Now Playing: DOOM 3 BFG EDITION

Winner of Gaming's Most Angular Font since 1993.

Released October 2012.

Developed by id Software and Nerve Software.

Published by Bethesda.

Available on Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC/Steam.

Version played: PS3

Now this takes me back.

Not that I had any particular memories of Doom 3 in its earlier form, at least not of playing it.  Though I'm effectively a console gamer alone these days, there was a time when my computer - or rather my mother's work computer which her council overlords smartly didn't fit with blocks against installing foreign programs on - was my main gaming format of choice, and most weeknights were a haze of Command & Conquer Red Alert 2 and Serious Sam: The Second Encounter.  Doom 3 was still very much a mirage on the horizon back then, a looming herald of the next generation, and much though I lapped up the hype, I knew I'd never really be able to sample its delights.  It was made with beefier systems in mind, you see - something which would eventually drive me away from PC gaming.  All power to those who can, but having to essentially take apart and reconstruct your games machine from scratch every year or so to keep up with the medium was both expensive and scary to me.  And so Doom 3 passed me by.

Until now.  Question is, was it better off unattainable?

What with HD re-releases being an ever-popular source of easy money for developers and this year marking the 20th anniversary of the original Doom, the BFG Edition on paper seems like an obvious move - and yet, I personally found its sudden, barely-heralded appearance on shelves to be quite the surprise.  See, not only is Doom 3 not really that old in the grand scheme of things, it's had a bit of a rough time in recent years.  Sure, the critics loved it on first release, but most of that was down to the technology involved; at the time, its graphics were cutting-edge and far beyond anything in any other game, and if there's anything PC gamers love more than 3D-accelerator-melting, couldn't-possibly-be-done-elsewhere visuals, it's yet to be found.  But once the rest of the medium caught up and the shock of the new wore off, players increasingly found reasons to dislike Doom 3.  It was too different from the earlier titles, it cribbed heavily from other games without really grasping what made them work, the enemy AI was moronic, everything was so dark you needed the in-game flashlight active at all times which made you put away your gun...and so on.  All of that added up to a kind of unconscious effort to bury the game from the public consciousness.  We all collectively seemed content to remember Doom as a pair of nostalgic, 2D-sprite-filled simple blasters of yore, and nothing more than that.

That said, I still bought the BFG Edition.  Money to burn?  Sure, that was part of it.  But it was mostly curiousity; I mean, a bad game is one thing, but a forgotten one?  I had to see it for myself.  What kind of game could provoke that reaction...?

"BOO!"

The plot of Doom 3 is certainly in the spirit of its predecessors, but its presentation is anything but.  Not only is there actual dialogue in this one, and cutscenes, but the game starts with one of those prolonged weaponless 'getting to know you' stages; y'know, like Half-Life did with Gordon Freeman arriving at Black Mesa, and which was subsequently copied by every FPS in existence for years afterward.  In this case, you're ace space marine Corporal No Name, freshly transported to the United Aerospace Corporation's Mars facility on regular rotation.  Everything seems normal - save for the facility only having 50% of the light fittings it should have, presumably giving everyone employed there major eye-strain - and your C.O. tells you to go find a scientist who's not answering his communicator in the neighbouring sector.  When you do find him, he babbles about teleportation experiments and warning Earth, when suddenly the (few) lights fizzle and the base is rocked by shockwaves...and out of the shadows swarm zombies, Imps, floating flaming heads and big fat tentacle-mouthed guys with cannons for arms.  Hell has come to Mars.  What're you gonna do about it?  Besides shooting things, I mean.  Of course you'll shoot things.

