As I have been playing some Doom recently, I decided to give the nowhere-near-as-popular Doom 3 a go.

When I started playing it, it reminded me somewhat of Prey and Half Life (though I probably haven’t played that many FPSes anyway), with the ability to interact with computer screens and such.  However, this only seems to be the initial part of the game – that is, the part where you just walk around doing what your superior tells you to do.  After that part, the game reverts to the FPS that it’s meant to be, full of people turning into zombies attacking you.

With that, it does somewhat maintain its original theme of a shooting lots of undead stuff, whilst modernising the gameplay (to that of the time it was made, a few years back).  Doom 3 adds a fair amount of gore, with blood all over the place, and plenty of dark places where zombies walk out unexpectedly to attack you.  There’s also a bit of having to get access to this and that, which does bear some resemblance with the old key system, or that where you need to visit some place to trigger a door.

Overall, whilst it does seem to be a natural progression from the old Doom games, I think the added gameplay complexity does a bit of harm to Doom 3.  I like the simplistic nature of the old Doom, and I think it would’ve been better if Doom 3 kept to this simplistic type of gameplay, rather than trying to fit in with the multitude of other FPSes around.