Its everything expected in a doom game.
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+ Timescale is a fun cheat.
+ Graphics that beat even today's technolegy.
+ Comes with a supberb, functioning level editor.
+ Occasionally great level design flashes.
+ Dark atomsphere that rebuilds the horror of Hell.
+ Super Turbo Turkey Puncher 3 is a good game.
+ Underpriced = Get more than your money's worth.
- Drab multiplayer.
- Editor ia very unstable.
- Story isn't very scary or surreal.
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If one thing can be said about the id software, its that its always revoulutionized FPS of any kind. Doom 1 and 2 inspired what is now Blood, Heritic, and Duke Nukem. Quake 1, 2, and 3 inspired what is now Half Life and Wolfenstien. Almost every shooter was inspired by some sort of trick used in the Quake and Doom engines. And with the Doom 3 coming out, id software does it once again. But now a new trick is tried for the new Doom generation. Here, with Doom 3, id software goes in the other direction of mindless level-roaming demonslaughter. While maintaining the epicness of Doom and Doom 2, Doom 3 is packed with its groundbreaking "Doom Engine". Lights are rendered in high detail, shadow effects are used, and a fairly effective sense of horror protrays as the backbone of the overrall quality of the game.
From looking at the morhbid title of the game, you might guess that it involves demons from hell. And if you aren't a fan of the original Doom, then you guessed right on top of the money. The story picks off from Doom 2: MarsCity, a spacestation planted on the planet Mars with a license to research a good chunk of world's portal technolegy outside of legal boundries and laws and all that boring stuff. However, as always, something went wrong and has created a portal linked directly to Hell. That portal bleeds out millions of demons of all kinds, mostly remakes of the demons in Doom 2 roaming around what's left of MarCity. And its up to you, as a nameless, speechless marine to keep the demonic infestation from reaching earth. That's just the setting of course; In the actual game, there's not much else for the storyline that's involved. Your eventually treated to a little more story about artifacts, martian civilations and some things to make it feel a little more organized, but id games never focused too much on storylines, so that's all you get. In your attempt to destory the forces of hell, you'll navigate (and be spooked by) numberous dark corridors with the ship, completing minor tasks along the way, and eventually making your way into Hell itself.
While the story is nowhere near interresting as Quake 4, it shouldn't keep you from playing a rather unique game. Still, expect alot of questions coming from your lips while you play. Since the main character is devoid of a name or personality, he's usually refered to as Doom Marine. Its nice id software kept with the old Doom story of the nameless marine, but it gets tideous to have all the commanders and other marines repeatidly call you "marine", and yet take you absoulutly seriously, despite you can't talk.
Unlike most FPS games that have stiff, tight controls like Halo or Quake 4, your weapon and hud lags and sways around to give you a more Half-Life feeling, but certainly alot better. Because of the swaying hud, you may feel like your playing a first person adventure/horror game with guns, but once you get used to it, the gameplay starts to feel really sharp. You mainly navigate around the ship, trying to complete several tasks that invovle removing the demons from existance...and that's about it. The game features a little bit of mystery solving with the fact to continusely pick up PDAs left behind by dead ship crew. These PDAs are cell-phone like objects that have certain emails on them revealing important key codes on them. So whenever you come across a locked door or ammo crate with a keypad triggering it, you just look around for a nearby PDA, play the emails, look for a code of some kind, and enjoy the profit.
Horror isn't exactly a strong point for id software, but they got it partially right with Quake 2 and Doom 3. However, nothing in Doom 3 will make you flinch too much. In the beginning, the game issues you to go down to the dark parts of the ship, looking for a missing scientist. Instead, you get treated to an army of zombified marines that pathetically trot out of the darkness, trying to scare you. The game's horror, in general, seems pretty weak. Occasionally, a demon will pop out of the shadows, or you'll get a red-screen affect when you see too many dead bodies, but the rest of the game seems to bend over more on the Cool side rather than the Scary side. It slightly obvious to see a door covered in blood and slime, only to find out that a scary monster is hiding on the other side. This is the game's attempt to weaken you up for more intense stuff, like random women screaming or dead bodies flesh-fused to the ceiling, but you won't be screaming. I won't spoil the rest, but I will just say for now that it still isn't that scary, unless your scared of closet monsters or something.
Doom 3 equips you with a fairly large load of weapons. You got your flashlight, which you use to see dark areas (practially the entire levels are filled with shadows, so you'll need to see). You also got your pistol, your shotgun (my favorite), the plasma gun, the rocket launchers, and a couple of more. The Doom 2 classic, the chainsaw, is back and it works better than ever, but the rest of the guns just don't feel all that powerful. Sure, they got a good, old school sound to them and pack a punch, but the plasma gun, for instance, that repeatidly goes "pow pow pow pow pow" in a high pitch voice makes it seem kind of corny at times. The shotgun sounds like a recording, and the machine gun hicups a bit, but its nothing to ruin the entire game. They all sound good, but not very realistic. Rocket Launchers should shakes the entire screen and let out a huge blast. Instead, it feels like your firing an explosive arrow from Turok.
And as I stated before, the Doom 2 monsters, from cyberdemons and imps, to the classic "Doom puffballs" and hellknights, and even the lostsouls, are all included in the game. You face tons of zombies and unarmed demons, but to give a challange, these zombies sometimes have guns and the demons are capible of throwing fireballs at you. These monsters can sound slightly dumb at times, but when they're cool, their very cool. They promise to you that they'll never continuesly dodge or lower your framerate, like Prey does. And it still the same, good old fun to see their lives surcumb, usually to the most favored, brutal chainsaw. What's unusal, for a 3 disc game, with all those intense graphics and monster, the framerate is terrific, and will only slow down if you see several moving crates or triggers. Even when your chopping away with the chainsaw or brutally slaying a crowd of zombies with a shotgun, the game won't slow down one bit. So basically, even though it looks different, Doom 3 still plays like your classic Doom 2. Doom still throws demons at you, it still gives you awesome weapons, and it still has its violent charm.
Doom 3 also has one of the best editors out there. GUI editor, Particle editor and Sound editor is just to name a few of the many editors included in Doom 3. Another remarkable and easy-to-use level editor is included and is also a big improvment from such editors like Hammer or Quark. You got alot more entities, alot less crashes, and just a good feel to it. Although not as good as the Preditor (since you have less triggers to choose from), you can make some high-detailed maps with the innovative engine. If I had been very unclear up to this point, then I'll say now once again that Doom 3 is a terrific step forward in the FPS franchise. The only thing bad I can say is that Doom 3's level editor crashes more than Preditor. If you can sucessfully exclude that, Doom 3 is definetly one of the best shooters from id yet and should not be missed.