The more I see of DOOM (2016), the more I dislike DOOM 3

[Plasma Gun]

When DOOM 3 first came out, I was super pumped to play a new DOOM game. I even played through it a double-digit number of times since launch.

However, as I see this new DOOM footage, I realize just how "not DOOM" DOOM 3 was since this new game seems to really "get" it.

Now, as is customary before a new DOOM/Wolf/Quake game, I will go back and play through all of the prior DOOM games + expansions, so I'll see if DOOM 3 is really as "bad" as I'm now remembering it, but does anybody else feel the same?

[Gzegzolka]

Nope, for me Doom3 was a good game on it own. Sure, gameplay is much more different and there is lot of stuff I would love to be more like in classic Doom. What I love is how much detailed maps are with all that stuff like small monitors you can play with, giant mechanisms doing different stuff, robotic arms, test tubes, messages You can read from computer screens, video-players, even some NPC's You meet are okay for me. I like design of demons and zombies, I like D3 zombies a lot. I love how big Mars base is, fact that You have toilets there, and sometimes even kitchens or other social rooms. It is no longer random labyrinth with "hangar" in name.
What I hate is gunplay, how stupid zsec's are, how demons react to being shoot, how they disappear when killed, how much dark this game is (seriously someone should take those maps and add more lighting to them) and demons in closed small rooms that usually open when You leave them - I hate that, or demons that jump on You when You open doors.

[RaikohZX]

Honestly for the most part I separate Doom 3 from everything else, and treat it more like "what if Half-Life focused on demons instead of aliens and horror instead of hollywood action?" Or maybe, "What if Id used Quake 2 to do their own version of Half-Life 1?" It feels like a product of its era, a game that was meant to be more of an engine and lighting tech demo so Id tried to play experimental and safe at the same time without really knowing what they were fully doing or any consistency.

That's not to say it's bad, just that it's so different from the rest of the series that it's hard for me to associate it beyond enemies and weapons. I wouldn't quite phrase it as 'not Doom', but it really never felt like Doom all the same.

[Plasma Gun]

Gzegzolka said:

Nope, for me Doom3 was a good game on it own. Sure, gameplay is much more different and there is lot of stuff I would love to be more like in classic Doom. What I love is how much detailed maps are with all that stuff like small monitors you can play with, giant mechanisms doing different stuff, robotic arms, test tubes, messages You can read from computer screens, video-players, even some NPC's You meet are okay for me. I like design of demons and zombies, I like D3 zombies a lot. I love how big Mars base is, fact that You have toilets there, and sometimes even kitchens or other social rooms. It is no longer random labyrinth with "hangar" in name.
What I hate is gunplay, how stupid zsec's are, how demons react to being shoot, how they disappear when killed, how much dark this game is (seriously someone should take those maps and add more lighting to them) and demons in closed small rooms that usually open when You leave them - I hate that, or demons that jump on You when You open doors.

I think this is an entirely and completely fair assessment of the pros/cons of DOOM 3.

[Plasma Gun]

RikohZX said:

Honestly for the most part I separate Doom 3 from everything else, and treat it more like "what if Half-Life focused on demons instead of aliens and horror instead of hollywood action?" Or maybe, "What if Id used Quake 2 to do their own version of Half-Life 1?" It feels like a product of its era, a game that was meant to be more of an engine and lighting tech demo so Id tried to play experimental and safe at the same time without really knowing what they were fully doing or any consistency.

I remember at the time, Carmack was really excited about the whole "every light is dynamic" thing that the DOOM engine enabled, and I suspect that the game was a product of this technical avenue that Carmack wanted to go down.

IMO, the game should always come first and the engine/technical side of things should be in service to that game idea.

[Buckshot]

DOOM 3 had its time and place, and was a interesting remake of DOOM 1.

I understand that they wanted to try something different with the DOOM formula, focus more on the spooky horror atmosphere of the DOOM atmosphere, go for a more DOOM 64-type vibe. In that respect, they pulled it off perfectly.

What they didn't focus so much on was the sense of speed and action that DOOM 1/2 offered, attempted to tie in too much of a generic scifi story into the mix, and made it feel ultra-claustrophobic compared to the original DOOM's. They made it more of a movie than a game.

