Posted on: July 31, 2024
jammonstrald
Games: 152 Reviews: 41
Underrated and under-appreciated
I really like Doom 3; it's my favorite Doom game by a large margin. It is much more of a survival horror than its action-focused brethren. I thought taking this direction with the franchise really served its setting and style extremely well. It was legitimately terrifying for me when originally playing it, and it is one of very few things I still have nightmares about from time to time. It lives in my head all these years later. The atmosphere is moody and morbid; I love how dark the game is. And I love how it is more of an understated creeping horror kind of game punctuated with the action. The weapons are all very different and fun to use, and they each have their own strengths and drawbacks, so there is an extra layer of gameplay in switching between weapons that I feel a lot of games lack. It has what might be one of the best designed interfaces/control schemes of any game, and yes: I even like the flashlight decision of the original. So why only four stars instead of five? Well, it's realllllly close to five stars for me, but the game does rely on monster-closets a LOT, and that gets a bit old as the game progresses. It's also entirely linear and has a functional but not memorable story. The game doesn't do much beyond shooting demons in a hallway, and even though it does that thing really well, it is kind of one-note. That said I would still consider it one of the best pure shooters I've played. If you have never tried it, or have only played the BFG version, I highly recommend the original.
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