Doom 3 holds up surprisingly well (and is underrated)

[Wilian]

I like it.

 

[Dayyālu]

Nah that's 100% Red Faction

Red Faction is truly the poor man's Half Life, but it's considerably worse than Doom 3 essentially gimmicky and a disaster design-wise. At least Doom3 is pretty and its graphic design good. At least no one remembers Red Faction 2, that was one of a kind disaster.

N In terms of quality, I'd say it's about on par with HL2 (7/10) but nowhere near as good as HL1.

Doom3 has no effort put whatsoever in his weapon (functional) and encounter design (monster closets, door imps) while Half Life 2 at least tries (and succeeds, but I'm one of the few HL2 fanboys here). The greatest effort they did was with the expansion pack that... copied FEAR and Half Life 2 because they had no ideas. If Doom3 didn't have the Doom name attached to it no one would remember it. How many people remember Pariah nowadays?


There's only one thing to add to the Doom3 postmortem: its sequel would have been the "cover shooter" nuDoom that we saw glimpses of, a game enslaved to the uncreative conventions of the time. Doom3 was pretty much creatively bankrupt - they had good artists onboard but no one knowing how to make a fun shooter - and an eventual NuDoom cover based shooter would have been forgotten in weeks.

Remember Syndicate? The remake?

Here, hot take on the Codex, thank fuck for Doom2016 and trying something different - even if 90% of Doom2016's ideas are stolen from mods. Thank God for that.

 

[Farewell into the night]

I remember playing and finishing Doom 3 as a little kid. Nowdays, I keep away from such bloody, satanic and scary games. They mess me up, I don't like it.

 

[Ash]

Red Faction is truly the poor man's Half Life, but it's considerably worse than Doom 3

RF is definitely not a great game, but I don't know about "considerably worse than D3". Perhaps I can agree it is somewhat worse, but it has something D3 does not: variety. Doom 3 has a decent enough content (combat, great visuals), but it's often the same "decent enough" combat and visuals over and over. It's barebones. Red Faction is a bit more scattershot in its content, quality and style. IDK maybe I need to go back and play Red Faction....it's been nearly 20 years.

Doom3 has no effort put whatsoever in his weapon (functional) and encounter design (monster closets, door imps) while Half Life 2 at least tries (and succeeds, but I'm one of the few HL2 fanboys here). The greatest effort they did was with the expansion pack that... copied FEAR and Half Life 2 because they had no ideas.

While HL2 is massively overrated I can agree it's probably the better game. Definitely more creative. They at least (sort of) tried, like you say.

If Doom3 didn't have the Doom name attached to it no one would remember it. How many people remember Pariah nowadays?

I remember Pariah. I remember it as the epitome of bland. The only cool thing about it was the weapon upgrades, and even that was rather mediocre in its implementation. Whatever it is, Doom 3 is for sure better. Fuck me that was an early decline shooter. Not bad in the way some obscure old school 90s shooters were bad (technical issues, budget issues, developer had no idea what they were doing), but bad in a way that it had no soul and seemed to be just trying to make a buck-- very commonplace nowadays.

Here, hot take on the Codex, thank fuck for Doom2016 and trying something different - even if 90% of Doom2016's ideas are stolen from mods. Thank God for that.

Yes. I'm not a fan of Doom 2016, find it a bit bland, and rather derivative and uninspired -- derived more from the less finer aspects of old school shooters, mixed in with the less finer aspects of new ones. e.g pretty basic arena-like level design (old arena shooters), weapon wheel (most common to new shooters), health leech grenades on a cooldown that makes most other equipment redundant (OP shit, most common to new shooters), weapon/suit upgrades that while are not terrible are not implemented in a optimal way that inspires meaningful choice, meaningful replayability, and fun moment-to-moment gameplay and there's OP upgrades (modern RPG systems in a nutshell), exploration that is basic asf and the relevance of secrets is lesser when they're marked on the map anyway (modern approach to exploration in a nutshell). In hindsight most of this is all modern decline. Can't really attribute boring level design to old school shooters either. Most old (90s) shooters had amazing level design.
...Granted most of this shit decline applies to Doom Eternal too which I find to be significantly better, but that's more because it actually brings in new, meaningful shit (dash mechanic, a decent challenge, platforming, varied art direction). Doom 2016 otoh was more a run of the mill shooter that had all these downsides. However, it's still one of the better shooters of the past decade+. That's how bad it is for gaming.

