Doom 3: BFG Edition - Thoughts

Doom 3 has always been saddled with an unsolvable riddle: would it have been more liked had it not been called Doom?

The franchise had been in hibernation for nearly a decade when Doom 3 came out, and as a fan of the series I was hyped beyond belief for the third official entry. It didn't let me down—I absolutely loved it—but even I could recognize that it was the black sheep of the series. It was a horror-shooter, with more of an emphasis on shooter than horror, taking cues from Doom 64's brooding notebook rather than the middle-school metal-mentality of the first two games. Gone were the goofy textures, non-sequitur level themes, and blazing-fast combat. Instead you had flashlight juggling, endless jump scares, and dull techbase after dull techbase. Back in 2004, I liked the tense flashlight-swapping combat and was giddy at seeing old foes return like the hell knight and archvile. But my enjoyment came with a caveat: I had to like Doom 3, because it was Doom!

Sixteen years later, having shuffled off most of the nostalgia that comes with branding, Doom 3 feels nothing like Doom, but rather a glorified tech demo trapped in an arcade shooter's body.

Of course, this crass assumption comes with the foreknowledge that 2016's Doom would return the franchise to its roots, injecting it with some much-needed adrenaline. Because of that, it's hard to play Doom 3 and not be disappointed by it in one way or another. Doomguy is sluggish, his weapons anemic, and I can count the number of nonlinear sections throughout the campaign on one hand. That's not to say the game lacks any strengths—the lighting remains impressive and Hell is appropriately unnerving—but it's a product defined by the era it was made in. The mid-2000s were littered with mediocre first person shooters, and Doom 3 stands shamelessly atop that pile, king of the drek.

The central problem with Doom 3 is that it is an adventure of few surprises. While there are a lot of jump scares (of which an embarrassing amount "got" me), I'd hardly call it an "inspired design choice" to hide a crouching imp behind a closed door, especially when it's used several times over. But these jump scares (and monster closets) are all Doom 3 really has; remove the need for a flashlight and you're left with a repetitive shooter that's practically on rails. Most of the time you're traversing narrow hallways with enemies spawning either directly ahead or behind you, and your only recourse is to just shoot it for a few seconds until it dies. There's no cool arenas to parkour around, nor fights with an engaging ebb and flow, nor any risk-reward analysis required when selecting a weapon. Just... choose whatever gun you like, hold down the fire button, and check behind yourself for a sneak attack—because there will always be one.

In a way, it's impressive how Doom 3's blandness is spread so evenly across every one of the game's aspects. Levels are overly constrictive and blend together since they're filled with non-descript gray machinery that may or may not be shooting green beams. The plot is paper thin despite having dozens of audio logs and emails to comb through. NPCs that talk to you bark orders most of the time, making you feel less like Earth's last defense and more like an interstellar whipping boy. A bunch of enemies not only fulfill the same role (there's like six melee-only dudes) but also have roughly the same health and lumbering movement speed, making them feel interchangeable. Several of your weapons are rapid-firing rifles that do similar damage and share equivalent reload times, meaning your arsenal feels interchangeable as well. Secrets are mostly relegated to triple-digit armory lockers that never require more than a peek through your PDA or glance to a nearby console. Armor is useless since you never fall below max armor, and the BFG Edition bafflingly throws more ammo at the player than it does fireballs. All of these facets merge together to form an experience that's dark, hazy, and unmemorable. id Software doubtlessly cared more about how Doom 3 looked than how it played.

My thoughts thus far have been pretty damning, but I'll concede something important: I don't think Doom 3 is "bad." It's not great, or exciting, or worthwhile, but there is a dry charm once you get into it. Sound effects are satisfyingly chunky even when the weapons aren't, and watching corpses disintegrate is always mildly amusing. Towards the end of the game the combat picks up due to more enemies being thrown at the player, though occasionally it'll forget whom is on the roster and just throws the same two types at you over and over. The BFG feels adequately dangerous and the Soul Cube is an excellent addition to your arsenal, as it provides the player with modicum of strategy (ie choose a single foe to kill to recovery your health). I liked the grenades too, though the fact that they're tossed underhanded makes them aggravating to use against enemies at a higher elevation. Lastly the encounter design does pick up in the last fourth of the campaign, but the instances where the enemy placement feels "smart" still remain few and far between. For the most part, Doom 3 only knows one trick: to stick the player in a never-ending hallway and loudly shout "boo!" over and over until randomly deciding to give up.

