Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil - Expansion Pack (PC)

The first thing you notice with Doom 3 : Resurrection Of Evil is that there's far less of hordes of creatures just mindlessly jumping out at you from behind almost every corner as there was in Doom 3.

And that gives you time to actually enjoy the amazing graphics, which are without a doubt the best of any PC game. The level of realism is superb.

It's not quite as dark and gloomy an atmosphere as the original Doom 3.....though it would be exaggerating to say they've seriously lightened the place up. But this is, after all, a horror game and the somewhat subdued lighting serves that purpose very well.

The game is generally harder than Doom 3. Some of the bosses are incredibly hard to beat. But....there are an additional two weapons that make life easier. The first is the grabber.....yes, straight out of Half Life 2. Have fun hurling plasma balls back at enemies. And the second is....wait for it....the return of the double barrelled shotgun !

You also get an artefact that gives you various powers, such as slowing down time, or even temporary invincibility. A sort of glorified soul cube.

Overall, this game is much more what I expected the original Doom 3 to be. It is more challenging, and not just an endless succession of things jumping out at you. There are puzzles, some quite tricky, and there's less of visiting the same darkened corridor for what seems like the millionth time.

So if you have the original Doom 3 and you are wondering should you buy the expansion pack, my advice is yes, it is well worth it.

To really appreciate the Doom 3 series you need to have played the original `Doom' (1993) and `Doom II' (1994) games that knocked peoples socks off back then. You then understand why Doom3 has nothing more than an array of monsters jumping out at you every time you open a door for the first time - it's just a homage to the original games. Game play, the demons, and locations in Doom3 are pretty much as the original Doom series, and as before you mostly just keep killing these very nasty things until there are none left. However in this Doom3 series the graphics quality, AI, and story development are in a different league, and you do have some interaction with other characters and the odd defence spider droid. You need a powerful gaming PC though (we have an Nvidia 7950 graphics card and AMD-2 5000 PC), plus you must own and install the original Doom3 game to run this expansion pack.

The story is set two years after the Doom3 catastrophe at the Union Aerospace Corporation (UAC) research centre on Mars, when Dr. Malcolm Betruger and his team unwittingly unleashed Hell's demons when recreating transporter technology developed by a long gone Martian race. It's 2147 and UAC has detected a strange signal from one of its Martian satellites, and consequently sends a team in to investigate. You go deep into the archaeological ruins of the lost Martian civilisation and find another alien "Artefact". When you touch it, in the first few seconds of the game, the forces of Hell are released again and attempt to steal back the powerful mystical device. You, a marine combat engineer, are working for Dr. Elizabeth McNeil. The attractive Dr McNeil was the whistleblower who notified counsellor Elliot Swann and Jack Campbell of Dr. Malcolm Betruger's mysterious activities at the beginning of Doom 3.

This time there is little introduction, within minutes you are running from cave to lab to monorail blasting demons at a frantic pace. Again the power starts to fail, but this time you find you are using your torch a little less (which almost lightens the tension). Occasionally you have to brave the Martian atmosphere with a respirator, but mostly you are wandering around the decimated dig area and long derelict bases, picking up a few PDA's and data discs left around by the hapless UAC staff. These provide emails, voice recordings and reports that are essential information for your mission, i.e. the weapons locker codes that enable you to kick a lot more Demon b*tt. The fading radio transmission of Dr McNeil, cut scenes of demon attacks and the eerie silence, with occasional loud machine noises from automatically operating plant, add to the creepy game-play, although most of the tension comes from the gloom and darkness. Plus [sadly] again there's no stealth mode, so you can't hide in the shadows - as that's where 'they' lurk. The game has a few levels: e.g. the Erabus dig site, Erabus Labs and Control, The Phobos Labs, and a return to the disintegrating Delta Labs, before you have to descend into Hell itself to face an old foe. You have all the old weapons from Doom 3 plus a neat antique double barrelled shotgun (resurrected from Doom II) and your mysterious alien artefact.

And the game play is again very scary, plus you need a fast gaming PC to respond in time when attacked or it's all over. This time there's far less time-wasting with cut scenes of you chatting to the odd survivor, and the game-play is overall far shorter than Doom3 (which actually reduces the feeling of repetition and works quite well). Again it does get quite hard as you near the end, and I had to resort to health and ammo cheats to survive the battle with the odd demon boss. Here though your alien artefact comes into it's own as it gains power through the game, and becomes quite formidable by the end. It took me just a few days to complete the game (Doom3 took weeks), partly because it's easier to get out of each level. You can save at any time for difficult sequences. So overall, just like Doom3, it was a very enjoyable, if rather creepy, game - it's not for preteens though. The only problem I had running the expansion pack was that I had to unload my patched Doom3 and reload it (unpatched) before Resurrection of Evil, which then applied the update patch - otherwise both games refused to run. For me it ran under XP and now Vista (with 3Gb system memory). So highly recommended, if you have a very fast PC, and now (often) at a bargain price.

It's not a repeat of Doom 3. The Soul cube, new monsters and weapons add to the interest, but essentially, nothing's changed. You just know that pressing a button or opening a door will spawn more monsters. The only intrigue just comes from guessing which variety.

The most interesting character is Dr. Liz McNeil. Why isn't better use of her? The occasional radio message is inadequate. Perhaps she could have been an active intellectual ally to your character's brawn rather?

I was wowed by the Martian landscape scenes in Doom 3, why wasn't this expanded on in RoE? Why so few trips outside (and even then rushed, because of limited air supply)?

ID Software / Nerve Software have to tread a difficult path between staying true to the Doom franchise, and developing ideas and storylines beyond the original concept. In my view, they could and should have been more imaginative. Must do better, ID!