The 3rd of August, 2004 marked the release of one of gaming’s most monumental sequels, a legendary successor to a legendary gaming franchise – DOOM 3.
It launched to critical and fan acclaim but in the modern era of DOOM some may argue that it no longer quite fits. Many people proclaim it as a great game, but a not-so-great Doom game. And honestly, I am unsure if they are right or wrong, but that is unimportant. What does matter instead – I believe you should (re)play Doom3!
The Red Planet!
In the far future of 2145 humanity’s most dominant corporation the Union Aerospace Corporation (UAC for short) stands at the forefront of scientific progress. From research into terraforming and new energy resources to advanced weaponry, engineering, and even teleportation. Their crown jewel is a facility built on the surface of Mars itself where they conduct some of their top research and experimentation. But not all is well in this vast facility, personnel frequently go missing, some seem to go insane and the board of directors is busy investigating one of their lead scientists on charges of misconduct and extreme negligence…
We know who is responsible. Its demons, like the actual ones – from Hell. These paranormal entities attack the UAC Mars station due to their meddling with dimensional travel. Come on, it’s a Doom game after all, the box art itself tells who we will be fighting, but props need to be given – DOOM 3 tries to make it all interesting and full of suspense and intrigue.
This is in all honesty the only title in the series that takes its storytelling seriously and puts it front and center. Chiefly the game delivers this with some good old fashioned cutscenes, radio chatter and video communication, but the world building is delivered through its environment and the PDAs full of messages and audio logs and disks scattered about. All this paint one hell (heh) of a picture about the UAC and its experimentation, alongside all the people who were working on Mars when the demonic forces invaded. From the sly and occult behavior of the main antagonist, Doctor Malcolm Betruger (his name alone tells us he is the bad guy) to the mysterious ancient artefacts and ominous hackings done from uninhabited parts of the facility to the comedic mix-up of ordering chainsaws for a space station of all things.
The UAC and its scientists, engineers, and guards are developed over the course of the game in a manner similar to how Black Mesa became its own entity with Half Life. All the cool experimental technologies such as the hydrocon or the biological experiments conducted on captured demons – and the revelations found within ancient alien ruins buried under the surface of Mars… id Software really did treat their universe with respect here. Even to this day I still remember the awesome Alpha Labs or ominous Delta Labs, the Monorail, the horror of the Communication’s Transfer, non-stop action of the CPU Complex or sheer awesomeness of the dig site at Site 3.
I love the modern DOOM games. Eternal is a masterpiece and the original 90s versions of DOOM are immortal classics for a reason. They absolutely rock. But while there is thought given to their world, it is only in DOOM 3 that I truly felt connected to the UAC and really cared for the lore or the people in greater detail. Is it perhaps silly that id Software went all in, seriously developing something so insane as literal demons from hell invading a station on another planet? Yeah, it is. But I love them for it!
Enter the Nightmare!
Another thing I respect in DOOM 3 is that it tries to be a horror game, at least for the first few levels. Something many modern fans of the franchise do not realize is that horror was always a core part of the series. In fact, some of its chief but not only inspirations include Aliens, Evil Dead, DnD, and other science fiction or horror media. We have textures of flesh walls with metal pipes, twisted faces, and demonic locations, tortured humans, HR Giger-looking monsters… and a heavy metal soundtrack alongside guns based off toy models, extremely fast movement speed and pink demons or Big F*cking Guns. Let’s be honest, DOOM 1, 2, ultimate Doom… they are action games with some horror aesthetics thrown in. Driven by rule of cool first of course!
But Doom 3 is a departure – it wants you to take its situation somewhat seriously and feel how horrifying it is, at least for a time. When the portal to Hell activates the base gets overrun very quickly and the frenetic sounds of combat and despair are expertly done. I cannot spoil that but at least for some time there is real tension in the game. 12-year-old me was indeed spooked back in the day!
Gone are the old goofy designs, instead replaced by more realistic or surreal, nightmarish and alien ones. Music is now rare; the game relies on machinery and ambiance instead to give its soundscape. The generally bright levels are mostly gone – DOOM 3 is a notoriously dark game and one will end up using sound to guess what they are about the encounter just around the corner.
But still, make no mistake. Within 5-6 levels, the game turns into an anti-aircraft gun inside of a tight corridor simulator. The player becomes armed to the teeth and the demons finally pick up the pace and send more and more of their legion against the nameless marine. This culminates around two thirds into the game when you finally visit the demonic dimension, Hell itself, and the demons start sending all they have at you to try and stop you. DOOM 3 is more of a horror game than any other official Doom title. It is also the one that tries to consistently keep at the least tension throughout its entire run and keeps at least a few scares way up into its endgame. id Software promised a nightmare and I believe they delivered it for at least the first part of the game. After that – its all-in action!
So uhh… I get a BFG 9000 right?
