
and tries to put a stop to them.
FLAWS
So, flaws...does Doom 3 have any? Well, yeah there are some.
And for starters I would say that the
gameplay can tend to get a bit monotonous after a while, and the level
design is at times a bit samey too with so many levels having the same
dark corridors, ladders and stairs. And the gameplay mainly consists of
the marine just following the
formulaic pattern of just running about shooting anything in his way,
grabbing key cards, pdf files, and CDs to gather information, and not
much beyond that. However the intense thick and fast action in the game
does help to overcome that for the most part and doesn't spoil the
overall experience.
There was
also an issue with the controls in the original PC version, where you
couldn't hold a weapon and the flashlight at the same time, as you had
to access one at a time. However this was fixed for the BFG edition, as
I mentioned earlier that the player now has the flashlight attached to his shoulder of the
marine's outfit, which he can turn on and off and still use his gun at
the same time but the only drawback is the light's charge only lasts for so long before it needs to recharge.
Another criticism that can be levelled at the game is
that most of the enemies can be killed with fair ease, especially some
of the ones such as the demon dogs with the robotic legs, which are
pretty big in size, yet an imp can still take a few more shots to kill!
Naturally the bigger baddies such as the hell knights, and the mancubus
are pretty tough to eliminate but quite a few of them can be dispatched
with just one or two shots from your shotgun. However this will all
change of course when you increase the game's difficulty but for most
part I would say that Doom 3 isn't too difficult, which some fans might
find a negative.
And finally another flaw
that can be levelled at the game is the lack of a map in the inventory
screen, as it would be good if it gave you a map of each level, as there
are times where you can get lost wandering around the corridors at
times, trying to feel your way through the level, which means you are
running blind, you can eventually get through the level fine but it can
take a while based on what level you are doing. In fact even Doom II
had maps for each level, so its bizarre they don't have that in Doom 3
so it kind of feels like a backward step here but maybe its the game
makers way of not wanting to hold your hand in working your ways through
the levels.
Another issue relates specifically to the BFG edition of the game, which
is the inclusion of forced autosaves at key points in the game, which
are pretty annoying as there are times they can actually hinder your
progress rather than help. And the reason being is because you might get
to an autosave at a point where you are low on health or ammo and this
might force you to load back in a previous save in order to compensate.
So, for this reason I think the autosaves were a bad idea and should
have been taken out of the BFG edition of the game.
UPDATE: As it turns out however, you can actually turn the autosave feature off in the settings, so this thankfully sorts this annoying issue out.
And last of all I felt that the inclusion of the soul cube device was a
bit of a cheat in a way as it actually trivialised the later boss fights
in the game as you can use it to attack the bosses and before you know
it, they would be destroyed as a result! However I can't deny that the
soul cube is a very useful tool in the game as it allows you to kill
single enemies and it restores your lost health as a result, so its not
all bad but in some ways it definitely feels like a cheating device that
weakens the challenge of the game.
Anyway that's it for the flaws.
SUM UP
So, to sum up after 21 years, Doom 3 still remains a
thoroughly entertaining, intense and creepy experience and I still prefer it over the reboot Doom game that came in 2016, which I didn't like as much but to be fair, I will try and give Doom Eternal a go quite soon. And
even though the game is a bit repetitve in terms of its gameplay and
level design, on replaying it again I didn't mind and still had a blast
with it and felt I wanted to play it all the way through, which I always
think is a mark of a great game.
So, combine the game's great action, weapons, creepy enemies and
chilling atmosphere, you have a real classic on your hands, which after
all this time still stands up for me years on.
So, I will rate Doom 3:
9.5 out of 10
So, that's it for this one guys and I will be back soon with another post next month.
Until then its bye for now!
