The first Doom could be considered to be the first shooter that implemented a sense of verticality, marking a departure away from dungeon crawling themes that were prevalent in 3D shooters during its time. Doom 2 could be said to have merely cashed in on the popularity of the first game, but it also showed how a game engine can be stretched to its limits.
Doom 3 may have been intended to signify the series' departure from its thematically simple gameplay, as well as to debut id Software's proprietary id Tech 4 engine. It is definitely far removed from its predecessors, which may have disappointed die-hard fans of the older games, but those looking for a different experience would be quite pleased, even those that are not already fans of the earlier games.
This next entry in the franchise appears to be a reboot of the Doom canon, the original version of which was quite bewildering as it started with the premise of a hellish invasion, then to an alien incursion and then back again as the designers played around with the story. This leads to the impression that the story was little more than an excuse for the player to shoot the hell out of anything that moves. (Pun not intended.)
(It is worth noting here that this could have been a result of compromise between camps led by John Romero and John Carmack.)
Anyway, the setting of Doom 3 is on Mars itself, instead of one of its moons. The UAC also returns, this time as an exploratory corporation that has been given the opportunity to exploit Mars' resources for wealth and its relative isolation for clandestine research. To justify the presence of armed professional mercenaries, the UAC has them staffing weapons-testing projects and participating in scouting missions, presumably on Mars.
As to be expected of human-run clandestine research in sci-fi stories, the UAC's forays into teleportation technology goes awry soon enough, resulting in a massive influx of demons that are eager for slaughter and the bloody and gory perversion of UAC's holdings according to their inhumanly twisted whims.
However, unlike the previous games, Doom III decides to start the game more slowly. It does so by apparently taking a leaf from a trend started by Half-Life: there is a period of calm before the storm, where the player character, a new, typically taciturn mercenary recruit, is brought into the facilities that he would work in for the first time and introduced to how things work there. This period is also of course used as a tutorial of sorts; the player is taught how to move about, jump, duck and shoot (apparently through fitness tests and target practise imposed on the player character).
This tutorial is also used to introduce the minor mechanic of PDAs, which long-time Doom veterans would suspect is a replacement for the key-carrying mechanic in the previous games. Indeed, it would turn out to be so, but its use is intertwined with another function that concerns the game's story. There will be more on this later.
There are also some foreboding hints about what is going to happen, and this is shown through the conversations among some NPCs whom the player will meet during the prologue of the game. This is the only time in the game that the player gets to watch them converse. Their animations and body language are not exactly stellar; in fact, they often deliver their lines while doing something that they will continue to do long after their conversation is over. Nonetheless, their actions are still quite convincingly done, which can be a surprise to some considering that id Software is not exactly well known for animating such scenes.
The shooting tutorial, disguised as a target practice session set in the armoury, introduces the player to the shooting mechanics of the game. It is here that Doom 3 shows one of the ways in which it differs itself from its predecessors: all of the weapons in the game have magazines and no longer draw from a pool of ammunition continuously.
This may not sit well with fans of the older Doom games and other old-school shooters, in which reloading is not even a concern. On the other hand, reloading is a convenient minor mechanic that is used to balance weapon designs with. Considering id Software's track record at designing balanced weapons – which isn't very good – this is perhaps for the better. However, id Software still makes some questionable designs for some weapons, as will be elaborated later.
It also gives hints, not on the story, but the weapons that the player would encounter. Weapons like the Chaingun and Machine gun sit behind barred racks, which is a promise of what is to come.
The prologue also contains some homages to earlier id Software games, such as a certain mini-game that is rather mind-numbingly simple to play.
Eventually, everything will turn belly-up, starting with the demonic possession of most of the human inhabitants of the UAC facilities. From here on, the player will likely suspect that everything that moves is possibly an enemy; the game will exploit this suspicion in rather amusing (if unpleasant and eventually rote) manners, as will be elaborated later.