The gameplay loop of DOOM 3 is tight and simple.
Poor guy has no idea what a bad move it is to spawn in front of me…
See that imp over there coming to get you? Dodge his fireball or even crouch under it (you can get a feel for these) and get up and close to the monster and paste him with your shotgun. Or just shoot him with your machinegun or plasma rifle or chaingun. Repeat with small changes for most other enemies, be only warry of enemy possessed Chaingunners and Zombified security forces. See a Hell Knight? Bruiser or Mancubus? Dodge hard and bring out the BFG or rocket launcher, do not let them get in melee range. A lost soul or Trite? Get the pistol or machinegun out and circle strafe the annoyance away. Solve simple puzzles and listen to audio logs or read emails discovered in PDAs to understand what exactly is going on in this place and find codes for certain obstacles or to open lockers full of supplies. Explore and avoid the terribly unsafe and OSHA violating depths of the Mars base.
Few games do interactive terminals as well as Doom 3!
I more or less described how to easily survive DOOM 3 and its expansion on the highest difficulties. It is that simple, yet in this simplicity I find some level of elegance and fun – it is such an easy game to hone in to mechanical perfection and get into a groove while playing. To stay immersed and just enjoy for what it is.
Oh, how confidently he jumps against humanity’s great warrior… and his plasma bazooka!
Oh, and yeah, the BFG 9000 is in the game. And it annihilates the forces of hell!
So far it sounds quite solid – but not even DOOM is perfect… what are its downsides?
I firmly believe id’s 2004 masterpiece is a great game but I must admit – there is a lot to critique here too.
Notice something in most of my screenshots? Well, the game is *dark*. Extremely dark even. The BFG edition is far, far brighter than the original, yet it too is dark by most people’s standards. Personally, as an owner of an OLED panel and someone who really digs this dark and dreary aesthetic – this is no issue for me. But for people on screens who struggle to display deep darkness well or who just are not used to such design, this can be quite annoying.
I love how the ammo counter is on some of the weapon models!
To combat the darkness the player has access to a flashlight – it is a separate item and melee weapon too in the 2004. When the game came out the gameplay loop demanded of players to mostly have the flashlight activated to clearly explore the areas in greater detail and then switch to their more powerful weapons when an enemy appeared. Lazy people like me would also shoot their big guns, illuminate the entire area with the muzzle flash and then zone in on enemies after said illumination – both were viable tactics and both were easy to pull off. For many players this was annoying to do, hence why mods and later re-releases such as the BFG edition made the flashlight shoulder or weapon mounted.
You are not completely alone as these robots hate demons too!
Apparently, this was closer to what id Software had originally intended and let’s be real – in the year 2145, the Marin ought to have 10 flashlights, a thermal camera and a sight at least 5 generations superior to the Vortex XM157. I get that. But I personally prefer the original gameplay loop more and believe that the game is more fun with it on. You see, the game isn’t so dark that you really need to rely on the flashlight that much for combat, it is more of a tool for exploration. For when it is actually needed, switching from it to a gun does mean the enemies at least have a chance to react before being annihilated, making the game a tad harder. And relying on muzzle flashes to get accurate headshot is just… cool.
Edgy…
Many do critique some of the guns, especially the shotgun for how weak it sounds (fair, the mixing is mediocre) and its insane spread. Basically, it is nothing like a real shotgun, it is an almost melee weapon in this game due to an extreme spread of its pellets and for many players this makes it not all that dependable. However, it has incredible damage and the game is balanced around it as it requests the player to dodge in and weave through projectiles and jump attacks to brutally pulverize the monsters with this boomstick!
A popular critique is how predictable some of the “scares” become or how levels inside the base start all blending together to some extent. That while yes, there is a big difference between let’s say the CPU Complex and the ancient dig site, but between Alpha Labs 1 and Alpha Labs 2… it is not such a big change in scenery at all. And I get that fully. id Software wanted the Mars base to feel like a real location made with a coherent aesthetic and while this does slightly improve immersion up front, it does mean that some sister locations do blend in together.
Others decry how silly its plot is and how while developed it could have gone ever farther, answered more questions, went deeper into the mysterious excavations on Mars and the lore of Hell itself. Then again, many fans also think it went too far and that so much lore and personal stories or audio logs and codes break the flow of the already somewhat slow title…
Upon reflection I can see how all of these critiques and many others are valid or contain more than a grain of truth to them. Yet many are also ultimately down to taste. I do not believe everyone would like the way DOOM 3 is designed, but for people like me who want to be immersed and get into a tight if at times repetitive loop while exploring a cool nightmarish location – it’s great!
But yeah, the imp spawns behind you or jumps after you open the door trick did get old around the 200th time the game did it…
Technological marvel – one of the biggest leaps in graphics, ever!