They were more focused on showing off the sweet polygon counts of a few characters on the screen, shadows, and other eye candy that GPU's were just starting to become capable of at the time, and may perhaps toned down the action based on high enemy count and pace due to limitations of processing power and graphics rendering capabilities of yester-year. It was one thing to pump out 40+ enemy 2D sprites on a screen in 1993, but it would have been a struggle to do that in 2004 with the same number of 3D full poly model enemies on graphics cards of that era. Today, with multicore, hyperthreading, and GPU's that can SLI well beyond what our wallet is capable of... that makes our PC's (and not just PC's, but even consoles) far more capable of handling all the eye candy, polys, speed, and enemy count at the same time. Even a mainstream gaming PC today should have no issue running the new DOOM.

So with that in mind, I've seen a perfect blend of the best parts of DOOM/DOOM64/DOOM3 in DOOM 2016. They've got the action. They've got the enemy count. They've evolved it to add in some really sweet ideas from current top-end mod's (like brutual doom). They've got the horror. They've got a story. The open area exploration and tight corridors. They've got the ambient terror score, but rock soundtrack for the action scenes. The multiplay. The map making. Etc, etc.

So while DOOM 3 certainly may not be the most memorable of the series, it did what it did, and it did it well. At it certainly influences the new DOOM, along with everything else, as they have to cater to that crowd, too.

[AirRaid]

Gzegzolka said:

Nope, for me Doom3 was a good game on it own. Sure, gameplay is much more different and there is lot of stuff I would love to be more like in classic Doom. What I love is how much detailed maps are with all that stuff like small monitors you can play with, giant mechanisms doing different stuff, robotic arms, test tubes, messages You can read from computer screens, video-players, even some NPC's You meet are okay for me. I like design of demons and zombies, I like D3 zombies a lot. I love how big Mars base is, fact that You have toilets there, and sometimes even kitchens or other social rooms. It is no longer random labyrinth with "hangar" in name.
What I hate is gunplay, how stupid zsec's are, how demons react to being shoot, how they disappear when killed, how much dark this game is (seriously someone should take those maps and add more lighting to them) and demons in closed small rooms that usually open when You leave them - I hate that, or demons that jump on You when You open doors.

This is a pretty good post. Sums up what I would have said.

As an aside, considering the various dislikes you have about Doom 3 in there, you need to keep your eye on Doom 3: Phobos. We are taking a lot of those things and fixing them for our campaign.

[Deatheye]

Ha, that's kinda funny because Doom 3 was the Doom the Devs wanted it to be

and imagine they would have done a doom 2 just in better graphics, some of the forever in the past living guys would like it, but the other 95% of doom players world wide and non doom fans would say how uninspired and boring it is

doom 3 is a great game, a great doom game and I love it as much as I love the old doom games

the new doom is gonna be a mix between doom/2 and doom 3 and since I love all the doom games I'll love the new one too

and the half life / doom comparison is garbage

[Tetzlaff]

Deatheye said:

Ha, that's kinda funny because Doom 3 was the Doom the Devs wanted it to be

I was just going to say that...

I love Doom 3 for what it is: an atmospheric horror FPS whith great design. There is a lot attention to detail in the game. The way of story-telling was excellent, leaving it to your own decision to read emails, listen to voice logs and similar stuff to figure out what was going on.

Also it is not true that Doom3 was primarely a "tech demo". The engine was specifically tailored for the game with the unified lighting, the light and shadow capabilities. Apart from that it was no "show-off" engine, it had relatively low resolutions (256x256 while Unreal engine used 1024x1024 for textures) and so on.

[quakke]

At core, Doom 3 keeps some of the key elements of Doom 1 and 2.

-Explore to find secrets
-Need to find keycards
-Backtracking at times
-Combat designed game (carry all the guns)
-Carry all the guns
-Run&Gun design
-Story is told in a way that fits and unlike modern fps, it doesn't go overboard with amount of focus on story.

Areas where Doom 3 differs from original Dooms..

-Maps are more linear and impossible to get lost to
-Enemy count on encounters is usually 5-7 at max
-Cannot run infinitely due to realsim
-Shotgun is melee weapon
..

I still quite much like Doom 3 because of it's nice visuals, amount of attention to detail, aesthetic, sound world, athmosphere and solid gameplay.

[Touchdown]

I'm yet to see DOOM4 but to me DOOM3 was in many ways exactly what I imagined a modern DOOM game to be - things like aesthetics and overall tone of the game. It was dark and serious. In fact, it should have been even more serious, without silly villians and their evil laughters. I have a mile long list of issues with this game but the vibe was spot on.

That's why I'm worried about DOOM4. I know it's all about pure badassery, pure fun or something. When developers go in that direction that usually means completely silly, juvenile and cartoony stuff. I don't know if that's the impression that I will have upon playing it but that's certainly a possibility.

But what do I know, I'm amongst those three or four people who actually loved the direction (at least in terms of vibe and visuals) of the cancelled version of DOOM4. I mean this...

Spoiler

... is EXACTLY what I wanted. Will their attempt at going back to the roots work for me? We'll see. But honestly, I'm not holding my breath. There's a really good chance their current direction will piss me off.

[quakke]

I can tell you already that Doom 4 is not anymore THAT. However, I think it's still very much Doom, through Doom 3 kinda, if you follow my drift..

Doom 4 is visually very Doom 3 inspired imo and personally, I really kinda like it since Doom 3 is joyful game for me. Gameplay is not from Doom 3 however, but the original Doom style instead. Aka less focus on scaring the player and more focus on run&gun, which is really good thing.

[Kaskaum]

D3 still is one of my favorites id games because it had a very good horror atmosphere that they haven't done since Quake 1.

[Gzegzolka]

I believe everybody got his own vision of perfect doom, there is a lot of opinions and I respect them all. Doom 3 is good game, got some cons and got some pros. I love first Delta Labs level, when You walk and there is no demons, but You hear them. Audio is perfect at that kind of moments.

I have read Doom bible some time ago and I know about first vision of how much complicated original game was designed, with plot, items, three characters and logs to read, and how in one moment all that was canceled for more arcade shooting vision. In my opinion that was good choice, game become more easy and popular, otherwise it could be as complicated as Ultima or even require cd-rom.

As for Doom3 Phobos - I'm waiting :) I would love to play this mod, for every screen shoot I have seen it keeps high quality just like in Black Mesa. This is going to be awesome when it will be released :) . I just hope that all those PDA's searching and reading e-mails to learn code for door will not be forced. If there is some additional locked room or locker - I'm okay with this design. If I have to read/listen 20 messages to open door to exit that is not ok for me.

There isn't much information on canceled Doom4, from what we have seen it was going to be very linear shooter. In my opinion it was good to cancel it, it could only harm doom IP. Only two good stuff I will miss. One is character design - those soldiers look cool and chick in short animation look even better that RAGE characters. Second one - is Earth and towns maps, they could be so much awesome if game was more open like Crysis2/3. Anybody know what was the plot of canceled Doom?

[Linguica]

The combat in Doom 3 is pretty bad, and therefore the game is pretty bad, no matter how many moving robot arms or toilets it has.

[rampancy]

yeah the combat aka weapons and ai were not awesome...

i did like the doom3 atmosphere though. the environment was the star imho.

and it may have been the last id release where they as a company helped move the technical side of game design forward.

[Touchdown]

quakke said:

I can tell you already that Doom 4 is not anymore THAT. However, I think it's still very much Doom, through Doom 3 kinda, if you follow my drift..

Doom 4 is visually very Doom 3 inspired imo and personally, I really kinda like it since Doom 3 is joyful game for me. Gameplay is not from Doom 3 however, but the original Doom style instead. Aka less focus on scaring the player and more focus on run&gun, which is really good thing.

Yeah, I'm aware of that. I just hope it's not too, hmm, cartoony from the lack of a better word. I mean, it can be fast and aggressive without feeling silly. There's a line somewhere there that I hope is not crossed with the over-the-top content. But I'll see that for myself in due time.

Gzegzolka said:

There isn't much information on canceled Doom4, from what we have seen it was going to be very linear shooter. In my opinion it was good to cancel it, it could only harm doom IP. Only two good stuff I will miss. One is character design - those soldiers look cool and chick in short animation look even better that RAGE characters. Second one - is Earth and towns maps, they could be so much awesome if game was more open like Crysis2/3. Anybody know what was the plot of canceled Doom?

A demonic apocalypse on Earth. :) Judging by one of the cinematics from Blur, the action was supposed to take place 2 years after the demons took over the planet. Groups consisting of the remaining military and civilians trying to fight back.

Linguica said:

The combat in Doom 3 is pretty bad, and therefore the game is pretty bad, no matter how many moving robot arms or toilets it has.

I would argue with that. The combat was not great but it didn't stop me from enjoying the game for other reasons.