The expansions on the other hand, are a marked improvement. Similar to Doom 2, Resurrection of Evil doesn't radically change things up, but rather provides a much-needed improvement to the enemy roster. Namely, the vulgar and bruiser, which are more aggressive versions of the imp and mancubus. They demand more dexterity from the player beyond simply strafing left and right, which already makes them harder than the final boss of the base campaign. Meanwhile the double barrel shotgun is a decent (albeit marginal) improvement over the regular shotty, and the Artifact is a nifty slow-mo ability that quickly becomes overpowered, allowing you to melt the toughest enemies into a fine crimson mist. I think the overall design in Resurrection of Evil is better than Doom 3—there's significantly less enemies biting at your ass after all—but it's not such a far cry from the base game that I'd recommend playing Resurrection over it.

Finally, Lost Mission is a strong send-off to Doom 3, as it removes both the Soul Cube and Artifact from your arsenal in order to make fights tense again. Don't get me wrong; I like the variety both abilities bring to the table, but it's nice to have hell knights feel intimidating again (even if they can be easily kited.) Lost Mission's greatest strength has to be its design, as it pivots away from corridor-based combat and leans more into arenas, making fights longer and meaner—a pale foretelling of 2016's Doom. Some of the arenas are great (like the elevator room at the end of Underground 2) but others simply showcase how feeble and slow your enemies are, especially since the nimble vulgar is bizarrely missing from the enemy line-up. Like Resurrection of Evil, it's definitely better than Doom 3's base campaign, but that fact doesn't absolve it from the sins written into its code.

Back in 2004, I doubt anyone could picture what a "modern" Doom would look like. I knew I couldn't, which is why I was more than happy that Doom 3 brought a pulse back to the franchise... even if it was more dour and serious than I would've liked. And even now I kind of appreciate its dedication to trapping you in a dark, mechanical labyrinth overrun with ambling abominations. But that's about as far as my gratitude can extend. The initial rush of nostalgia had worn off three hours into my playthrough, replaced by a sinking feeling that what I was playing wasn't really that fun. Levels were boring, the weapons weren't stimulating, and Hell must've been overrun with imps because that's all I was fighting. Doom 3 relied on using darkness so much not because it loved the gimmick, but because that's all it had going for it.

So would Doom 3 have been more liked if had it not been called Doom? I thought I was unsure, but if you swap "more" with "less", the answer becomes clear for me.

Doom Eternal - Thoughts

2016's Doom didn't need a sequel. I will never whine about receiving more Doom, but that game was damn near flawless. The art design was amazing, the campaign had the perfect length, and the lightning-quick combat was a breath of fresh air for the FPS genre. In my entry on the game I complained about its linearity and some other issues, but time away from Doom has reduced those gripes to background noise. Doom was a juggernaut that blew nearly everyone away, and repeated playthroughs has cemented it as one of my favorite shooters of all time.

So when Doom Eternal was announced, I was more intrigued than I was ecstatic. The gameplay was perfect, so what else could id Software add? Perhaps if they made the stages more non-linear, removed the self-serious cutscenes, and expanded the multiplayer, then I could see how Doom Eternal could rise above the Olympic heights set by its predecessor. The game wouldn't be nearly as revolutionary—there was no way of that happening—but I would definitely be down to play a more polished Doom clone.

Yet in the end, id Software did none of those things—in fact they did the exact opposite. Doom Eternal is more restrictive, more self-serious, and does away with the traditional deathmatch experience. What skeletal remains there were of the original '90s series have been further discarded, forging Doom Eternal into its own strange, nasty little thing. So I can't in all honesty claim that Doom Eternal is a better game than 2016's Doom... but I think I like it more.

What I love about Doom Eternal is simple: the gameplay is nuts. Not only is Eternal faster on every front, but it's far deadlier as well, mercilessly punishing the player for missteps and careless gambles. Doom's difficulty tended to peter off in its latter half, but Eternal pressures the player for the entire game, keeping a blazing inferno lit under their ass. And it's not just that the enemies hit harder and are more aggressive; you'll be required to use your entire arsenal if you want to avoid joining the ranks of the dead. The ammo cap has been massively reduced, meaning you'll have to constantly rely on chainsawing through fodder demons to restock your weapons. Grenades serve a much larger role this time around (I forgot they were even in Doom!), providing a burst of damage & stun when the player needs it most. There's also a flamethrower and power-punch to refill armor and health respectively; if you haven't been keeping track, this is a lot of additional keys to hit.

