When I saw this on GOG, and read the description, I thought "oh, cool, a DOOM 3 mod with a greater focus on '90s action! That sounds great!" I downloaded it, I started up the prologue, aaaaand... What's going on? Why am I playing a walking simulator all of a sudden? Who's this girl? Why is my name "..."? Where the hell do I even go? While the promotional material and user reviews hyped me up, it's always the first impression that sticks. And my first impression of this mod upon playing it is "dying man simulator", not "DOOM 3 mod with heavy '90s influence". This is better than the base DOOM 3, according to the "helpful" reviews on here. Well, the base DOOM 3 didn't waste well over an hour trying to push me into caring about its story; the introductory segment was short, and kicked into action pretty quickly. And I can fire up the base DOOM 3 whenever I feel like a bit of DOOM 3ing. Phobos having these overly long setpieces makes it hard to just jump into, which is not very "'90s FPS" of it. Oh, and Half-Life is one of your inspirations, right? Except Half-Life didn't waste my time making me care about Gordon Freeman's childhood friend's mother suffering from a neural disease. It just told me - Gordon Freeman, 27 y/o, MIT graduate, late for work, go to the Test Chamber. And *its* introductory segment didn't overstay its welcome, either. DOOM 3: Phobos just makes me feel so bored I don't even want to get to the action bits. It feels like cutscenes you can't skip. DOOM 3 had proper cutscenes you could skip, and Half-Life had in-engine conversations that felt like they were just part of the gameplay. Phobos just does the DOOM (2016) approach of locking you into a room while Samuel Hayden tells you that destroying Argent Energy is a bad idea. Overall, based solely on the first hour of play, I don't really like this mod, and it bored me pretty quickly. If you could skip the cutscenes and jump straight into the action, maybe I would enjoy it a lot more.
