Good, but could have been a lot better.
After 4 years, the graphics in Doom 3 are still quite remarkable. The dynamic lighting really lends to the atmosphere. In fact, lighting contributes quite a bit to the mood of this game. Often you won't be able to see as there will be areas of complete darkness so this is the time you whip out your trusty flashlight. Why an advanced space-marine from the year 2145 has to carry around a handheld flashlight is beyond me but the rest of the game wouldn't have worked as well without it. There were times when you are alone in a long dark room with only a single, weak light source with imps hiding behind the shadows. In those situations you can't help but feel the tension and isolation as you progress through the twisted Mars base.
I loved the art style in Doom 3. The environment in which you play was conveyed very well and although the setting may not be all the unique, the way in which it was presented is. I haven't encountered a great deal of games that place as much emphasis on light and shadow as Doom 3 does. The creature designs and animations were also fantastic. Seeing imps crawl around over the ceiling or in front of a window is especially creepy and enemies such as the cherubs, pinkies, spiders and fire/chainsaw zombies each have their own distinct personalities which are both terrifying and individual. Hell knights are quite a sight to behold and are very intimidating.
Another contributor to the immersive experience is the sound. There is plenty of ambient noise with machines working all throughout the base and just general background noise that makes you feel like you are fighting your way deep out of something awful. The enemies all sound nasty and hellish but the weapons sound a bit weak. A bit more punch and definition in the weapon sounds would have made the action more compelling.
The tone Doom 3 tries to set is one of horror. There are however, severely contrasting flavours thrown into the game experience. On the one level you have the flashlight which you cannot hold a weapon while using. So this constitutes an air of helplessness. You have the audio logs which are quite eerie and I feel do the best job of keeping a tense atmosphere where you are at times genuinely scared but also interested to learn the plight of the various employees taken by the disaster. Finally, you have the combat which effectively does away with the whole horror theme and dumps a big fat pile of old-school FPS and poor AI into the mix for good measure. Of course this throws off the whole balance of the game and what could have been a genuinely scary survival horror turns into a "bark is worse than its bite" kind of situation.
Several advancements have been made since the last entry in the series- notably the areas of graphics, story, sound, presentation and execution. Combat however tries to have the best of both worlds by attempting to combine the old-school Doom run and gun action with the tactical cover systems of modern shooters. The AI fails to pull this off on a number of occasions. Simply put, if an enemy sees you they will first shoot at you then if you hide, they will come after you, so all that remains in terms of tactics is to hide behind the nearest object with a shotgun and blast away. Later on in the game, enemies will make use of cover, but frequently you'll find they leave body parts exposed (i.e. their head) which all but voids any perceived benefits of using cover. As a saving grace, once you start to tackle more powerful enemies the combat can become more interesting, albeit only due to the fact that they can take and dish out more damage.
A further bane to the success of the combat and the horror theme is the placement of enemies. Often you'll find a door will magically open up as soon as you find a cache of supplies and out pops an enemy from a hidden broom closet. This is not at all realistic and actually becomes quite predictable. You'll learn to recognise the secret door sound and instinctively know to turn around and shoot whatever happened to be hiding inside that very small seemingly inaccessible space. You can learn to predict when and where certain spawns will occur too. For example, if you enter a room with a long hallway you can expect a marine zombie to come rushing through the door right in front of you. If you enter a room where there is a large open space you can expect flaming skulls and cacodemons to attack you. Whenever an imp spawns in front of you, you can be sure that another will come up from behind as well. It's these kind of things that ruin the immersion in the game and remind you what you're dealing with- a standard shooter.
Though the combat is mediocre I did enjoy the story. You have to go through your fellow employees (most dead and some not) PDA's to understand the story but it is well worth it. Some of the audio logs are down right disturbing like one in the Delta Labs where a physician documents the deterioration of his subject's mind and body. You're standing in some medical examination room completely isolated listening to some guy losing his mind. It does feel a bit like System Shock 2 with people's minds degrading and the continuous collecting of PDA's but I don't mind this form of story telling. It is usually not forced on you- you're free to find out as much or as little as you want about the disaster and the events leading up to it. However, if you want to pick up all the extra weapons and ammo early in the game it pays to listen to the logs and go through emails.
Towards the end the story kind of degenerates and the focus shifts more to combat and as such the game goes downhill basically after you've returned from hell. Had it continued on the same path it was on in Delta Labs I feel this could have been an excellent game.
To get the best out of Doom 3 it is necessary to not only follow the story but also to play it in the dark, alone and with headphones. It's only in this sort of environment that you'll get the full impact and understand the author's intention. To a player who just rushed through the game ignoring all the extra little touches that have been thrown in there and trying to play it like the earlier entries in the Doom franchise Doom 3 will be a disappointment. It is not the same kind of game and may have been better off had it not been tied to the original series.
The biggest problem Doom 3 has is trying to cater to the old and new players. If they had simply thrown away the Doom 3 moniker and gone more on the survival-horror side of things this game would have received a lot more merit for things other than its graphics. The horror and mediocre combat do not mix well together. There is a major clash when you hear about a fragile human mind being torn apart and the many casualties that tried to bring back specimens from the other side and then you, an average space marine, easily make it through the base without a trouble in sight, blasting away hundreds of demons like it's child's play.
Despite its imperfections, Doom 3 is still an enjoyable experience and managed to make enough of an impression on me to do a serious review of it. Had it done away with the traditions of the earlier Doom games (and perhaps the shooter genre) it would have been a much better game and a far more memorable experience. As it stands, Doom 3 succeeds more often than it fails and I feel was time well spent.