I cannot imagine playing Doom 3 when it was first launched and as it was originally intended, with having to hold the flashlight and gun separately. I appreciate the attempt to make it more of a horror game but ultimately you would just be shooting shadows for 12 hours. Playing the updated version on Switch in which you can have both a weapon and a flashlight makes it a great sequel to the original Doom games. You have that same classic strafing and shooting gunplay that made Doom famous, which stills still plays great all these years later. Paired with an atmosphere so thick you could cut it with a knife, Doom 3 really feels like something new compared to its predecessors. Although the largest criticism against the game’s design is the complete overuse of monster closets. They are the cheapest and most infuriating element in the game. A cheap jump scare and a boring combat scenario ruin many otherwise great sections of the game. Scrapping through an intense firefight with a sliver of health only to be killed two minutes later by a demon hidden in a closet is enough to make me put the game down. You would be being generous to say there is anything you can call a story in Doom 3, especially compared to Doom 2016. Where they managed to take a simple idea and tell it with the exact right amount of camp to make it fun throughout. Doom 3 has none of that fan and my god there are too many audio logs! If you think audio logs are a good story technique Doom 3 will prove you wrong. Also no Spoilers for a 16-year-old game but that ending and final boss are just textbook examples of a rusted and pointless ending. The ending hits you like a damp towel and that isn’t what this great game deserves.
Surprisingly Doom 3 still looks great all these years later. A lot of that is down to the incredibly moody lighting, which fills the game with dread and suspense. Not all of the game holds up well but the art style and atmosphere, pull you in as well as it did in 2004. Very few games use darkness as well as Doom 3 and so it stands out to this day because of it. The developers use the pitch black to make chunks of the game impressively claustrophobic. You feel boxed in at every turn and this leaves you constantly never trusting what’s ahead. And as cheap as the monster closets are, in the pitch-black they can be pretty scary.
Doom 3 Still holds up in 2020 and is ultimately a great game. Tense, Moody and filled with classic FPS gameplay you just don’t get that much anymore, Doom 3 is still worth your time.
