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Dom Robinson reviews
Activision 
- Price: £39.99
- Players: 1-online
- System requirements:
- Windows 2000/XP
- Pentium 4/AMD Athlon 1.5Ghz
- 384Mb RAM
- Hard disk space: 2.6Gb
- 64Mb 3D hardware accelerator video card
- DirectX 9.0b (included)
It’s fair to say that Doom 3has been one of the major releases that deserves the tag “long-awaited” since it was originallyintended to hit the shelves approximately a year ago, and definitely in time for Xmas,but while its other major rival, Half Life 2, gave the lame excuse that half the codehad been nicked (yes, of course!), this one kept quiet about all that and just got on withbeing late.
So, what’s the backstory to Doom 3, then? There isn’t one. This isn’t to say thatthat’s a problem, since as long as you have a well-written and structually-sound game toplay with the all-important ‘Wow!’ factor, you’re in no danger of getting bored. Sadly,Doom 3 is not that game.
All you seem to do is wander from room to room, seek out the baddies unless they do thisfirst, shoot away in a bid to be the one NOT to die, pick up their ammo and weapons andmove on. Often you’ll come across locked doors that can only be opened by some of theother employees on-site, but since they’re now part of the undead you’ll have to killthem first.
Once done, steal their PDA and download the information onto yours (i.e. just walk overit to pick it up, so no expertise required), after killing their newly-diseased owners,and get out. In other words, it’s like picking up the key to unlock the door.
Shooting other humans is nothing to worry about. The game tells you not to, but why? Itmakes no odds and one shot kills them, another turns them to a skeleton and they fade away.
The PC games I’ve played in the past two years I could count on one hand, namelyUnreal 2: The Awakening,Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness,Tron 2.0and now Doom 3.
Most of these end up on a console like the Xbox, and I’ve come to generally prefer this but figured I’dgive the PC a try as the duffer that wasThief: Deadly Shadowsdid its best to make me lose faith in that thought! Also, I gave this a chance due toDoom‘s original PC roots.
The reason I prefer a console as I don’t like the PC going wrong due to games going awry, and I can’t writea game review while the PC is otherwise engaged. Still, with a P4 2.66Ghz PC using WinXP and512Mb RAM, I got good results with the GeForce4 MX440 graphics card when playingTron 2.0last year.
The sound FX are bog-standard, although I wasn’t listening in Dolby Digital 5.1, just plain surroundsound so maybe that didn’t help, although earlier PC games have excelled in that capacity.
Doom 3 has nice lighting, but overall is disappointing, particularly due to its very stodgy framerate.It played ‘sticky’ on a resolution of 800×600 and ‘high quality’, but was a tad better on themedium alternative. Apparently, the ‘Ultimate’ setting is for cards that haven’t been invented yet(!)How odd. Also, this game started making my PC begin trying to cool itself down. Why? You look throughmostly dark areas, use your flashlight to see the baddies, put your light away to get out your gunand then you can’t see him!! Then he gets too close and takes a swipe. Ow!
None of this makes for fun – it just annoys!
EvenThief: Deadly Shadowsseemed intelligent compared to this, despite the enemies’ dumb AI. Doom 3 is way too linear.Back in 1993-95 we had different tastes, but I don’t think you can get on with excuses likethat now. It may well have lots of deadly creatures, but blasting away zombies just isn’tmassively entertaining these days like it used to be ten years ago.
Of course, no-one’s saying the wordDaikatanaby a long chalk, but while Doom was the original PC first-person-shooter, theyreally needed a way of updating it to keep it fresh, while games have stolen itsthunder such as the coolness of Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II andthose that incorporate stealth elements likeHitman: Contractsand the best of the ‘Thief’ series,Thief II: The Metal Age.
Despite the faults that games likeGTA on XboxandDriv3rhave, you can’t beat their realism for simply interacting with real people, and some of theabove-named examples have the right combination of arcadeness with stealth.
That said, I’d like to give Doom 3 a blast on the Xbox to see how it translatesto console where you don’t have to worry about graphics cards and settings and PCs going screwy,not that mine is, but I just get nervy about that sort of thing sometimes.
When you do run out of the limited amount of ammo, and I didn’t want to resort to using a cheatto get unlimited amounts, the stupid amongst you can even pick a fist fight amongst the enemy.This is often necessary, but while stumbling about in pitch blackness, you just know you’regoing to get capped before you find a health point to draw from, in similar fashion to theoriginal Half Life.
Let’s face it. Doom was of its time. Quake I & II advanced it nicely with itslush textures (I didn’t welcome Quake III for throwing away the single-player element),but surely those can be recreated without being so damn CPU-hungry? Just what the hell is goingon that requires it to be like that? And why can’t they make a lower-res version for those ofus with a decent machine that is too lowly for this game, despite surpassing the requirements?
There is a multiplayer option, but this kind of game doesn’t do it for me in that respect,simply because I end up getting shot to pieces too quickly. I prefer online games that I canat least have a fighting chance at, such as Xbox Live versions ofMidtown Madness 3,Moto GP2andProject Gotham Racing 2.
I’ll wait for Half Life 2 and see if that fares better, although frankly I can’t see how itcould be worse.
SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC
PLAYABILITY
ENJOYMENT
OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.