Doom 3 is basic but the graphics make the game more fun.
In Doom 3, you play as a space marine who has just arrived at the Union Aerospace Corporation base and you sucked into the game from that moment. You see the great character models and you spend your first five minute just wandering around, talking to everybody. It feels like the start of Half-Life but it is fun just to see the great visuals. But it is not too long before you get orders to investigate some weird events that are going on. You get yourself equipped with a standard pistol and you go to see what is going on. Then it all happens. A scientist gets transformed into a zombie and you are now fighting for your life until the game is over. That is the basic plot and there is not much more to it than that. Sure, the old Doom games that came out over ten years ago barely any plot but still, I wanted more of a storyline that this.
The actual gameplay is very simple and it is going be familiar if you have played game like this before. The levels in the game are very linear and you are stuck in claustrophobic corridors, laying waste to anything that gets in your way. There is a bit of variety in the level design here and there but most of the time, you are in the Union Aerospace Corporation headquarters. The shooting action in Doom 3 can be fairly intense but not because your foes are tough or anything but because of sheer numbers at times and you maybe get closed in and they are actually the best parts of the game. You get to fight many monsters in Doom 3 and many are from the old Doom games. Expect to see lots of Imps, Hell Knights, Revenants and much more. There are some new creatures but they aren’t actually that interesting. It is more fun to see your favourite monsters again made in completely different technology.
There is also a lot of weapons like shotguns, chainguns, rocket launchers and of course, the chainsaw! Most of the weapons are quite good but some are quite useless like the grenades because all of the enemies run straight at you and they are opted for this game. Still, using different tactics against different types of enemies is a part of the fun in Doom 3. So running point A to point B is just all you do in Doom 3 and it definitely does get repetitive if you just keep on playing. But the graphics actually do help the game to more fun than it would be otherwise.
The graphics are the best thing about Doom 3. The graphics bring ultra-realistic lighting effects and creepy animation. Monsters move in way that gives them personality. Like how some zombies are incredibly slow but some are a bit faster. Doom 3 is a very dark game but at least it all looks well and when you see a shadow on a surface, it looks very convincing. I am so surprised that the Xbox version manages to bring the fantastic graphics from the PC. It doesn’t look as good as a up to date PC and sometimes, you will witness the framerate slowdown when you throw a grenade or shoot a explosive barrel or something like that. Nevertheless, Doom 3 is a game worth experiencing for the graphics alone.
The sound in Doom 3 is also amazingly well done. If you are playing the game with headphones or a surround sound setup, the game sounds superb. You hear your own footsteps a lot but at times you will hears creepy noises and things in the background which tries to unsettle you but it actually fails in doing that. Anyway, all of the monsters sound great and the voice-acting is okay. Nothing special as most of it heard in the game’s own PDA system. Some of the people you get to listen to sound okay but some people sound so over the top and dramatic. The noises for the weapons aren’t fantastic mainly because they are quite underpowered. The chainsaw’s brumming noise is enough to put your head away. But the game does mostly sound great because of the atmosphere and the way you can hear where the monsters are in the area you are in.
On terms of value, Doom 3 is quite a good-sized single-player game. It isn’t that long, mostly because most the enemies that you fight are down in two or three shotgun shots. You just keep on pushing through fighting more and more. Sure the repetitive nature can make the game rather boring and tedious at times, you want to finish the game regardless. The multiplayer action in Doom 3 is great. But when I say that, I really mean the co-operative mode. You can play it through system-link or Xbox Live. You cannot unfortunately play the game through split-screen but maybe that is a wise decision since that would give the game less suspense. Anyway in co-op, you are basically playing the same single-player game in Doom 3 but you are playing with somebody else. The levels have been simplified a bit for the game to run a bit better on the Xbox. When I played the co-op on system-link, I did not find any problems and I had a great time. You can also play regular multiplayer but it is dull and I can’t see why to play this when you can play something like Halo 2 instead. Never mind though as the co-op mode is great.
Doom 3 isn’t the most complex game to be released but it brings plenty of fun fights and the co-op mode is well worth experiencing for yourself.