Monsters and AI
Of course, we have to turn our attention to the guys your using all this ammo on and this is a point where Doom 3 excels but at the same time disappoints (again). All of the monsters are very well drawn, skinned and animated, showing off the impressive capabilities of the game engine.
All our favourites are here from the original games from zombies, undead soldiers and imps through to revenants, arch mages and screaming skulls. Each one is a work of art with most possessing vicious ranged attacks as well as terrifyingly effective melee combat moves too. The sound effects for these are, I’m glad to say, brilliant. Walking into a corridor or room and just hearing something breathing or scuttling is enough to get you going, couple that with the fact you can hardly see anything anyway and, fuelled by your imagination, the monsters become a completely new, more sinister and frightening prospect.
So we know that with the use of little lighting and excellent use of sound, the monsters are pant wettingly scary. Add to that the knowledge that your weapons are severely limited in stopping power, reload times and ammo and you’d have a real challenge surviving the first three minutes, yes? Umm, well the answer is in fact, no. Not only does the game draw its inspiration from ideas seen 10 years ago, it takes the AI from exactly the same era too.
Plug away as much as you want at these guys… they just come in a dead straight line at you. Occasionally you may see a monster take cover, but it does that regardless of whether you’re shooting it or not. The baddies do re-act to you shooting them, by flinching as the rounds hit, but they keep on relentlessly stomping towards you till either you or they drop. Now you could argue that as these things are spawned from Hell, they have no thought of self-preservation. That’s fine, but it does make the game a touch on the boring side to play as you don’t have to think about any kind of tactics other than avoiding enemy attacks until you can kill them in return. The trouble is, everyone else in the FPS world has moved on from here into the richer realms of cover, flanking and co-operation to attack you.
When you do kill a bad guy, do you get to see his body slump to the floor? No, he dissolves in a cloud of red ash. Turn your attention to the bodies of fallen comrades and try a few shots at them to spread a bit of gore. After one or two shots they explode into entrails and a skeleton then fade away into the floor. In fact, the actual interaction with the environment is very, very limited. The game is quite clearly designed as a linear ‘corridor, room, corridor, cavern, tunnel, end of level boss’ affair. Though the surroundings are wonderful to look at (as long as you have your torch on) you can’t interact with any of them. The few things you can push are there to further your progress through the game with the exception of a video game right at the beginning of the game (which gets boring after about 20 seconds, and annoying because it makes you think that there will be this much interactivity throughout the whole game when in fact that is ALL the interactivity in the WHOLE game!).