In the story mode, there are plenty of enemies and hazards that can harm the player character, so there is always a handy health counter on-screen to inform the player of imminent death. As in the previous games, the player character has no more than 100 points of health, which can be recovered by picking up health kits and using healing stations. If the numbers are not enough, a pulse monitor is next to the counter to give a non-numerical visual indicator.
Trying to heal in the story mode is not as easy as checking on one's health though. Health kits do sit around waiting to be picked up, but they are also subject to the game's physics, meaning that explosions, shots and items being flung through the air knock them around if they hit them. This can be especially problematic if the player is trying to have the player character run over health kits while still under fire by enemies. This is even more aggravating if there are bottomless pits or similar hazards that they can fall into and be lost forever. (It just so happens that this occurs for just about every boss fight in the game.)
Healing stations are easier to reach because they happen to be affixed to walls. However, using them is not instantaneous; the player character has to stand in front of them while waiting for the health station to dispense aid. They are certainly not to be used when enemies are nearby. Moreover, they have limited health that they can dispense. Such designs make health stations seem a novelty that is introduced just to make the UAC facilities more thematically sophisticated, because they certainly are not conducive to the gameplay and are only useful when the situation is calm. In fact, they don't even appear in multiplayer.
Some of the healing items seen in previous games, like the blue health potions that gave 1 point of health that can go above the maximum 100, do not return. While this may be understandable if the intention was to make the game more believable and conforming to its sci-fi themes, the game's plot of a hellish invasion would have made this consideration moot. Moreover, these items had enriched the mechanic of health replenishment, so their absence is actually a detriment, considering that other kinds of pick-ups, like armor replenishments, have returned.
On the other hand, one of the best health power-ups in previous Doom games reappear in the story mode in a different form, with abilities that go beyond a one-off health boost. Describing this item would constitute as a spoiler because it is actually a story-centric object, but it should suffice to say that it shakes up the gameplay of the story mode a bit. However, it should be noted here that the game designers may have gotten carried away with it and made its use essential for a pivotal fight in the game, which can be an annoyance to players who would prefer to deal with fights the old-fashioned way, that is, shooting everything up.
The mechanic of armor also returns; armor in this game, like its predecessors in id Software's earlier shooters, decrease the damage done to the player character's health. If the player is interested in keeping the armor counter up, there are two types of armor-replenishing items: armor shards and jackets.
Shards, like health kits, are affected by the physics in this game, perhaps even more so due to their small sizes and thin shapes that may cause them to be wedged somewhere inaccessible. Fortunately, each shard's contribution to armor is quite little, so losing one or two to physics guffaws is not much of a problem. However, armor shards tend to be spawned in tight clusters, so a nearby explosion can scatter the lot of them. Armor jackets, which give a lot more armor, are less susceptible to physics and are thus easier to collect, fortunately, because of their greater weight ratings and large shapes.
It should be noted here that many of the zanier power-ups in the previous games do not return in their entirety. Invisibility is gone, but its loss would probably not be missed by anyone but the most ardent fans of the original Doom games; after all, it was not much of any help in evading monsters in those games, much less players who can still see the silhouette of player characters with invisibility.
However, Berserk and Invulnerability return as an amusing hybrid. The best way to be acquainted with the re-design for Berserk is through the story mode, which sets up an unavoidable situation that the player can only get out of by making use of it. It is cheesy, but the first impression that it makes is certainly considerable.
Anyway, the Berserk power-up grants the player both the buff to fist damage and the invulnerability of the two original power-ups. It may seem imbalanced at a glance, but the invulnerability made the use of fists a lot more feasible, which wasn't a smart thing to do in the previous games. Moreover, the rather annoying coloured screen filters in the previous games have been replaced with far more impressive visual effects that are the warping of the edges of the screen, made possible due to the id Tech 4 engine.
The visual effects do cause the player to have tunnel vision, but if this is intended as a balancing measure (in a manner similar to the colour filters that the original power-ups have), this is understandable enough.
Another design that can be seen as a balancing measure is also aesthetic in nature; the player character that grabs the Berserk power-up continuously yells for as long as the power-up is active, which is astonishingly long in the story mode. It can seem amusing at first (mainly due to how long the player character can yell without going hoarse), but eventually, most players would be annoyed. The power-up is a lot shorter in duration in multiplayer mode, thankfully enough.
