The Merits of Doom 3

[YukiHerz]

I enjoy Doom 3 but not to the point of playing it regularly, I wish there was a way I could enjoy a deeply enhanced version of it, that would really be awesome.

Oh wait Quake 4 already exists.

[scalliano]

Doom 3 is a game I come back to every so often. It exists in that nebulous period in the mid 2000s when FPS games were in flux - the post-Halo, pre-CoD4 era. It's undeniably the weakest mainline Doom game, but I still enjoy the atmosphere and the gunplay does actually dump on many of its contemporaries (yes, I'm including HL2 in that statement*). My criticism would be that it doesn't go all in on the survival horror theme that was suggested by the promo material. There were certainly a lot of missteps in the execution, but I still think it's a fun game. I'll even go in to bat for the OG XBox versions. Doom 3 isn't great, but it sure as hell isn't terrible.

But the BFG Edition sucks. Bad.

*I am not saying HL2 is bad, just that I didn't feel it personally and thought HL1 and its mission packs were better, but the actual gunplay was pretty naff across the series. Don't @ me.

[Trusty McLegit]

As someone in their early 20s who never played any of the doom games as a kid, I have no nostalgia for any of them. That said, when I played Ultimate Doom for the first time, I loved it. It's a great game that holds up because of good game design and level design. When I played D3 for the first time, not so much. Doom 3 in my opinion is a horrible Doom game for many reasons I don't need to repeat, and a mediocre horror game if you set it apart from the rest of the series.

Ironically, D3 is also the best VR experience I've ever had. The weirdly slow pace of the game lends itself better to VR, and the claustrophobic effect is actually effective instead of annoying

[Matt]

Ironically, D3 is also the best VR experience I've ever had. The weirdly slow pace of the game lends itself better to VR, and the claustrophobic effect is actually effective instead of annoying

I'm suddenly reminded of the difference some folks find between reading and watching Shakespeare.

[Amuscaria]

I was hyped when Doom 3 shipped. Got the game on release date, playing on a computer below the minimum requirements without a GPU. Managed to beat the game with my computer limping on a whopping 10-15 FPS on minimum settings. The visuals impressed me. The macabre-tech aesthetic was fantastic. I still think it's less 'Doom' and more 'Scary Half-Life with shadows'. The game didn't age very well at all, though. Played the BFG edition a few years back after getting it from a Steam sale. The game looks much worse than I remembered, and that's with the shitting computer I originally played on.

[Reactor]

Doom 3 is an excellent game, there's no deny in that. Sure it differs a LOT from the classic Doom 1-Doom 2 and its sequels, but the genre change didn't ruin the game at all. After all, this is ID we're talkin' about here...they changed this Doom game to a survival horror, and like every genre, it has its fair share of pros and cons. Unlike the earlier games, this one had an extended and pretty good storyline with lots of tidbits to put together like a puzzle, the spooky scenes genuinely freaked me out, and finally, this game featured zombies which are not just dooling, shambling, moaning wreckages of their earlier self, with zero battle value. The Z-Sectors are actually smart and tactical, making them a white crow amongst all games that feature zombies. And Hell's depiction is far better than what I've seen in the previous Doom games, with the exception of MAP28: The Spirit World.
Cons are the excessive darkness, the sluggish moving speed, and the lack of several Doom 2 monsters. There was plenty of room in the game to include more Doom 2 monsters.

[phantombeta]

I was hyped when Doom 3 shipped. Got the game on release date, playing on a computer below the minimum requirements without a GPU. Managed to beat the game with my computer limping on a whopping 10-15 FPS on minimum settings. The visuals impressed me. The macabre-tech aesthetic was fantastic. I still think it's less 'Doom' and more 'Scary Half-Life with shadows'. The game didn't age very well at all, though. Played the BFG edition a few years back after getting it from a Steam sale. The game looks much worse than I remembered, and that's with the shitting computer I originally played on.

While it probably doesn't account for all of it, the BFG Edition makes plenty of changes, such as changes in the lighting, I believe. It's also on a different version of the Doom 3 engine that's a hybrid between the original Doom 3 engine and the RAGE engine, AFAIK.
When I played Doom 3 and RoE a few years back with the original release, Doom 3 looked pretty good, so maybe it looked worse than you remembered because of the changes from the BFG Edition?

[Graf Zahl]

Doom 3 is an excellent game, there's no deny in that.

I absolutely and wholeheartedly disagree here. What you do here is presenting your personal opinion as fact, nothing more.

Doom 3 and Quake 4 together were the last straw for me regarding "modern" games in terms of quality so they will forever hold a very special place in my memories as an end of an era.
And after that, with DRM everywhere, modern games became a no-go by default. I simply won't buy stuff I cannot resell when I don't like it - unless it is very cheap. So they were also the last "modern" games I ever played, except for some freebies on Steam.

Before Steam I bought a lot of games second hand, and with that gone and no good way to resell, it just became far too costly.

[Nash]

So Graf, just out of curiosity, what would make you give modern games a chance again? If a miracle happened and suddenly all the DRM in the world ceased to exist? If developers and publishers went back to the business values of old and not be so anti-consumer?

