GregHowley.com

Having only gotten into First-Person shooters with Half-Life 2, I'd never played any of id's Doom series before. And while Doom 3 wasn't the best shooter I've ever played, it certainly wasn't the worst.

The game's premise, in the unlikely case you don't know, is that you're a futuristic marine who's just been sent to a base on Mars. Shortly after you arrive, the shit hits the fan, and a portal from hell opens, flooding the Mars base with demons. You spend the rest of the game killing demons and learning how and why this portal opened so that you may close it and prevent the demons from boarding the rescue ships Earth sends. If the demons go to Earth, then that's bad. Worse than snakes on a plane even.

That Doom 3 had a storyline at all is commendable. The game's story is revealed through a combination of brief cutscenes, Half-Life style NPC conversations, and many many emails and voice logs which are experienced via your character's PDA. Although this worked, it got tedious after a while simply because of the sheer number of emails, and because you can't quickly skim the voice logs. Skipping them isn't a great option either, since many contain important passcodes which open equipment-laden lockers.

The biggest annoyance in the game was the darkness, and the fact that you can't hold a weapon and the flashlight at the same time. It was apparently included to add to the horror, but in the end it was just annoying having to quickly switch between your flashlight and weapon all the time. Still, I learned to cope with it after a while.

I actually found the startle factor lacking, even if it was better than most games. Ever since I played Resident Evil 2 long ago, that's been my benchmark for scary games. No other game has made me jump like Resident Evil 2 did, and I'm including the later Resident Evil titles. There was one point in Doom 3 when a little spider dropped down and I jumped a bit, but somehow I'd expected more.

Doom made an interesting choice in reducing and simplifying the control scheme. Usually, I set up my mouse so that left-click is primary fire, right-click is whatever secondary fire the weapon has, and center-click is 'use'. But Doom had no secondary fire and no 'use'. Most of my mouse buttons went unused. All the elevators and computers were activated with the left-click, as your weapon is lowered when you approach the controls. Is this simplicity good or bad? I don't know.

The biggest compliment I have for the design of Doom 3 is the weapon selection. Each weapon has a proper use, and nearly none are useless or redundant. For example, in Half-Life 2 the OSIPR is simply a more powerful machine gun, and in Far Cry nearly all the guns are roughly the same. But in Doom 3, every weapon has a proper use. (except for the stupid handgun) The shotgun is useful throughout the game for taking out imps and zombies, as its damage is high and ammo is plentiful. But it fires too slowly for when you're fighting multiple enemies, and it's only good for short-range combat. The machine gun is perfect for when you need a rapid-fire low-damage weapon for taking out hordes of little guys. The chaingun is one of the best weapons for dealing out loads of damage quickly to take out a big enemy, but it reacts slowly, as it takes a second to begun firing. The plasma gun does a lot of damage, but is a poor weapon for long range, since the projectiles travel very slowly and the enemy has likely moved by the time they get there. And the three explosive weapons: Grenade, Rocket Launcher, and BFG each have their uses, but their blast radius makes them dangerous. There is also a chainsaw which I never used, and the even more useless barefisted option. But overall, the weapons have more character than in any other shooter I've played. The amount and placement of ammo and healing supplies were also perfectly done. I was never stuck with 3 hitpoints and no healing supplies, I never ran out of ammo, but I never felt like it was plentiful either. I'm sure this changes in different difficulty levels, but the normal level was just right for casual play.

I don't think I'll be keeping Doom 3; I have no desire to replay it, but it was a good game.