Doom 3 has a lot of little flaws that annoy me, but ultimately, they just keep the game from perfection.
That said, when I first heard Doom 3 was being made, I was intrigued but also skeptical. Half-Life had changed the single-player FPS forever, and Halo had a similarly massive effect on shooters as a genre. Doom on the other hand, was old-school all the way. I wasn't sure if a new Doom game could make as big a splash now as it did back then, with all the competition in this genre nowadays.
Well I finally played Doom 3. Personally, I think it's a great game, but it has a lot of little flaws that annoy me. First, I'm going to talk about what's good about the game. First of all, it's fun to play. It has a great atmosphere, great graphics, great sound, generally a very solid shooter. The storyline, while nothing special, adds a lot to the game and gives you more reason for blasting these demons. Another big plus of Doom 3 is just by virtue of the fact that it's an action horror game on the Xbox. The original Xbox lacked any Resident Evil games. While Doom 3 isn't the same style, it's still a quality action horror game for Xbox owners who enjoy that kind of thing, and may have been itching for one.
The best thing about Doom 3 is that it's faithful to the original Doom. But at times, that can also be the worst thing about it. First of all, the objectives are very bare-bones. It's basically just get to the end of the level, killing everything that stands in your way, as well as occasionally finding a key (Or the equivalent) or flip a switch to open a door, just like the original Doom. I don't really have a problem with that, but I would've liked to see at least a little more variety in the objectives, like maybe having to blow something up at least. There isn't a single huge explosion in the game.
Another problem I have with Doom 3 is the weapons are very underpowered. One of the things that was so great about the original Doom, is you had the weapons that looked and sounded very powerful. They'd make a loud boom when you'd fire them, and there would be a large amount of recoil to show how powerful the weapons were. In Doom 3, the weapons look and sound like pea shooters. In fact, the shotgun in Doom 3 sounds a lot like the handgun in the original Doom.
Also, the aim assist they added to this game is a double-edged sword. It can help you aim better, because using a controller isn't nearly as precise as using a keyboard and mouse. But, the aim assist can cause problems as well. For instance, when you try to shoot explosive barrels next to enemies. If you try to aim your crosshairs at the barrel, rather than the enemy, it's unnecessarily hard because your crosshairs want to point at the enemy. While we're on the subject of the explosive barrels, they suck. For a game with such great graphics, the explosions produced by shooting those barrels are incredibly unsatisfying. The same goes with grenades. If you want an action game with great explosions, stay away from Doom 3.
But back to the aim assist. There's one boss fight in the game that is actually made much harder by the aim assist, because he's invulnerable to regular guns, and your objective is to shoot the enemies around him so you can then do damage to the boss itself. This is made harder by the aim assist because your crosshairs will point at the invulnerable boss, while you're trying to aim at the enemies around him. Turning off aim assist doesn't help either because that makes aiming too hard. There's no perfect middle ground, and it seems a bit sloppy to me. However, it's only a problem in a few small segments of the game.
But the biggest problem I have with Doom 3, is just in the fact that it's just not scary. You could tell the developers were trying really hard to make it scary, and it definitely could have been scary. There's a lot of good, creepy scripted moments in the game, but the fact is there's very little suspense in the game. 99% of the time when you turn a corner, you know an enemy's going to come out, in the same way it did before. The demons are all really cool, and make a great first impression because of their awesome introductions, but there aren't too many of them and they repeat far too often. If only they had taken out a few of the battles and replaced them with pure suspense, and doubled the number of demons in the game (keeping the awesome intros for each one), it probably would've made it a lot more scary. As it stands though, the best I can say is Doom 3 is creepy and atmospheric. But I wasn't really scared by it.
All those problems though, ultimately are just what keep the game from being perfect, and being on the level of Halo, the high water mark for FPS on the Xbox. Despite not being quite on that level, it's still a great game and none of these flaws hurt it too much. It's still wicked fun to play, often provides the perfect level of challenge, it's got one of the best atmospheres of any Xbox game, stunning visuals, amazing sound, a decent story, and it's a pretty lengthy game too. I believe they also accomplished their goal of striking the right balance of making it just enough like the original Doom while also updating it with modern technology and gameplay. Overall, Doom 3 is not guaranteed to be your favorite FPS of all time, but it deserves a spot in every FPS fan's collection.
Scoring:
Gameplay: 7
Graphics: 10
Sound: 9
Value: 7
Tilt: 7
Overall Score: 8.0