I read an off-hand comment somewhere about DOOM 3 where it was described as the “Dumb Blonde” of First Person Shooters. Very attractive to look at, but not much substance. The truth is that’s a pretty apt comparison. DOOM 3 is pretty to look at—or at least as pretty as a martian base full of blood stained walls populated with decaying zombies and demons from hell can be—and id is to be commended for creating yet another amazing graphics engine, but once you get past the shock of the graphics you’ll find that you’ve already played this game before.

In the interests of fairness I should mention now that I’ve never been a big fan of either the DOOM or Quake series mainly because of their emphasis on twitch gameplay. I’ve said before that it wasn’t until the cinematic experience of Half-Life that I developed my FPS addiction and I’m definitely in the camp that likes to have a story to go along with the action. With the previous DOOM games if you didn’t bother to read the manual you’d have no knowledge of what the plot was supposed to be. Not that it really mattered if you knew what the plot was as the gameplay consisted of shooting everything that moved while looking for the switch/keycard that opened the door to the next level then rinse and repeat. Pretty much every monster came running straight for you and you could count on new ones spawning behind you every so often from hidden closets and wall panels that would open when you crossed a certain point or picked up a certain item. The challenge was mainly in dealing with the large numbers of baddies all at once.

To its credit, DOOM 3 does a much better job of storytelling than its predecessors. In fact, the first 20 minutes or so of game play is largely spent with storytelling depending on how much inclination you have for exploring at a leisurely pace. I found there was a lot of interesting things to see just by wandering around being nosy when I should have been reporting to the marine Sargent or following a robotic sentry, but once hell breaks loose (literally) this aspect of the game seems to fade away and we’re largely back to the traditional kill everything that moves while looking for the PDA that will grant you access to the next level only now the tedium is broken up by story sequences every so often. While it’s definitely a great improvement over the previous games there’s still too much of it that feels like you’ve been here before. Monsters still generally head straight for you and although a couple of them have learned how to dodge they’re not very good at it. They also tend to pop out of hidden wall closets that happen to open when you cross a certain point or pick up a certain item which makes them feel like they were placed there well ahead of time rather than being something that just spawned. Areas that you’ve already been through will remain devoid of monsters of any kind unless the need for backtracking through an area was part of the level design. In fact the best way to know if you’re headed in the right direction in DOOM 3 is noticing whether or not you’re being attacked by monsters. If you go more than two dozen feet or so without being attacked and no story sequence has kicked in then you’re headed in the wrong direction and should turn around, which is kind of odd for a base that’s supposed to be swarming with demons. The rest of the game play still falls largely to finding the right switch or PDA that you need in order to progress.

The story sequences themselves are well done and id came up with a clever way of alerting you to when a sequence was over. The scenes usually play out from a third person perspective allowing you to see your character and when the sequence comes to an end the camera flies into the back of your character’s head until it’s back in the standard FPS position indicating that you once again have control. The voice acting is excellent, particularly in the early stages of the crisis when you can hear your fellow marines being slaughtered by rampaging demons over the radio in your armor, and the sound is top-notch and used effectively for atmosphere. It’s just a shame the story is so predictable. From the moment you see him you know who the head bad guy is cause he looks like a head bad guy. You will also guess exactly what the big experimental technology gone wrong that brings Hell to Mars is long before it’s revealed in the story. There’s absolutely no surprises in the plot and it’s basically the exact same game as the previous two in this regard. This isn’t so much a sequel as it is a remake.

But a very pretty remake to be sure. Visually, the game is stunning and it’s sure to give your system a workout even if it’s relatively new. I built my current PC a little over a year and a half ago and it’s still a great system for 98% of the games out there, but with D3 I’m limited to running at 800x600 resolution with medium quality settings if I want the frame rate to be playable. Despite being a couple of steps down from the 1280x1024 resolution I’m used to playing at the game still looks amazingly good. The level design makes heavy use of real-time shadows to ensure the atmosphere is sufficiently full of dread and foreboding. Think of the movie Aliens set on Mars with demons instead of the aliens and you’ll have an idea of how the use of light and shadow comes across in this game. There are plenty of dark corners requiring the use of a flashlight to see what’s there and your character is incapable of holding both a gun and the flashlight at the same time so once you find out what’s in the corner there is often no small amount of panic as you attempt to hit the key that will switch you back to your weapon before you get chomped to death. More than once I stood there like an idiot flailing at the zombie with my flashlight instead of blasting him with my shotgun.

In the end the game looks and sounds great and manages to pull off a couple of “gotcha” moments here and there, but isn’t as scary as you might think. It’s enjoyable for what it is, but it leaves you with the feeling of a missed opportunity. I haven’t spent a lot of time in the multiplayer, but what little I have experienced feels like pretty standard fare with nothing particularly innovative about it. Most of the weapons are the same as in past versions of the game as well. The game engine is incredible and does bring some new innovations along with it such as computer terminals that you can walk up to and interact with like you’d expect and video displays that look like they’re displaying real video, but as cool as that is it’s not enough to overcome the feeling that you’ve been there and done that twice already. Still, I look forward to seeing what some of the companies who end up licensing the engine from id manage to come up with. If you’re a fan you’ve probably already got DOOM 3, but if you’re not then you’re probably not missing out on much other than a damned impressive graphical demo.