Together the team that makes up Just Adventure + is an unstoppable
death machine. We’ve destroyed dragons, battled werewolves and gone
head-to-head with all manner of evil, despicable nasty things…
Superman hasn’t got anything on us. But unlike most other superheroes
we don’t use brute strength or special powers – we’ve got the mighty
power of THE FINGER. Yes, with the finger we are gods, saving the
world again and again with a few swift clicks of a button! Dracula?
Pah! We scoff at your infinite power and smite you with our incredible
logic-based
puzzling skills!

The only problem, as I’m
sure it is with most of you, give us a gun and a couple of extra
control keys and we’re done for – a
whimpering mass of jello. Which brings me neatly into JA+’s review
of Doom 3. Yes – the game that started it all, or at least made teenagers
lose interest in our beloved adventure genre in favor of straight-forward
gunplay and all manner of advanced weaponry. Doom was a pretty basic
game, but there’s no denying its impact. 3D action gaming had been
done before, some might argue better, but Doom brought it all to
a head. The story, if you could call it that, pitted one marine on
Mars against the entire legions of Hell.

Which, as it happens, pretty much sums up the plot of the third
game in the series.

Now, this is going to
be a little tricky. An adventure-centric review of Doom
3? CAN
IT BE DONE?! Well, I’m going to attempt it – we
at Just Adventure are, after all, known for deviating from the standard
– and I’ll begin by stating that I actually really enjoyed it.

“BUT WHY?!” I
hear you all scream as if possessed. Surely I should be slagging
it off for being so damn basic? Because basic
is really what it is, as Doom 3 is possibly the least original shooter
released this year. The enemy AI is standard but effective, the guns
are big and beefy and it’s basically a case of running around and
pulling the trigger. The enemy spawn left, right, center, above,
below – always keeping you on your toes and, somewhat annoyingly,
always after you’ve picked up a much-needed item…

“AHA!” You cry. “A
health pack! Well, no-one’s here so…”

*Sound of Hell Spawn arriving behind you and slashing you to ribbons*

…pretty much sums it up. Some gamers will find it extremely annoying.
Others will be gripped to the screen. I was pretty much halfway between
the two, stalking the corridors in bursts of an hour or two, which
I found broke up what could possibly get quite tedious.

More extraordinary, is that despite the nearly-inadequate gameplay,
I was gripped. Doom 3 drips atmosphere from every oozing pore. The
enemies are incredibly designed and animated to a tee and initially
the backgrounds are really quite amazing. The amount of detail astounds
– the first time I went to a monitor to have my cursor change into
a pointer onscreen made me gasp. Hey, that sounds pathetic, but its
really quite something when you remain in the same view and interact
with a monitor in 3D without a cutaway.

The acting, voiceovers and character models are very detailed and
the initial half-hour truly gives you the feeling that Mars City,
your starting point, is very much alive. Droids scuttle around beneath
your feet, spacecraft hover in the air and animated monitors bombard
you with information. You feel as though you’ve stepped through your
monitor into a science fiction movie.

Then the Hellspawn hits and you’re thrown into the core of the game
with some jaw-dropping visual effects and a swift kick up the jacksie
by a zombie….

As you go along, the environment hardly changes for the first half
of the game beyond grimy industrial tech corridors. That sounds pretty
boring and it could be… but luckily it’s broken up by panicky moments
outside in Mars’ atmosphere, some clever yet disturbing in-game cut-scenes
and some absolutely incredible machinery. Doom 3 proves how scenery
can be brought to life and if anything invites ideas as to what kind
of interactive adventure it’s engine – developed by id software –
could create. The levels set in Hell are even more amazing – scenery
wraps around itself, walls collapse and reform, seas of fire swirl
with heat haze and mysterious shapes curl around each other into
the sky. I just thought – sod the gameplay, this is what its all
about. Showing off… and really, that’s pretty much what kept me
going.

What
also helped were the PDA messages, a system pretty much directly
ripped-off from the superior System Shock 2.
The world of the Mars base is brought to life through mundane emails,
PDA-based puzzles (which I found surprising in a Doom game, but more
on that later), company-created commercial videos and very-well handled
voice diaries. The one that stuck in the mind the most was coming
across a message from a soldier trapped in Hell. It made me feel
really quite lonely, and it’s effect was such I had to stop playing
for fear of freaking out.

Yet despite that one moment, the main problem with Doom
3 is its
unwillingness to sustain tension. Even though the atmosphere is very
well created, with pulsating fleshy sores poking into hi-tech rooms
filled with macabre imagery, the constant bombardment of enemies
breaks up what could be a really scary game. Compared to the Silent
Hills, or better yet System Shock 2, it just doesn’t really dig
in. A couple of misplaced in-jokes also serve to break up the immersion.

I got the feeling that
Doom 3, strangely, would work better as an adventure broken up
by action rather than an all-out action game.
Its cinematic style would suit a more sedate horror title, the amount
of detail put into the (very) basic story being nearly as much as
your average adventure. The fact that your main character has less
charisma than Michael Winner and never speaks doesn’t help either
– it almost comes off as an “action Myst“.

Which got me thinking… Ubisoft, license this engine for the next
Myst title after Myst IV: Revelations and I’m sold. The interaction of the machines and monitors, through
the odd puzzle which breaks up the combat (don’t get excited, they’re
very basic), reminded me of the eponymous series and I found myself
lamenting the lack of truly serious noggin-scratchers. Much as adventure
titles with actions sequences are often seriously misplaced, Doom
3‘s cerebral efforts felt very half-hearted and only served to point
out its gameplay inadequacies.

Yet despite my problems with its repetitive nature and basic gunplay,
I found Doom 3 had a lot to offer for an adventure player willing
to dip their toes into an FPS – but only through the atmosphere and
detail. If you can put up with endless enemies spawning in flames
behind you and just take your time through the quiet bits absorbing
it all, then it is a really impressive title. It showcases what can
be done in 3D through its in-game cinematics of creatures busting,
crawling and clambering around, crazy industrial machinery and how
the promise of interaction and a lot of backstory can keep you going.

If you can handle graphic
imagery and action and want to see what can be done when 3D is
utilized correctly, with its clever graphical
tricks and impressive direction, then Doom 3 is
highly recommended. If you can’t, then don’t bother. It should also
be noted its minimum
specs are really quite low for what it is and even on its most basic
settings the games atmosphere oozes through.

Should you think you can manage it then I’m sure you’ll be pleasantly
surprised. Just don’t expect much from the gameplay, savor the detail
– and Doom 3 will take you on a nightmarish journey to Hell and back.

Just don’t forget the marshmallows.

Final Grade: B-

System Requirements: