Doom 3 in 2023

[MajorRawne]

Evening all. Having finished both Evil Within games, I'm looking for a horror shooter that's got the shocks and gore of EW1, with the fun factor and firepower of EW2.

 

Back in the day I was so disappointed with Doom 3. I mean it was good, no question, but I was shocked that after firing Tom Hall, they went ahead and made his game anyway (anyone know his opinions about this?). I remember turgid mazes of identical-looking labs and a boring monorail section, but I also remember some fierce battles, a scary walk through the dark where your only light comes from a friendly robot, the monsters are all scary and of course Hell was magnificent when we finally, fiiiiinally got there (after ten years).

 

Is it worth blasting through it again after all these years, and what are the best mods if any?

[Azuris]

IMO yes.

HD Textures for the original, Looks pretty good with IT.

 

Some will suggest to fix the Shotgun, but don't.

It forces you to overcome your Fear and go towards your Enemy, instead of backing up

But it rewards you with a one Hit in your Enemy.

 

The BFG Version brightens much up of the whole Game, takes out the glooming Eyes of Enemies and also some visual Effects.

You have also very much Ammonition.

But it is good for a pure boom boom Walkthrough.

But the Break while saving is molesting.

 

Take here and there a Look onto the Machines, it can help through Mars Base as they're pretty neat done.

 

Sometimes a Playthrough without Expections can help to like a Game, you have not before, but not always.

 

[MajorRawne]

Thanks, I'll download the original version (been told BFG edition is not as good for various reasons) and the HD textures mod.

 

I remember when Doom 3 was astonishingly good-looking, possibly the best-looking game ever, and nobody's PC  could run it. Can't wait to see how it's held up :)

[Geniraul]

Doom 3 is definitely one of the most atmospheric Doom games, so I fully recommend dive into it one more time! For some experience with new lighting and sound effects, as well as rebalancing, you might want to try it with the Golden Edition by @DASI-I.

 

Spoiler

 

 

I don't know too many cool custom maps, but personally, I think Lost Facility is a good one.

 

Spoiler

 

 

There is also a thread with Doom 3 custom mods and maps recommendations:

 

 

 

Edited August 12, 2023 by Geniraul : Packed the videos into spoilers to economize the vertical space.

[Meyland12]

Maybe i'm a bit too late to this topic but i would say few facts about doom 3 mods.

 

For first i recommend to play Doom 3 Fragging Free Mod. This mod offers a whole new campaign but you can also play doom 3 and ROE in fragging free mod with it's  features. This mod make doom 3 act like a classic doom game and some levels of it's new campaign has even some earth levels (at least i guess) so at least my dream of cool sequal of doom 3 talking action on earth is partly filled.

 

user named bladeghost also made some great TCs like Blade Yaujta mod where you play as well known predator from predator movies and Prometures mod which is based on movie of that same name.

 

There is also muitplayer mods like 5.56m Full Metal Jacket. I dobut you will find players to play this mod but maybe you can play with bots (i haven't tried that mod yet).

 

Finally you can find some custom maps on net. Sure there aren't many custom maps for doom 3 as for doom 1 or 2 but you can still find some cool custom maps. 😉

 

 

[Mayomancer]

I'm perhaps biased when it comes to Doom 3, but I find it to have held up extremely well, moreso than some of the other games from the same era, like Crysis. I personally like to keep things relatively vanilla, only using a source port (which is dhewm3 for me) and texture upscaling mods (though the game doesn't look too shabby as it is), but you have a lot of options with the different mods around.

[CFWMagic]

I'll leave this here.

https://www.moddb.com/games/doom-iii/downloads/doom-3-custom-community-edition1
 

Based on sikkmod. Has a few other things plugged into it. Makes Doom 3 the System Shock 3 it was destined to be.

[Connor Reagan]

I would also recommend Doom 3 Phobos. Fantastic mod.

 

https://www.moddb.com/mods/phobos

[Faceman2000]

I played it for the first time in 2019, and, well, I don't think it's aged well at all. Graphics were groundbreaking for it's time, but the combat felt like a worse version of Half Life 2's and the rest of the game wasn't enough to hold my interest.

[princetontiger]

Twitch has zero to maybe 10 players playing Doom 3 at any time... I mean, it's a fun game, but times have moved on. Doom 2016 and Eternal are much better.