One of the reasons for DOOM 3’s pedigree of course – its incredible engine. id Tech 4 was built as a full-on upgrade over the already extremely impressive id Tech 3 (Quake 3, Call of Duty 1, Return to Castle Wolfenstein) and it had one goal in mind – to vastly improve real-time dynamic lighting in games. To unify real-time lighting and shadowing and make it run fast and on a per pixel level, far better than previous techniques. The addition of technology such as normal mapping and specular highlighting is just icing on top of the cake!
It even has working mirrors :O!
When I first started up DOOM 3 in 2004 on my ATI card, my jaw dropped to the floor. I had seen pretty video games make no mistake, but dynamic shadows and lighting of this caliber, per pixel? In a video game? This looked like CGI to me. Obviously since then we have had even better lighting and ray tracing or path tracing… we also have far better textures and models. But even so, DOOM 3 was one of the biggest steps forward for video game graphics, and 2004 itself was amazing with Half Life 2 and Far Cry 1 breeching different but still impressive technological limitations and tearing them to pieces.The base is slowly being absorbed into Hell itself…
I also need to mention the audio. If you have a good sound system and have the correct port of the game installed (more on this later) – you will understand what I mean. The game sounds phenomenal in its ambiance and NPC or enemy chatter. It is actually better than many modern games here, outright. Its only real problem is that some weapons do not sound all that strong due to their mixing. Fair critique, but the rest of the audio engine and execution are worthy of praise.
It isn’t just technology though… the artists GOATed!
Frequently when we discuss technologically impressive games of the past, we forget that almost universally they had strong art direction too. I do not want to repeat this mistake. DOOM 3 is not just engineering excellence, it is also an artistic powerhouse. From the disturbing monsters and cool looking low-fi industrial dark science fiction aesthetics and forsaken laboratories to its crowning achievement – the most nightmarish version of Hell I have seen in a video game bar 2-3 exceptions that came decades later. Fire and brimstone personified, a cursed place running on dark magic and science!The lighting itself is also tastefully done – it isn’t just there to make 2004 you say “Wow!” – it is there to look good. And it mostly does even 20 years later. Major props to id’s artists – they went hard.
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They went hard indeed…
BFG Edition? And what is Resurrection of Evil?
Well, I have some good and bad news here. The BFG Edition Remaster is probably not the best way to experience this old game. You see, it cut out several small sections of the game and removed some enemies. It also doubled the ammo counts and made the player faster. DOOM 3 was never a particularly difficult game. It honestly is actually perhaps the easiest in the series once you get its gameplay loop, but making it even easier is perhaps too much.
That’s a cool entrance!
Still, it runs well on modern systems and doesn’t require modding to get to 4K/120. So, it still gets a nod by me. However, if you own it you also probably own the 2004 original and my personal recommendation is to use the Dhewm 3 source port or the DOOM 3 Redux Mod. One other option I have not personally tested but I have heard is quite good is the BFG edition mod called CstDoom3-BFG. I have it on good authority that it is very solid!
Ancient alien civilizations are always cool!
Resurrection of Evil (ROE) is the game’s only expansion pack and it is in essence – more DOOM 3. New weapons including a wacky gravity gun-type weapon that can sling the demon’s fireballs right back at them and a double-barreled shotgun that smashes through the forces of hell, more action packed and in before unseen, older parts of the facility with cool new monsters and bosses. It also has a super overpowered ancient demonic artefact for maximum carnage! If you like the base game then I think you’d like the expansion too. Though do beware – the BFG edition cuts up parts of ROE and in my opinion makes it a worse experience. It is still fine, but for sure I recommend you use Dhwem 3’s version instead.
You will meet survivors during your journey!
The Lost Missions is an extra 8-level DLC that is made using cut assets from the expansion and the original game. It is pretty solid too, though very much even more action packed. Take that as you will. Its Hell level(s) are quite awesome indeed though and some of its story revelations are quite satisfying to fans like me. It can be accessed from the BFG Edition or as a mod.
DOOM 3 is open source – it is eternal!
Last but not least, DOOM 3 is id’s last fully open source game. Its game code is available to everyone and it gets a pure 10/10 on the modability scale. There is no limit to what you can create inside of it. One of the best mods of the past few years – PHOBOS is a DOOM 3 mod. I highly recommend it as an entry into the modding content for these games, you are in for a treat!
DOOM 3 – an experience that is worth a try!
I don’t think DOOM 3 is up for everyone’s tastes. In fact despite my praise I personally still prefer Eternal over it. However, I cannot deny that it is a special game for me. In my opinion it developed the franchise in a brave direction and is an experience worthy of any DOOM or FPS fan’s time. For some people, this is their favourite game too and I can see why.
Give this old legend a try. It is cheap nowadays on both Steam and GoG.
The articles content, opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed in SAPPHIRE NATION are the authors’ own and do not necessarily represent official policy or position of SAPPHIRE Technology.
