Doom 3 holds up surprisingly well (and is underrated)

Doom 3 needed quest compass, or at least teleport you to the content

 

Hi-res fix, realistic weapon sounds, plus flashlight mod and much of the crappy stuff becomes uncrappy. Game still looks good and at least I'm not bouncing around the maps like a meth-infused pinball or clinging to walls like Spiderman.

 

Doom 3 had a nice start. Flashlight and all was well done even if in the end it was rapidly made into more of a normal shooter and less horror stuff. Good vibe.

The NG+ Nightmare (or whatever it was called) where you permanently lose HP was pretty rough and cool. It really forces you into going at maximum speed. It was a nice touch and challenge.

Overall I liked the game, but as others have said, it's not a great "Doom" game, but an underrated game nonetheless.

 

It's very wonky in quality. There are some tense and atmospheric sections, but the vast majority of the game feels like a repetitive drain designed by half-witted rednecks.

 

It's better than the God awful Doom 2016

 

Doom 3 is shit no matter how you look at it.

 

What, it should instead be seen as a 10/10 shooter? the game in which 50% of the content is blasting the one to three imps spawning in your back?

It's not underrated, if anything its initial reception was too positive outside of the tiny original doom crowd lambasting it and it's now seeing a hipster revival of people going "hey, it wasn't that bad" because they've played too many garbage modern FPS and would be willing to suck any dick that was washed in the past three days after being used to snorting hobo cum. Of the very last PC focused wave (before consoles became the main dev platform for all shooters) of AAA fpses that was Fear/HL2/Crysis/Quake 4/Prey/Doom 3, Doom 3 was easily the most boring. Not that the others were all that great either (aside from Fear which had very repetitive environments but really high quality gunplay and enemy dynamics) but they were more competent shooters. I called Quake 4 forgettable earlier but it's a better fps than Doom 3. Although sentences like these make me feel like I'm debating which special olympics winner deserve the gold medal.

If doom 3 had been made by a company that wasn't id and it wasn't called doom it would already be long forgotten and we wouldn't be seeing hipster threads about it. The license is the sole reason why this topic even exists. Brand name gave power to an otherwise very average game.

 

With Quake 3 Arena I was both delighted and disgusted. Delighted because it was 10/10 mutliplayer game, disgusted because of lack of proper single player campaign so my expectation went into Doom 3 as soon as it has been announced.

After seeing it for the first time I could believe - bad Id engine for the first time (couldn't handle large areas), slow-ass gameplay (stamina meter or Doomguy was even worse then Duke Nukem being able to carry max 2 weapons and get drunk after single beer in DNF), everything is covered in darkness and Imps jumpscare you every corner which gets old very fast.

I HATED new design of monsters, Revenants, Mancubuses or Lost Souls are but how could they turn Baron of Hell into that POS?

Guns suck too except for shotgun and plasma. Oh, and it starts that annoying trends of collecting audiologs.

If you want to play true Doom 3 play Doom 64 and this one should be a spin-off called Alone in the DOOM or RESIDENT EVILution. There's was a chance that Doom 4 could be even shittier but they throw first, popamole version into thrash and (thanks to Brutal Doom popularity) things went unexpectedly well with Doom 2016.

For 2004 play Painkiller.

 

I think you just see too deep into my post. I literally never check (or checked) that website or anything. I never check official rating, reviews, etc. I MIGHT sometimes check steam ones. Therefore in my head, since literally nobody is talking about that game, I assume it was underrated. I just made an error because of a lack of information. I don't really mind the other games you listed, I just liked playing it Doom 3.

 

Doom 3 is simply awful. Anyone who thinks it's any better than that, must have really low standards. I remember playing it, I clearly recall how I thought, that the game was building up for something bigger with its narrative and sound design. All those noises, like demonic hisses and laughter coming from behind the wall, led me to believe that I will eventually shit my pants. There is even that bizzare section, where everything calms down for a while, and there are no enemies in sight. I thought: that must be finally it, a calm before the storm, something sick is going to rape me now. But no, there was nothing. Just the same shitty corridor with the same lame imps spawning in the same pattern over and over again, for too many fucking hours. That's how I remembered it.

With all the love I have for the classic team of Id Software (Q2 is decent), if someone put a gun to my head and told me to play this or Half Life 2 to the end in one uninterrupted sesion, I would gladly pick HL2.