[Lippeth]

20 hours ago, princetontiger said:

Twitch has zero to maybe 10 players playing Doom 3 at any time... I mean, it's a fun game, but times have moved on. Doom 2016 and Eternal are much better.

Checkmate, atheists.

 

As much as I love messing around with mods, I still consider the original Doom 3 exe with no mods to be the definitive way to play. But when it comes to modding, I usually just make my own patches to give all weapons a dryfire sound and animation, firing offsets that bug me with the machinegun and chaingun, and fix a few odds and ends like weapon gui screens, the weird armor percentage, or the plasmagun sounds being linked to the world model causing it to play over itself, sometimes at a delay and in your right ear. I don't know what this says about the quality of Doom 3, but sometimes playing with the code in a text editor can be just as fun as playing the game.

 

If you want to get the most out of the vanilla game with nothing but the console, Doom 3 Tweak Guide by Koroush Ghazi is a great resource, giving proper explanations to as many cvars as possible, instead of the all too common "just trust me and copy paste all this into your autoexec.cfg to make teh bad broken gaem more gooder".

 

That said, CstDoom3 is a favorite of mine when it comes to 2023-ifying old stinky Doom 3, it's main features include reverting the HUD stretching that happens when using a wide aspect ratio, displaying cabinet codes, and all the more contentious options like a head mounted flashlight and reduced spread for the shotgun. The best part is that everything is optional, and the menu goes pretty deep with cool options. They've also got one for the BFG Edition which is just as extensive.

Edited May 27, 2023 by Lippeth

[BountyHunter]

I'm playing through this for the first time ever, using the BFG version on my Xbox 360.

 

Loving everything about it so far. 

[OliveTree]

I first played Doom 3 on my original xbox. My mom got it for me at a thrift shop, clearly skeptical of it from the box art lol. It's one of my favorite Doom games. I'd probably rank it in second place underneath Doom 2016 for my personal ranking of the series.

 

I think a lot of the people who call it "a fine game but not a doom game" are off the mark by a lot. Yes, it's slower, and dimmer, and it has all this story-related content that the original Doom games never would have had. But it's also so clearly in the same lineage of design. It's still about movement and reflexes and it captured the impression that the original games, of immersion and fear and simulation. And its understanding of Tech and Hell were so true to Doom that they've essentially been borrowed wholesale for 2016 and Eternal's depictions of those environments.

 

IDK. I just think it's such a passion fueled game with such a high level of craftsmanship behind it. I know a lot of Doom fans who haven't even tried it. And thats a shame. Plus it has a very good sense of escalation to it.

[TheSlipgateStudios]

Doom 3 is timeless, it doesn't matter even if it's the year 2050, I would still play it!

[famicommander]

On 5/24/2023 at 2:05 PM, Faceman2000 said:

I played it for the first time in 2019, and, well, I don't think it's aged well at all. Graphics were groundbreaking for it's time, but the combat felt like a worse version of Half Life 2's and the rest of the game wasn't enough to hold my interest.

It wasn't good when it came out either. It had impressive visuals and sound design but the gunplay is and always has been horrible, the story is horrible and unskippable, they try to make it a horror game but supplies are too plentiful and the difficulty is too low, they rely entirely too much on jumpscares, etc. If it didn't have "Doom" in the title I'm convinced it would be forgotten as it deserves to be.

[Gzegzolka]

Doom 3 is definitely a Doom game, just with bit different mood. Shooting is also bit janky as people would say nowadays, but when You start playing You can get used to it. For me best part was all that detail in maps, all that working machinery and monitors displaying in game gui. Maps in both ways looks like mazes and like places where humans could work. In my opinion there were too many PDAs to collect and too many spam audiologs/emails, too many puzzles were based on finding codes in PDA. It was also long game with lots of tech base corridors, they should definitely introduce hell overgrown/tentacles, candles, satanic runes much later in game and made it more twisted mix of hell and Mars base. As a person who replay D3 each year few years ago my habits bit changed, now I prefer RoE add on and Lost Mission for quicker more action oriented experience. 

[Geniraul]

Another outstanding mod to note is Classic Doom 3 by @Gazz. Knee-Deep in the Dead levels remade for Doom 3 are such a unique experience!

 

 

[Astar]

13 hours ago, Geniraul said:

Another outstanding mod to note is Classic Doom 3 by @Gazz. Knee-Deep in the Dead levels remade for Doom 3 are such a unique experience!

