Here's a fun story about my review for this game: I was actually writing one MONTHS ago, I'm talking near the beginning of the year. But just as I was about to hit send, the website crashed, and I lost all my progress.
It is honestly such a fitting scenario for how it felt to play Doom 3. Because I had zero motivation to rewrite it for MONTHS. That's how much of a slog it is to discuss it.
Let's get this out of the way. Doom 3 is not a bad game because it's nothing like the other entries. I don't care how much like Doom this title is. I don't care if it wants to be more like a horror game. If you take one look at my account, you can tell I play literally anything. I am open to change and new ideas if they are done well.
Doom 3 is not done well. It sucks. The level design is god awful, the story is boring, the monsters are dull. The weapons feel terrible to use. That's the bullet point list. But let me be fair, and let's discuss things the game does well.
It honestly hurts a bit to say this, but this may actually be one of the best Nintendo Switch ports. It runs at a silky smooth framerate, the graphical enhancements are great, all the environments are detailed and the textures look good. It has all the content, add ons, expansions you can think of.
On paper, I really love the premise behind this game: a space station being overtaken by demons and having it become a hellish nightmare to navigate. Ironically, it reminds me of the Alien franchise, yet I feel like this type of game design would later be used for Alien Isolation. It's a good excuse to make a horror game.
The one level in Hell (yes count it, one) is the highlight of the game. The level design felt more open (meaning the hallways did not feel so tight) the aesthetic was great.
I also actually really like that we play as a random space marine as well. I love these fish out of water, against all odds type of stories where you only really survive out of the sheer tenacity and will to live. I love the "they fear you" mentality they want you to have in 2016 and Eternal but in Doom 3 this premise works better for it being a horror game. Youre not the lone warrior and the only one who can save everyone, rather you are the only one who lived, and now we must guide him to survive.
Lastly, I do like how you can interact with a lot of the other crew members, just stragglers who were able to escape the chaos and hide away in a room. It's an actual interesting dynamic. The game barely has any so when these guys show up it's at least novel. I wish you could have interacted with them more. Most of them just tell you one or two things and sit there in a fetal position as they wait to die...
Ok that's all I got. Let's talk about what I hate.
Most people don't play games in this franchise for the story, but *3* really does not do itself any favors with this dull, generic narrative. There's a suprising amount of cutscenes in the game but 99% of them mean nothing. They are just fluff and a loose way to say "the next room will have demons go kill them" which is something I would have assumed regardless.
It has this god awful villain. And the way his dialogue is written is cringe worthy. No matter what the scenario is he is spouting off God Complex remarks, taunting you, insisting he will be victorious... even though by that point, you have killed well over hundreds, maybe a THOUSAND demons. Even in the middle of his speeches you are just mowing down countless baddies. I really hate villains that are written this way, where they have no reason to act as arrogant or cocky as they do. It doesn't make me want to kill him, I just want him to stop talking because he's not even threatening by that point. He's an old fart that doesn't even know who the player character is and the game expects you to get invested. The base game, even then, does not give you the satisfaction of killing him. The final boss is just another generic monster. That's pretty lame... to conclude this part, the story takes so much time to say nothing of substance at all, which is what bothers me. All these cutscenes and animations and characters and audio logs and none of it feels like it has any weight, or gravitas to it.
I could have forgiven all of this if the gameplay was good, but it's easily my least favorite Doom title gameplay wise. First of all, even just as a horror game, it barely feels like one when you have ammo out the wazoo for the entire experience. Think of most horror games you play, like the classic Resident Evil or Signalis, those titles had really limited ways to get ammo which In turn created tension. Later RE games like 5 and 6 also had this problem with high ammo counts, but the difference with those games is that they're blatantly action oriented. They're not pretending to be a slow paced horror. So Doom 3 at its core just dosent work. You never feel any tension because you have ammo at all times, for 5-7 guns at any given time.
Even with that I STILL wouldn't be so hard on the game if at the very least, the core gameplay was fun. But it just isn't. This is because the guns don't feel good to use and the level design sucks.
Very infamously, the shotgun in this title is absurdly weak. Not because it CANT do good damage, but because it requires pixel perfection precision and shoving your face into the demons bellies to even land a good shot. It has no spread, and the individual scatter shots do no damage.. The Super Shotgun functions better, but the OG shotgun is a staple of the series and what you'll end up using a lot, since this game is 99% tight, boring linear corridors.
Which is a good transition into the next point, wow is this level design uninspired. I seriously think 80-90% of the game is just walking down shoulder length, air tight, narrow linear hallways. Occasionally, you step outside into space for like... 5 seconds. You stand on a moving platform for a few minutes. But otherwise, there is exactly one path, and you go down that path and there are enemies. It's hard to get invested into the atmosphere of the game when all the rooms look the same, and the way you progress through the area is the same.
But the real reason why the level design ends up being so terrible is not even that it's linear. Most horror games are.
The enemy placement and mapping is so god awful...
There are exactly three types of triggers to make enemies spawn. Sure, MAYBE once or twice something cool will happen and they come out from a window or something. But they are very scripted. Normally, when enemies spawn in this game, they happen when...
-You open a door. And the enemies are behind the door and jumpscare you.
-You are walking down the hallway and they just spawn in with that awful lightning sound effect.
-They materialize behind you, out of nowhere, in a corner you checked earlier that went nowhere, and then they spawn 2-3 more at the same time.
Out of all of them, while they're annoying, the worst one that killed the experience for me is when they just spawn the enemies from behind. Near the end of the game, I started just walking backwards with my body turned towards the other side. The exact frame you step on to spawn them, they just pour out from the walls.
My issue with this is that it's not exactly scary when they decide to repeat the exact same gimmick to placing enemies over 100 times in a single run. Again, imagine if you played, let's say Resident Evil Remake right? Remember all the setpieces and moments where monsters were in the room? Hanging from the ceiling, crashing through the windows, hopping the fence and running at you. Now imagine you take those all out, and the only way to make enemies appear is if you walk down the hallway and they just spawn behind you and run at you when the camera is turned away.
You may think I'm over exaggerating, but I kid you not, no sarcasm or overdramatizing, this happened for the entire game. If you ever play this game, in the back of your mind, just keep count of how many times you get blindsided by this.
And there really is not much to keep you hooked if that's enough to make you dislike it. The music is actually pretty decent; but there's barely any, most of the areas are just white noise and monster sounds. There are secrets to find, and lockers with codes with weapons, items, healing and armor. But the only way to get these codes is to listen to these absurdly slow, drawn out audio logs where the characters are not saying anything of substance. Most of the logs are "things are going well! I sure hope nothing bad will happen." I also dislike this because they decided to treat the audio logs as a key for unlocking expendable items, and because of that they lose their value. You don't care about them for what they're saying, just what they get you.
I think Doom 3 is just a ton of missed opportunity. It has a major identity crisis. As a game in the franchise, it fails because the level design is poor, clunky, and it does not adhere to the base controls of the game.
Conversely, the game does not work as a horror title either because any scares evaporate when every hallway is the same. And having way too much ammo deflates tension.
Presentation wise I love it. It looks great, it's sharp, it runs perfectly, it has a lot of content, the demons are cool. I hate how they are designed, but they LOOK cool.
But they are all trapped in a really poor experience. I have played worse, sure, but this one just upset me.
I love the Doom games, and I don't want to say to just skip it. But at the same time.... I don't think you're losing out on much just skipping to 2016.