I have now finished Doom 3. I am currently re-running through the game on Nightmare mode. Why? Because it's there.
This is not a flattering review of Doom 3. If you are one of those people who are going to call me a big idiot just because I don't like Doom 3 as much as you do, stop reading now. I am going to try to give serious criticism to the game, however, so if you want to read such a venture, continue. If you work for ID software, please keep reading. This may help in case you plan on making Doom 4.
First of all, some praise. Doom 3 is an insanely good looking game. It is the first game where I have collected screen shots of, though I dare not put them up as the wallpaper for my computer. My wife sometimes uses this thing. I don't want to give her nightmares. Doom 3 is visually stunning, as the saying goes. But more than that, it's just downright creepy. The voices on the periphery that whisper "save us" or "over here", the baby crying, the floating bodies, the popping floor grates, the occasional temporary vision of the world as seen through Hell. Oh yes, it's a great game for these reasons, and no matter what I say hereafter, keep in mind that I would buy Doom 3 again if only for its creepiness. For the veteran gamers out there, it is far worse for nerve rattling than Silent Hill or Resident Evil.
Why then am I criticizing? My commentary is essentially based on my own game experiences with Doom, Final Doom, the wad pack Alien Doom, and Doom 2. That is to say, I assumed that Doom 3 would take on all the best things about the Doom series and add to them. This is simply not the case. The monsters are there, the weapons are there (including a few new ones), but it is the difference between the Donkey Kong drumming game and Donkey Kong circa 1980. Something has been lost and reworked to the point of total game play diminishment.
So, let me begin there. In the previous Dooms, the game was essentially 2d. It appeared to be 3d, but this was due only to the engines ability to re-render a "flat" map into three dimensional space. There was no aim up or down. You were never above or below another position. There were in effect, no second floors. If stairs went up, they did not lead to a place directly overhead of a space you could otherwise stand in. This was a BIG problem with the game. But the game designers coped with it well by creating vast worlds where you barely ever noticed this limitation. Doom 3 fixes this problem.
In addition, previous Dooms were straightjacketed into an adventure game style that was actually derived from that old Atari game Adventure. The plot of any level went something like this: get blue key, open blue door, somewhere behind blue door is red key, get red key, open red door, somewhere behind red door is yellow key. Get yellow key, open yellow door, exit. All doom levels are some permutation of this basic structure. Some have less than three keys, some have more, but any essential areas of the maze that need to be entered will be guarded by colored doors. Of course, there are non-essential areas of the maze, and many of these are entered by tripping off traps or clicking non-essential switches.
Also in previous Doom games, the level starts fully stocked. That is to say that all the monsters that are on the level are there. They don't teleport in, or if they do, there's a room somewhere with a teleporter in it, and the monster starts in that room. Also, one of the basic philosophies of the previous Doom games is that if there is an area where you can conceivably stand there is a way to get to it, and a way to get out of it. Veteran players of the previous dooms will know well that if you can see a place that looks like you might be able to get to it--there's probably a secret switch somewhere that will open a door out there.
As for combat, the previous dooms made a point of taxing your ammo. There is not enough ammo to kill every monster in Doom 2, even if you never miss--and it is very hard to never miss. You are, therefore, forced to use tactics to increase your chance of hitting or to get the monsters to shoot each other. Whenever possible you must use your chainsaw (which doesn't require ammo). One feature of the previous Doom games is that monsters who have not been shot by you, if shot by another monster, will begin to attack the other monster. This tactic is absolutely necessary when you are running out of ammo and you enter a room filled with 30-100 monsters. Which brings up another point, the average encounter in previous Doom games involves a legion of bad guys, a lot of them big.
Now for Doom 3. Well, to start with the monsters won't start killing each other off, which is good because you never face more than 2 or 3 of them at a time. The only thing that attack in hordes are the spider thingees and I've never seen more than 12 of them (one shot with the pistol will kill them, they are basically pointless). The worst encounter I've ever seen in Doom 2 was a Cyber Demon/ Spider Daemon Mastermind combo with 2 chaingun zombies and four or six imps. The worst encounter I saw in Doom 3 was 2 hell knights and an arch vile. Please...
