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Developed by id Software and released in 2004, Doom 3 marked the long-awaited return of the legendary franchise after years of absence and a tumultuous development process. This third installment boldly pivots the series toward the realm of horror-driven first-person shooters, delivering an experience that is as gripping as it is terrifying.
Set in 2145 on the red planet of Mars, Doom 3 unfolds within the confines of the Union Aerospace Corporation (UAC), a futuristic conglomerate conducting experiments in teleportation, weaponry, and biology. A catastrophic teleportation mishap tears open a portal to Hell, unleashing a horde of grotesque and belligerent demonic creatures, akin to an infernal Pandora’s box. As the anonymous Doom Marine, it’s your mission to eradicate these nightmarish abominations and halt their invasion before they can set their sights on Earth. While the plot may seem simplistic at first glance, laced with B-movie-style dialogue, it serves as a gritty backdrop for relentless monster-slaying action.
Doom 3 represents a seismic shift for the franchise, embracing a horror-centric approach with strikingly realistic visuals for its time. The game’s atmosphere is oppressively grim, brought to life by bleak, futuristic industrial environments drenched in rust, blood, and scattered corpses. Unidentifiable organic matter and grotesque viscera litter the halls, while the game’s masterful use of dynamic lighting and shadows creates an unrelenting sense of dread. Mars has never felt so suffocating—claustrophobes, beware. While I wished for more time exploring the planet’s desolate surface, the game’s interiors are breathtakingly detailed, despite a few lackluster textures that slightly mar the otherwise stellar presentation.
The chilling atmosphere is amplified by an exceptional soundscape. From eerie, droning noises to blood-curdling screams and unsettling whispers, every sound keeps you on high alert, fostering a constant state of tension and unease. The only minor drawback is the near absence of in-game music, a disappointment for fans of Bobby Prince’s iconic soundtracks from the original Doom games. That said, the main theme is a pulse-pounding rock anthem, and the pause menu’s music adds a haunting layer of mystery.
The bestiary of Doom 3 is a parade of grotesque, nightmare-inducing creatures, each more horrifying than the last. You’ll take twisted pleasure in dismembering and eviscerating these monstrosities. Demons lurk in every shadow, often ambushing you from corners or emerging right behind you—stay vigilant, as danger is ever-present. Many iconic enemies from earlier Doom titles return in more realistic, terrifying forms, including:
Zombies, some wielding shotguns or machine guns, adding a tactical edge to encounters.
Imps, ubiquitous humanoid demons hurling fireballs.
Cacodemons, the infamous floating red spheres that spit electric projectiles.
Pinky Demons, now ferocious quadrupeds with a startling redesign.
Archviles, capable of summoning other demons to overwhelm you.
Revenants, skeletal warriors armed with rocket launchers.
New horrors also infest the UAC’s labs, such as:
Trites, swarming spider-like creatures that attack in packs.
Cherubs, grotesque insectoid beings with disturbingly human-like child faces.
Wraiths, teleporting fiends that keep you guessing in combat.
Massive bosses punctuate the campaign, offering challenging encounters that stand out in an otherwise relatively easy game.
Doom 3 boasts a varied and satisfying arsenal, paying homage to the franchise’s roots. Standouts include:
The Shotgun, devastating at close range but hampered by a wide spread and sluggish fire rate.
The Pulse Rifle and Minigun, perfect for mowing down hordes of enemies.
The Chainsaw, a gory tool for reducing demons to bloody pulp.
The Rocket Launcher and the legendary BFG-9000, which obliterate anything in their path.
The Soul Cube, a mystical weapon that restores health by slaying enemies.
Your trusty Flashlight is an essential ally in the pitch-black UAC facility, but the inability to wield it alongside a weapon is a frustrating design choice. Constantly switching between the flashlight and your arsenal disrupts the flow of combat, a flaw that could have been solved with a simple in-game duct tape fix or a suit-integrated light.
Veterans of classic Doom games may find the combat slower and less frenetic, particularly in one-on-one encounters. However, battles against multiple enemies inject a thrilling dose of chaos. The level design is delightfully intricate, often labyrinthine, and meticulously crafted, though occasional searches for well-hidden items evoke the exploration-heavy days of old-school FPS games.
Doom 3 is an exceptional title that fans of FPS and horror games will find immensely rewarding. Its suffocating atmosphere, set within a hellish technological nightmare, is nothing short of phenomenal. With a substantial campaign lasting around ten hours, it keeps players gripped from start to finish. However, it remains underappreciated by some fans of the franchise, which is a shame. While it diverges from the fast-paced action of its predecessors, this distinctiveness is its greatest strength, carving out a unique identity in the series. Don’t hesitate—dive into the Martian abyss and fulfill your mission!
A remastered version, DOOM 3 BFG Edition, was released in 2012.
Check out my review of it here.