 

[Lyric Suite]

What kills Doom 3 for me is that the gunplay is soooooooooo fucking slow but the enemies behave in typical Doom fashion. I wouldn't have a problem if the game actually played like a survival horror, but it doesn't. It plays exactly like Doom, except you play as a gimped fatso instead.

For that reason, i actually like to play it without the duck tape mod. This helps also with the second problem, the levels being so suffocatingly cramped. It doesn't make it a whole lot better, but hey, it's something.

The other alternative was use a mod that changed the running speed of the Doom guy but that just trivialized the game, so no dice there. Should have looked if there was a mod to bump the running and shooting speed of monsters too, but the levels being so cramped i doubt it would matter.

 

[Ash]

What kills Doom 3 for me is that the gunplay is soooooooooo fucking slow but the enemies behave in typical Doom fashion. I wouldn't have a problem if the game actually played like a survival horror, but it doesn't. It plays exactly like Doom, except you play as a gimped fatso instead.

To be fair, a movement speed nerf may have been necessary. Most enemies Doom 3 can handle active at any given time seemed to be like 7 because muh amazin tech and graffics! Unless they made AI super "smart" (or elaborate, rather) and relentless. But as you say they're pretty much as advanced as OG Doom AI. They should have took notes from Unreal. Well, Unreal's Skaarj anyway, possibly the mercs too. All the other enemy types are pretty standard, but Skarrj are the primary enemy type anyways so it certainly leaves an impression.

 

[samuraigaiden]

The zombie soldier AI is so annoying tho. He just walks straight at you

 

[samuraigaiden]

A good game, not a good Doom game.

Would you say Doom 2016/Eternal are good Doom games?

They're okay Serious Sam games.

Haven't played them, but gameplay videos gave me more of a Painkiller vibe than a Serious Sam vibe.

 

[Ash]

Eternal is better than any arena shooter I've played. to be fair I haven't played them all as I tend to stay away arena shooters. A traditionally shit, extremely barebones and repetitive sub-genre imo.

 

[samuraigaiden]

To add salt to the wound, they handed off the Quake license to another developer during that time period which led to a forgettable and forgotten Quake 4. Because it wasn't enough to tarnish one id franchise.

TBH I think Quake 4 is a pretty cool game. Sure, it's not as good as Quake, but as a sequel to Quake 2 it's absolutely certified INCLINE.

 

[Ol' Willy]

TBH I think Quake 4 is a pretty cool game. Sure, it's not as good as Quake, but as a sequel to Quake 2 it's absolutely certified INCLINE.

It is. Although, three main detriments:
- cutscenes
- vehicle and turret sections
- slow running speed

Aside from that it's a good game. I played it at the hardest difficulty and found the game surprisingly challenging.

 

[Average Manatee]

The environments in Doom 3 are so small that I don't see faster running speed doing much. Sprint is fairly quick, enough that you can dodge anything at mid and even fairly close range. Any quicker just means more crashing into walls constantly and highlights how crappy and small the areas are.

The actual core gameplay of Doom 3 would probably be alright if it had a Doom-number of enemies in Doom-sized environments. And with shotgun ranged tuned for those Doom-sized environments, of course. It's very obvious when you play that the shotgun range was nerfed because the level size of the game was also nerfed and a normal shotgun would just dominate everything otherwise.

 

[Tacgnol]

How was the Doom 3 expansion, Resurrection of Evil or w/e it was called?

 

[Dayyālu]

How was the Doom 3 expansion, Resurrection of Evil or w/e it was called?

There are two expansions in Doom3, one is a "proper" one called Resurrection of Evil and the other is a "fake expansion" called The Lost Mission, thrown out with the BFG edition.

Let's immediately discuss The Lost Mission: it's essentially a map pack done with "predone" and copypasted areas from the original games, and it suffers from the peculiar rebalancing done with BFG where they shower you with everything. As some posters have argued, Doom3 has too weak gunplay to manage a proper "furious shooter" atmosphere and the little resource management you had get destroyed when you're given endless plasma cells to destroy everything you want AND they cut out some combat encounters just because. It's a cash grab, played it because I'm a completionist.

Resurrection of Evil... it's arguably better than baseline Doom3. Much of it is copied from other contemporary shooters tho, like the Grabber being the cheap version of the Gravity Gun (capable tho of intercepting enemy fireballs and squishing lesser foes), the double-barreled shotguns improving the anemic arsenal with something with a bit of "boom" and the Artifact instead of the Soul Cube. The Artifact is a nice if simple idea, pretty much a trio of powers (invulnerability, berserk and slow-motion) that you can use as you prefer after charging it with "souls" found as pickups. Nice idea: feels like they went for the cheapo FEAR imitation with the slow-motion focus.
Combat is harder because there's less stuff going around, and they tried some "creative" level like the oxygen tank level (where you have to loot zombies for their air tanks).