The Doom 3 engine, known as id Tech 4, was apparently cleaned up and optimised for this release of the game.  Exactly how much 'better' this makes the graphics, I'm not sure, but what I can say is that the game runs very smoothly, only stalling during later levels (for reasons I can't fathom - it seems to happen at random ) and rarely at that.  The controls are mostly what you'd expect with a few differences relating to weapon selection; the L2 and R2 buttons are used to move 'back' and 'forward' through all obtained weapons one at a time, while tapping right on the D-pad automatically switches to bare fists if you're suddenly feeling suicidal.  This leaves R1 for shooting and L1 for the flashlight, which is now armour-mounted and usable without putting your gun away, a welcome change from the game's original design.  Your health doesn't automatically regenerate, and must be replenished with pick-up items or special healing stations mounted on walls; body armour can also be picked up, which minimizes the damage taken from attacks.  Unlike in typical console FPSes, you can carry more than 2 or 3 weapons - in fact you can carry every weapon at once, if you've found them.  It's only now that I'm understanding why other shooters put that perplexing limit on your arsenal; having to scroll through a selection of 8 or more guns to find the ones you need mid-fight can be irritating and lead to mistakes.  Even so, the switching happens quickly enough that you can grow used to it.

Clearly interior design on Mars was formed by more avant-garde

inspirations than us Earthlings are used to...

Graphically, time hasn't been kind to Doom 3, as is the case with most games of its era.  Despite cursory efforts to tidy things up and make it 'HD ready', the relatively low poly count is obvious in the sharp edges of virtually every physical item, and almost every character model sports rubbery, waxen skin textures - not really a problem for the various demons and undead, but odd and unpleasant on the human characters, especially when they talk and the devs' attempts at facial animation forces them to warp and stretch at odd points like they're stuck in David Lynch's cheese dreams.  Environment textures are hit and miss; there's a lot of repetition, and walls and doors look pixellated up close, but the level furniture fares much better, with the various computer-screen images and animations being especially sharp and eye-catching.  The lighting is the game's strongest point visually (amusingly enough for something so often cloaked in darkness); shadows are cast realistically, every source is dynamic, and the effect of the torch is one of the better examples I've seen in a game.

Sound-wise, the music is unremarkable but functional, mostly lost in the mix when anything important happens.  There's a certain aggressive, industrial feel to it that suits the style of the gunmetal, function-over-form environments you find yourself in, though I think they could've gone further with a more surreal edge given the subject matter.  Voicework is generally strong, with most of the actors hitting all the right beats, although it's more 'good' than 'remarkable'.  It helps that the lines they're saying are generally well-written, although you'll have to scrounge for the really good stuff as it's hidden away in the catalogue of PDAs left strewn around the game world.  The various status reports, confidential musings and messages to family left behind on Earth are full of heartfelt touches and moments of silly humour that provide a brief escape from the tension and bleakness of the game world.  The guns on offer sound...passable.  Not as meaty as I'm used to from my dabblings in the Call of Duty series (hey, future blog idea!) but not disappointing as such.  Well, except for the Plasma Gun, but it's always the goofy Star Trek blaster thing that lets the side down, isn't it?  Bleh.  The monsters all make a variety of gribbly noises, although there's few cries that will resonate with you after you leave the game (and the thing I'm going to mention in the next pic sounds particularly silly) and most of the horror atmosphere is generated by that old standby, Disembodied Voices Whispering Through The Walls.  There's a lot of that here.

This is the Revenant, probably the silliest-looking enemy in the game.
I mean, it's a transparent-skinned man with shoulder-launched rockets.
What the - ?