As mentioned earlier, Doom 3's weapons are far different from those of its predecessors', even the Quake franchise's thus far. The primary difference is the introduction of magazines, which make them far less simple to use.
The fists return, of course, but if not buffed by the Berserk power-up, they are impractical – much like they were in previous Doom games. The chainsaw also returns; like its predecessors, it is a nasty melee weapon, but it is now less effective. This is because unlike the enemies in the previous games, the enemies in Doom III do not have a lot of stun animations such that they can be locked into a staggered state by continuous application of the chainsaw's brand of murder.
The last melee weapon is the player character's rather robust torchlight, which can be used as a makeshift club. However, much like the melee weapons, it is difficult to use effectively in combat. In fact, the player is more likely to bring out the torchlight for purposes of illumination, which in itself can be a hassle; this will be elaborated on later when the lighting system in this game is described.
Most players will eventually realize that if they want an efficient solution to close-range combat, they would resort to the shotgun, which works like a typical shotgun and thus is not really remarkable in design.
The pistol returns, but unlike its predecessor, the pistol is a lot less useful at hitting faraway enemies because it is affected by scatter scripts that make it less effective at pelting enemies from afar. Still, in the story mode, it serves the niche of being an efficient weapon to use against low-level monsters but otherwise poor against anything else. In multiplayer, it is little more different than the default weapons found in earlier id Software games, i.e. they are rather weak against any player armed with any other gun.
Eventually, the player is introduced to the machine gun. Although this weapon has been in other shooters for a long time in various forms, this weapon archetype had little presence in id's earlier shooters, even those not of the Doom franchise. Anyway, it still offers what a typical machine gun offers: small bursts for accuracy at medium ranges, full-auto for close-range. If there is anything that makes it different from so many other machine guns in shooters, it is that it has a surprisingly generous magazine size.
Hand grenades are also a new entry in the Doom franchise, and they happen to work a lot like those in Quake II. They happen to be useful in both the story mode and multiplayer of Doom 3: in the former mode, monsters tend to lurk around corners, unseen but not unheard (but sometimes both), so tossing grenades around corners can be handy; for the latter mode, there are plenty of corners to exploit against pursuers.
The rocket launcher returns, appearing to be little more different from the one seen in the Quake games. Of course, it has to be reloaded after each shot, so it is slower on dealing damage. The player character can still attempt to rocket jump with it, but it would appear that player characters in Doom 3 have been assigned rather hefty weight ratings, preventing them from coming near the crazy heights that player characters in games made using id Tech 3 can reach.
The chain gun also returns with its rapid-fire capabilities, but is now held back by its magazine, its scattering scripts and the need to wind up. Fans of the earlier Doom games would be quite disappointed with this incarnation of the chain gun. On the other hand, it has tremendous damage per second at close ranges, making it effective at getting rid of a target that gets too near.
The plasma gun also returns, but it also has some disappointing changes. The most obvious change is the particle effects that it emit when it fires; they are big and flashy, obscuring the player's view of what is ahead. Perhaps this was due to id Software being too over-eager to show off the prettiness of the new game engine, but if it was, then this design is a bad decision that inconvenienced the player.
Otherwise, the weapon is a tremendously powerful weapon, having high damage per shot and some splash damage. This is balanced by nothing else but the aforementioned particle effects, which can still be seen even in the lowest graphical settings.
All these weapons that have been mentioned appear to have been heavily balanced, even nerfed if one is to compare them with their previous incarnations in earlier Doom games. The game designers have mentioned that this is meant for believability, but ultimately, any player character still has the "walking armoury" design (meaning that he can carry and conceal an absurd amount of weaponry and ammunition on his person) that renders the latter argument moot. The tremendous number of drawbacks that each weapon has would greatly disappoint die-hard fans of the previous games, but if they are assessed with weapon design conventions of the time, they are certainly well-balanced.
