Doom 3 had everything to become one of the greatest game of all time: several years of development, the most advanced graphical technology, huge budget, legendary game designers at helm of the production. So what went wrong?

I've always said this, and I'll say it again: circa the first hour of the game is near-perfect. A masterclass in how to establish an atmosphere, build suspense, create a sense of place and presence, and fully immerse the player into it. From the start Doom 3 positions itself as a horror game first. Which isn't as much of a leap as some people would have you believe. I mean, Doom 1 was as much of a horror game for its time as Doom 3 was for its. For example, I find Doom scarier than Resident Evil. And if you take Quake as part of the same lineage, then Doom 3 totally makes sense. In fact, it almost completely follows the Doom formula, with only three real differences:

1. Now there are logs to pick up and read or listen to.
2. The scale is somewhat smaller, probably to make the groundbreaking graphic fidelity playable on weak computers.
3. Everything is really dark and you're given a flashlight, which you can't use while wielding a weapon.

These three changes work really well to accommodate the new direction. Reading or listening to testimonies of frightened employees heightens the fear of the unknown. Smaller scale means fewer enemies in claustrophobic environments, which means each enemy is more intimidating. And the flashlight thing is a genius decision that makes the player choose between the ability to see and the ability to defend themselves, creating a persistent sense of vulnerability.

For probably the first third of the game, it plays by these rules. Incredible sound design sprinkles echoing noises, and a plethora of scripted scenes make enemies crawl out of the most unexpected locations. The overarching message the game conveys with its design is: YOU ARE NEVER SAFE. Occasional discovery of survivors make you truly treasure this fleeting "human" contact, as you know you're not gonna have another one for a long time afterwards. Mars is an inhospitable place. Every now and then they let you see the surface through windows or even get a quick walk outside, and it's a dead lifeless place with a seemingly constant storm. You really get the sense of isolation and loneliness. I think Doom 3 is probably the closest thing you'll have in video games to the movie Alien (with Quake 4 being the closest to Aliens).

That is for about the first third of the game. That's when everything kinda starts crumbling. The game doesn't know how to progress as a horror game, so it tries to progress as an action game. The problem with that is: it's not really a vehicle for an action game. An okay action game at most, not a good one. Small corridors mean that there's less place for maneuver and less potential strategic depth. I feel like almost every location has something like 2-3 possible strategies, and you have to figure them out, like a puzzle. If you fail to do that quickly, you get attacked. And, when you get attacked, it hurts really bad in this game. Particularly because it makes your screen shake like you're having a seizure, and that completely throws your aim off. If you get ganged up, it's near-impossible to hit anybody, even the person demon standing right in front of you.

The thing with the flashlight, from being a genius mechanic turns into a major nuisance, especially when dealing with hitscan enemies, which the game throws a lot at you in the last third of the game. These hitscanners only really work in the early game, when you face one or two of them at a time, and preferably in an area with lots of cover. The AI is really good though, similar to Quake 4. These guys can traverse several rooms or even elevation levels to find you. One time a pinky forced me to hide under floor tiles, and once it saw that it can't get to me, it ran away to ambush me later. There is a really cool kind of a "dance" you can do with most melee and projectile-shooting enemies, where you try to get close for a shotgun hit and run away when they're attacking. With some enemies you can shoot down their projectiles, which also adds gameplay depth. But the hitscanners, lost souls, and spiders are really annoying.

As you progress through the game and encounter more and more enemies, the sense of horror completely fizzles out, but annoyingly the game doesn't stop repeating the same tricks. Reading/listening to the logs becomes a massive chore. All that "People in sector G reported seeing shadows" becomes kinda stupid when you're running around with a rocket launcher and a BFG, mowing down several enemies at once. And this really becomes a major problem towards the end, when they throw gangs of monsters in tiny rooms with you. By the middle of the game, I felt that it had outstayed its welcome. By the end I was exhausted. Which is a shame because there is a lot of cool stuff towards the end, but all the excessive action kinda ruins the atmosphere.

I think Doom 3's main problem is that they wanted to do something different, but couldn't commit to it for the fear of alienating the core fanbase. Because Doom 3's main strengths are not in its combat. Don't get me wrong, the combat is fine. It's like a Doom lite. But once the atmosphere dies and all you have left is the combat, you start feeling like you could've been playing something better.

Doom 3 is like an elaborate joke with a great set-up and a disappointing punchline.

Still, for what it's worth, it's a solid game. I think the BFG Edition is probably the superior experience. It gives you an attachable flashlight, brighter environments, and more ammo. Sure, that takes away from Doom 3's horror aspects, but I think it's probably better to drop the pretense from the get-go and just have fun with what it is: an action game. Not a great action game, but a solid one. One worth playing through once or twice.