Doom 3

Close those blinds, kill the lights, lock the doors, and crank up that subwoofer, ‘cause Doom 3 is in town.

What is it about “fear” that makes games fun? The likes of Resident Evil or System Shock, two popular franchises that revolve solely around scaring the crap out of the player in unique and interesting ways are just a couple of examples of this curious little craze in action, but thinking hard about it, the success of these games is something I’ve never directly understood. After all, isn’t being afraid a kind of bad thing? An emotional state that makes you want to run away and hide under something until the danger passes, or twitch and shoot blindly at every dark corner you encounter? What possible logic would a game that gives you an urge to run away from it have for being developed? The truth of the matter is, I don’t know, and I also don’t really care – trying to over-analyze these curious phenomena tends to take all the fun out of it, and “fun” is just what Doom 3 is all about, fear factor and all. Legendary developer id software has, unfortunately, kind of developed a reputation over the years for developing incredibly fancy tech demos that sell their game engines for billions of dollars, rather than just really, really great games (that’s not to say that the days of Quake and Quake 2 weren’t awesome – the games themselves just weren’t as good as they could have been with a bit more focus on gameplay over pure fancy technology). With each new game, id Software has bumped the tech curve up another notch, commonly forcing gamers to upgrade in droves, but the games themselves sometimes felt a little...lacking, leaving the community to exploit the vast modding potential their game engines offered to fill in the gaps. Is Doom 3 an exception to this case? Is the game as much an enticing experience in its own right as it is a demonstration of John Carmack’s Jesus-like game design capabilities? This week, I took a shaky and slightly hesitant step into hell to find out.

One big important thing to remember about Doom 3 is that it has absolutely nothing to do with the previous titles in the series. While there are obvious carry-overs in design and ideas for the old monsters and weapons, as far as the “official” story goes, the original Doom and Doom 2 never actually happened (not like there was much of a story to them in the first place). Doom 3 takes a totally fresh start in terms of storyline, where, deep in the future (surprise, surprise), a vast company called the “Union Aerospace Corporation” has become king. Advancements in technology offer humanity transport all over the cosmos, with Mars being the current focal-point of the company’s colonization, terraforming, and research efforts. The player takes the role of Generic UAC Marine #53, having just been shipped into Mars from Earth to help reinforce the local security forces due to some unexplained disappearances and bouts of insanity that have been plaguing the staff on facility. Workers, scientists, and even the local security guards have been experiencing strange phenomena, hearing strange voices from nowhere, and even outright going crazy, lashing out with the urge to slay indiscriminately. On top of that, one of the facility’s lead researchers (Dr. Betruger) has also suddenly gone a little stir-happy, madly diverting all of the Mars installation’s resources towards his experiments in teleportation technology, causing power failures and malfunctions all over the base. Naturally it’s only a matter of time before something really, really bad happens and all hell breaks loose – literally.

But enough driving obvious puns into the ground. The first thirty minutes of Doom 3 had me stepping into an intro that almost reminded me of Half-Life in a few aspects, if only for the fact that you get to spend a decent amount of time getting acquainted with the game’s big characters, storyline, and other universal aspects by wandering around aimlessly before you’re thrust into some manner of big-name catastrophe. Stepping off the just-arrived dropship, the player is briefly introduced to an external visual of the battle-hardened body he’ll be possessing for the next dozen hours before being given direct control. To avoid pissing off the vocal majority of the Doom community, I’ll dance away from offering any major spoilers regarding the intro segment beyond that, but it’s already easy to see how much id Software has shifted focus from the blatant run-and-gun gameplay their last major singleplayer endeavor (Quake 2) offered into something far more sophisticated and immersive. The fact alone that there are actual non-combat NPCs you can chat up and annoy really adds quite a lot to the experience, but the real meat of the game’s coolness comes from the environment itself.