The only weapon that returns in a convincingly impressive manner, both visually and gameplay-wise, is the BFG-9000. Like its predecessor, it is a huge weapon – so huge that it has to be fitted over the arm of the user. However, it is designed to be more like the BFG in Quake II: it fires a ball of electronic and fusion doom that can zap anything too stupid or too slow to move out of its path, eventually exploding when it hits something.
However, unlike its spiritual predecessor, it can be charged to increase the strength of the fusion ball. On the other hand, to prevent the user from carrying a powerful charge within the gun at all times outside of battle, it explodes if the player uses up all the charges in its magazine, immediately killing the player character.
In the story mode, there are plenty of inhuman and somewhat human monsters to be gunned down. The game starts with the pathetic but numerous zombies, which are easy to remove. There are plenty of models for zombies, ranging from normal-sized individuals who appear to be formerly technicians, to fat, bloated individuals who were not seen at all during the prologue (which can be an oddity).
There are also zombified soldiers, which appear to have retained their combat skills and are apparently the only enemies that fight with any sense of strategy. Many of them will lurk behind cover, popping in and out to take shots. They are also the only enemies that do not pursue the player relentlessly, making use of any piece of cover (especially corners) to revert to their behaviour of popping in and out of cover to shoot. They have the same weapons that the player character has, but do not run out of ammunition, conveniently enough.
It won't be long before the more observant players figure out the predictability in their behaviour though, and learn to chuck grenades around cover or shoot them when they pop their heads out. They also tend not to take cover at doors, preferring to simply run though and take cover behind crates and low walls; this behaviour can also be exploited.
Unfortunately, this is the only extent of any tactical thinking on the part of the enemies in Doom 3. The more inhuman enemies are governed by A.I. scripts that are little more controlled by random instinct and a relentless urge to pursue the player character, wherever he is. This is not unlike their predecessors in the previous games, though they are still more sophisticated in comparison, mainly due to their different capabilities.
The demonic enemies in the story mode are used to demonstrate the different design direction that id Software has taken for the series. Doom III shows itself to be decidedly a lot bloodier and gorier than the previous games by making use of introductory scenes for these enemies, in which they tear some hapless human apart and demonstrate some other capabilities (usually at the expense of more hapless humans). These are impressive scenes (though definitely not for the squeamish), which is a surprise considering that id Software does not have much experience in designing cutscenes.
The Imps are the first demonic enemies that the player will confront in the story mode. They are not as simple as their predecessors once were: Imps often appear out of the walls or crawling on it, before dropping down onto the floor to attack, for which they have a few options. They can pounce, throw fireballs or simply try to get up close to claw away at the player character. Nonetheless, they are quite easy to deal with, if one can get past their rather unsettling visual designs.
The later ones are even more unsettling to deal with. For example, there are creatures that seemingly teleport when they are not attacking, though they are actually cloaking themselves with shields that render them invisible and impossible to harm, as suggested by the faint patter of footsteps when they are within their own pocket dimension.
Some of them can be rather troublesome to deal with, such as the redesigned Cacodemons, which are especially susceptible to the game's physics because they are literally knocked around when they are shot. Another example is the Archvile, which like its predecessor, summons additional demons as long as it is still alive.
Describing them all would be to invite spoilers here, but it should suffice to say that their designs do not appear to be too flawed, other than their stupid and relentless A.I. scripts. The game attempts to compensate for this flaw by having them spawn at locations that are very disadvantageous to the player, or spawn them in huge numbers in larger than usual rooms. These are very contrived designs for enemy encounters, which can be a disappointment considering how much id Software redesigned the signature enemies of the Doom franchise.
The game's attempts at cheap shocks are worth noting here, if only to highlight their peculiar but limited appeal. Monsters appearing from walls, ceilings and grates are nothing new in games, but this game utilizes this trope a lot, to the point where the player would be weary of them but also dread the prospect of having to turn around the next corner or entering the next room, which is not necessarily a bad consequence of the designs.
