This game will ruin your eyesight and make you ruin your shorts!
You are a marine sent to the UAC research facility on Mars. Apparently a lot of spooky stuff has been going down and you’re one of many armed men dispatched to the planet to help the staff sleep better at night. So what if some people here and there are hearing voices in empty rooms, or seeing monsters in the shadows, or even practicing Satanic Rituals…what could possibly go wrong? Oh yeah, all Hell could break loose! And it does. It wouldn’t be a very entertaining game if nothing happened, now would it? Now you’re stuck, alone, in the most poorly lit facility in the solar system to battle it out with the forces of Hell.
Now that we’ve got the story out of the way, let’s talk about the game itself. The graphics in this game are spectacular. And since this is a PC game that means your min. system requirements are a NASA supercomputer and the blood of a virgin. Get to hunting. The environments are poorly lit to establish a mood and to always keep you on edge (not to mention to keep you squinting like Mr. Magoo). The game relies heavily on a lot of B-Movie-esque tactics to scare the crap out of you. Expect to hear a lot of evil sounding chanting, laughter, screams, squeals, whispers, and lots of other things going bump in the darkness. This trick works all the time. I personally love getting into video games and letting them scare the crap out of me. This one does that…a lot. I also have to say that the character design is top rate. The game brings back all of your favorite cannon fodder from previous Doom games. Expect to see the ever threatening Cacodemon, Imp, Zombie Marine, and yes, even Pinkie! All of these characters are breathtaking…it’s just too friggin’ bad the lighting is so lack luster or you could truly appreciate the beauty and attention to detail with which these characters have been made. The game relies very heavily on the old Doom principle of “Find the door, find the key” but this time it’s people’s PDA’s. You have to scan people’s PDA’s to get their security clearances and so forth. You also get the added benefit of personal audio logs and their emails. These are all actually very helpful as finer pieces of the over-all story line. Nice tweak to an old premise. In the appearances department this game has done everything right.
The only gripe I have with the items and weapons is that with all of the technology on 22nd century Mars the one thing they DON’T HAVE is DUCT TAPE!! For the love of Phobos, let me stick the flashlight to something!! Your weapons are nice. They have the Classic Doom Array. You have your trusty blaster pistol, your shotgun, your chain gun and even an improved BFG! However, the weapons are useless when you have the flashlight in your hand. You have to toggle between having the flashlight and being defenseless or not having the flashlight and running blind. This isn’t good considering all of the enemies who are going to be diving out at you from behind walls, broken panels, the ceiling, the floor, and anywhere else you can hide a monster from Hell. The targeting icon doesn’t even turn red unless you’re firing at the enemy and aiming at it too. Expect to have a lot of firefights NOT go your way. Also…you have to love the chainsaws on Mars. They attempt to explain them by saying that someone ordered jackhammers and they got chainsaws, but that still sounds a little too convenient. For the most part this game would have done a lot better had even a few of the weapons had a flashlight on them.
As a whole this is a very nice game. And, as of the writing of this, most (if not all) retailers have probably discounted the game to $20 or under. This is nice, considering that if you don’t have one bad azz PC you’re probably going to be playing Doom 3: The Slideshow. This is one to get for you hardcore shooter fans and I know you Doom fanatics had it reserved long before it came out. Enjoy and lay waste to the demon, alien, minions of Hell thingies!