(Let's just pretend that such a thing would happen. I know it's impossible but let's just imagine)

Would you be willing to try then? Because, in my opinion, there's been quite a few good modern games (disregarding DRM of course) that maybe you might have missed out in the last 10 - 15 years...

[Graf Zahl]

Of course I would. I occasionally buy some stuff on GOG but so far I restricted myself to the classics mostly from the Quake-3 era or some indie title. I feel I get a lot more value for my money there than when buying modern state-of-the-art games.

But despite being much more customer friendly, GOG has the same problem as every other pay-for-download service. Once you get tired of a game it loses all its value, unlike a CD you could sell (and buy new games from the revenue.)

[Darkcrafter]

The beauty of original Doom to me is that the engine limits lead to maps with limited design, accenting the most important things. When I was a child playing Doom I always had that illusion of something grand "out there" behind the map. I was waiting for something bigger and brutal when finished another level. Also there is a nice art style. You artist don't always just take a photo of something that it sees, but depicts it in a way it imagines that. All the games of 90's were unique in this regard. Now we have thousands of the same photo realistic 3d assets that make any game looking the same. Where I think Doom really needs enhancements is maps with good natural environments with stones, rocks, trunks, lava streams and falls. I think it's totally possible in GZDoom as I already had a luck importing my 3d models into it. I was even able to create a decent 8 angle stone sprite then scattered it around the game geometry and it end up fitting the original game art style well. A dynamic skybox gives the map even more immersion

[Reactor]

I dunno, I liked'em both. Quake 4 was the first instance to actually create a saga out of the Quake-series, as each earlier installation was a standalone game with its own storyline (not counting the expansion packs), there's a high potential for a sequel or an expanded storyline of the Strogg war with tons of possibilities. I do not regret giving Quake 2 a chance, since it turned out to be pretty good IMHO. I enjoyed the whole Strogg storyline, its whereabouts an' characteristics are still fairly unique...at least compared to your average FPS nowadays with overused storylines. And witnessing the Stroggification in person was shocking as shit! Yuck!
Doom 3 certainly has its downsides, but all in all, it is a very good effort as a different approach of the Doom games. For a long time, I thought that Resident Evil really topped the zombie game genre, and nothing can surmound it. Doom 3 proved me wrong: it is very well in par with those games, and quite frankly, it scared me shitless on several levels. The infamous "they took my baby" scene is a masterpiece

You're right about the DRM however - it's a piece of a big honking turd.

[lil'devil]

I love Doom 3, it holds a lot of great memories for me and I found it very scary. But that's probably because it was one of the first games I've played, at the age of 9, long before I played the classic Doom games. :)

Maybe if I played it today for the first time, it wouldn't've seemed so great to me. So, it's very important when and at what age do you first play a game to form your opinion about it.

[Enjay]

I dunno, I liked'em both. Quake 4 was the first instance to actually create a saga out of the Quake-series, as each earlier installation was a standalone game with its own storyline (not counting the expansion packs), there's a high potential for a sequel or an expanded storyline of the Strogg war with tons of possibilities.

For me, the biggest miss-step that Quake 4 made was that it didn't do a good job of what happens to the player after Stroggification. The whole game was marketed under the "the only way to defeat them is to become one of them" tag line but when it happened it was... meh! I don't mean the actual process of being Stroggified. That was pretty grim and well handled (within the limitations of the game); I mean what happened afterwards. OK, you got some slightly better stats and a few marines made snidey comments about you but it could have been so much more: proper integration into the Strogg hive mind, better handling of understanding their language, the ability to upgrade bits of yourself, cool extra abilities over and above what they allowed, even better access to Strogg tech, security clearance and so on, more robust infiltration missions, being able to do stuff that human soldiers would never be able to... Basically, other than being given a slight buff, you kept on playing much as you always had - it could have been much, much more.

Also, I have to confess, the last section of the game did become very "rinse and repeat" in terms of what you had to do, with nothing really new or revolutionary happening (which is partly why better handling of the effects of Stroggification could have made the game a lot better). It actually got pretty dull by the the time that the predictability of working your way up yet another tower to defeat yet another goal/boss had played out.

However, I did still prefer it over Doom3 by quite a big margin.

[Reactor]

I think that question was left open by purpose. Remember the ending of Quake 4? Col. Harper states that Kane has new orders, and when Kane is shown, the evil laughter of the Makron can be heard. Wouldn't be surprised if Quake 5 would feature Kane as the new Makron, the end boss! Would be a pretty sweet twist of story He has the neurocyte installed inside, its activation is only a matter of finesse storytelling...
The second half of the game was a bit repetative, ye, with opening a portal on the roof of the 3 towers, but there were still scenarios that made it more interesting. The tram rails section is one of my personal favourites, an excellent execution of a vehicle level..."Strogg on the left side!", and the section with the walker was also pretty rad. You know what I missed? A flying stage with a hijacked Strogg plane. I mean...we rode a hovertank, a walker, a convoy truck, and a tramcar, this is the only one left out. Sigh. Oh well...maybe in Quake 5!
I must admit I was hopin' for more Quake 2 baddies to show up, and removing the monster infighting was also a dumb idea. I wanted to see how they pummel each other (Doom 3 also lacked proper monster infighting, which was a shame).