Earth, We Have a Problem

From the Beginning

4 years of development is an unusually long time for a game. However, Doom 3 is not just a game. This game represents a new era of PC gaming that only happens ever so often. When the first Doom came out for the PC back in 1991, it was only following the footsteps on Wolfenstein 3D. However, Doom took the term first person shooter and pulled it into the mainstream. Id software was making hundreds of thousands of $$$ a week when this game was released, and it was for a reason. They created a genre of gaming that put the gamer into the hotseat and made them feel like THEY were the ones in the action. Today, what comes upon us can in some ways be seen as nothing new (no joke!) Doom 3 is merely a retelling of the two originals from the early 㣾s. How does id software expect you to play Doom 3? As if the first two never happened.

Evil Corporations Rule All

The story behind the game comes into full bloom in Doom 3, unlike was ever described in the first two games. Meet the UAC, aka the Union Aerospace Corporation. This company, er, Enterprise is the end all, rule all entity on earth in the year 2040 something. They have expanded their operations to a base on Mars. The UAC controls all military, consumer, and scientific relations with the rest of the world and thus have a limitless budget and influence. On Mars, their main goal is to create a “home away from earth” where humans can live peacefully off of the resources from Mars. The UAC backstory is quite long and interesting but I wont delve into it fully.

Your role on Mars, you ask? You are a marine on a simple mission: to protect the base on Mars and ensure complete security of the operations in UAC’s Mars headquarters. Along the way, you will learn that all is not well on this base and that fellow comrades have been experiencing ungodly things and have been requesting removal from the base. You enter as a neutral, simply there to serve for the military.

Once you arrive on the base, you are given a small rundown by some UAC staff and get to do a little walking around. You are given a PDA, which controls all your inventory, emails, videos, and other info. You can gather info from other PDAs in the game, and trust me, you will encounter many with juicy info to go along. Upon entrance to the base the feeling of something large overtakes you. Unlike the first two Doom games which pitted you in an arena to die, Roman style, in Doom 3 you ARE somebody. Instead of being a mere soldier fighting his way to the end in endless halls with various weapons, Doom 3 allows you to step in the shoes and experience the story from the beginning. This is the way Doom was supposed to be played, and id got it right. Damn right.

A Little Death Doesn’t Hurt

I’ll keep it spoiler free, if I may. So something happens and the portals to hell open up. Everyone (well, almost everyone) on the base is taken over by the demonic forces of Hell and it’s your job to meet back up with your squad mates and retake the order. Little do you know, especially if you haven’t played the first two, is that you don’t truly know how bad the situation really is. Sure, you may think, that it was just some technical screw up that did it, but you can’t fix it. You can only fight it.

Let me just say that Doom 3 provides us with the most refreshing FPS since BF 1942. Sure the two genres aren’t comparable but the way these two games shocked us match quite well. As you are on your way back to command headquarters, you start to encounter the various demons and monsters that id envisioned for us. They are now about 10x scarier than they were before. Comparing characters that were once made of only 50-100 polygons to the ones with about 5000 polys in Doom 3 really does make a difference. You not only see it, but you feel it.

I can’t say much else for the rest of the experience in Doom 3 but that it must be played in order to be fully enjoyed. Watching a friend play it doesn’t cut it, either. Turn off the lights, put on the headphones, and crank up the volume. The journeys thru the corridors of the UAC base are frightening even for those who say they don’t scare easily. My first time thru was the most frightening (and most fun) among any other game I’ve played this year.

Come to Visit, Stay Forever

From the moment you take your PDA to the talks you have with the UAC staff, you notice why it took id software 4 years to create a game of this magnitude. In order to create a game with this much depth in terms of story is amazing. Ive played Half Life and countless other story based FPS games and none match that of Doom 3. True, Half Life 2 is only weeks away and this may be the best competition that Doom 3 gets this year before Stalker comes out. In order to get the whole story behind the game, you have to do your share of talking and exploring. You can visit many rooms before all hell breaks lookse, including the kitchen and bathroom and some workrooms and desks. People provide the best info but generally give you the same response and advice: the UAC is doing something and you DON’T want to stay on the base.

The PDA organization system is just astounding. As you collect new PDAs, emails are downloaded to your PDA, as well as new videos that you can watch as well as some voice recordings. It’s fun to dig into this info as you find new passwords for the various locked ammo boxes and health stations in the game. Most of the staff members’ PDAs that you find contain emails revolving around the mishaps and experiences among the staff. Spooky stuff is scaring everyone and you finally realize that whatever the UAC is trying to do is not in the staff’s best interest. You will learn a lot of juicy info slowly and I loved how id let the story evolve at your own pace. You don’t even have to know half of the story, just barreling thru the game will work. It’s your choice, and that’s what counts most.

The Engine of Deception

John Carmack, the man behind the graphics that you see on the screen, could care less about how fun a game is or what the artists do with the game. His job is to get the insides working, better known as the engine. The Doom 3 engine began back in 1999 and was revolved around the then popular GeForce 3, also the same video chip the Xbox uses today. It’s very visible today how “old” this engine is at its core when the game will let you play on a GeForce 3 and above. Sure, it won’t be pretty, but it will run. The Doom 3 engine will be powering games for the next 4-5 years so what we see in Doom 3 is only the beginning to what will happen in gaming with this engine.

