DOOM 3

I really wanted to like this title after growing up with Doom and Doom II. I didn't have the chance to play it when it was first released but when GoG had it, I thought I'd give it a go. I played it on and off for a few minutes after work for about a week, getting to Alpha Labs 3. I put it aside for a few days and then tried to get back into it only to realize I just don't care. Maybe it's just too slow paced, or maybe it's the overall feelings of dread it inspires. Either way, I can't say I recommend it. Hopefully there are some decent mods out there that bring back the original Doom feel.

Base Doom 3 is great. It's one of the most immersive games I've ever played. The premise of Doom was always cool, with a mix of Sci Fi and the supernatural. The fact that Doom 3 took that premise and added a large amount of worldbuilding to make the world feel alive was fantastic. The game had lore on everything from demons to an ancient Martian civilization to the new kinds of technology the UAC were experimenting. The atmosphere is also killer, with fantastic lighting and gorgeous sound effects. The shooting is also great. There's a large variety of weapons and enemies. Each level usually has some new thing to show, whether it's a new weapon, new demon, new scenario etc. The game is also mostly based around dodging projectiles or melee, with hitscan enemies being infrequent. This makes skillful movement even more rewarding. But why is the BFG Edition meh, though? Well a few things: 1. The lighting has been tweaked to be much brighter, which hurt the atmosphere. It's not totally ruined, but significantly less intimidating as before. 2. Too much ammo. Doom 3 vanilla cleverly hid ammo in secret areas, encouraging the player to explore. By flooding the levels with ammo, BFG Edition has rendered exploration nearly pointless, as you can't pick up any secret ammo you find anyways. 3. Lesser mod support. Doom 3 BFG Edition was built on half id Tech 4, half id Tech 5, meaning any mods made directly for Doom 3 vanilla likely won't work. There are mods for BFG Edition, including ports for the most popular mods, but it still is lacking compared to vanilla. 4. Shoulder mounted flashlight. Yes, I know some people like it more because you can see and shoot at the same time, but the original game was designed around this and felt much more tense. Plus, relying on silhouettes and flashing fireballs made for more intense fights. That's most of the reasons why BFG Edition is meh. Hopefully GOG gets the vanilla version sometime, hopefully as a free addon to BFG Edition owners.

No idea why this is so buggy and have so many performance problems but it is barely playable on my "high end for time of release" PC. And reams my work computer which is modern with 3d acceleration till I just turn it off to save it. This is the main quest/campagin, the addons are markedly worse very disappointing. I know the Steam version says you get doom 3 and bfg version which may work better. Also the BFG changes a number of things that kill any horror element not GOGs fault but hate these changes. I am livid that I could just get the garbage PS3 or XB360 version and it work right and be more playable!

My only complaint is there are no manuals to the game. I never played Doom 3 but the visuals and sounds seem stunning enough for the time. For completions sake get the manuals up here as it seems I have to look all over the net for them. Grrrr... rip n tear my hair out... oh wait.. I'm bald. Nose hairs then....

I read so much about this game, and when I got it I was so disappointed. So many of the mobs just appear behind you, or teleport in, what a major cop out in map design. I feel like DoomGuy has a broken leg in this game he moves so slow. Playing GZDoom, I had high hopes for Dhewm, but I'm going back to Doom2...