Doom 3

I got pretty far on my first attempt to beat Doom 3. Maybe even 75% through. That leaves a good many hours left, though, as according to Steam it took me 13 hours to complete the game on this try. Which I think is too much with such monotonous gameplay. F.E.A.R. had the same problem.

The game had fewer harmless jump scares than I recalled. The vast majority of time it was actual enemies coming through the walls or jumping from the total blackness the game so loves. I think I've built a bit of a resistance to jump scares with the F.E.A.R. and Dead Space games, though. I did jump a few times, however. Once quite a bit during the prologue when a guy standing behind a corner totally surprised me.

Doom 3 is the only game I've seen so far to have a mirror scare. And one of the few to have mirrors at all. Deus Ex had mirrors, as well Mass Effect 3 in the bathroom of Normandy's captain cabin. I guess it's an engine limitation or maybe reluctance to allocate resources to implement such a feature. But you'd think that mirrors would really add something to horror games like F.E.A.R. and Dead Space.

I installed a duct tape mod for the run to counter a bit the darkness of the game. It attaches a smaller version of the flashlight to the shotgun and machine gun. It prevented some of the surprises, and as well made the stupid, complete darkness bits more bearable. I wonder what they were thinking with that. It's more of an annoyance than a way to build up tension to not be able see enemies.

I guess having become bit better with shooters also helped me to finish the game this time. I recall having some real trouble in some parts previously. The Guardian was again troublesome though. It took me multiple tries to realize only the blue part on his back takes damage when he's re-summoning the Seekers. I thought it was enough to shoot the demon in general and kept wondering why the fight just kept going on.

What I didn't remember of Doom 3, was how lame all the guns in the game feel. Or maybe I didn't have much to compare them to back then. Still, the sound effects are simply feeble. There's very little weight behind the guns. I guess having more recoil would've helped too. Even Deus Ex: Invisible War's -- that came out a year before Doom 3 -- guns felt better with how the shotgun and sniper rifle ragdolled the enemies.

I played through the expansion, Resurrection of Evil, as well. It's the standard deal; more of the same stuff with few new additions. And it has half the length of the main game, which really makes it a tighter-packed, better experience. Also, Jennifer Hale as McNeil in RoE felt quite out of place. Her voice didn't fit the doctor at all.