Realism is key to a good engine, and this is what shaped the one behind Doom 3. John Carmack knew that in order to provide gamers with the final experience in Doom’s world (no sequel will be made, sorry!) you had to be able to taste the smoke in the air, the drool from the demons, and the blood on the floor. This was never an issue in the originals because the technology simply wasn’t there. The days when technology pushed applications and games are over. Now, it is clear that apps and games push our hardware.

Everything is so accurate in Doom 3 it is unbelievable that so many different PCs can play the game, quite well might I say. Unlike what Epic Games is doing with the new Unreal Engine, where amazing graphics are being made from boatloads of polygons for precise detail, Doom 3 provides us with the same quality from using techniques that have been around for years, but the problem was that no one knew how to grasp this technology and use it to such an extent. Doom 3 stands in its own arena in the fact that low quality looks about as good or better as High Quality in UT 2004. The tight quarters of the UAC base provided id with the ability to push in loads of detail in minute areas.

You can walk thru the game and probably not even find a recycled room or style from an earlier place. Details like cut electric wires shooting sparks to steam hoses that are cut and spewing myst, as well as fire that not only looks like the real thing but creates a haze as known in real life. Nothing was overlooked from day one, which is why the quality in terms of presentation is so sleek. Some games show off their best in a few areas and push this into trailers and screenshots, but once you get done with the game, you know that the preview was the game (kind of like most $hitty movies.) Carmack and his team of designers have proved the industry wrong. The first area is just as detailed as the last, and you can see it with every weapon you fire or enemy you encounter.

Effects on the weapons are also best of the best. Think of UT 2004’s best effects and multiply them by 5. It’s that darn good. The pistol that you are issued is great, but get onto the shotgun and plasma rifle and you will say “holy $hit.” The feel, the sound, and the graphics on each weapon don’t slack compared to the rest of the game. I personally think the Soul Cube has the best effect of all, but you’ll have to play and find out what’s behind this mystical weapon.

If it sounds like heaven, it must be heaven

Sound is one area where not much can be said. Get yourself a nice 5.1 speaker system setup because Doom 3 uses it like a baby and a bottle. Headphones work great, don’t get me wrong, but a full speaker setup is great for Doom 3. The explosions and general ambience of the halls of the UAC corp are perfectly rendered and provide surround sound systems with a great punch. I reviewed the game with headphones and had a wonderful time, and there were no shortcomings I could complain of.

One area that I can credit id with is voice overs because every worked, demon, and soldier has unique lines from different people. The voice overs are also well timed and don’t feel like they were rushed during last second of production.

Shortcomings are few and far in between

Do I have any qualms about Doom 3? Sure I do. Will they make you not buy the game? Probably not. Overall, Doom 3 is one of the most polished games that has been released this year in its genre. I see Doom 3 as a single player full experience type of game that cant be put up against the likes of UT 2004 or BF. The game provides what it set out to do, and that is retell the Doom story from the beginning and finish off the series like it should have been done.

One thing that id should have done is focus a little more on the multi player portion of the game since this is what the first two Doom games revolutionized. To see multiplayer put aside, per se, as in the amount of focus that was given to this area in Doom 3 is a bit disappointing, but I cant grieve about it towards id. They wanted to do something radical in the SP arena and they did just that. Maybe that’s why they are letting modders do the dirty work for MP endeavors.

Misc items that I have to point my finger at is the fact that id allowed nVidia to manipulate the game in order to play better on nVidia cards. This left ATI with sub-par performance on its line of cards, even the high end x800 series. Even on my test system, equipped with an x800 Pro and an AMD 64 3500, I saw some FPS dips in areas that should have remained stable. My 2GB of RAM evened this out, but for everyone else playing with mid range ATI cards and systems, it’s a shame that this type of “behind the scenes” business was done. When we first saw Doom 3 at E3 2002, the game was running on an ATI 9700 Pro and was running phenomenally. Now it seems that the tides have turned.

Buy the game? OF COURSE. The single player experience is top notch and multiplayer is fun, and will only get better as modders release 8-12-16 player mods. Head on out and pick up a copy, because id said so.

OVERALL SCORE: 9/10

… A note on Hardware …

The test system that I reviewed Doom 3 on contained an AMD 64 3500 on an Asus A8V, with an x800 Pro and 2GB of Corsair. I used a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS for the audio and my wonderful Sony DJ Headphones for the experience.

If you want to see the best results in Doom 3, I can only recommend the best video card you can afford along with an upper mid-range processor. Doom 3 is very memory and video card intensive, as well as a processor killer. AMD 64 systems have been proven to be the better choice for this game, as well as many others. For the audio I recommend you use at least a 5.1 speaker setup or the best pair of heaphones you have. A CRT or 16/12ms LCD will work awesome with the game. Also, make sure you disable any AA or AF you have turned on through your video card and use the in game settings for filtering instead. Use a resolution of at last 800x600 with Medium Quality. I ran my tests on 1280x1024 with Ultra Quality (it CAN be done so don’t listen to those who say you need a 512MB video card. HAHA!)

Don’t overspend on Doom 3 because HL2 is on the way in just about a month and it has much lower system requirements. I will be reviewing it as soon as I get my greasy hands on it. In the meantime, have fun with Doom 3.