Reviews - Zaxx233

A very ambitious mod with a fantastic first and a kinda bad second episode.

Narratively it starts out great and it's awesome to explore Mars City, a location that was never really part of the original Doom 3 experience. Episode 1 has some amazing maps thanks to this freshness in presentation, the combat is not that good but the level design is great.

I expected the same greatness from Episode 2 but oh boy was I let down, it's like if it wasn't even made by the same people. Episode 2 is basically the longest sewer section I have ever played with level design that drives you insane with CONSTANT backtracking, really boring puzzles, the absolute lack of weapon variety and just awful combat sections.

Episode 2 constantly asks you to fight half a dozen enemies in close corridors and considering how Doom 3 was made that just simply doesn't work. Doom 3's enemies have pretty good pathfinding so usually they spawn in and go right towards you and if those spawns are nonsensical (and they are) then you can find yourself having "door combat" all the time where a bunch of demons just block your path to a room and you're just standing at the door shooting stuff.

Also have fun using the super shotgun, the machine gun and the chaingun with the occasional thrown grenades for 5 hours because the full Doom 3 arsenal doesn't exist here. I was actually shocked when I got a plasma gun for the last 30 minutes but there's no rocket launcher in a 5-6 hour Doom campaign? So boring and the difficulty doesn't feel right either, on ultra violence chaingunners are borderline gamebreaking with their damage output. Based on my experience I don't think that nightmare is actually even playable, it must be broken if enemies deal even more damage.

The speed of things doesn't feel right either: walking is a bit slow but running is so fast that I mostly just bump into stuff instead of moving precisely. Doom 3, just like this mod has tight spaces with a lot of objects in the environment so movement this fast will never feel comfortable. Because of the stupidly fast running you can strafe jump really fast though, it serves no purpose (apart from making one timed section really easy) but if you're a Quake fan you'll have your fun there.

Overall I think the main problem is that while a lot of the gameplay is faster and more brutal than Doom 3 some of the original clunkiness still remains. Mechanically Doom 3 is a bit too strict for these massive close quarter ambushes so increasing the movement speed and the damage of weapons is great but that won't help if you're being cornered and you're stuck in a reload animation that you can't cancel by switching to another weapon.

Great first episode but don't bother with the second if you don't like complex sewer maps (it easy to get lost and the mod doesn't have an automap te help you out). If you work at a gas station and you get a kick out of transferring fuel and refuelling things then go right ahead though. I know it sounds harsh to just blatantly say that Episode 2 has awful combat but when you're in a narrow corridor fighting 4 hellknighs without any room to manuever you're just like "have they even playtested this?"