Reviewed: April 4, 2005
Reviewed by: Mark Smith
Publisher
Activision
Developer
id Software
Vicarious Visions
Released: April 4, 2005
Genre: FPS
Players: 1 / 4
ESRB: Mature
9
10
10
10
9.7
Supported Features:
Screenshots (Click Image for Gallery)
Doom 3 rocked the gaming world when it released for the PC last year delivering one of the most frightening gameplay experiences in the history of videogames. But while we were all cleansing the Mars outpost of demons and zombies the guys at id Software and Vicarious Visions were hard at work preparing to bring this fright fest to the Xbox. It's not like the Xbox port was an afterthought. Long before the Xbox system even launched John Carmack was already writing the code that would seamlessly bridge the PC and console titles, and many years later the end result is astounding. Doom 3 is a masterful piece of work, combining the FPS and survival horror genres in a way that none of us could have possibly imagined.
Doom 3 is all about the atmosphere, ironically taking place on Mars where there is none. But the UAC is about to change that with new terraforming technology that can manipulate matter at the atomic level turning red dirt into water or even breathable air. Of course there is a secret lurking deep in the Delta Labs, a secret you’ll learn all too soon. As one scientist so eloquently put it, “The Devil is real and I have built his cage.”
Skip this paragraph unless you want a minor spoiler. Apparently, the scientists on Mars have been working on teleportation technology and the resulting wormholes have opened a dimensional door to hell. Various demons have been brought back for study and display in some sinister museum, but other demons are now spilling into our dimension, and the Mars installation is crawling with the suckers.
But perhaps I am getting ahead of myself. Let’s begin at the beginning. You play as a generic Marine (you don’t even have a name) sent to Mars for a routine tour of duty. The opening movie has a shuttle depositing you into the spaceport where an interactive introduction gets you familiar with the game. This entire sequence is very much like the opening in the original Half-Life even culminating with a dimensional explosion that releases all sorts of nasty demons and zombies into the base. That’s when the game really begins.
Of course the question all PC gamers are asking, and rightly so is, "Why should I buy the Xbox version?" Well, if you have a high-end PC then you probably shouldn't. The Xbox version is an abridged edition of the PC game with some areas shrunk, some removed, and many areas entirely rearranged. Then again, the game is just different enough that it does offer a somewhat unique experience. And to sweeten the pot, Activision has packaged DOOM 3 in two versions, the standalone game and a Limited Collector's Edition with plenty of DVD-style goodies including a trip down memory lane.
Exclusive Xbox Collector's Edition includes:
- Full versions of the original ULTIMATE DOOM™ and DOOM II®. Play the classic single player campaigns, or play split-screen co-op or deathmatch with 2-4 players on one Xbox
- "Behind the scenes of DOOM 3™" A G4: VIDEO GAME TV "Icons" feature
- Interviews with the id Software team
- Concept and production art gallery
- Metal DVD Case
Doom 3 doesn’t pretend to be anything more than a hardcore FPS game. They load you down with a small arsenal of weapons and unleash the hounds of hell, literally. Only quick reflexes and a spasmodic trigger finger will keep you alive to the closing credits.
What Doom 3 does do, and very well I might add, is setup a genuinely creepy atmosphere. Even before the “accident” that gets things rolling, Mars and the UAC installation is just a dark and brooding environment. Everything is very sterile, lots of metal, computer monitors, and countless miles of pipes and conduit. It’s also very dark, even with the lights on, but when those lights go off, you’d better have a flashlight handy.
Light, or rather the absence of light, is used to create much of the fear you will be experiencing in Doom 3. You are given a powerful flashlight early in the game and the first time the power shuts down (even though there are no demons yet), it’s just a troubling “oh crap” moment until you reach the exit and they come back on.
Fear plays a major part in Doom 3. Part of it is psychological, generated by the hostile environment, your obvious seclusion as one of only a very few survivors, and the only one with any firepower. There is a surprisingly developed story that plays out through emails, voice and video logs that you will find scattered about the UAC installation on PDA’s and video discs. These pay tribute to the notes and books from classic games like Resident Evil, and generate much of the back story or at least fill in the gaps.