There are new enemies to expand the menageries, as befitting a sequel. These can be rather troublesome, especially to fans of the original Doom games who are used to fighting the original roster of demonic characters. An example is the Cherub, a creature that randomly alternates between slithering and hopping across the ground or hovering with its wings. Other examples include Trigits and Ticks, which are numerous and too small to hit easily from afar, especially in the darkness.
Next, there are the bosses, whose designs appear to be original (but not unique). Again to describe each here would be to invite spoilers. However, it has to be said here that although a couple of them appear to be straight-forward to defeat, the other two is not so. The latter two cannot be simply whittled down with continuous gun-fire, but at least the boss battle with one of them has the disembodied voice of an ally telling the player what to do; the other one doesn't have any, though an observant player would know what is to be done.
Of course, any player other than a die-hard fan of the original Doom games would consider these designs to be quite acceptable, but the latter kind of players would not. (It is little wonder that the second of the two aforementioned bosses has been rendered vulnerable to straight-forward gunfire in a post-release patch.)
Much like the levels in the original Doom games, most of the story mode levels in Doom 3 are set in UAC bases, which means that there are claustrophobic corridors and a lot of walls and ceilings for the player to look at, along with plenty of electrical panels, electronic terminals and cables. They can get dull quickly, if the player is looking for variety in visual aesthetics.
However, id Software appears to have given some thought to the layout of the UAC bases and their purposes. There are plenty of machinery around, supposedly serving research and industrial purposes, as well as posing a hazard to the player character's progress. Ultimately, these are the products of the imagination of people who are educated in IT and programming, so many of the pistons, conveyors, rails and such can be dismissed as sci-fi doohickeys. That they are usually there to add dangerous elements to the environments would make them seem even more contrived.
On the other hand, id Software does seem to be aware of the appeal-dashing risks of monotonous environments, so it has also utilized the environment of Mars to create a different set of environments for the story mode. The hellish invasion has damaged the lines of commute between the UAC bases, some of which also happen to be in the midst of renovation or construction. Therefore, the player character has to make runs through the thin but stormy atmosphere of Mars, all the while at the risk of running out of breath (which causes the player character to take damage to health).
Yet, more discerning players would just dismiss these sections as timed runs, making stops at nooks and crannies that hide conveniently placed oxygen canisters to replenish the "timer". However, there are interesting aesthetic touches to these levels, such as the player character's laboured breathing and the howls of the harsh winds.
Of course, the inhuman enemies of the game are not bothered by the harsh environments of Mars. They will appear in these segments to hound the player character, adding to the urgency of the situation. However, there are far fewer enemies in these segments compared to the ones indoors.
There are also some levels in the game where the player has to follow an armed drone to reach safety. These are easily the most memorable levels, largely because the player character is often left on his lonesome to fend off enemies. The drone also showcases id Software's surprisingly good friendly A.I. programming, as the drone rarely if not never abandon the player character and will backtrack to call out to him with distinct chirps if he lags behind.
The drone also happens to be terrifically difficult to kill, but if it does fall, the player is left alone within the darkness (because these levels are usually dark) and has to fend off a dangerous number of enemies alone (because these segments often have increased numbers of enemies to match the additional firepower provided by the drone).
Perhaps the biggest disappointment with the environmental designs lies in the lack of levels set in Hell. These occur towards the end of the game, and they may seem too short to pay any tribute to those in the previous game.
On the other hand, they are certainly far ghastlier than the original levels. There are a lot of disgusting decorations and doodads with emphasis on blood, gore and fleshy growths, as well as gales composed of what appear to be tormented souls. There are plenty of candles made of fat too, as well as a lot of illumination from otherworldly flames in nearby pits as well as infernos in the vast horizons of Hell.
Speaking of visually hideous environmental designs, as the hellish invasion escalates, the UAC bases start to become more corrupted as the forces of hell exert their influence and mutate the environments to their whims. These are very impressive (but also rather unsettling) ways to portray the progress of the story.