The new abilities radically change Doom's combat from a free-form death ballet to a chaotic weapon juggling brawl. It's still possible to get to the point where you're untouchable, but reaching that zen state requires a lot more work than it did in 2016's Doom. Here you'll need to learn how to switch away from your weapon while it's on cooldown, seek out weaker foes when you're in need of munitions, and utilize enemy weaknesses to rob them of their strongest attacks. Doom Eternal's fights are rigid—so rigid that the most memorable thing to come out of the game is an infamous nemesis that can only be harmed when his eyes glow green. I was terrified of the aforementioned Marauder during my first playthrough, but he really does help to teach how Doom Eternal prioritizes what you need over what you want. At the beginning you'll probably find yourself wishing that you could hold more ammo or that the arachnatron wasn't such a bullet sponge, but you'll come to realize Doom Eternal shines brightest when you have to use every tool in your arsenal to survive.

A lot of folks are quick to mention the ammo drought, enemy weaknesses, or implacable Marauder as the biggest shake-up to Doom's formula, but that honor belongs to the best upgrade in the game: the dash. No longer must the Slayer dance around an enemy in the hopes their fireball will miss—dashing affords Doomguy a new dimension of control, letting him skirt dangerous attacks and rapidly close in for a glory kill. Seriously, the dash is a remarkable improvement that transforms the player from a scrambling ranger into a blazing-fast buzz saw of bullets. There is no doubt in my mind that without the dash, Doom Eternal would be the inferior experience compared to its older sibling. With it however, Eternal has evolved the series into a veritable FPS/character action game hybrid—and it rules.

I immensely enjoyed my time with Doom Eternal, but that's by and large because I learned to play by its rules. I found the demands inherit in its gameplay to be intriguing and rewarding rather than complicated and limiting. Plus I adored how ferocious the combat had become—especially on Nightmare, where being struck by two enemies at once is basically lethal. But by narrowing down its audience, I don't think I can comfortably call Doom Eternal a better game than its predecessor. In many ways Doom was the ultimate FPS power fantasy: despite the chunky gore and grim atmosphere, it was a welcoming experience that let you kick off your shoes and slay some hellspawn. Doom Eternal on the other hand is relentlessly austere, both in its gameplay and its lore.

And I totally understand—id Software was at impasse. Although they could've continued with a light-hearted "Hell on Earth" storyline, I think the plot would've suffered from a "been there, done that" feeling. Instead they dove even deeper into the lore, weaving a sci-fi tale about two clans of aliens and their history with Hell. Surprisingly, I didn't mind the focus on the Sentinels and Hell Priests, partly because I like how stupidly in-depth it was, and also because 2016's Doom had primed me on what to expect. I think the story of the previous game is more captivating—especially because you don't need to look into the lore to comprehend it—but Doom Eternal manages to stand on its own... for the most part (prepare for a lot more cutscenes you have no control over).

Almost everything else about Doom Eternal is on par with 2016's Doom. The progression system offers a lot of variability, the changes made to the weapons are excellent (the super shotgun meathook is a godsend), and the visuals are constantly captivating—an endgame area sticks out in particular, being one of the coolest and most unique alien worlds I've had the pleasure of rampaging through. There's no singular track that reaches the heights of BFG Division, but there are plenty heart-pounding, foot-tapping tunes that are guaranteed to get the blood surging through your veins. And lastly, I uh... have no idea how well the multiplayer holds up. The single player campaign was all I needed, and it fulfilled its purpose very well.

Doom Eternal isn't just more Doom—it's Doom-on-steroids. Some really big, demonic gut-ripping steroids. The game provides you with a lot of flashy tools and then warns that they are there for your survival, not entertainment. You can still flaunt your battle prowess, playing with imps and cacodemons as if they were newborn kittens, but the journey to get to that stage will be a lot more taxing. And honestly, some may not be ready for that. 2016's Doom remains the better game on the principle that it's the easier title to get into, but Doom Eternal managed to do the impossible: it improved on an already immaculate combat system. Eternal is a fearsome, chaotic, energizing beast—and I loved loved loved all three of my playthroughs of it.

DOOM (2016) - Thoughts

A palpable shock must have blanketed my face during my first hour with id Software's new Doom. "Wait, this doesn't suck?" is what I was most likely thinking, mouth agape at the spectacle of gore before me. But it wasn't the blood that had me nonplussed—no, it was how good the game felt to play. A bizarre realization unraveled before me in Lovecraftian fashion, a maddening truth sprouting from this newly formed coil—"I'm playing a Doom game in 2016 that doesn't suck!" Better yet, not only did it "not suck" for the entire campaign, but it was actually a hell of a lot of fun.

The catch, of course, is that it contains some of the most baffling design decisions I've seen all year.