But most of the fear is that in your face, “cat jumping out of a dumpster”, or similar moments. Unfortunately, these tricks become a bit stale and even predictable about 6-10 hours in the game. You quickly learn that a zombie will be lurking behind almost every closed door; giant spiders (Trites) will crawl out from those narrow gaps along the walls, and every time you pick up a nice assortment of ammo or health a bunch of demons will warp in to deplete you of those items.
Later in the game some of the demons won’t even try to surprise you. They warp into the level with a blinding flash of orange lightning that will alert you to their presence from three rooms away giving you plenty of time to stash your light and ready your weapon of choice. Oh yeah, about that flashlight.
The flashlight is probably your most important item in Doom 3, or at least a close second to the BFG9000. Without it you would be “doomed” to an eternity (or at least 25hrs) of darkness. Apparently the Marines of the future haven’t figured out how to mount a lamp on their helmet or their shoulder and are reduced to carrying around a conventional flashlight. And since all of the weapons (with the exception of the pistol) require two hands you’ll find yourself in the unenviable position of having to choose between fighting and seeing. There are numerous instances of looking with the light followed by shooting into darkness, and then checking with the light to make sure you killed your target. Fortunately, the targeting cursor changes to red when hovering over an enemy, even if you can’t see them, so you have a slight advantage to fighting in the dark.
The flashlight is mapped to the white button and toggles quickly between the light and back to the last weapon you were holding before you switched. While we're on the subject of controls, Doom 3 is easily the best FPS game I have ever played on the Xbox. It's controls (and therefore plays) better than HALO 2, Riddick or any other FPS game. You can invert and adjust the sensitivity of either axis to suit your preference. The D-pad is used to quick-select any four weapons of your choosing while the Y button cycles through them one at a time. My only minor complaint is that you cannot setup unique multiplayer and single player D-pad configs. I don't use the same weapons online that I do in the regular game, which means I have to reconfigure when bouncing back and forth.
While the darkness might be perceived as an annoyance to some, I found that it quickly became a viable part of the gameplay, almost like an enemy unto itself that had to be fought the entire game. Since most of the game is played at some level of darkness any light whatsoever just became that much more noticeable. Shadows are cast in real-time so moving lights like red warning beacons, swaying fluorescent fixtures, or the centrifuge in the research area create some eerie moving shadows, and backlighting was used to create some sinister silhouettes. It’s amazing how much a computer and three pipes look like a demon ready to attack when lit from behind.
All of this sinister lighting, the sense of isolation, and foreboding atmosphere created some genuine fear along with an ongoing sense of uneasiness and even some paranoia. I lost count of how many times I yelled aloud when I opened a door and got jumped by a demon or Trite. For a game that eventually got very predictable, they managed to save a few surprises, even up to the very end.
The enemies in Doom 3 are more frightening in their appearance than in their tactics. AI is lacking and these mindless hordes simply come right at you challenging the fact that you may have forgot to reload after the last encounter. The four bosses in the game create a bit more of a challenge but mainly only due to their increased firepower and hit points. You can circle-strafe your way to victory against all the bosses once you learn the best weapon for each one.
There is a wonderful assortment of weapons in the game. You start off with this bad ass pistol that looks just like the one from Blade Runner. You then add a shotgun, assault rifle, plasma gun, chaingun, grenades, rocket launcher, chainsaw, and the piece de résistance, the BFG9000.
As the weapons and ammo become more plentiful, so do the monsters. While some weapons work better against some monsters, for the most part you are free to use whatever you like. The shotgun can take down all zombies and a few of the lesser demons with one or two blasts at close range. The assault rifle works great against the Trites while the rapid-fire plasma gun is best against the Lost Souls. And even though you might never suspect it, backing into a corner and holding down the fire button with the chainsaw in your hand is a great tactic against any enemy that has no ranged attack.
Imps and Revenants are probably two of the most formidable opponents because both have powerful range attacks. Imps shoot fireballs, but they are right handed so you can use this against them by dodging to the left a lot. Revenants shoot rockets but those can be shot down before the reach you. Imps and Trites also have a lunging attack where they can spring across a room and get in a cheap shot. These lunges accounted for a lot of my “scream moments”.
