Doom 3: BFG Edition
Publisher: Bethesda
Developer: id Software
Platform: PC (Reviewed), Playstation 3, Xbox 360
Release Date: Out Now
Price: $39.99 (Buy Here)
Overview
Doom is the most recognisable franchise in all of gaming. It is easily the game that is most responsible for bringing gaming into the public eye by having a theme that was openly criticised by the religious organisations and media at the time for being way too violent. Doom is the number one cause of violence in youth if what they were saying was to be believed.
Does Doom 3: Edition make you want to kill babies like the media would suggest? Read on to find out. (Actually we don’t cover that anywhere in this review).
Story
Doom 3: BFG Edition feature the three Doom games available on the PC platform. This of course means that the game features a total of three similar, yet vastly different stories. This is good for players, as it kind of sets the Doom universe up for different interpretations of the overall story.
Actually, converse to that, it also makes the series lore really confusing. Are these three games a retelling of the same story? Are they direct sequels? Maybe they’re alternate universes? I don’t know and whilst you’re playing it really doesn’t matter all that much.
The basic premise of Doom, if you didn’t know, was that a corporation known as the Union Aerospace Complex (or something, the C might be different) owns a colony on the planet Mars dedicated to research and scientific advancement away from the morals of Earth. However, something goes wrong when creatures resembling Demons come from a dimension similar to, or of, Hell and wreak havoc on the colony. As a soldier of the UAC, it is your job to put a stop to the demonic mess and escape the planet.
In the first two Doom games, this means that you’re playing through episodic content with each one finishing off and the next taking place nearly immediately afterwards. In Doom 3, you have a more traditional advancement system, going through levels until you reach the end of the game. Whilst Doom 1 and 2 have levels, they are much shorter and can be completed in less than an hour. Interestingly, Doom 3 also has expansion packs, which are not a part of the Doom 1 and 2 releases (to my knowledge).
Gameplay
The games themselves are incredibly linear, I mean I often give games a lot of crap for being really linear, but you really don’t realise how linear they are until you go back and play them again later in life. I mean all games are linear, but is how well you mask that linearity that makes a game good. In another time, Doom 3’s linearity would have been masked incredibly well; heck it’s masked more well than most modern shooters like Call of Duty and Medal of Honor. However, making a player backtrack for a key and then going forwards again to go through a door does not make it open. This makes the game feel a lot like a corridor shooter and well, it always has been.
However, it does become a bit more maze-like the further you go in the game. There are more and more elements that you have to travel through, more key mixing, a bit more puzzling and some great platforming sequences. Whilst this applies to all the games, in Doom 1 and 2, it is a bit more basic as you aren’t able to jump.
OH! One gripe I have with Doom 3 is that strafe-jumping is incredibly weird. As a quake player, strafe-jumping is my preferred movement type. In Doom 3 I’m not entirely sure how the jumping mechanics work, do you jump three times in succession for the speed boost? Is the strafe-jumping working but just nulled in Doom? I’m not entirely sure. I know that there is extended jumping in the game and it definitely increases speed, but is it Strafe-jumping? I’m not sure.
Doom 3: BFG Edition has a multiplayer component to it also. However, it is surprisingly barebones. I’m not entirely sure if it’s connecting me to any game with the desired gametype, if there are dedicated servers somewhere that I’m missing or if it’s using Steam to determine which games would be a best fit. All that I know is that I was never matched into a game with a desireable ping, and neither was anyone else playing. This is odd, because id have a free-to-play shooter that does this so much better. Why should paying customers be getting a sloppier multiplayer experience?
Visuals
Back in the mid-2000’s Doom 3 was THE GAME graphically. If you wanted to compare PC’s, you’d use Doom 3 as the benchmarking agent. When id announced that they’d be releasing Doom 3: BFG Edition with graphical upgrades, I was thinking to myself: “Here we go, it’s going to be graphical king again”. However, whilst this is not the case, it would have been nice if there were actual noticeable improvements to the game.
To be honest, if you put the versions of the game next to each other, you could probably tell the difference between the two. However, running from my memory, this game looks exactly the same as it did in the past. It is incredibly similar that I don’t feel this version of the games enhancements should have been as heavily talked up as they were.
I will, however, state that us here at Capsule Computers do not own a Face-Mounted Display and as such have no comment as to how this game plays with it on. It’s cool that the game supports it, but we have no idea how it would run. Apologies.
Audio
The sound in this game is really odd. There are a tonne of problems that really need to be fixed, especially in regards to volume mixing. Sometimes the characters talking will be muffled due to some of the ambient noises in the game. And the game having a lack of subtitles makes this incredibly painful to listen to. This is especially bad when you have to pay attention to details in recordings and videos and you have some gloomy noise playing over the top.
Somehow, the weapon sounds in this game sound excrutiatingly weak. The Shotgun, which is one of the better weapons to use for normal enemies, sounds incredibly weak. I mean, I can get why weapons might need to sound weaker from an atmospheric standpoint (you can’t have the game making you feel over-powered where you could be killed at any moment by demons) but there’s no need to have them sounding incredibly weak either.
Overall
Doom 3: BFG Edition is a great package for anyone who has yet to purchase Doom 3 and its corresponding expansion packs. The two predecessors to the Doom 3, Doom and Doom 2 are a great addition to the package that makes this even more worth your wallet. However, if you already have copies of these it isn’t a must buy. This is, though, the best way to get into the Doom franchise if you’re not already there.