One of the most standout things that gripped me immediately was how detailed everything was. Truly we have evolved from the days of simple, square rooms populated only with the occasional table or cleverly-placed wall decal. The world geometry in Doom 3 is very cleverly detailed, with pipes hanging overhead in logical places, archways, gratings, and windows all helping to flesh out the environment, and pleasing, curved objects adding an extra layer of realism. A lot of work went into providing the feeling of a slightly run-down installation that isn’t quite performing up to its operational specs, and wandering through the base offered me sights of malfunctioning panels, exposed wires, and access panels with their covers removed, with the occasional stream of sparks or smoke providing a nice additional touch. Another thing that struck me was how dark everything felt around the base, but I think this was explained away adequately by the unusual number of malfunctions in the base equipment just prior to your arrival. The sheer amount of darkness in the game and level design is something that some will find annoying, and others consider an excellent addition to the game’s atmosphere, and I’m going to have to side with the latter crowd. Those of you afraid of the dark need not worry however, as a neato flashlight (with an infinite battery charge, for a change) is provided to assist in navigation – with the exception that you have to switch away from your current weapon in order to bring it up, of course. Guess they don’t have duct tape in the future.

But one element of the game world that impressed me the most were the computer panels – the interactive objects used to open doors, get information, and otherwise do things to the game environment in cool and interesting ways. The panels used to open doors (or indicate that they are locked until you find the proper way to open them) are no longer rendered with crappy two-state animations, but instead are beautifully animated in an almost movie-like quality, allowing for some really neat sci-fi interface transitions in the game. This is thanks to an all-new system in the Doom 3 engine that handles UI elements in a very advanced manner, allowing for a wide range of fully-animated things to be shown on wall panels, television screens, or even (I suspect) the ammo counters on your own weapons. The game takes advantage of this by showing news reels and promotional, informative movies relating to the game universe on computer displays as you progress through the game (I loved the one about the BFG), giving you an excuse to hang up your shotgun for a couple of moments and just take in the detail, and there’s even a mini-game you can play (“Super Turbo Turkey Puncher 3”) just by walking up to the arcade machine and clicking around. Interacting is incredibly simple; there isn’t even a use button, surprisingly. Just walk up to an interactive panel and your weapon will lower with a mouse cursor appearing on the screen, allowing you to adjust options and fiddle with stuff just by aiming at the relevant function and left-clicking. This kind of stuff is not only really cool, but adds a major degree to the immersion factor, and I really hope future games pick it up as an example. One small closing complaint about the environment: a lot of specific room detail objects and textures are re-used in a plentiful manner throughout Doom 3, which might have been somewhat tiresome if it weren’t for the sheer amount of darkness the base is shrouded in. Still, a little more variety might’ve been nice, though I can understand how this could be argued in favor of realism. Also, I spotted a lot of blatant spelling errors throughout the game (‘scandle”, “turrent”, etc), making me think someone had their head stuck into coding the game for just a little bit too long.

Okay, so you’ve finished marching through the lengthy intro sequence, the gate to hell has been opened, and demons are pouring forth in waves to feast on the souls of the living (if you consider that a spoiler, you should probably pay a little more attention to what the game is all about). What’s a Marine to do but curl up in a small corner weeping hysterically until some crazed zombie ambles up to transform him into a fine paste through repeated whackings with a hefty wrench? Doom 3 does a great job at putting out a strong “you are alone” feeling while wandering through darkened corridors getting jumped by demons at every turn, but to help add a pinch of believability to the game, id Software has chose to include a handy-dandy PDA for the player to use. Simply hitting the tab key at any time will cause your battle-hardened soldier to yank out his Personal Data Assistant (the game doesn’t pause during this time, so execute a casual shoulder-check for errant demons before getting distracted with this thing), filled with useful things such as an indicator of your current location and security status, your most current important objectives, and a list of received emails and video logs. But that’s not all – throughout the game, you’ll retrieve the PDAs of other people on the base (commonly deceased), the contents of which you can download to your own PDA, which both upgrades your security clearance (sometimes, depending on the pad) and allows you to peruse any emails and voice logs stored. Given the content of some of these messages (anything from deadly-serious comments on the problems occurring at the base, to random spam, to even people wondering why the hell a bunch of chainsaws were sent up in the latest shipment to Mars rather than jackhammers), I found myself grateful that this whole system was included, if only to give me something to listen to other than the mysterious voices that kept chasing me down the hallway, and was another fine element to the elaborate recipe id Software used to make Doom 3 a soul-shaking experience. Throughout the game, there are also some doors and lockers that need a key combination to open, which requires you to hunt down the right PDA and browse through the logs until the right combo comes up. Two lockers in the game even require you to visit an online website to get the code – though I scribbled it down locally for later use, just in case the page ever went down.

