Waking up on Mars with no memory and a wound you can’t explain, you begin a desperate search for answers - about yourself, your past, and the catastrophe looming over two worlds.
You soon meet Samantha Miles, an agent of a sketchy world-wide conglomerate, who claims to know you. As she helps yo...
Waking up on Mars with no memory and a wound you can’t explain, you begin a desperate search for answers - about yourself, your past, and the catastrophe looming over two worlds.
You soon meet Samantha Miles, an agent of a sketchy world-wide conglomerate, who claims to know you. As she helps you with your identity, you aid her in the quest to find a long lost friend and missing agent. When the original events of Doom 3 unfold, the two of you must scramble for safety while still tracking down the missing agent and your identity.
Haunted by fragmented memories and guided by the familiar voice of a girl named Lee, you’ll unearth bittersweet flashbacks, and fight for survival as a mysterious and deadly invasion spreads from the shadows of Mars.
Doom 3: Phobos is a free mod for Doom 3, available to anyone who owns the base game and DOOM 3: Resurrection of Evil Expansion. It is developed non-commercially by Team Future.
Explore a new set of maps, enemies and story for the beloved old Doom 3 game.
The game is divided into 4 episodes of varying length.
From bug fixes, restored cut scenes, quests and characters to completely freshly-made new content, Mods are an essential part of the video game preservation. We teamed-up with these community-driven projects creators to offer you this list of handpicked Mods. Combining our strengths, these are now accessible right away, already installed within the base game for the smoothest experience.
The Mod you’re about to enjoy is the work of passionate fans who wanted to share their love in an even more meaningful manner. While every effort has been made to ensure a high-quality, stable experience, the original developers or publishers aren’t responsible for any issues that may occur from using this content.
After all the hype, I was expecting another Black Mesa. I've never played Doom 3 before, but I'm a veteran. To this day, I love and play old FPS games and new boomer shooters.
This game has terrible combat, where when I shoot, I can't even see the enemy I'm shooting at or where I'm shooting. The game has a strange... perspective? Things and characters don't seem to fit into the locations? Everything just feels terribly console-like.
Everything is monotonous, brown, and sterile. System Shock 2 takes place on a ship and still has unmatched level design. Why? Even the catacombs of ships and stations in space can be made interesting. I feel like I'm playing something from the Xbox.
It opens in walking sim territory, where you explore aimlessly, activating furniture to hear memories, and later on devolves again into it, which is not at all in keeping with its gamesake. That's entirely the case for a pointless prologue and an underwhelming first chapter that's still somewhat interesting, in a Blue-Shifty kind of way. It's only on account of the second and third chapters, which are very well done, that I recommend downloading this one. And that's all there is, so far.
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.
Let's just assume Phobos starts with a 9/10,
because on paper it's basically everything you could want from a Doom 3 overhaul — and a few things
you probably don't.
• better story than you're probably asking for (although arguably too much of it)
• great level design
• great art direction and attention to detail
• above average sound work.
• weapons feel punchy and distinct making the main point of the game feel good
So what's the problem?
The problem is, for some reason, the game only works on what is essentially the first ever iteration of idTech 4, from 2004.
And that comes with a number of issues, but cheifly among them... you'll be stuck at 60fps.
This mod doesn't run on BFG Edition or even dhewm3 for some reason.
In case you're wondering, RBDoom3BFG is objectively the best way to play Doom 3, and vanilla idTech 4 is objectively the worst.
My monitor is 240Hz, meaning this mod runs at a 75% reduction in smoothness compared to everything else, compared to what I'm used to.
Unfortunately for me, I just can't play Doom 3 at 60fps in 2025, and so, a 9/10 mod translates to 3/5 stars. It's almost tragic.
