A solid port of a decent expansion pack with some of the best bonus material you'll ever find.
Like Doom 3, Resurrection of Evil for the Xbox appeared on the shelves several months after it's PC launch. This, being a console game is now a stand-alone title unlike the PC game, which was an expansion pack, so don't get any crazy ideas thinking that you need to own Xbox Doom 3 to play RoE. It's also important to know that both the PC and Xbox versions of RoE were developed by Nerve Software and NOT id Software. For whatever reason, I was actually quite surprised that Nerve even bothered to port the game to the Xbox and not the 360, mainly due to it being released at the end of it's life-cycle, but I suppose with the success of Doom 3, it was an obvious choice.
If you're too lazy to read up on just what RoE is all about and what new features it has to offer, here's a lazy, vague summary seeing as I already explained that I like to describe the differences between PC and console ports. The game is set about two years after the events of Doom 3 and see's a UAC research team, led by Dr. Elizabeth McNeil, investigating a beacon signal at an older UAC facility on Mars. Once there, you touch some mysterious artifact and blah blah blah all Hell breaks loose once again as you predicted. Not exactly Metal Gear Solid is it, but then this is Doom so it's not like you care.
Features new to the game are the fact you now play as a different protagonist, a 'combat engineer' Marine although this is quite redundant to the gameplay as it has no effect on it. There's three new weapons in stock, the double-barreled shotgun - which is just oh-so satisfyingly awesome and makes short work of zombies, the grabber - which is basically a rip-off of Half-Life 2's gravity gun, and while it does have some original abilities such as the power to launch enemy projectiles right back, you won't use it that often due to Doom's corridor-crawl level design and the 'Artifact', which is basically RoE's equivalent to the Soul Cube from Doom 3, only it slows down time apart from you're own actions (think F.E.A.R. only you still move at normal pace), temporarily makes you invulnerable and gives the 'Berserk' affect of the original Doom (super strength). Pretty cool stuff all in all, and the new shotgun and artifact prove to make the whole Doom 3 formula more fun...it's just a shame that the chainsaw was removed from the game.
A handful of new enemies to face include the Vulgar which essentially has the characteristics and attacks of an Imp, only it proves to be more agile and tough. There's also the Bruisers and Bio-Suit Zombies, but they aren't particularly worth noting. Lost Souls now look more like they did in classic Doom. You'll also come up against three new bosses along your path of ultimate carnage and destruction, but to be honest, I've never been keen on bosses in shooters full stop, so I'm not even going to waste time explaining them. The PDA system, while still there, plays less of a role in RoE, which, if anything, does the game justice because it feels as if Nerve just wanted to focus on all-out action rather than story building. But other than these new features, just expect more Doom 3. If you didn't like that game then there's no point in even reading on, because even with these additions in place, all this is is more Doom 3.
Now all that's off my chest, I can finally get down to what makes RoE on the Xbox different to it's PC counterpart. Upon starting a new game, the first thing I noticed that was new to the game was that there is no longer a dedicated flashlight. Instead, it's built onto your puny pistol, so now you can shoot your foe while illuminating your path. There's just one tiny little setback Nerve hadn't considered. The pistol is the only weapon with any kind of torch strapped to it. Of course, if they had just stopped and thought for one moment, they would've added it to all the weapons in your arsenal. Silly, silly Nerve! Considering the ruckus that Doom 3's flashlight stirred up, there will no doubt be players whining like they did before, and while I can understand why, I'll straight up admit that I'm in the small majority of Doom fanboys who actually ENJOYED the whole flashlight concept in the first place. But I did notice that RoE on the Xbox was a little less dark anyway and you probably won't be struggling to see where you're going for the most part anyway. However, if you do want to play Doom 3 or RoE on a console and hate having to get either flashlight or pistol out to lighten things up a bit, then you're stuck. Just get the PC game instead and download the infamous 'ductape' mod.
It seems to me that Nerve tried to be a bit more ambitious with their port of RoE, especially when compared to Vicarious Visions' port of Doom 3. To be honest, some aspects of this is for the better and some of it is for the worse, as I'm going to attempt to explain. Xbox Doom 3 had virtually all the content of the PC game bar a few outdoor locations, but each of the levels had been split into two halves to save memory and load times. So essentially you were getting the entire game, it's just the levels halved into two instead. For the same reason as the former, most of the levels from the PC version of RoE have also been split. But like before, no levels are technically missing. If anything, Nerve were actually more ambitious in that RoE had more outdoor levels, and none of them have been altered in the Xbox version. If I was really obnoxious and biased towards the PC game, of course I'd just be complaining here, but given the tech of the Xbox (2001 technology running a 2004/5 game), it's very understandable and does a good job anyhow.
