Doom 3

Welcome back to Mars, Corporal, the gates of hell are waiting to receive you...

It's the experience you've been craving for years. Once again you take the controls, preparing yourself for an epic battle to save the universe against the invading hordes of Hell. With an arsenal ranging from a Civil War-era pistol and Vietnam-era shotgun, to your trusty BFG9000, you head off into the now-possessed Mars base looking first to save the innocent civilian staff, then fellow Marines, and eventually only yourself. You squint and strain to see through the gloom, trying to divine which alcove, nook or cranny holds yet another unleashed bundle of claws and fury whose sole purpose in life is to rip you a new one. You soiled yourself two demons ago, but you're too tensely engrossed to do anything about it but hope that it doesn't permanently stain your chair or carpet. You hear the distinct crackling of yet another teleportation and an angry scream makes you jump-- this time it's your bladder that gives out. From the dark ahead of you a red fireball launches right at your heart. You dodge, jump to the right and start laying down a stream of bullets into the darkness...

Ah, Doom 3. The shining gem of gaming technology released to a ravenous mass of quality-starved gamers. Its purpose, to breathe life back into a stagnating genre of FPS while kneeling in homage to the Grandfather and Patriarch of all shooters-and it came sort'a close.

This game suffers from the same tragedy that befell Star Wars Episode I: it missed its audience by about a decade (or two). Now, this isn't to say that the production quality of the game isn't of the highest order-Id Software isn't populated with bottom of the barrel coders or high school dropout hacks. It has none other than John Carmack, the graphics engine coding god himself, to make sure every single piece of new technology is explored and exploited. No, what I'm talking about is a fundamental lack of understanding the audience's expectations of what the game should have been.

Back in the early 90's, you could wow a gamer with a simple shooter. The game didn't need a good story- just an unexplainable premise, and lots and lots of stuff to shoot.

But the paradigm has shifted. Now gamers are well into their 30s (and 40s even), and they demand a "realistic" gaming environment, where not only is the premise pretty damn cool, but the logistics of the game do not detract from the immersive experience. It's getting to the point where eye-candy, though nice, just can't redeem a game that is being totally random and unfair in gameplay.

For example, imagine a time in the future where a sadistic scientist somehow manages to escape being ripped to shreds by demonic hordes long enough to make a deal with them. In this deal, he stipulates that he must be given enough power so that he can raise the dead, turn dead humans into meandering killing machines (some with severe body modifications), and become preternaturally omniscient. With this newfound power, he busily begins to eliminate all who oppose him and his newfound chums.

Enter you. You are the oldest looking Corporal that the Marine Corps has ever produced. You have arrived on Mars, the pit of the universe, just in time to have all hell break loose. You are horribly under-equipped with weaponry that was used during the Civil War and is somehow still standard issue amongst the armed forces in the 26th century. You have body armor- thank goodness, but you don't have any kind of light amplification integrated into your helmet-hell, you don't even have a tactically mounted light on your pump-action shotgun. Just to make matters worse, every time you use your standard issue mag-light, you drop your weapons. You must then make your way through the monster-infested darkness, hoping (futilely) that no monsters show up because all you'll be able to do is bonk them to death with the flashlight.

Just to make matters even worse, this freaky scientist somehow knows where you are at every moment of the game, but instead of sending enough of his cohorts to slash you to death, he merely sends enough to annoy. And annoy they will because they are nowhere, and then bloody everywhere. These demons must know the base better than the people who constructed it because they are in every closet, in every duct work and seemingly in every "empty" room. There are even monsters inside of closets with another closet full of monsters inside of the first closet. You really need to suspend belief to understand why monsters have nothing better to do than rot away in closets waiting for you.

But don't fret, dear Corporal, despite this seemingly incoherent and insurmountable situation that confronts you, there are pieces of equipment to help you on your way to conquer the capricious demonic realm. You have plenty of armor, weapons and health equally spread throughout the facility to rejuvenate and replenish you. Of course, the hellish horde had enough time to catalog and booby-trap every single piece of it, making every attempt to utilize them a nasty, and an all-to-familiar catch-22. This is also an incredible accomplishment if you consider the dull intellect of the entire hell-invasion force, whose strategies include jumping out of closets, screaming and running right at you despite pumping countless amounts of lead into them, and booby-trapping (but not destroying!) ammo, health packs, heavy weapons, etc. Wouldn't you like to know what sort of a bumbling job these guys had in hell before they were so intent on killing you?