Here is my review for DOOM 3:
Doom 3 is a very atmospheric game. There's gore, blood, and viscera all over the place. Most of the game is incredibly dark. So it is difficult to actually see what you should be aiming at. You got to flip back and forth between a weapon and a flashlight. More so, the game loves to spawn enemies behind you or directly in front when you open a door. It does feel pretty cheap. But at least the game provides you with plenty of ammo and health. The weaponry is where the game shines. You get all the weapons Doom is known for: your Chainsaw, your Plasma Rifle, your Chaingun, and of course the BFG! For the first time in the series Doom 3 introduces vertical aiming! So you have to track your enemies as they fly through the air. Making the Lost Souls, Cherubs, and Cacodemons much more of a threat than before. There's also some outside "no air" sections. But those are pretty forgettable as you just run through them to the next door within 60 seconds.
Story wise, this is a fleshed out reboot of the original Doom. You're Doomguy who goes to the Mars research base. They are researching teleportation technology and have inadvertently teleported to a place that no human should venture. Shit hits the fan immediately upon arrival. The power goes out, screams and torment are heard, and things start exploding. You grab a gun and your armor and set to work. This time you're guided by your sergeant through the Mars base. You got to get to the power station to start up the power, then send out a distress message to the human fleet, then investigate and stop the Hell invasion of Mars. Each area is heavily guarded by demons. So you do what you do best, and mow them down. Each area provides a new enemy and new weapons, each more powerful than the last. Eventually you find your way to the chief scientist's lab... alas! It is a trap and he sends you to hell. Doomguy fights his way out of Hell and back to Mars. When you return you find they have created a gigantic portal under the surface of Mars to invade Earth. Doomguy has to stop this. He ventures down into the substrate to rip and tear his way to the portal. It is guarded by the biggest demon you've seen, the dreaded Cyberdemon! This demon is huge and wields rocket launchers. But Doomguy has something to stop him... your trusty Chainsaw Cube! Sure it's an ancient demon killing artifact deemed the Soul Cube... but it's a flying chainsaw cube! The portal is sealed and backup arrives. Doomguy is the only survivor.
Overall, it's a fine shooter; yet, pretty basic by today's standards. Unfortunately, it doesn't contain the same nostalgia factor of Doom 1 or Doom 2. I personally prefer the game that ripped this off... Dead Space 😄

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Here is my review for DOOM 3: Resurrection of Evil:
This is a DLC continuation of Doom 3. Hell is once again breaking through to Mars and it's up to Doomguy to stop it. That's pretty much the entire plot. You find a heartifact (an ancient artifact shaped like a heart) and you have to return it to Hell. This is a much more straight forward run and gun when compared to the base Doom 3 game. It's not focused on tension or atmosphere, you're all about the ripping and the tearing. Surprisingly, it's all new areas and objectives, very little is recycled from the base game.
Gameplay is exactly the same as Doom 3; with a few new things. It adds the heartifact, which grants you the ability to slow down time. As you defeat bosses the heartifact powers up, granting invincibility and beserk(one hit kill punches). You get the super shotgun (renamed to double barrel shotgun) and the gravity gun from Half-Life 2. I consider the gravity gun overpowered so much more in this than in Half-Life. The intention of the gun was to catch enemy fireballs and chuck them back. However, every object is indestructible, so you can pick up your favorite steel barrel, launch it at the enemy, pick it up and repeat. These barrels also block enemy attacks. So there's very little threat unless you're surrounded.
Overall, it's a fine romp if you need more Doom 3 action. I never seen the Doom movie, but now I wonder if this is the baseline of that film.

Doom 3 is a fantastic game on its own merits and doesn't get enough credits for its accomplishments. It's been 20 years since it's initial release, and at the time it was truly cutting edge with a level of fidelity we had never seen before.
ID Tech 4 delivered an incredible engine with capabilities such as real-time lighting and shadows, detailed bump mapping, interactive GUIs, powerful scripting, animation & sound-systems and so much more. Add to that a very large amount of geometric detail and texture variation compared to other games at the time.
The game took a much more dark and grounded approach to concept, which was extremely refreshing for many people coming out of the 90s. It wasn't going to have characters running around at 1000 miles per hour as it was going for something way more immersive, atmospheric and realistic as stated early on by mr.Carmack himself.
Story wise, despite what some might say, it's not in the way very much at all, and in fact for the most part everything is optional with the excellent implementation of the PDA-system which gives you the choice of how much you care. The fact that the game has about 20 minutes of intro was necessary to make the world feel believable, rather than just dump spawning you into hell and acting like it's 1993 which would've felt off given the direction and buildup of the game.
Gameplay wise, the play between light and dark is really the core pillar a long with the smooth methodical gameplay that really brings the immersion on top. The tension that builds from you having to trade firepower for visibility works extremely well with the dark design of the game, and also benefitted the performance of the game at the time. This is also why many people who enjoyed Doom 3 for what it was didn't appreciate the BFG-edition that threw that under the buss just to cater to those who wanted D1,D2 in D3.
Another somewhat controversial topic was the shotgun and the fact that it wasn't "effective enough". Well, this is simply game balancing, the D3 shotgun absolutely shreds even late game enemies by just a shot or two, but it requires you to shove the gun down their throats as a risk reward tradeoff. Tinkering with this just makes so many chess-pieces come out of balance in the entire game, instead I enjoyed it for what it was intended to do.
It's a shame that the ID Software of today seems so afraid of upsetting the butt hurt mob of anti-d3ers that they barely mention the game on its 20th anniversary. A bunch of people who to this day just can't accept that the game just isn't for them, rather than acting childish.
If you want to play the game today I'd heavily recommend running the source-port dhewm3.org that has a ton of bug fixes, widescreen support and generally just makes the game run without hassle on modern systems while staying true to the core experience.
If you're feeling spicy there is a mod or two I'd recommend, throw the alpha-sound in for the pistol as It makes a world of difference as well as a texture-pack such as the Wulfen-textures which adds a ton of more detailed and renewed textures. Couple that with sickmod, and you've got a fantastic looking game even by todays standards which is a testament to all the hard work that went into it.