In Defense of Doom 3

[DooM_RO]

Here is a FANTASTIC video that pretty much mirrors how I feel about the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn0IMQIlUMQ

[DoomMarine82]

DOOM 3 is still great

[The Civ]

DoomMarine82 said:

DOOM 3 is still great

http://i.imgur.com/7OyM3wn.jpg

Woah, where is that in the game?
I feel like I would have remembered seeing that.

[DoomMarine82]

Oh no, it's my variation :)

[DooM_RO]

I play Doom 3 about once per year. I have a soft spot for it and while I share many of the complaints it gets, I think people are just a bit unfair towards it.

DoomMarine82 said:

Oh no, it's my variation :)

WOAH, that's awesome!

[Chezza]

I thought that giant mouth looked different. I'm guessing this is the sudden jumpscare scene when you get close to the door. It's somewhat early / mid game I think.

[snapshot]

It's actually pretty great for a 2004 game, Although it had it's own problems, it was still overall very nice, 8/10 .

It gave a new Look for the monsters, 6 Eyed IMP, Flying women head, Transparent Revenant Body ... etc, An all new Horror experience,Atmosphere ...etc , but kept several elements from It's Classic predecessors .

It might not look as great as today's games, but it was definitely great for it's time .

[Avoozl]

Well it may not look as good as today's modern games but it certainly plays better than quite a few of them.

[Tetzlaff]

A very good video, I can fully agree to his points.

[Face23785]

I personally loved Doom 3. I recently wrote in another thread probably my most coherent defense of D3 over the years, so instead of trying to explain it all again I'll just paste it below. Unfortunately I suck at linking to posts:

This subject has been beaten to death. Overall Doom 3 was a good game. It had it's flaws, but I hate to break it to you SO DID DOOM AND DOOM 2. Most of the hate on Doom 3 stems from people looking at the original games through rose colored glasses and just hating that Doom 3 wasn't more of the same. I loved the original games. They were exciting, fun and scary. They were obviously held back by the technology of the time but they utilized what was available in an extremely effective way. So what was wrong with the new game doing the same thing?

So the player wasn't as fast? Ok, is that really so bad considering the original player was absurdly fast? How many times have you fallen into ooze or missed a pickup because the player is so fucking fast?

So it was dark. Cry me a fucking river, you can still see where you're going and what you're doing. It's a product of the setting, a space base that's been devastated by a disaster. Odds are it's not going to be brightly lit anymore. There were dark parts in the original games too, and VERY dark parts in Doom 64.

You can't have 50 enemies on screen at once. Ok, tactically that makes no difference because the enemies' attacks aren't as easy to dodge anymore and there's less space to work with. When were you ever overwhelmed by the sheer number of monsters in the original game? Numbers alone couldn't do it, proper placement was key. A small number of monsters could make a very effective trap when done well. You could argue it just felt cooler and more fun to mow down hordes of demons, but that's more of a personal preference than anything. It's not game-breaking.

There was no METULLL. OK, you're not an angst filled teenager anymore playing a violent game because your mom doesn't like you playing them and listening to that evil music. Let it go, it'll be ok. The music in the original games fit great and was indeed iconic, but the ambiance in the PSX version and in Doom 64 fit just as well. Play something from your personal music collection if you absolutely need it to make yourself feel like a man.

When you get to the root of most of the complaints about the game, and ask the question "why is x so bad?" basically all you've got is because it wasn't the way it was in the original game.

I can agree there were parts of the combat that weren't well fleshed out, like the shotgun being absurdly ineffective at anything beyond 3 feet, while the shotgun zsec could shoot you from a mile away and still do killer damage. The pistol was weak? Sure it was, it's a fucking pistol. Have any of you used a handgun before? Unless he was issued a high caliber revolver, the pistol is going to be weak and ineffective against any kind of monster. Caliber isn't discussed in the game. You can make the same point about the machine gun. It's probably a small caliber so it can hold, what was it, 60 rounds? The lead-in for the teleporting monsters was horrible, I've really got no defense for whoever thought that was a good idea. It was ok the first time but as you progressed through the game they should've made it happen instantly, just for tactics sake.

