I can’t tell you how excited I was to hear that another Doom version has been released. And now that I have it, I can’t tell you how happy I am to play it. No, really… I can’t tell you.
Doom3 rule #1: Don’t be afraid of the dark.
Because it is dark. Very very dark. Very very dark small coridors that all look the same laid out in a labyrinth that got me lost more often than not.
Doom3 rule #2: Bind an easy to reach key to your flashlite. The nice thing about the game is that your flashlite key will toggle between flashlite and last used weapon. And you will be doing that a lot.
That said, here is the story line… Doom3 takes place about 150 years in the future on Mars. You are a marine and your tour of duty assigns you to a research facillity of the UAC ( The huge company that rules the world and makes everything).
Now here’s where it gets unusual…there is somekind of accident/experiment gone wrong and all the scientists, workers and marines turn into zombie mutants!! Who would have expected that??
I really think that George Romero is the Wm. Shakespear of the 20th and 21st Centuries. This game, like too many others, is “Night of the Living Dead”. You spend much of the game picking up abandoned PDA’s so that you can read other people’s email and logs getting clues and access codes to get through too many locked doors. All the while shooting some monsters and living dead
As far as the weapons go, you start off with the pistol, then get the shotgun, the machine gun, the grenade, the chain-gun, yawn, etc. etc. The weapons are the standard gaming fare with no real big surprises waist deep into the game.
One of the things that should irritate me, but leaves me chuckling instead, is the descriptions on the game cover itself. Here’s one:
“Doom 3 is like nothing you’ve ever experienced.” When in fact it is exactly like everything I’ve ever experienced in a PC game.
While I’ve rattled off a list of what the game isn’t let me mention what the game IS.
Doom 3 is DOOM. The scenery is different, the graphics and physics are better, but you are still running around in corridors killing things with weapons similar to what the original Doom provided. There is even a lounge in the game where you can play a video game called “Turbo Turkey Puncher” which is a cameo of the original Doom – and you can punch the stuffing out of a turkey! The rendering engine does seem to tax my G-Force 4 ti-4400 with 128MB of ram. But it is totally playable. The graphics are good, but not as good as the hype I have heard. The player mobility and physics are good and overall I would have to say the game is well made.
Summary:
For most people, I think there are far better games out there for less than the $55 bucks Doom 3 cost on release. Many, many other games, but…
I am a Doom fan, I have played Doom since it came out – Hundreds of times. It was the second FPS I played and the first one I fell in love with. We used to make Doom maps and have LAN games at work in the old days. I will play this game. I have to, it’s Doom.
PROS
- It’s Doom!
- Good Player Physics.
- Easy to configure and play
- Graphics are fairly good.
- Contains a Turbo Turkey Puncher Game!
CONS
- ONLY compatible with Win XP or Win 2000
- Requires a lot of processor and video power for less than amazing graphics
- It’s not original in any sense of the word
- It’s very predictible
- The maps are too dark and too tedious