The new game engine is actually not as fantastic as id Software and fans of the game would make it out to be. Compared to its closest competitors at the time, such as the Unreal engine, this early version of id Tech 4 does not appear to surpass them in terms of numbers of polygons for models. The textures are not substantially any more detailed either, though they still look competently done.
On the other hand, id Tech 4 is a technical marvel. Skeletons for models have plenty of joints, as are apparent by how the demonic enemies in the game are animated, especially the ones that lope. There are plenty of animations in the environments, and these do not seem to decrease the frame rate too much unless there are plenty on-screen, which is rare. The textures may appear somewhat bland, but they benefit from shading effects that impart various degrees of gloss and matte unto them.
However, the most impressive graphical feat of Doom 3 is its shadowing and lighting. Shadows can appear on the crevices and contours of models, enhancing the shapes of the polygons that comprise them (though they also highlight deficiencies in some of designs of the models, such as sharp edges that the designers failed to smoothen out). Light and shadow also exchange places quickly when the light sources are knocked around. The processing for lighting and shadowing appears to be astonishingly efficient, because there does not seem to be much of a drop in frame rate when light sources do get messed around.
Unfortunately, the darkness in the game can be too overbearing. This is largely due to the lack of means given to the player for the purpose of illuminating the darkness: the torch is the only source of light within the control of the player, yet bringing it up prevents the player character from using weapons. This means that the player character has to shoot into the darkness to hit anything within it, which can be frustrating. (On the other hand, most demons have some glowing parts on their bodies, which betray their presence,)
The sound designs are more convincing at being thoroughly impressive than the graphics. Being a game with sci-fi and otherworldly themes allowed the game designers to let their imagination run wild on how sci-fi weapons and demons should sound like.
Trying to describe the audio designs of sci-fi weapons that have no real-world counterparts would be rather futile, but it should suffice to say that they would sound satisfying to most players, especially the more powerful ones that do sound like the bruisers that they are. There are a lot of sci-fi warbles and bleeps though, so players who are tired of such audio designs would not be impressed.
The sound designs of enemies are just as varied as their visual designs. Zombies typically moan and groan when they detect prey, though they are surprisingly rather silent when they do lurk. Former human soldiers breathe very loudly, giving away their presence if they do happen to be lurking but becoming more silent when they do pursue the player character, though they will utter updates on the location of the player character if they do happen to spot him. (This is just for aesthetic purposes, because all enemies in the story mode will know exactly where the player character is at all times, typically enough.)
The demonic enemies are a lot less subtle in their audio designs. Many of them sound suitably inhuman, having been given sound clips that appear to be the result of the warping of the noises that real animals make and the altering of otherwise human voices. Every creature has its own distinct set of noises, so an observant player would be able to recognize the presence of specific enemies through audio alone.
Even lurking demons would snarl, growl or rumble, pretty much losing their opportunity at ambushes if the player is cautious enough to listen to the surroundings carefully. Most enemies are spawned via triggers though, so the player does not get to counter enemy ambushes very often.
The ambient sounds are perhaps the most effective of the sound designs, if they were intended to invoke a sense of dread in the player. There are a lot of ominous hums, which are difficult to attribute to either UAC machinery or the corruption brought about by the invasion. Especially foreboding hums permeate dreadful places, like corridors that have been corrupted by hideous fleshy growths and rooms that had been vandalized with unsettling sigils and runes. The effectiveness of the ambient sounds is a testament to the skill of their designer, Chris Vrenna, formerly of Nine Inch Nails.
On the other hand, it would appear that it was Chris Vrenna alone who contributed to the musical designs of the game. Other than the metal theme song that plays in the main menu, the rest of the game seems to lack music. There are creepy tunes for some of the quieter places in the game, like the UAC offices, but otherwise the game depends a lot on ambient sounds for its atmosphere.
Prior to Doom 3, id Software has never been known for competently written stories; the stories in the previous games are just there as an excuse to have the player character shooting everything that moves. The storywriting in Doom 3 is substantially a lot better, which can be a surprise to those that had not expected id Software to be bothered with a worthwhile story.