For those that don't know, I grew up with the classic 1993 Doom as a kid. I played it and its sequel on my parents' IBM work laptop, and in my spare time nowadays I occasionally make maps for it. Having such a close attachment to a 20+ year old program means that I'm extremely critical of anything that sprouts from the brand's name, skeptical of whether it actually has any relevance nowadays. The crux of my concern for the new Doom was that the series hadn't been relevant for a long time. Sure, Doom 3 was a fun game in its own right, but it took the franchise in a questionable direction, structuring the game largely around its untenable "horror" roots. For myself and many like me, there just didn't seem to be a good way to revive Doom, especially considering how many leaps and strides the FPS genre had taken beyond it. The series felt almost Shakespearian in its relevance, heartily revered for its accomplishments but likely to be laughed at by the common-folk if it was placed on the silver screen today (which ironically happened in '05).

Somehow—somehow!—I was wrong. Doom not only successfully exists as a modern game, but it actively puts other FPS campaigns to shame. The best (and most integral) part about the game is that it is fast. While it's easy to overlook such a simple adjective when you're reading a review, Doom's speed absolutely dominates the gameplay from the moment you take control. No longer must you wait behind cover and gradually lick your wounds; the key to surviving is to blow the face off of any enemy that gets within sniffing distance. Initially the glory kills seem like a gratuitous and pace-breaking inclusion, but they're a brief and satisfying way to pick up health during the first half of the game, perfectly fitting in with the "dumb metal" theme of the game (speaking of, the soundtrack is pretty kick ass too). Before long, you'll get a good handle on zipping around imp fireballs and snapping their jaw clean off their skull—and it'll feel great too.

Complementing the breakneck speed of the game are the bone-shattering weapons. Doom disregards modern FPS conventions by tossing out maximum weapon capacity and reloading, urging the player to constantly switch up their armaments in the midst of battle. Toss in some weapon mods that vastly change how you'll use each of the guns and you have a veritable amusement park of death right at your fingertips. To accompany the variety of firearms are a parade of some of Hell's finest, most requiring a different approach from one another. Hell Knight getting too close? Machine gun rockets or plasma stasis will give you some room. A mancubus blocking the path? Blow that sucker up with some rockets or get up close and personal with the super shotgun. Too many low tier enemies warping in? Rev up the chaingun or line 'em up with a gauss siege shot. The bread and butter of Doom is playing around with its weapon and enemy combinations to see what works, what doesn't, and which are your favorites.

The levels are the cherry on top of the creamy gameplay sundae, wonderfully accentuating the brisk pace of combat. Since staying mobile means staying alive, each of the arenas you'll duke it out in give you plenty of clambering avenues, ensuring that it'll be difficult for your enemies to overwhelm you. Outside of combat you can scour the environment to find some tricky secrets or hidden weapons... until the game starts gating you from backtracking for some reason. And here is where Doom really starts to miss its mark.

The levels work in perfect tandem with the game's battles, but past the Argent Facility (level 4) the design shifts towards unidirectional linear progression, tossing interconnectivity by the wayside. This pushes the game to focus only on combat, even when you're eager to explore its hallways for stray goodies. And for some reason the designers become insistent on stopping you from backtracking to find secrets, even when there is no reason for them to do so. One moment you'll be wandering around and the next a door will slam behind you, lock, and trigger a checkpoint. By the time you get to the end of the campaign, Doom doesn't feel like the full game it promised it would be at its start.

There are copious other issues that unfortunately mar the title too. The starting weapons are blatantly outclassed by the late game armaments, especially once you unlock the final upgrades on the weapon mods. Doom presents its ludicrous story with a straight face (which I commend it for) but feels insistent on forcing the player to sit there and listen to dialogue, even after it's established that the Doom Slayer doesn't care one iota for Hell's sympathizers. The multiplayer is serviceable but lacks an identity (if anything, it made me miss playing Halo), and Snapmap is plagued by the worst of Zdoom-isms: text-laden gameplay that tries it's best to emulate something other than Doom.

In spite of these failings, I continue to want to play Doom. Akin to Hyper Light Drifter, the flaws on display do not outshine the title's greatness; Doom contains one of the most satisfying gameplay systems of 2016. The snappy response of battle, the ease at which you can traverse the environment, tackling the challenge, weapon, & rune tasks in combat, and the excitement that comes from facing the higher difficulties meld together to form a non-stop adrenaline rush that sticks to your mind long after the credits have rolled. Doom joins Wolfenstein: The New Order in not only successfully revitalized a series from perpetually obscurity, but also making its contemporaries look tame and meek in comparison. Do I wish it was a tad better? Yeah. Did I nevertheless enjoy my time with it? Hell yeah.