August seems like a long way away while the fall begins to prepare for winter. I purchased Doom 3 on day 1, installed in day 1, played it thru to its end and finished about a month ago but have felt like writing a quick review for various reasons. Is it even worth writing about a game that is 3 months old and in less than 7 days will be eclipsed by the sequel to the game that is the sole reason I became a die hard PC gamer? Answer is probably no but I have this false belief that someone will read this and value my thoughts. That said I will jump into the review in full force.
Graphics/Sound - The bad? Dark, dark dark and the sounds occasionally are piss your pants creepy. The good? As a 1000 before me have mentioned these are simply too good of graphics to be believed and the sound is piss your pants creepy at times. A great immersion exists while you play thru a level because the atmosphere is dialed in so acutely. The grpahics look great even at 640X480 with virtually no bells or whistles, better at this quality than most games I have played at 1024X768 and bells and whistles maxed out. The sound is while not perfect damn close, creature sounds ambient sounds even the overplayed voices all work each and every moment during the game. I am compelled to do something I have never done before. Overall 30/25
Gameplay - Ok the game sucks you in thru visual and audio but what is the gameplay like? During the first 6-8 hours of what becomes a pretty long FPS, the gameplay is superb. It is very scary, very intense very everything and then something funny happens.... you realize that almost everytime you jump it is for the same reason something jumps out at you. I like horror movies but the cheap scares of Nightmare on Elm Street bore me after the second film, same works here after the first 2 acts the scares still scare but they are boring and lack conviction of the earlier scares. Ok so the horror portion of the game fails for the final 50%? So what a FPS is about the action right? The action unfortunately has the same feel, it gets stale. No new creatures for basically the final half of the game, no new scares no interesting set pieces no anything other than an endless supply of hellspawn that run directly at you. The most difficult enemy in the game is presented during the first half but as demons become more frequent the mutated marines dissappear. Don't get me wrong I thought the game held plenty of challenge but it was the same challenge for the back half and I was expecting more. Overall 22/35
Bang for $ - The single player game was long in my opinion, granted it took me 9 weeks but unlike better games I routinely left this game and did other things because of the 'stale' factor. I figure the SP was 18-20 hours maybe a few more on the most difficult setting prior to nightmare, a setting available after you finish it. I never even tried MP because it was initially limited to 4 or 8 people and frankly it is my opinion that id was very arrogant to think that the community would fix this problem for them. a MP game like this is meant to be 16 or 32 players, this isn't Splinter Cell, this isn't a Co-op game like Ghost Recon it is a shooter plain and simple... 4 player shooters are... console shooters. I should not complain too much because I don't play MP a great deal. Overall 18/20.
Personal View - Honestly, if you take away the creeps, better and more intense than Undying, and the graphics, a new standard in graphics, what you have is Soldier of Fortune II. Granted how intelligent should I expect hellspawn to be? Less intelligent than humans of course but a little higher than what Doom 3 gave me. I actually screamed a few times early and even more than once was visably shaken after an encounter but that wore off and I was left to watch the pretty pictures and the mostly mindless creatures shamble their way towards their inevitable death. Overall 13/20
Final Overall 83/100
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