Your UAC-issue PDA quickly becomes an important tool in your quest. Not only does it maintain a log of emails, voice, and video discs, both for you and every other PDA you find and download, but it is constantly being upgraded with new security clearances that will get you deeper into the complex. Emails and voice logs are cleverly used to further the story and give you access codes to 30 locked storage cabinets that contain health, weapons, and ammo.
The Xbox version does a few interesting things with the save system. A tap of the Back button will quicksave your game at any time, otherwise you can save your game in a unique slot from the Pause menu. I was surprised that the game does not auto-save at the beginning of each level like it did on the PC. Saving and loading are really fast, a fraction of the time it took on my high-end PC, and the guys at id actually told me that Microsoft had them insert a delay so you had time to read the message about not turning off your Xbox. Otherwise, the actual saving takes about 1-3 seconds.
After you have saved the world (or do you?) Doom 3 offers a fantastic multiplayer component on Xbox Live or System Link. In addition to Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Last Man Standing, and Tournament modes there is also an interesting cooperative mode that lets you play the single-player campaign, or at least a variant of it, with another person. This possibility sounds intriguing in theory but after playing co-op for a couple of hours it just doesn't work. Doom 3, at least the story mode, is best experienced alone. Playing in co-op you no longer have a PDA or storage lockers. The levels are slightly altered but the monsters didn't seem to increase in number or difficulty. Additionally, ammo and health pick-ups are shared so you have to be courteous to your buddy. If you do die, you will respawn somewhere close and can find a backpack with all of your possession where you died.
There is a decent selection of multiplayer maps that are large enough to accommodate four players in deathmatch or team games. I played at least 20 matches in the past few days sampling all the modes and all the levels. There are some really cool twists in a few of the levels with interactive consoles that spawn mega-healths and even a cloaking device that will turn you invisible for 20-30 seconds. Multiplayer is totally intense and the dark environments encourage stealth and even a bit of camping, although experience gamers will quickly learn the favorite campsites and clear them with a rocket or grenade just to be sure.
Doom 3 is a spectacular achievement in environmental graphics. It does things with textures and light (or absence of light) that nobody has ever done before on the Xbox. I've been waiting for almost a year to see the game that could top the graphics in Riddick and here it is. Thanks to coding that began before the Xbox even shipped, this version of Doom 3 manages all of the same lighting, shadows, and advanced particle, fog, and bump-mapped textures found on the PC. You can even shoot out selected lights in the multiplayer to make things even darker.
There were only a few cutscenes that appeared to be pre-rendered and even then it looks like they were generated with game engine graphics. Most of the cutscenes are scripted events that control the in-game graphics and end with the camera zooming into the back of our Marine’s head returning our control and view to his perspective.
Perhaps the most stunning achievement in graphics aside from the lighting was the vast assortment of animated textures that were used to create the countless video displays. Not only were these displays animated with wonderful and believable textures, many of them were interactive. Your cursor would change to a pointy finger and you could use these touch-screens to download information to your PDA, unlock areas, rotate a bridge, operate an elevator, or activate a monorail. Even the health station, when touched, sprang to life with vital statistics like heart rate and blood pressure. The legible text and other fine details on these screens is light-years above the competition.
The weapon models look fantastic, each with special lighting effects and digital ammo counters. They also have interesting fire and reload animations. The flashlight is a work of art and looks just like the real thing with a cone of light and that creepy dark ring in the center of the circle of light. It realistically lights up the area and even reflects from the demonic eyes of creatures hiding in the darkness.
While the zombies are more amusing than scary, especially fat zombies and headless zombies, the demons are definitely scarier and deadlier. Perhaps the scariest of the monsters are the ones you never really get a good look at. Cherubs, Cacodemons, and Lost Souls are fast-moving apparitions that lurk in darkness and are only visible the moment they strike, in a blinding burst of muzzle flash. It’s actually more terrifying (in a subliminal way) to never get a good look at these creatures, as your imagination does a good job of completing what the game only starts.