[LkMax]

The first time I played it I was not a huge doom fan (actually I think I played Doom3 before Doom, or both in a close time span for the first time) so I didn't make comparisons and actually liked the game (it was also the best graphics I've seen on my PC at the time, with a low resolution compromise), but with time passing, a lot of games played (including classic Dooms) and I forming a more critical opinion on video-games, I could clearly see how so much stuff could have been improved:

- The shotgun is a melee weapon (it's super weak except point-blank)
- The monsters constant spawning of single imps was lame
- By the time a monster finished to spawn I would have him killed already (around 5 seconds to end each spawn animation was bad, specially for monsters that heavly relied on it like the Wraith)
- The monster closets were overused and predictable
- Repetitive aesthetic before the final levels - all rooms looked too similar and there were too few open areas (missed oportunity)
- Hell looked uninspired (they only fixed it on the Lost Missions, years later, in a crappy package called BFG Edition)

There's probably more that I don't remember, but anyway, Doom 3 was more a technical achievement and just an o.k. game.

Deatheye said:

and the half life / doom comparison is garbage

It's actually pretty accurate.

AirRaid said:

As an aside, considering the various dislikes you have about Doom 3 in there, you need to keep your eye on Doom 3: Phobos. We are taking a lot of those things and fixing them for our campaign.

Ha, Half-Life 3 will come out before this mod. :o)

[Deatheye]

LkMax said:

- The shotgun is a melee weapon (it's super weak except point-blank)
- The monsters constant spawning of single imps was lame
- By the time a monster finished to spawn I would have him killed already (around 5 seconds to end each spawn animation was bad, specially for monsters that heavly relied on it like the Wraith)
- The monster closets were overused and predictable
- Repetitive aesthetic before the final levels - all rooms looked too similar and there were too few open areas (missed oportunity)
- Hell looked uninspired (they only fixed it on the Lost Missions, years later, in a crappy package called BFG Edition)

There's probably more that I don't remember, but anyway, Doom 3 was more a technical achievement and just an o.k. game.

your "o.k. game" was probably id's biggest financial success, it was the doom game the devs wanted doom to look and be like and it was one of the best games in the year 2004 together with half life 2

it's always easy to say "they could have done that better and this" 12 years after it's release, we could do the same with doom 1+2

[Marnetmar]

Um

And the financial success of a game has what effect on one's personal opinion? Do you think of Nicki Minaj as a talented musician because of how many platinum records she's sold?

[doom_is_great]

Doom 3 may have not been exactly like Classic Doom, but what it did well, it did well. Atmosphere, number one, was top notch.

Also, Classic Doom wasn't just hordes of demons and heavy metal. It had slow, dark, creepy portions as well just like in Doom 3.

[wheresthebeef]

I honestly really enjoy Doom 3, and I play it and Episode 1 on a fairly regular basis.
If you ignore all the weapon lockers and only open specific ones (like double barrel locker) and just bum rush through the levels, it becomes a pretty frantic fast paced shooter. It's not hard to play vanilla Doom 3 without ever needing the flashlight; there is so much ammo laying around, just fire a shot or two if you are in a really dark area and need a light.
My favorite part is the beginning, Mars City. Unfortunately its rather short, but its fun when you go back there and shits all fucked and you can now go into all the earlier locked down rooms.

[DoomUK]

I don't need Doom 2016 to tell me that Doom 3 isn't a very good Doom game. It's a decent atmospheric FPS in its own right, with lots of things I could praise it for, but I think it goes without saying that it doesn't hold a candle to the classic games. Even its modding capabilities are a bit of a sore point - just ask any Doom 3 modder how difficult it is to make something look good in that game, with those tools.

[Gzegzolka]

Yes, in many areas Doom3 try to be "jack of all trades" with both arcade gameplay - simple shooting and ammo/health pick-ups everywhere, and try emulate System Shock on other side - with all those PDA's, code-locked doors.
Mars City is good part - lots of zombies and You have only weak guns, first time I play it - it was survival for me - You have that tension and feeling that chaos strike this place and You are in first row to see it, on later play-through I find every ammo pick-up and have no problem with gunning dead-mans. I love Resurrection of Evil mission pack, it have better boss fights (except last boss) and is more oriented on happy-action-shooting :)

[MrGlide]

Buckshot- "So while DOOM 3 certainly may not be the most memorable of the series."

I really thought Doom 3 was a super memorable game myself, the only other game that has really came close to it's atmosphere imo is dead space.