Oblivion Gates were more invigorating than that.

 

id has not produced any meaningful single player experiences since Quake 1 (some people would argue since Doom 2). That's because John Carmack drove out designers like John Romeo and American McGee from the company. On their own, neither Carmack nor Romeo were particularly successful (multiplayer aside).

As early as in 2005 I read comments that JC was George Lucas of video gaming. He also lost the engine war with Epic which resulted in id Software becoming less than relevant and sold to Bethesda.

 

Actually, you were correct. 77/100 user score on metacritic is low for an AAA game. Especially considering that shitty games such as Bioshock have 86/100 user score (and 96/100 critic score). Considering the complete devaluation of scores, the metacritic score of Doom indicates a mixed rather than a warm reception by mainstream standards.

 

Quake 4 > Doom 3 expansion packs > Doom 3

Too much team-mate escorting though, if you want to keep medics and techs alive.

Quake 2 parasite's fat brother.

 

Your taste is just shit. The visual design in Doom 3 is great.

 

Actually, yes. Despite everything, Doom 3 at least had a carefully executed and distinct art direction.

 

Mancubuses and lost souls were very lazily designed and bland. And where did all of those grey bastards come from?

 

Art direction is a matter of personal tastes, but there is no denying that the overall design and gameplay experience was bland by the standards of that time. Players expected more than monsters closets by that time.

 

Doom3 would have been okay as a survival horror in the style of System Shock.

Here I said it.

It has good ambience and I liked a ton the feeling, the detail, the places.

As a shooter, everyone told already what its massive problems are, resulting in a frankly mediocre experience. I was around at release and everyone with half a brain saw it as aping Half Life (it also apes Half Life narratively if you think about it) and asking where the fuck was a proper Doom sequel. I'd love to dig out the articles from the old magazines.

Its expansion, while marginally more fun, was a desperate run to copy Half Life 2 and FEAR in a desperate attempt to stay relevant. It's at least better designed than baseline Doom3, while still being dreadfully bland.

Of the games on its engine, Quake IV was a utterly mediocre experience that I nonetheless enjoyed more than Quake 2 (not difficult) and I have a deep and unearned love for Prey because it clumsily tries to be different and experiment. Wolfestein 2009 is almost unrelated to Doom3 bar the typical "floaty" feeling of the combat.

If someone wants to wonder, the BFG edition is sort of weird because they shower the player in resources (killing tension) and the new extra campaign is re-used assets that makes you wonder what the fuck they were thinking (cheap fucks).

 

It offers a bit more enviromental and game mechanical variation than Doom 3, but ironically the highlight for me was the waste processing facility (the one with the zombies failed transfers) that resembles Doom 3 the most. Plus, you get stroggified in first person perspective, robocop style. I literally thought "how edgy" to myself

 

Still, both lost souls and Mancubusses in Doom 3 are better than those in Doom 2016/eternal.

The Mancubus looks hellish and is not too far from the original:

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

They really did not stray too far from the original design:

As for Lost Souls, I somewhat, however:
1. I did like the scripted events with them, taking control over mortals at the beginning and spectacularly killing that doctor.

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

2. Their Doom 3 design is unnerving and light years ahead of the blandness and generic design of the sequels:

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

All in all, the Doom 3 designs do seem far more respectful to the original and can be considered a homage to it, while the Doom 2016/Eternal designs are generic, boring and try too hard (and fail miserably) at imitating the original. You can look at the Lost Souls of Doom 3 and immediately think "Yes, that's a Lost Soul." However, looking at Doom 2016/Eternal design makes you think "Generic flying skull" rather than "Lost Soul from Doom".

 

Meanwhile, in the Doom3 expansion....



Because people complained about the Doom3 baseline Lost Souls. They're a nice design tho, like most of Doom3's artwork. Pity it's wasted on mediocre gameplay.

 

vs

Actually it was Hell Knight, not Baron o Hell but anyway, I'll never forgive turning terryfying goat humanoid into Alien 4 monster.

 

Meh, I like Quake 4 better but it's a mediocre FPS too.

 

No, most people liked Doom 3.

 

Usually, when I get an urge to replay D3 I have a look at my huge backlog of good doom wads and just forget about it.