Doom 3 supports HDTV, widescreen, and progressive scan for ultra-crisp graphics. Sure, the PC can run this game at higher resolutions, but honestly, this game is almost a dead match for the PC version and when you turn out the lights and play this on a 47" HDTV you are going to get the crap scared out of you.
Much like the visuals, sound and music combine to enhance the already oppressive atmosphere of Doom 3. Music is minimal and used only as need to enhance a cutscene or scripted event. Environmental sounds, creaking metal, hissing pipes, whirring computers, are all industrial instruments in a mechanical orchestra that creates a natural soundtrack that inspires real fear. The rest of the audio presentation is left for chilling sound effects, demonic screams, screeches, and howls, and incessant gunfire.
To my delight, each weapon has a totally unique sound effect, both for firing and reloading but the sound levels for the gunfire and resulting explosions were a bit muffled, or at least not as thunderous as I would have expected or liked. I got better sub-woofer effects from the vibrations of the reactor core than I did from the baby nuke explosions of the BFG.
There were some sheer moments of audio terror. I stumbled onto one horrific scene of a dead scientist, his PDA lying in the middle of a pentagram surrounded by flickering candles and then I hear a ghostly voice hiss, “SAVE ME”. At random times disembodied voices will cry out from random directions. Yes, this game will freak you out, especially if you have a surround system and can take advantage of the Dolby Digital support.
Speech is perfect, both in quality and content. All of the interactions with NPC’s are spoken, although you (the Marine) never speak. There are also numerous voice logs that you can play back for story elements and critical access codes. In a moment of designer brilliance, you can close your PDA and continue to listen to these logs as you move ahead.
Another quality moment, several actually, are the narrated promotional videos you can watch throughout the complex and eventually download to your PDA. These informative videos not only look fantastic, they are narrated by “that guy” with “that voice”, you know the one…yeah, that guy.
Sound, especially 3D sound has never been as important as it is in the multiplayer modes of Doom 3. If you sit still you can actually hear footsteps of the other players and can track their location by those footsteps, or perhaps the hissing of opening and closing doors. In the level where you can push a button and create the cloaking device, this procedure is signaled with a loud klaxon and red flashing lights. When you hear this you know what is happening and where so you can either try to steal the device or ambush someone else when they try to take it. Another level has a beating heart that you can pick-up and go into a berserker rage mode. This is the freakiest thing you are likely to hear in a videogame all this year. It's truly terrifying.
In a day where games are constantly being bashed for being “too short” everyone should be delighted that Doom 3 has anywhere from 20-30 hours of single-player content. The multiplayer modes are insanely fun and there were already dozens of people playing online before the official street date. Now that the game is available in all stores expect thousands of games and gamers of all varieties. The cooperative mode is a nice addition even though none of us who tried it here enjoyed it as much as regular multiplayer, but I'm sure it will appeal to somebody out there.
Of course any true Doom fan will want to spend the extra $10 and get the Collector's Edition, not so much for the videos, but for the complete versions of Ultimate Doom and Doom II, perfectly ported to the Xbox and now with multiplayer support. Playing these old-school games in cooperative mode is 100x more fun than playing Doom 3 in co-op mode. With the three colored keys and locked doors these games require actual teamwork. We played through the entire Ultimate Doom in a single evening with three players and had a total blast.
Doom 3 supports future content via Xbox Live and personally, I can't wait for some more multiplayer levels because I have already memorized and mastered the ones that came with the game. This is one game with a very bright future.
You don't play Doom 3; you experience Doom 3. I was reminded of those haunted mansions or “dark rides” they have at theme parks with all of the scripted scares. There is an interesting story and the designers do a great job of hinting at the overall plot, leaving you various clues to the puzzle. Chances are most gamers will figure things out before it’s actually spelled out for you, but I rather enjoyed being spoon-fed each tasty morsel of the plot.
At its core, Doom 3 is nothing more than a twitch-fest for the reflexes and an assault on your senses. It might not break new ground or explore new facets of gameplay, but Doom 3 does deliver the scariest ride of your life, wrapped up in one of the nicest presentation packages of any Xbox game to date. This Game of the Year contender is a must own title for any action-horror fan.