Ah, but in the game you have a palm pilot, you say, a tiny little link to logic. That should be sufficient to help you keep your sanity long enough to get you through this terrifying ordeal. But oh, no! You can collect and snoop all the email and video you want, but if it's a simple map you're craving- well, tough luck space buckaroo! Maybe all of the other marines-which by the way are all dead, snaked your maps as a hazing ritual. Not that you'd be able to make good use of maps, seeing as every single poorly-lit hallway has blown-up crap in it. You'll have to make due with broken elevators, difficult-to-use ladders, and fluorescent lighting that no matter how much power you turn on in the area, will continue to blink annoyingly. And it would appear that demons hate stairs, because they seem to have destroyed almost all of them.

But it's a game, right Corporal? And you desperately want to like it, so you put all the strangely conflicting stuff behind you and move on...just in time for the Chainsaw-wielding, farmer zombies to attack. Chainsaws? On Mars? Um...oh yeah, I know: they used them to cut down the Martian forests to clear enough space to build the underground facility.

Ack, this reality bending thought process is starting to hurt.

All right, you're surviving these assaults to reason- they're painful, but you're persevering and you spent $55.00. Now it's time to go shut down that big wormhole into the demonic realm so that more monsters can't teleport in-wait, what was that? They seem to be teleporting whenever and wherever they want to right now. Why worry about the big gate- especially when every time I go through one of those damn teleporters all of my weapons get stripped? Why don't I just fly out of here and nuke the planet? I'd like to see their gate survive that. Besides, I went through the hallways to get to the demon's precious portal and none of the bigger guys will fit through them to get out. And did you say that it was guarded by a rocketpack wearing Balrog? Oh my, could you stop the room please, I need to get off.

This is the kind of thing that no matter how much I want to believe or how much I wanted to enjoy the overall experience- I just couldn't. I was too busy screaming, "give me a freakin' break already with the teleporting thingy!" and, "you cheap bastards!"

This game was created for a 20 year old with a 1993 FPS mentality. I've grown up in the decade that followed the original Doom, yet sadly, this game did not.

Like Star Wars Episode I, Doom 3 has high production values, but it shares annoyances on par with Jar Jar Binks which only serves to distract from what should have been perfection given the caliber of the Id team. Could they have created a new story that ADDS to the genre, rather than rehashes the original? Or, like Lucas, did they know we would buy the game no matter what story was in there?

Now, I know that my introduction makes it sound like this game was an abysmal failure, and on one level you'd be correct. However, there are certain aspects of this game which were so well executed that they do approach perfection.

Ambience-oh yes, this game has incredible ambience. The visual and audio environment is so creepily crafted that I finally gave up wearing pants in lieu of a large diaper I created out of a beach towel. I'm not sure what the FDA's daily allowance of adrenaline is, but this game will take you over the top of it within minutes of play. There should be a Surgeon General's warning posted on the side of the box. You should spray Scotch-guard on your carpet around your computer chair to keep the stains from setting...

I'm telling you-it is the scariest game to which I have subjected myself ever.

If you play this at night, with the speakers cranked-up (and if you dare, fully caffeinated), I promise you a life-changing experience that no therapist will be equipped to help you with.

The visuals are stunning- when you can see them. This is the DARKEST game you will ever crawl, run and scream yourself through. Not even the Silent Hill or Thief series were as dark as this.

There were many elements that seemed to me a combination of several of my old-time favorites: Aliens vs. Predator, Half-life, SystemShock 2, and the Quake series. There were some places so derivative of these previous titles that Id should send a royalty check to some of the other game's designers. There was a part where I expected the subtitle of "On A Rail" to popup, another where I fully expected Head Crabs to cascade down on me while riding a large lift. In another, I thought that I should call up Ripley and have her torch the Alien queen with the Plasma Rifle (that looks curiously similar to the flame-thrower she used in the 2nd movie)-because I'm quite positive that the Queen was laying eggs somewhere close by the Power Core.