And fear is definitely the main focus of this game. The developers have taken every step to try and make the game force you to jump at erratic intervals, shoot randomly at shadows, and maintain a generally unsettled frame of mind throughout the entire game. To this end, the monsters and environments have been set up to try and surprise you wherever possible. Coming into a room, the door might suddenly slam shut and lock behind you, with the few active lights going out to plunge you in total darkness, leaving only the faint thudding of something evil slowly making its way to you. The monsters are almost totally different from their counterparts in the original Doom as well – Imps are no longer near-stationary sprites that occasionally fling fireballs at you, but instead have the ability to move insanely fast, leaping and crawling down a corridor to get in your face so they may bite upon it viciously (don’t worry, they can also still fling fireballs as a counter to your feeble attempts to keep them at a distance). The basic armed grunts have also seen an overhaul, and not only do they carry pistols, shotguns, and machineguns, but use actual tactics and cover to try and avoid your counter-fire – almost a little too intelligently for the average servants of the undead, but I’m not complaining. Unfortunately, it’s all too soon before the scare tactics start to get predictable. See the fancy plasma rifle sitting in the corner of that room? Woops, better be careful there Jimmy – chances are, a swarm of icky spiders (a new type of monster to the series that does an excellent job of chewing into your kneecaps) will come crawling out of the wall the second you touch it! Find a large, particularly well-lit room? Warm up that chaingun before you step in with the almost certain feeling that the lights will go out and a bunch of imps will suddenly teleport in to ruin your day. You would think the predictable ambush patterns would get tiresome after awhile, but, if anything, they actually enhanced my experience, as I started to sweat and get reflexively twitchy every time I approached a darkened, ominous corridor, knowing something would be coming, but being unsure as to exactly what, and where from. Things were even worse if NOTHING ended up happening, leaving me to wonder what kind of horrible surprise was waiting for me ahead.

But when it comes to combat, Doom 3 definitely does not come up lacking. All of the old favorite guns are back in action again (with the exception of the super-shotty…*sniff*), with everything from the dinky fall-back pistol to the flashy plasma rifle making an appearance – and, of course, the precious BFG. Of course, the weapons have seen quite an overhaul since their spritey old days (just like the enemies), and are now actually clip-based – even the venerable minigun needs a brief pause to reload after sixty bullets have been spat out of its rotary barrels of doom. There’s also a new assault rifle available that is great for ranged combat and has a really cool onboard ammo counter (in fact, as hinted at earlier, most of the weapons do), but loses effectiveness against enemies that like to get up close – which is where you let loose a blood-curling scream and bang one of the new hand grenades into the offending enemy’s face with your teeth. The shotgun is just your basic boomstick for shoving into someone’s stomach and discharging repeatedly in a sadistic and gleeful manner, but one cool quirk is that your grisly space marine has mastered the art of shoving in not one, but two shells at a time while reloading, ensuring a minimal amount of downtime in between those extra-special “blam blam blam” moments. And of course the BFG handles in its usual effective room-clearing manner, with a new feature where you can hold the fire button down to get a bigger blast – just be careful not to overcharge it. However, my two favorite toys in the game aren’t anything I just mentioned, but instead are a little more underrated. Number one, the chainsaw, offers bone-slicing action in such horrifyingly vicious detail that I’m almost positive the sick bastards at id Software pulled a few homeless people off the street and used them as test subjects just to ensure they got the right mix of “meat” and “crunch”, and the second being not a weapon, but a powerup – specifically, the famed “berserk” powerup. In the original games, this turned your screen red and caused your fist attacks to do an insane amount of damage for a limited amount of time, while in Doom 3 the fists still allow you to effectively punch even the strongest of enemies into kibbles, but the visual effect has changed to transform your view into something resembling that of an insane psychopath filled to brim on steroids and an assortment of mind-bending drugs. Adding to the “I’m an insane lunatic who’s going to tear your eyeballs out and shove them down your throat” sensation is the unholy, crazed screaming sound that plays non-stop while the effect is active, almost urging the player to run around smashing stuff until the noise stops. My first experience with the berserk powerup (and don’t expect many – I only encountered two through the whole game) left me in some kind of amazed stupor over what had happened. Suffice to say, Doom 3’s arsenal will not disappoint.

