Doom 3: BFG Edition Review (JAIRO)
Doom 3 BFG Edition is a controversial but nevertheless good game!
Idk why Steam changed the name, but this is the enhanced 2012 BFG edition, not the original 2004 game.
Although the BFG comes with the FREE original Doom 3 and original Resurrection of Evil DLC.
Also it contains the original Doom 1 and 2 from 1993, not to be confused with the separate "enhanced" editions on Steam. BFG is practically the full package.
There still rages a huge debate which edition of Doom 3 is better.
The original that has greater horror atmosphere but lacks quality of life improvements like using flashlight and weapons at the same, in this Super-Dark-No-Can-See game.
Or the BFG that made the flashlight shoulder-mounted and greatly improved the overall game at the cost of reduced atmosphere.
(If you want to play Minecraft at night with no torches while the game constantly crashes, play the original. If you want enhanced graphics, better sound with more horror effects, a checkpoint save system and much more, then BFG is your game.)
DOOM 3 is controversial but misunderstood, doesn't mean the hate was not justified.
While the original DOOM created the revolutionary Boomer Shooter genre and spawned countless clones, Doom 3 feels like one of such clones than a continuation!
The betrayal comes from the genre being switched from boomer shooter to a horror shooter instead!
Gamers came for DOOM but got F.E.A.R. instead...
Don't get me wrong, even among other Horror Shooters, Doom 3 is an exceptional game..
Good for them, but not what we signed up for.
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Gamers wanted to weave around dozens of enemies in hectic combat in order to Rip & Tear in Hell's kitchen.
But what they got was a Carnival Haunted House tour where every door is a cheap jump-scare and you encounter max 1-3 enemies per tiny claustrophobic room! The tempo of the game was slow as a turtle.
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While the cheap jump-scares grow stale and predictable very early on, the ambient sound design and chunky amount of gameplay levels eat away at your psyche little by little, filling you with a sense of dread.
The overall horror, nevertheless, is well done.
The enemies were programmed to behave like their old 1994 versions, their attacks are easy to dodge and their patterns are easy to learn.
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About the story, it is a re-imagining of Doom, it plays in a different timeline from the retro-games or the new Doom 2016 series. You can bravely skip it, not required to complete. They tried to build the lore with this one as it severely lacked in the original ones, but most of it is droned out by the loud ambient sound. Poor audio mixing.
The flaws that I can't overlook are:
1) The bosses were all garbage. Weird design choices and mechanics which don't matter in the end as they are nothing more than bullet sponges. None of them stood out (but I'd say that is the sin of the times back in 2004).
2) The weapons had nice sound design but their "futuristic" look was unrealistic. Worst of all was the shotgun that was nerfed into the ground and eviscerated. Horrible trash weapon.
Only in the DLC and Lost Missions do we get access to the famous Double-barreled Shotgun which finally made shooting and weaving fun! Forced to dodge and get close up, miss a shot and pay dearly but land it and the enemy is dead! Even Barons die in 3 point-blank shots from that shotgun!!
3) The various notes found are garbage, wasting our time. Repeating same panic or employee working details. Absolutely no use for any of that information.
We get a lot of levels playing in labs and offices, only the final levels bringing us to hell. The DLC and Lost Levels follow that same pattern. We basically visit hell 3 times. The amount of combined levels results in lots of gameplay hours.
The developers were way too ambitious. But when there is talent behind it, they can turn even a failure into success.
Doom 3 was a commercial success. Maybe not a masterpiece like the previous games but a worthy contender in a very different genre.
Despite all the pros and cons, I can see the value in this game.
It was a good time.
Is there anything else you would want?