But when it came down to it...this didn't particularly peeve me. In fact, it almost seemed a gracious nod to those who had come before and helped refine some of the elements that have become the standards in sci-fi FPSs. I almost got choked up over it...

The weapons were a mixed bag. Why game developers keep slapping a pump-action shotgun into my hands no matter what era I'm in is a mystery. For me, if Id had just started with the Plasma rifle as the "stock" weapon and moved up the ranks to more futuristic energy weapons, then I wouldn't have such a gripe. I mean, a pistol that shoots a standard ballistic round is my standard-issue Marine side-arm? Didn't I just take a spaceship ride to get to Mars? Another oddity: the grenade. Do they have an extra slippery suspensor-field around them or something? Because they sure bounce in the most unrealistic ways.

I found the BFG9000 a little underpowered, but the variable energy release was quite a nice feature. Also, the Soul Cube was sexy-killing fun. I just couldn't wait to kill 5 more beasties just so that it would seductively whisper "use us". (Why won't my dates ever say that?) It turned out to be the futuristic, demon-killing weapon of choice for me.

The cinematic cut-scenes were top-notch productions, and you slickly move between them and live action without any hitches (an idea that everyone should thank Homeworld for bringing to video games). They were never a hindrance, and they gave some nifty insight into the (tenuous) plot. The movies get a "thumbs up".

The creatures were incredible re-incarnations of the ones which once graced the screen of my 486DX2. I give full kudos to the creature design team 'cause these monsters were the "shiz" baby! They way they moved and looked were excellent. Nobody has ever done work on par with the likes of what these guys created. The first time I saw the Hell Knights walk out of the teleporter I didn't want to kill them because they were so damn beautiful to watch-okay, until they shot the painful green stuff, but up until then it was like babe-watchin' at the beach...in a hellish, monstrous sort of way.

The graphics engine is a technological marvel, and very scalable-though don't go thinking this is going to work on your old P3 Gig system with a Geforce 3. I played it at 800x600 with the lowest detail settings (which still looks really good) on my AMD 2600+ with 512 DDR and a Geforce 4 TI4600 and didn't suffer too many slideshows. I'm sure that if you can pony-up the bucks for an Opteron with a gig of DDR and saddle a Geforce FX 6800 (or above) into it, then you'll be able to achieve those deliciously detailed shots that are posted on Id's site. It should also be noted that playing this game will convert your computer into a space heater and it will use every once of computing power you own plus leech some from your neighbor's place (should you give it the opportunity). The graphics engine was definitely designed with some room for hardware technology to grow into it.

The dynamic lighting was spectacular. Watching shadows change in accordance with the light source being acted upon by an interfering agent was uber-cool.

Also adding the finishing touch to the graphics engine is the debut of the sicky-cool, slimy tentacles/tubes that are invading the base. Go ahead and give a good look-over to them when you've killed all of the teleporting demons in the area. I think you'll enjoy it as much as I did. It's like staring at a decaying animal at the side of the road, you may want to heave, but it's just too interesting to turn away.

The audio was nicely done. Cartoonist and Filmers live by the credo, "Sound is 60% of the image", and Id followed suit. From the heartbeat to the trippy children's' voices permeating the darkened corridors-it was all superb work. There were hardly ever any times when some sound or other wasn't humming, clinking, chortling or buzzing away in the background. In fact, it was almost a little overboard in its omnipresence. It really helped set your nerves on end and made the enclosing environments come to life. It reminded me of the constant thrumming which accompanied my journey in SystemShock 2: relentless and driving, and at times gothic and eerie. Just remember to turn off the sound if you pause the game to go to bed, 'cause there is no way in hell that you'll have anything but nightmares should you leave the sound on while sleeping.

The voice acting was rather adequate. Each character played his part well- as well as having a voice which reflected the characteristics of the character. The voice acting was neither distracting, nor offering itself up as a centerpiece. In other words, it was correctly executed.