I really loved the sheer level of ambience that Doom 3 presented, and the effort that had obviously gone into the game’s graphics engine (after all, game engines are practically what id Software is all about). With the unique interface elements and integrated physics system, there are a lot of really cool things the game showed off, such as a crane mini-game where the player is tasked with using a fully-operational magnetic crane to try and clear a room of toxic containers before the door will allow entry (pick up some of the bodies in the room for extra fun). But is Doom 3 worth all the hype? With all the advanced technology, the cool nostalgic weapons and monsters, and an actual storyline, did everything live up to what was promised and expected? After thinking hard about my trek through the game, I have to ultimately answer “no”. Again, the methods used for ambushing the player got incredibly repetitive after only a little ways into the game, and I had to admit some level of outright annoyance after seeing an attractive item that I knew would result in me having to slay dozens of additional monsters once I picked it up (even though this made the game a lot more intense overall as I mentioned earlier). The whole PDA and character interaction system added a nice level of background to the game, but once “the catastrophe” occurs, you find yourself mostly alone, with only some very scant encounters with other humans, and there are never any segments that have you fighting alongside your fellow marines (though a couple of areas early on grant you access to a cool little security bot that guides you through corridors and helps fight off zombies and imps). Okay, granted, perhaps a feeling of isolation and desperation for human contact is what the “Doom 3 experience” is all about, and this makes the rare interactions with non-hostile NPCs all the more noteworthy, but I thought it would’ve been really cool to actually have a chance at saving one or two trigger-happy marines if I worked hard enough, getting them to help watch my back in exchange for the help I had provided. But, then again, this isn’t Half-Life 2, nor is it meant to try to be, and these kinds of complaints are mostly those of personal opinion, so let’s get back on track with more important things, like stroking John Carmack’s head with talk of how Doom 3’s amazing game engine actually handles in the field.

The system I subjected to Doom 3’s GPU-torturing engine demands was my main gaming rig, an XP2500+ processor with 512MB of RAM and a Radeon 9600 Pro. Right off the bat, I can easily say that Doom 3 ran acceptably under this system, but I had to spend a couple of moments jumping between 800x600 and 1024x768 resolutions before I finally settled on what I considered a nice balance between “runs somewhat smooth, but looked like toasted ass” and “runs a bit choppy, but does not look like toasted ass” (a small third party tweak for ATI cards I downloaded helped framerates a bit too – check common sources, like PlanetDoom for more info). Doom 3 has some very intense hardware demands, as is par for the course of id’s average new title. With that in mind, the game offers a surprisingly limited number of customizable settings, with only four graphical pre-sets and a few advanced options to fiddle with. “Low”, “Medium”, “High”, and “Ultra High” are the available options, all of which offer different levels of detail for the textures, game environment, and other important stuff. The game auto-detects the best graphical settings and resolution based on your system configuration when you first start it up, but the settings can easily be stretched a little by either a few mouse clicks, or educating oneself on the thousands of tweakable console commands the id Software games are famous for having. As for how the game actually looks in action, my initial perspective was one of amazement. Like Deus Ex: Invisible War and Thief 3 (only in terms of functionality, not the engine being a buggy piece of unstable crap), Doom 3 has full support for dynamic shadows, and puts this to beautiful use throughout the entire game. It honestly took me a few moments for me to realize that the waves of blackness moving throughout the Mars base as I stepped off the transport at the docking area wasn’t any kind of graphical error, but the result of the transport I had just left hovering above blocking out the lights as it prepared to leave. And now, having experienced all that Doom 3 has to offer, I have definitely learned that dynamic shadows and lights are far from a bad thing. Throwing grenades around and watching loose light fixtures up above swing around wildly after the explosion, with the lighting in the room reacting appropriately is a really cool effect. One time, I even yanked my pistol out and fired it at a light for the hell of it, with my mental reaction first being “oh, cool, I blew the light out!”, then “wait… why the HELL did I just do that?” once I realized I had effectively plunged myself into more fearsome darkness. Granted, games like Splinter Cell and the aforementioned DX:IW / Thief 3 have done the shootable lights and dynamic lighting / shadows charade before, but Doom 3 did it just so well that I felt it deserved some mention. You really get a feel for how great the tech works when you see the shadow of some huge, hideous monster marching around a poorly-lit hallway up ahead, getting ready to come around the corner and surprise you. Side note: your budding marine doesn’t actually cast his own shadow, but a casual console tweak (g_showPlayerShadow 1) fixes this nicely for the perfectionist within.