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Doom 3 - Australian Review (Reviews)26/11/2004 10:40:08
Few old school gamers will forget their first encounter with Doom. Be it on a friend's machine or a department store computer the result was the same - total neurological explosion. In the eleven years since, the genre it spawned has delivered countless numbers of spectacular gaming experiences, but the indelible scar that Doom left on the souls of a generation of gamers still holds sway. Bugger Half-Life, D3 is the game we have been truly waiting for and when you see it for the first time, will it elicit the same convulsions of delight and gasps of awe as the original? Or will your disappointed hearts be ripped from your chest and left to eek their last dismayed beat on the foreign cold of your office desk? Well much to the relief of cardiovascular surgeons and carpet cleaners the world over, D3 is a rousing success. When the game loads up for the first time you will be entranced, drooling at the supreme graphics and pumped as hell to teach the spawn of Satan a lesson in ass-poundery. The plot follows the greedy UAC's discovery of an alien civilization's ruins under its Mars based facility. The ruins contain the secrets of teleportation and the UAC set about harnessing its capabilities. But they go a step too far and employees start to go missing. Sent to protect the UAC as part of a marine detachment, you quickly discover that things have gone, literally, to hell. Now it's up to you to make sure the evil never makes it to Earth. What follows is a triumph in horror gaming. The intensity rarely droops below 'shit scared' with the limited light, claustrophobic setting and aggressive AI making sure your thumping pulse burns welts into your forehead. Play with stereo headphones and the lights out and you will be deadest filling your dacks with greater speed than you can re-feed the system, regardless of your cold pizza stockpiles. Gameplay is taught, a solid balance of slow, painful exploration and frantic, ultra-violent action and the single-player story is captivating. D3 has achieved its goal, delivering a masterful re-imagining of the original Doom concept, but in doing so it also lays bare its weaknesses. The inevitable side-effect of horror gaming is loss of replayability. D3 is heavily scripted and makes no attempt to spice things up with random enemy placements or alternative special effects. Should you die and restart from a save, for example, there is no need to second guess each corner on your return through the level. Every enemy will appear in the same way from the same place. Sure, the original experience is electric, but the game succeeds because of its shocks, not because of its moderate challenge so when the surprise is removed, the experience becomes hollow and monotonous.
Perhaps that's the inevitable fallout from crafting such a profound single player venture? Everything is pumped into that first experience and what a monument to game development it is. The atmosphere is phenomenal, you truly feel like you're stepping onto the red planet and into the terrified halls of the UAC. Even the most inconsequential of NPC's, computers or effects holds a gravitas - a history that submerges you into its virtual reality. When the enemy eventually lays down its holocaust you react with real world terror. Sure, the thumbprints of Aliens vs. Predator, Half-Life and Deus Ex as well as films such as Total Recall do obscure its identity on occasion, but it would have been remiss of id to ignore positive genre evolutions. Make no mistake; D3 is its own powerful experience. Alas, in respect to the level design, it's also a flawed experience. They're complex and extremely claustrophobic, which lends itself well to the horror, but there's also extensive backtracking and limited interactivity - you just yearn for more space and freedom. The PDA, an integral part of what is otherwise a very user-friendly interface, is also ill-judged. It works effectively in maintaining the atmosphere, but you will spend a lot of time filtering through the options here, seeking clues that can unlock paths or lockers. This is Doom, all we want to do is bash shit and kill dudes, making more cerebral affair just a distraction. Another distraction, albeit of a positive kind, is the presentation. Other than Far Cry's massive open-air environments, this is as good as gaming can get - the sprites looks superb, the lighting sensational, the animations fluid and the physics realistic. You'll need a computer that costs more than your house to enjoy it, but hey, it's worth it. It's not all looks either, there is an inner beauty, a depth. From the impressive backchat of the UAC workers through to the monotonous rumblings of the stations heavy machinery, id has crafted a rich Sci-fi illusion. There is always the sound of life echoing away down a hallway - be it human, foreign or mechanical - and many of the SFX will burn their way into your nightmares. So will your enemies, most of which would consider roadkill as a step up the aesthetic ladder. The AI is smart and passionately aggressive, staying hidden where possible and striking you from the dark. There is a reasonable variation of beasts and as you progress through the game they become bigger, scarier and harder to kill. When you step into a dark room and the sparks of a broken light reveal a floor inch deep in blood, headless corpses, random appendages and bits of brain, you will be calling for mummy. But when you hear the telltale growl of some giant in the dark you'll deadest puke on your keyboard. Oh, and when we say blood we mean full-on in your face gore. You could ground up the Earth's entire cattle population, spread it through this game evenly and still fall short of D3's nastiness. It's not just the monsters that are guilty of this mess either as you too will have an opportunity to splatter some 'devil-art' across the levels. But, unfortunately, none of the weapons stand out from your usual FPS affair, especially considering they lack an alternate fire, pistol whip or zoom. The biggest hiccup of them all is the failure to attach your torch to a gun. Essentially, it's a cheap tactic aimed at inciting suspense. When your torch falls on a beast looming in the corner, you'll have to waste a valuable heart-beat transferring to your gun - this is scary, but not fun. For all its successes, however, D3 is niche gaming. It is fast-paced, claustrophobic and genuinely scary. A lot of your experience will be in the dark, struggling to move around a world littered with debris while trying to avoid super aggressive enemies. This will be very frustrating for gamers who enjoy open-arena FPS and will alienate those who don't want to be fearful of every shadow. For everyone else though, this is primeval, spectacular and memorable gaming worth every cent.
Score = 9.5/10
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