Its overall design style is where the game really separates itself from its predecessors.  Whereas the original Doom played fast and loose with what a Martian military base would look like - often seeing you running through stages made of brick and mortar, resembling medieval castles more than anything futuristic - Doom 3 takes heavy cues from the Alien movie series, Alien 3 especially, in crafting a far-flung human outpost that's very much believable in its look and feel.  The scarcity of windows coupled with the constant presence of tight walls and low ceilings is both reminiscent of what we know of modern space travel, and builds a sense of claustrophobic dread in the player - there's nothing worse than not having room to strafe when some skinny rotting thing jumps out of the darkness and starts flinging fireballs at your face, after all.  That said - with a tip of the hat back to Mr. Revenant up there - the sense of realism inherent in the design of the space-base clashes rather violently with the enemies present.  Yes, I know, they're from Hell, they certainly should look alien and strange - it's just that they do so in a frequently wacky fashion.  I mean, take the Cacodemon; it's a flying, perfectly spherical head with tiny little eyes and a huge mouth, from which it shoots lightning bolts.  This creature looked perfectly at home in the simplistic world of original-variety Doom, but here it sits ill at ease with a world where the laws of physics actually exist and matter.  Now, I'm not suggesting that id should have gone the route of the Doom movie and removed all reference to Hell (replacing it with some gobbledegook about genetic science/mutation), rather I think they should have either tried to come up with a hard sci-fi approach to viewing the afterlife, orrr just kicked reality to the curb and made everything look like it came from a heavy metal album cover.  Take a guess which approach I prefer.

But what really sets the game apart for me is how it plays.  FPSes these days all tend to read from the same set of Cliff Notes, specifically those laid down by Call of Duty.  Regenerating health.  Chest-high walls.  100% linear levels.  Over-choreographed enemy assaults tied into setpieces, always predictable by the sudden appearance of an open space with lots of cover opportunities.  Hundreds upon hundreds of guns all performing roughly the same function.  REALISM!!!111!.  Doom 3 comes from a time before all that, and although it's not what I'd call 'original', in today's market it feels like a breath of fresh (recycled, smelling slightly of rotting flesh) air.  Although the game progresses in a linear fashion, backtracking is both possible and encouraged, with wandering off the path typically rewarded by items hidden in nooks and crannies.  Most enemy types can appear through portals at any time in any place, often out of sight, behind you, or in rooms you'd already thought cleared, ensuring you never really know peace.  Your arsenal is relatively limited, but each weapon is tailored to a specific purpose; one pistol, one shotgun, one assault rifle (plus a chaingun and Plasma Gun that perform basically the same job but better), one rocket launcher, and so on.  And your health is fixed, requiring med-paks and etc. to replenish it, leaving you uneasy whenever that little red number starts dropping into the 70s and 60s; there's a reason why survival horror games don't do regenerating health (okay, Resident Evil 6 kinda did, but you're not seriously expecting me to consider that the peak of the genre, are you?) and given that the aesthetics and tone of this game remind me heavily of Dead Space, that's a welcome mechanic.  Oh, realism?  One of the boss enemies - for of course there are boss enemies - is a soldier's upper torso surgically grafted to a tank's tracks, armed with a BFG 9000 and ranting about how it's going to feed your soul to maggots.  Yeah.  'Realism'.  It can go die somewhere.

Taste the pixellated blood!

Additionally, this being a special edition means it's stuffed to the gills with extra stuff...which, er, I haven't actually played yet.  Woops.  Still, you get the original expansion pack Resurrection of Evil, plus a newly-crafted one titled The Lost Mission, and both Doom and Doom 2 in their chunky glory, replete with their own expanded level packs to boot.  I've got pretty fond memories of the Game Boy Advance port of vanilla Doom, so I'm pretty keen to see if the game continues to stand the test of time.

So, that's Doom 3.  A misunderstood classic?  Hardly.  It's dumb as a sack of hammers and too self-consciously serious about its damn silly subject matter - and there are a few instances of first-person platforming in the Hell stages which just serve to remind me how much I hated that in other games.  But in this age of the multiplayer shooter, where the accessibility of an online lobby matters more to developers than the narrative of their increasingly short single-player campaigns, Doom 3 may yet find a second lease on life, by demonstrating that there's something to be learned from the past.  It's tense, it's atmospheric, it's crazy, it's fun.  And it expects you to behave like you've got at least half a brain rather than holding your damn hand the whole time.  8.5 out of 10.  More games like this, please.

"Can I come down now, please?  My arms are cramping!"
Not until I've finished the expansion packs, you can't, boy.