Sadly, I noticed that RoE's performance was a little choppier than the first Xbox Doom 3 port. Whether this down to a more complex nature of the levels (which isn't necessarily true although I'm sure there's more larger outdoor areas as I stated) or it's just Nerve being lazy with their port I don't know. To state that the frame rate is poor however is definitely untrue. For the most part, it runs just as well as the first Doom 3 port did (which was near-perfect throughout), it's just that occasionally you will notice the game struggles. Obviously I'm no genius, but I'd say when things do start to get choppy, it would still be running around 20fps or maybe just below, so it's definitely still playable 90% of the time. Obviously that's just an estimate.
Visually the game holds up just as well as the first Xbox Doom 3. In other words, it's still quite possibly the best looking Xbox game ever released. Despite the lower resolution and the fact that some of the fancy dynamic lights the PC had are missing, the game still looks spectacular, and is FAR better than what you'd expect the Xbox could do. If you play the game on a HD TV via an Xbox 360 and HDMI scart lead, I would imagine you'd get even better results than you would with a normal Xbox and a standard-definition TV, which looks amazing as it is anyway. All in all, no faults whatsoever graphically.
In terms of multiplayer content, you're getting pretty much what you saw in the PC game. Me, not being much of a multiplayer gamer anyway didn't particularly enjoy Doom 3 or RoE's basic deathmatch fragging in the first place, so obviously I'm not exactly going to praise the game in this sense. But to be fair, the general consensus is that Doom 3 never had much of a groundbreaking multiplayer anyway. Oh sure, RoE offered new eight player Capture the Flag modes (wow...), but lets face it, nobody played Doom 3 for it's multiplayer. To make matters worse, RoE on the Xbox doesn't even include the eight player CTF that the PC had, so essentially all you're getting is the same as before only new maps and weapons. Even more disappointing is the fact that the Xbox Doom 3 had it's own exclusive co-operative mode where you could play the entire game with a friend. You won't find that here.
Lame multiplayer content aside, what you DO get is quite possibly the best bonus content in any game ever made – complete versions of Ultimate Doom, Doom II and Master Levels for Doom II. With full single player and split-screen co-op mode support. Oh, AND deathmatch! And no I'm not kidding! As a HUGE fanboy of old-school Doom, having these landmark games instead of a polished Doom 3 multiplayer is a dream come true. Not only that, but the fact you can also play them split-screen with a buddy is just awesome, no other word for it really. Before, you could get the full versions of Ultimate Doom and Doom II if you purchased the Collector's Edition of Doom 3, but this meant you were paying for them.
As for the actual games themselves? Well, do you really need a review? The answer is no, because they are masterpieces that are still as fun to play today as they were back in '94. However, if you really want the facts on just how they stand next to their PC grandfathers, then here's me being generous. These are near-perfect ports; the only complaints I have are minor, and I do mean minor. The game runs at the standard DOS original 320x240 resolution, instead of the Windows 95's superior 640x480...so it looks a little pixelated that's all. Also, a Final Doom port would have been nicer than a Master Levels port, but this is literally just me nit-picking and deliberately being awkward, because the game looks and plays perfectly fine really, and there are no performance issues whatsoever, in any of them (and I should think so too!). They also play very well with the Xbox's controller despite feeling a little strange at first considering you'll be using the analog sticks to move.
At the end of the day it all wraps up to this: the actual Resurrection of Evil game itself for the Xbox isn't quite as good as it's PC cousin, but you expected that anyway right? Even so, it is a very solid port of a decent expansion that provides around six to eight hours of gameplay with the single-player campaign. The multiplayer may be weak, but with three original Doom titles thrown in for extra measure, you get so much replayablilty as well as value for money. A great package all-round.
Wrap-up:
+ Another outstanding technical achievement given the Xbox's hardware
+ Still a great expansion pack regardless of what platform you play it on
+ Best bonus material ever - can't go wrong with the classic Doom titles
+ Multiplayer for both RoE (online) and classic Doom (split-screen)
- Most flaws that Doom 3 on the Xbox had apply here also, so basically....
- ...the levels have been cut up into sectors due to hardware limitations. No big deal, but not as good as the PC either
- Co-op for RoE has been abandoned, despite original Doom 3 Xbox having a co-op mode
- A few minor performance niggles to be had