None of the monsters "lurk." I saw one imp the whole game that didn't teleport in--thereby, declaring its presense and giving you a full second to draw a bead on him. You never get shot and wonder, 'what the hell is shooting me.' The monsters take less damage and deal out less damage, and you get better weapons including the Soul Cube which makes the last third of the game play like a really good looking screen saver. The worst trap (pile of goodies that if you touch, a door opens revealing a whole bunch of monsters) involves maybe a couple of imps. And by the way, what's with the imps. Revenants people! Save the low breed monsters for the lower levels. The higher levels aught to upgrade the encounters just a bit. Oh, and whatever they were trying to do with the Cacodaemon just doesn't work. Even when there's three of them, they go down like punks.
There is never the grand sweep of a large room like there is in all previous doom games, you're always in close quarters fighting only a few beasts. I can't remember what level of final doom it is, but there's a round walkway type of level where you fight revenants, mancubi, arch viles, hell knights, hundreds of shotgun guys, and whatever else they decided to throw in there. That's a battle. Two zombies with shotguns is not a battle.
Doom 3 might have achieved this any number of ways, aside from the obvious: just make a big room and put a whole bunch of monsters in it. There is the outer landscape of Mars, where you have to worry about your oxygen, but you really only go out there 3 or 4 times in the whole game, and aside from one encounter, I don't really think they used their game design to its full effect. Which by the way, is the nuts and bolts of all my criticism for this game. It might have been really really really great. Instead, its nice looking.
As for level playability, they solved the 2d/3d problems of previous dooms but the levels are no longer maps or mazes. There is never more than one option of where to go next. If there appears to be a side tunnel, the door will always be broken or locked. It isn't a maze, it's a straight line. This is just plain poor design. They could have fixed this any number of ways. Most notably, they could have looked at how they designed levels in the previous doom games and acted accordingly. There are, by the way, no secret doors, no real hidden caches. If you see a locked cabinet in front of you, the switch is always behind you. In previous dooms, you flipped a switch and wondered where the door opened (and whether it had supplies behind it or a thousand monsters). In Doom 3, the doors right there and you know what's behind it because it's made of glass.
I never once ran out of ammo playing doom 3. I rarely used every health pack I found. There was never any reason to use the Chainsaw, the missile launcher, or the BFG. Why would you use a BFG on three monsters? Once you get the soul cube, oscilating between that and either the chain gun or the plasma gun is the only thing you ever have to do to kill things. Quite simply, there are no tactics that need to be employed in the game.
A lot is made of one of the game's new features. Pressing the tab key gives you access to some of the ex-workers in Mars's e-mail. This is the back story that was missing from the previous doom games (though really what back story do you need? The levels called the suburbs and it's filled with demons. Nuff said?). The problem with the backstory is that there's too much of it and none of it matters. It's not like someone can tell you a better way to get to Delta labs--the game is set up with only one way to go ever. What ends up happening is that you use the e-mails to get locker codes so that you can get more supplies that you never run out of. Has anyone played and actually fallen below 50 armor?
So, how can these problems be fixed? First of all, and I can't stress this enough, more monsters. The move from 50 to 3 is not good. But where will all these monsters fit? Point 2, make some areas that are big. The entire game does not have to be a crawl through hallways. Make some arenas. Better yet, force the player outside once and a while. Next point: make the game less linear. A player wants options. Part of the fun is figuring out the order in which to search the maze. Lastly, bring back switches that open doors on the other side of the maze. There should be "secret" areas--that's part of the game's heritage. Maybe you could tie those in with all the PDA stuff to make that game function actually worthwhile.
Alright, I've had my say. Now if you are a member of ID's programming team, I hope there is no love lost. I see what you guys were trying to do with the game, you were trying to make it visually stunning, and in that case, you succeeded. But visuals are not a replacement for the enjoyment of game play, and you need to get more of that back in the game