They added quite a few enemy designs, from a "classical" Lost Soul to stuff like the Bruiser than IMHO truly nails the schizo helltech feel (but not the Doom feel, tbh). If you liked Doom3, RoE is better, harder, and I forgot about the boss fights that are at least decent in RoE compared to the shitshow that was baseline Doom3.

 

[Machocruz]

Red Faction is truly the poor man's Half Life, but it's considerably worse than Doom 3

RF is definitely not a great game, but I don't know about "considerably worse than D3". Perhaps I can agree it is somewhat worse, but it has something D3 does not: variety. Doom 3 has a decent enough content (combat, great visuals), but it's often the same "decent enough" combat and visuals over and over. It's barebones. Red Faction is a bit more scattershot in its content, quality and style. IDK maybe I need to go back and play Red Faction....it's been nearly 20 years.

RF had a decent weapon selection, at least for my tastes at the time. Some had alternate fire modes or cool features like x-ray scope. Better than either D3 or HL2.

https://redfaction.fandom.com/wiki/Weapons_in_Red_Faction

 

[schru]

Eternal is better than any arena shooter I've played. to be fair I haven't played them all as I tend to stay away arena shooters. A traditionally shit, extremely barebones and repetitive sub-genre imo.

Have you given the Serious Sam series and the first Painkiller (plus the Battle out of Hell expansion) a proper try? As far as I can gather, I like most of the classic shooters you do and I'd say they're rather fun games. Serious Sam takes a little time before it gets into its own, while Painkiller, though it's simplistic in design, has very nice gun-play.

 

[Carrion]

RF had a decent weapon selection, at least for my tastes at the time. Some had alternate fire modes or cool features like x-ray scope.

Agreed, the weapons are nice and one of the best things about the game. The combat was a bit stale otherwise, though, and I don't think the game really lived up to all the promise. The destructible environments were the most touted feature but ended up being little more than a gimmick etc. Then again, it's been almost 20 years for me too.

 

[Tehdagah]

A good game, not a good Doom game.

Would you say Doom 2016/Eternal are good Doom games?

They're okay Serious Sam games.

Not sure about Eternal but 2016 is 80% exploration.

 

[karoliner]

Bruh Doom 3 is ass.

 

[Naraya]

I remember bouncing off Doom 3 pretty hard when it was released, it was just so different from its precursors. But... I would like to try again. From what I understand the BFG edition is kinda shit compared to the normal one. So I'd like to ask if there is a way to get Doom 3 non-BFG edition anywhere?

 

[passerby]

So I'd like to ask if there is a way to get Doom 3 non-BFG edition anywhere?

You can just buy the original D3 on Steam, or sail the seas.

BFG can be redeemed with a bit of tweaking:

Supposedly you just have to add 'seta r_lightscale 1' in the BFG config file to get the original light brightness levels.
As for the increased ammo in BFG, there are mods that reduce the ammount you get from pickups.
There is also a mod that brings back muzzleflash lights and toggleable flashlight.

 

[Naraya]

There is also a mod that brings back muzzleflash lights and toggleable flashlight.

Yeah about that - I think it's the biggest change, right? I mean, having and not having your flashlight always ON is a big deal.

 

[Kainan]

Doom 3 is above all an attempt at state of the art gfx, which is at least a noble cause.
While NuDoom is an attempt at addicting young children and ruining people's lives.

 

[RRRrrr]

To be fair, a movement speed nerf may have been necessary. Most enemies Doom 3 can handle active at any given time seemed to be like 7 because muh amazin tech and graffics!

I don't think that is true. By the end of the game, there were some big fights. The hell level was pretty much Doom 1 scale. Making fights small was a design decision, not an engine limitation.

 

[Average Manatee]

To be fair, a movement speed nerf may have been necessary. Most enemies Doom 3 can handle active at any given time seemed to be like 7 because muh amazin tech and graffics!

I don't think that is true. By the end of the game, there were some big fights. The hell level was pretty much Doom 1 scale. Making fights small was a design decision, not an engine limitation.

You'll notice that Hell in Doom 3 is a lot flatter with both less dynamic lighting and less clutter for dynamic lights to interact with. This was for performance reasons. The UAC areas would struggle on PCs of the time if they were as big and open as Hell. And even then the number of enemies at one time is pretty low in Hell compared to most Doom 1, they just spawn waves in quicker.