 

 

What a great documentary! Didn't know that Sonic Clang was involved in this project so much

[Geniraul]

For sure! That was a surprise for me, too!

[amackert]

DOOM 3 has held up well aesthetically, and you can adapt to its gameplay, but I personally don't care for the "full experience" much anymore. The PC version is way too damn long for its own good and it gets tedious. I'd actually prefer to play the original XBOX version, as it was trimmed down so much it ironically flows a lot nicer to me and is more enjoyable from a gameplay standpoint. Had DOOM 2016 and Eternal not existed, I'd probably be a bit softer on DOOM 3, but they do, so it's been taken down several pegs in my book. I loved it when it was newer though and cutting edge. At the time was one of the few video games that ever legitimately spooked me (playing in a dark room with headphones).

[Midway64]

I play and love Doom 3 BFG Edition unconditionally, including the Doom ports...

 

Y'all can blow my brains out now.

[Astar]

4 hours ago, Midway64 said:

I play and love Doom 3 BFG Edition unconditionally, including the Doom ports...

 

Y'all can blow my brains out now.

Don't worry, me too :)

[OniriA]

On 5/16/2023 at 12:08 AM, MajorRawne said:

Is it worth blasting through it again after all these years, and what are the best mods if any?

 

I'd recommend playing the vanilla version with the redux mod. It properly enhances the games textures and makes it look far superior then the bfg edition. Even restoring original cut content.

 

Here's an overview. 

 

* 600+ High Resolution textures with proper normal and specular maps.

* (Optional) Improved sound design for weapons, audio logs, cutscenes and monsters.

* Native support of common widescreen resolutions up to 5K.

 * High resolution UI, fonts and loading screens. Uses a modified version of 6th venom's mainmenu.

* Optional restored cut content. (Dialogs and textures along with a curated selection of sounds ported from the E3 2002 alpha build)

Adds a bunch of graphical options which you couldn't configure in the vanilla options menu like textures resolution, anisotropic filtering, FOV...

 

 

 

[AmethystViper]

Don't forget Enhanced Edition too, it also adds further quality-of-life improvements, bugfixes, weapons and enemy AI rebalancing. I wish though there was an easy way to get D3HDP working with the BFG Edition so I can enjoy much better graphics with the benefits of native controller support with the BFG Edition.

[Roadkill]

I still have both BFG and og installed on steam. For me , it's a classic and can always be replayed. Mods make it even better.

 

@AmethystViper Oh yeah I wish D3HDP would be ported to BFG.

[DiceByte]

I have recently began playing Doom 3 for the first time on switch and that game terrifies me. I feel like every encounter is a jump scare, even if I see it coming. And I am currently on low HP, so that is just great. And I haven’t even gotten that far yet!

[Caffeine Freak]

Since I've been working on expansion-size Doom 3 mods for over a decade, I basically know the game inside and out at this point. I still play through the vanilla version of Doom 3 every once in a while. (ROE is a proper expansion, whereas The Lost Mission is a worthy effort with some cool levels and awesome geometry, but falls flat in other areas.) I've found that I can burn through the game in just over 4 hours on Nightmare. I love all the Dooms and think each of them have their own strengths. 3 is perhaps most comparable in terms of tone, mood and pacing to Doom 64, which is something I appreciate. Both of them have their own, distinct voice in that regard. I like 2016 and Eternal better than 3, though 3 still has impressive atmosphere and visceral gunplay all these years later.

[MLGari]

Is there any good flashlight mods for D3EE 

yafm-hl made me restart from monorail skybridge due my previous D3EE saves being incompatible and breaks the ui D3EE has 
and duct tape makes you lose muzzle flash

[P_A_Z]

I play the original Doom 3 with the Sikkmod 1.2, and a repack of monoxead HR textures combined with wulfen's texture pack 2.0. The advantages of the Sikkmod is his modularity as well for visual and for the gameplay. For example  there are options to carry objects, medipacks and other stuff like to enable nightvision or a little flashlight on guns who needs to recharge. This is totally optional, so we can play as we want. This is my favorite mod. I try Redux but i don't like it cause it is too clean. I like the rusty aspect of Doom 3.

[Lila Feuer]

I like using the alpha shotgun which I didn't know for the longest time is what the old sprited Doom 3 shotgun is based on.

 

https://www.moddb.com/mods/alpha-shotgun-mod

 

It would be cool to see the pistol and machine gun as well as the old HUD as add-ons.

 

The Reznor sounds are also great.