Progress in the main plotline is portrayed through cutscenes. These cutscenes highlight id Software's competent use of camera angles and facial animations, but they also highlight the aforementioned drawbacks in the graphical designs of the game, namely the lack of high numbers in the polygons for models. Because of this deficiency, a lot of the facial animations of important characters in the game are left wanting. Observant players may even notice that some shapes for heads are repeated for many characters. The placement of convenient light sources to illuminate these characters' faces makes the disguising of these deficiencies impossible.
The voice-acting is at least decent though. Some characters do seem rather calm considering the situation where cruel creatures are running amok and former friends and colleagues are turning all treacherous, but they otherwise convey the urgency of the situation adequately without sounding dull or campy. The player character himself is mute and not named at all, which can be disappointing if one considers how much effort that id Software has invested in the story.
The rest of the story is fleshed out using the mechanic of PDAs. The player character will come across the PDAs of other characters (usually dead), and can retrieve them to copy their contents over to his own. (The other PDAs disappear to nowhere though, which can cause some disbelief.)
PDAs in the game, as to be expected of PDAs, contain messages and journal entries that impart bits on the backstory of the game as well as the terror and anguish of those who survived the initial hours of the invasion; some of these are voiced-over messages in addition to having text. They may also contain information like security numbers that unlock containers and locked doors, usually to uncover some goodies like extra supplies or weapons that the player may not have obtained in the story mode yet.
(There is also a fourth-wall breaking gig that involves the mechanic of PDAs, but to describe this would be to include a spoiler.)
However, reading them is an issue: the game does not pause when the player brings up the PDA, which means that the player character may be attacked by any enemy that the player may have missed, the demons known as "Maggots" being a particular example as they are quite silent. Furthermore, the game does not mute out the ambient sounds, which means that the player has to read or listen to messages while ominous audio plays in the background. This can feel rather inappropriate if the player is reading a funny message.
Following what id Software has done for Quake II and III, multiplayer mode appears to be designed into the game by default. It should be noted here that Splash Damage (which is one of id Software's partners) worked on the multiplayer mode of the game, so it is expectedly quite different from the story mode.
Unlike the story mode, items and power-ups in the multiplayer mode are not affected by physics and instead float and rotate like their counterparts in the multiplayer modes of the Quake games; they also have additional particle effects for visual embellishment. These make them stand out from the environments in the multiplayer maps, which are just as dark as the ones in the story mode.
Speaking of darkness, there are plenty of dark nooks and crannies that players can hide their player characters in; theoretically, devious players can make the multiplayer mode just as dreadful as the story mode, simply by exploiting these locations.
Power-ups are a delicate aspect of multiplayer maps to design, because poor placement may result in players developing circuits and routes that maximize the benefits of these pick-ups while denying them from enemies; this is a lesson that id Software has learned all too well from its earlier shooters. In contrast to the power-ups in these earlier shooters, which at most sat in difficult to reach places, the power-ups in the multiplayer maps of Doom 3 are not only situated in difficult to reach places, but also dangerous ones, with hazards like lasers that fire periodically across where these power-ups spawn.
Unfortunately, if anyone had thought that the multiplayer maps are well designed, he/she would discover that there are only a few maps that Doom 3 offers, which can be a severe disappointment, especially if one considers that this sequel had been long in the making.
Moreover, the launch version of the game only supports up to four players in any multiplayer match, which is too few when compared to the numbers that id Software's earlier shooters have achieved. The types of multiplayer modes available are also limited; there appears to be only deathmatch modes, which are typical to the shooter genre.
To summarize this review, Doom 3 may come off as a disappointment to those who had been expecting id Software to usher in a revolution like it did with Doom and Quake. It may also disappoint those who believe that the sophistication of a game should be commensurate with its long development time, because Doom 3 does not seem to offer anything beyond what many of its peers in the sci-fi sub-genre of shooters already have. Its multiplayer mode is also far below what id Software's other shooters have achieved. However, its story mode is an impressive attempt by id Software to show that it is capable of crafting a worthwhile story with considerable atmosphere.