But again, the combat in the original games wasn't perfect either. How many times have you seen people complain about the health of the lost soul, the chaingunners' attacks being overpowered, barons being ammo sponges, the SMM being a weak ass final boss, IoS being a played out and boring final boss. The fucking PE is useless if you can get next to it. Monsters 100 feet below you if you're trying to go over a ledge could block your movement! Flying monsters anyone? But none of this is GAME-BREAKING or makes the game suck. They're little quirks that just make the game not perfect.

[Koko Ricky]

I feel like not enough people realize how CLUMSY the combat in D3 feels. That's the biggest qualm. Combat is one of the most important things in a Doom game and for it to be as unfinished feeling as it did really brought the experience down.

[RUSH]

I've loved Doom 3 since it was released. The graphics absolutely blew me away at the time. I remember being completely amazed by the dark shadows and realistic environments. Doom 3 felt like you were being immersed into an environment that resembled the tense horror of movies like the original Alien and The Thing. It was truly terrifying. I remember me and a buddy were playing and he kept commenting on how every little wall was so incredibly detailed. Nothing even came close in terms of detail. Everything felt like a living, breathing world.

And playing alone in the dark with headphones was even scarier than ANY horror movie I've seen. Some of the biggest scares of my life came from Doom 3. I feel people who bash the game are those who run around with the brightness on max in a bright sunny room expecting fast paced action like the original...

If you really want to experience Doom 3, you have to play vanilla with no duck tape flashlight mod. Loud volume, headphones and in a dark room with no friends. Do that and after a while all the little ambient noises begin to make you so jumpy that simply seeing an enemy causes you to flinch. The sounds can be really disturbing and begin to mess with your head after some time. That is where Doom 3 succeeds. Tense atmosphere. Horror. The gunplay is secondary to that. Almost the opposite of the original games. So I can see where the hate comes from. It is a classic horror sci-fi in my books. Like Alien, and The Thing.

[RUSH]

Also DooM_RO, that was a great video. Thanks for sharing. He made a lot of great points that I agree with.

On a side note: I hate the BFG edition. It isn't the same Doom 3 to me. Not recommended whatsoever.

[Face23785]

RUSH said:

I've loved Doom 3 since it was released. The graphics absolutely blew me away at the time. I remember being completely amazed by the dark shadows and realistic environments. Doom 3 felt like you were being immersed into an environment that resembled the tense horror of movies like the original Alien and The Thing. It was truly terrifying. I remember me and a buddy were playing and he kept commenting on how every little wall was so incredibly detailed. Nothing even came close in terms of detail. Everything felt like a living, breathing world.

And playing alone in the dark with headphones was even scarier than ANY horror movie I've seen. Some of the biggest scares of my life came from Doom 3. I feel people who bash the game are those who run around with the brightness on max in a bright sunny room expecting fast paced action like the original...

If you really want to experience Doom 3, you have to play vanilla with no duck tape flashlight mod. Loud volume, headphones and in a dark room with no friends. Do that and after a while all the little ambient noises begin to make you so jumpy that simply seeing an enemy causes you to flinch. The sounds can be really disturbing and begin to mess with your head after some time. That is where Doom 3 succeeds. Tense atmosphere. Horror. The gunplay is secondary to that. Almost the opposite of the original games. So I can see where the hate comes from. It is a classic horror sci-fi in my books. Like Alien, and The Thing.

This is exactly how I played it my first time through except I didn't use headphones, I used surround sound speakers and had it blasted, was probably pissing off my neighbors but good. You get so immersed in it that the cheesiness of Betruger doesn't even occur to you, and you really get into the gameplay and the story. The biggest problem most people had was such a streamlined expectation of how the game would be, and when it didn't match that they hated it. I knew from the first Mac conference where the engine was demonstrated that it would be nothing like the fast-paced cartoony action of the original game, which I also loved immensely, but I was prepared for a different kind of experience and let the game take me where it wanted to go instead of dragging my feet kicking and screaming that it wasn't just a super source port of Doom 1.

GoatLord said:

I feel like not enough people realize how CLUMSY the combat in D3 feels. That's the biggest qualm. Combat is one of the most important things in a Doom game and for it to be as unfinished feeling as it did really brought the experience down.