Touchdown- "... is EXACTLY what I wanted. Will their attempt at going back to the roots work for me? We'll see. But honestly, I'm not holding my breath. There's a really good chance their current direction will piss me off."

I'm not saying my wants are more important than yours, but this is exactly what I don't want. The environment and this kind of atmosphere has been beat to death over the last 9 years.Trudging through another busted up city with health regan and having to take cover all the time kind of rail shooter? I'll pass, that would be worse then another Doom 3 imo. There is a really good chance the new direction will make me happy.

Linguica- "The combat in Doom 3 is pretty bad, and therefore the game is pretty bad, no matter how many moving robot arms or toilets it has."

I personally find the combat in Doom 3 superior to most other shooters, or at least from what I remember. With the game being so lineir and slow paced I don't to replay it so much but have enjoyed it.

[MFG38]

I can definitely see where you're coming from, but to me, Doom 3 is still as much a Doom game as the rest of 'em. Sure, it's not like classic Doom, but honestly it doesn't need to be either.

That's not to say I dislike what I'm looking at in DOOM '16, though. In fact, I'm happy id's taken the direction towards old-school. But at the same time, I'm kinda worried about id essentially kissing the old-school Doomers' collective ass.

[DoomUK]

The combat is such a common complaint about Doom 3 that there must be something to it. There are mods that address this issue, but shooting things in the base game was/is such a dull experience for me that it's hard to believe it's an Id game.

[RaikohZX]

DoomUK said:

The combat is such a common complaint about Doom 3 that there must be something to it. There are mods that address this issue, but shooting things in the base game was/is such a dull experience for me that it's hard to believe it's an Id game.

To me at least, it's mostly the impact, the way the guns sound and fire and so forth. The Rocket Launcher, or the BFG, those sound as powerful as they are and are both devastating weapons. But some of the other weapons such as the Pistol or the Machinegun, albeit subjectively, sound kinda wimpy, which is annoying because the Pistol is surprisingly efficient with headshot damage. The shotgun's spread is absolutely ridiculous, it's worse than the Super Shotgun in classic Doom and means its effective usefulness is point-blank on a single enemy. Typically Imps and Zombies. There's no pain chance or equivalent thereof, enemies just bend a little but it doesn't stun or pause them as they continue to attack you like you didn't just shoot them in the head repeatedly.

It makes me feel like until they die and ragdoll/gib across the room, even if I were to pile the Chaingun's rounds into their face they just sorta really don't give a damn, and that gun's a beast.

[AirRaid]

LkMax said:

Ha, Half-Life 3 will come out before this mod. :o)

I hope so. I'd like to see HL3 within the next couple of years. :)

[Touchdown]

MrGlide said:

I'm not saying my wants are more important than yours, but this is exactly what I don't want. The environment and this kind of atmosphere has been beat to death over the last 9 years.Trudging through another busted up city with health regan and having to take cover all the time kind of rail shooter? I'll pass, that would be worse then another Doom 3 imo. There is a really good chance the new direction will make me happy.

Are you telling me that a remote space station on another planet has not been done to death? :) Also, I should probably clarify that I certainly would not want DOOM4 to be a linear, heavily-scripted rollercoaster ride. I'm talking primarily about the vibe and atmosphere. I've always thought that all the 'crazy' things in the original DOOM were just a result of technical limitations and id crawling out of the arcade days. That a more serious sci-fi horror vibe is what it should have been going forward and DOOM3 was kind of that. This cancelled version of DOOM4 felt like an extention of it.

Another thing is that maybe for modern military shooter players this kind of setting is overly familiar but personally I haven't played many games like this. Moreover I have never seen a down-to-earth, serious game with a Hell on Earth theme, demons obliterating our civilization and turning it into a hellish reimagination. Demons are not that common outside of fantasy games.

None of this really prevents the game from being fast-paced and aggressive. It's just a matter of handling it properly. But again, everytime developers make an 'oldchool' game, it ends up being so silly that you can't take it seriously. Look at Mortal Kombat X. The gore is extreme but it's so over-the-top that it can't be taken seriously. Of course with MK that's kind of the point, much like it wouldn't be a problem in a Duke Nukem game. With DOOM though, if it's not serious enough, that will be a problem for me.

And yeah, I know like 99,999...% of people will disagree with this. For some reason people want everything to be funny and ridiculous and the very mention of a serious game is met with a chuckle. So whatever.