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Short but Sweet Satanic Expansion
By Martin
Kingsley
The key to a first person
shooter is balancing beauty with fun. Not only do you want to see
creative, innovative design, interesting locales, fun weapons and
character abilities, you also want it all to be exceedingly pretty.
This year, the over-arching industry battle was waged
between iD Software's Doom 3 and Valve Software's long-awaited,
much-delayed Half Life 2. For all the pre-battle hype, it was a
war quickly over, and for good reason, since Doom 3 just didn't
have what it took to last the distance with its eager player base.
After a few hours one poorly-lit industrial complex looked the
same as the other, and you began to resignedly anticipate when the
next batch of hell spawn would jump out at you.
It was, however, great eye-candy, and the engine looked decidedly
promising; in fact, the fruits of iD's hard work are just appearing
now, in the forms of Prey and the Raven Software-developed Quake
4. With a hand from Xbox developer Vicarious Visions, it made a
smooth transition to the Xbox and was actually, on consideration,
a better play on the console than on the PC.
Enter Resurrection of Evil, a collaboration between long-time contributor
Nerve and id More a boost for the original single-player campaign
than anything else, this expansion brings you back to the red planet
two years after the events of the first game, as a Union Aerospace
Corporation combat engineer left stranded after the assorted legions
of Hell (the other hot red place) invade yet again.
This time, however, you're a little better off than the poor sap
under control of your thumbsticks the first time around, thanks
to a pulsating and empowered heart-shaped Artifact fresh from the
shores of Hell, a double-barrelled sawn-off shotgun (a nod to Doom
2), and the Grabber (not influenced by Half Life 2's Gravity Gun,
nope, not at all). Oh, and you don't have to spend all your time
staring into one of those bloody PDAs.
The Artifact and Grabber are relatively big changes to the tried-and-tested
Doom 3 formula.
In the former's case, as you go up against the many big bosses
that bookend levels, you gain new powers that include a variation
of bullet-time (useful when you're outnumbered or when you're faced
with booby-traps), temporary invulnerability, and the ability to
kill enemies with one punch (similar, admittedly, to the Berserk
mode from Doom 2).
The Grabber, however, lets you have a little fun with the sometimes
highly-static Doom 3 environment, allowing you the ability to throw
around barrels, boxes and even the fireballs of the hell spawn elite,
which is highly convenient when you're looking to conserve all that
ammo.
It must also be noted that, listening to the masses, Nerve have
permanently attached the flashlight to the basic pistol, so you
don't have to worry about being jumped and mauled with no way to
really defend yourself.
So, heavily armed and savvy, it's once more into the abyss, dear
friends. To go with the new weapons and skills, of course, you've
got a few fresh and nasty enemies, introduced via the fun mechanic
of the real-time Doom 3 cinematic engine, which is still as good-looking
as ever.
In fact, it would be fair to say that Doom 3 is still the best
looking game on the Xbox. Unfortunately, despite the new tricks
and weapons, there just isn't very much here.
The single-player campaign, while just as good as the prequel's,
is also terrifically short (about five hours, on average), and the
four-player multiplayer hasn't got much in the way of staying power,
especially considering there is no Artifact, no Grabber and some
bright spark decided to remove the two-player co-op feature of the
original Xbox port of Doom 3.
Were it a little longer or a little more involved, I could recommend
Resurrection of Evil whole-heartedly, but as it is it makes for
a better experience for those new to Doom 3 than its actual prequel,
which is an interesting position to be in as far as an expansion
pack is concerned.
It also contains, as an extra, Xbox-ported Classic Doom and Ultimate
Doom, so those pining for a quick trip around the nostalgia factory
can re-live the good old days when sprites were simple.
Demon hunting has never felt or looked so good, we just wish it
wasn't over quite so quickly.
Game: Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil
System: Xbox
Players: 1-4
Online: Yes
Developer: Nerve
Distributor: Activision
Rating: 80%
(Ratings
Key/Explanation)
Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil is on the shelves now.
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