I only found one minor aggravation with the audio-or maybe discrepancy would be a better term. Each door in the entire complex would open and shut with an angry noise so violent that you just about bite your lip off when you accidentally stepped onto the trigger, but the secret closet doors containing monsters would open in a whisper-quiet mode so silent that not even your trusty pet dog will be able to warn you about it. That, to me, is underhanded and cheap- but if your desired effect is to make me squeal like a little girl from the sudden attack from an unheard source...well then it was accomplished flawlessly.

There were a couple of things which were of minor annoyance concerning the game engine. One is: just how big am I? I could never get a sense of just how I fit into the environment. There were times when I'd run around for a couple of minutes trying to find an open door only to realize that I somehow fit into that really shallow-looking duct in the floor. Strange. And the bloody ladders. You can't look around! At all. You touch the ladder rungs and your head somehow gets glued forward. I cannot describe how very disconcerting that is when you're trying to scan the area for the next slash-attack. The jumping was also a bit clumsy. I remember trying to get from one floaty platform (why won't jumping puzzles go the way of the dinosaur?) to the next being both frustrated and grateful that I frequently made use of the F5 button.

And I don't think Id should go around toting this as an "inter-active" environment. Of the objects I actually moved or bumped, there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the properties of the objects. I had cardboard boxes that I could move with my pinky finger and then jump on top of without them collapsing. I'd go into the next corridor and have a metal shelf that I couldn't even budge. Sometimes it would appear that random objects would fly away from me as if repelled by a magnetic field emanating from me- 'cause I don't recall having touched them... The "inter-active" part of the engine could use some work. Oh well, baby steps are better than none.

And here's my personal pet-peeve/gripe: Not a single light in the facility works correctly-not even those shredded torso, wall sconces in hell. Nothing was a constant light source. It makes me wonder why I spent so much time turning the Power Core back on. Waking up in my own vomit after having strobe-light induced overload seizures became rather commonplace. I finally wised-up and started playing with a wallet taped into my mouth to keep me from biting my tongue off. What's up with all of the friggin' blinking lights? I have an LED camping light that will run for 150 hours on 3 AAA batteries before dimming out-and somehow the distant future still has problems with lighting and backup power-supplies? Argh!

AND-the red slashy deals that pop-up in my visor whenever a creature manages to make contact with my suit. This could be the absolutely most aggravating and silly idea to make it into the game. Why in the world would my technologically advanced suit try to blind me during a battle with a metaphorical visual representation of something happening to my posterior? It's just dumb. Someone out there, please make a patch to rectify this apparent lapse in gameplay sanity that Id unleashed upon the world. And to all you other game designers licensed to use the Doom 3 engine-please do not make use of this "feature"!

The AI is not very inventive. The creatures see you, they attack you. Viola! Fin. That's that. They have some rather interesting movements and characteristic, especially those little, flying, claw-armed cherubs-but in the end it's: teleport, scream, attack, run right at you, attack, scream, run right at you, etc... heck, they are denizens of hell, not rocket scientists. What'd you expect them to do?

What's really nice is that these creatures are from every walk of Id's life. You have the updated Doom assortment, but to that you can add some of the Strogg from Quake 2 and some of the demon-kind from Quake 1. For instance, instead of a Strogg Berserker with a hammer and blade for arms, you have a zombie soldier that has a slurpy tentacle deal that he likes to bitch-slap you with. You also have an encore performance by the spidery chicks from Quake 1. Oooo, and you can't miss the hiccoughing, jumpy, blade-armed demon from Quake 1- except now he does groovy little teleports to get close enough to you to do the stabbing action. It's techno-updated nastalgia...just keep your eyes open, you'll see them and probably smile fondly in remembrance too.

Does the game have replay-ability? Doubtful. I really don't have much desire to play through Doom 3 again. I know the plot now, I've killed all the teleporting beasties. I have the feeling that once I upgrade my system I may use Doom 3 as a graphical benchmarking tool, but the gameplay itself was too novelty-driven to keep me coming back for more. Even the temptation of game "mastery" doesn't entice me. If you're the type that likes shooting exercises then you'll have a hey-day with revisiting the game on Nightmare level, but I think I'll move on now.