Doom 3 Resurrection of Evil Xbox Review

Some people never learn, do they? It wasn’t enough for the UAC to know that they’d lost their entire Martian outpost with all hands, no they had to send more people there to die. Scientific curiosity is one thing, but this is just plain suicidal. Lucky for you, you get to play one of the few survivors in Id software’s follow up to the critically acclaimed Doom 3.

Graphics

Once again, the Doom 3 engine has worked wonders with the Xbox’s hardware, everything looks beautiful, well as beautiful as the depths of hell can look. Backgrounds are very detailed, textures look realistic, the lighting effects (what there are of them, being such a dark game) are perfect, the bad guys are well detailed and smoothly animated. But, all this comes at a price and when you get more than a few enemies on screen you do get some noticeable slow down. This is a small price to pay though, as it is rare that you’ll be facing more than 3 enemies at any one time. All in all, it’s not quite as impressive as the original, being as it’s just more of the same, but still one of the best looking games you’ll play on a home console.

Gameplay

This time round you’ll be revisiting UAC’s delta labs 2 years after the happenings of the first game, as usual you’ll play a marine who starts off as part of a squad, but after the rest of your squad are killed you are left alone to complete your mission, the only company you’ll have is the occasional radio contact with your team leader, a Doctor McNeill, who will fill you in on mission objectives, as you finish one, a new message will come through. The game plays pretty much like the last, moving from one area to the next, clearing them of demons as you go, here and there you have to activate machinery to let you progress further, but it’s all pretty standard stuff. There are a few new additions to the gameplay though, the first is the alien artefact that you pick up at the start of the game, unlike the last game’s soul cube it isn’t a weapon, what it does instead is slow down time, which can be invaluable when you’ve got 3 Hellknights bearing down on you, but like the soul cube it does need feeding. Instead of just feeding off of your kills like the soul cube, this artefact can only be fed by dead human bodies, which is something you might expect to be in short supply, but every now and again you’ll come across a few, which usually means you’ve got a big fire fight coming up. Apart from the artefact there’s also a couple more new weapons, first is the Grabber, an unashamed rip-off of Half Life 2s gravity gun, but it’s not just useful for moving the furniture round, smaller enemies like the flaming skulls and spiders can be picked up with it and used as weapons and you can even use the enemies’ fireballs against them, catching them in mid air and firing them back, this can be very useful when you’re low on ammo, but unfortunately it’s completely useless against some enemies. Like I said, a complete rip off, but a great addition to the game and a lot of fun. Next new weapon is the double barrelled shotgun, which has amazing firepower, killing all but the biggest of foes in a single shot, and even the big guys go down with 3 or 4 shots. The downside is reload time, having to reload after every shot, but seeing as you can never get too over run this isn’t so bad. Unfortunately because of the new weapons we’ve had to lose some of the old ones, most noticeably the chainsaw, which is a shame, but the new guns make up for it. The campaign mode is shorter than the last games, and the multiplayer is missing the fantastic co-op mode, but there are some extras, Ultimate Doom, Doom 2 and the Doom 2 master levels are all included on the disc, and although old games are still classics and great to play through, unfortunately the multiplayer on these classic games is not online, but you can’t have everything.

Sound

The game’s sound, like it’s graphics are top notch, very atmospheric, and more than a little creepy. There is no music, other than the same tune from the last game, which just plays during the game’s intro FMV and game’s credits (which roll round far too soon), but the sound effects are many and varied. Weapon fire sounds authentically powerful and the demons make appropriately demonic noises, that added with the game’s ambient sound immerses you in the game fully, especially played on a big screen in the dark. Dolby 5.1 is supported and, if you’ve got the equipment, just adds to the already rich atmosphere.

Lifespan

Unfortunately the games single player is not as long as the last, but should still give you a good 12 hours of gameplay, the multiplayer isn’t up to much though, lacking the co-operative mode of the last game and only supporting 4 players online, with only 4 game types (Deathmatch, team deathmatch, last man standing and Tourney), but the inclusion of the classic Doom games adds a large chunk of gameplay which should keep you going for a fair old while.

Overall

A worthy addition to the Doom series, this expansion pack continues the game’s story nicely, the addition of the classic games gives you a nice chunk of nostalgia for you to get your teeth into. The multiplayer is sadly lacking though, making this mainly a game for the solitary gamer, but if you love your Doom you can’t really go wrong, especially not at the budget price of twenty quid.

8.6 out of 10