Not sure where you get that idea from, there's plenty of people around to agree with you on that, that's kind of where this thread came from, for those few of us who appreciated the game for what it was instead of staying hung up on what it wasn't. Maybe lots of people don't realize how the combat fit the environment fine. Except for those fucking grenades. I really got nothing for that. I wasn't very skilled with the plasma gun either but I chalked that up to me just sucking.

[Xerge]

Doom 3 looked like the Doom movie that I used to imagine back in the 90s.

[RUSH]

Face23785 said:

You get so immersed in it that the cheesiness of Betruger doesn't even occur to you, and you really get into the gameplay and the story. The biggest problem most people had was such a streamlined expectation of how the game would be, and when it didn't match that they hated it. I knew from the first Mac conference where the engine was demonstrated that it would be nothing like the fast-paced cartoony action of the original game, which I also loved immensely, but I was prepared for a different kind of experience and let the game take me where it wanted to go instead of dragging my feet kicking and screaming that it wasn't just a super source port of Doom 1.

I completely agree with this as well. Betruger didn't seem cheesy at all to me. He was an absolute psychopath and always intimidating throughout. His voice and laugh was damn creepy too, the way it would seem to echo throughout all the halls of the base. Every time I heard it I was like "yeah, I'm screwed aren't I?"

At the time I hadn't seen the pre-conference footage so I only knew what to expect from the odd internet screenshot. I loved the game immediately even though I could tell it was going to be horror instead of fast paced action. Of course I love the original classic Doom games but I also love dark horror/science fiction and Doom 3 was both of those things. I can appreciate that they wanted to try something different. And they pulled it off perfectly. It's not like it was a bad game. It's just that people had vastly different expectations. In fact, I'm willing to say it's still the best horror game I've ever played. Dead Space was good too but not quite as intense.

Playing Doom 3 is like rearranging all the influences from the best horror movies and combining them into a believable interactive world. It's just so cool. Some of the maps I have downloaded are really scary and equally well made too.

[Face23785]

The other thing I loved about Doom 3 was how much work went into fleshing out the environment. It was extremely detailed and well thought out base design. You really felt like you were on a space base. I relate it to the ship in Dead Space, the design was so realistic that it really helped the immersion. I didn't mind the linearity of it because it was so realistic, and when you had to backtrack through parts of a level that you had been through in a previous level, parts of it were changed to keep the experience fresh. Everyone who said the levels all looked the same weren't paying attention. All the tech base levels in Doom looked the same too, if all you looked at was what textures they used.

[Deleted_Account]

Been playing Doom 3 since it came out, I still love the game. Now if only Phobos was completed and released!

[RUSH]

Piper Maru said:

Now if only Phobos was completed and released!

Lol, we all wish. They've been saying it's coming out "next year" for what feels like a decade now. Maybe this year is truly "the one." That will be awesome. Doom 2016 AND Phobos? Holy moley, better get me a bucket because it's gonna be some serious Doom orgasm time.

[Deleted_Account]

RUSH said:

Lol, we all wish. They've been saying it's coming out "next year" for what feels like a decade now. Maybe this year is truly "the one." That will be awesome. Doom 2016 AND Phobos? Holy moley, better get me a bucket because it's gonna be some serious Doom orgasm time.

If Doom 2016 and Phobos were released on the same day I would implode from the excitement.

[RUSH]

Piper Maru said:

If Doom 2016 and Phobos were released on the same day I would implode from the excitement.

Or explode, if ya know what I mean. But holy shit yeah that would be so awesome I'd take off work the next day to fully self indulge.

[Clonehunter]

I very much enjoyed Doom 3 when I first played it, and I still enjoy it to this day. It still stands as one of the few games I've actually beaten. Soon, it will be one of the fewer games I've beaten more than once.

[Pencil of Doom]

I like Doom 3 as much i like Doom and Doom 2, i beaten D3 more than 5 times and still play it with mods and play user made levels for it.

[Splatter]

GoatLord said:

I feel like not enough people realize how CLUMSY the combat in D3 feels. That's the biggest qualm. Combat is one of the most important things in a Doom game and for it to be as unfinished feeling as it did really brought the experience down.

Absolutely. The combat turned out damn poor. This would be forgivable if the horror aspect the game pushed was done well, but it's on the level of the haunted house that people in your neighborhood set up for Halloween: spooky voices, wacky mirrors, props on strings.