Playing Doom 3 for the first time in 2025 – From /r/Doom

I’ve been all up and down the classic Doom campaigns; Plutonia is in the running for my favorite games of all time. However, I’d never played 3. Wound up giving it a spin as part of some Halloween sale purchases, and…it’s an odd one. I’ve just beaten Alpha Labs Sector 4 as of this post. Scattered thoughts below. Would love to hear others’ takes.

For the record, I’m playing BFG edition on the Switch. I know this both removes some of the intended lighting-based horror and comes with some of the usual controller-based handicaps not present in mouse play. Playing on Veteran with no mid-level saves.

• It’s challenging, or at least has been challenging for me playing on a controller, without much console-based 3D shooter experience. But I’m not sure if it feels challenging in the right way. With its haunted-house horror design and high damage output per enemy (letting a gunner land hits on you can just chew through you at full health), a lot of retries can feel like slow-paced, methodical crawls back to the one ambush that killed you. While that kind of gotcha design is present in classic Doom games too, levels tend to be filled with more engaging combat design to try to improve at from the start of the map, keeping runbacks more fun and leaving more room for meaningful progress (better play) while doing so. I feel that’s less true here. Less acrobatic/strategic combat and many more full-health refills, that then just don’t matter when the next ambush hits you. Makes the runbacks feel more chore-like and less engaging.
• The horror focus also feels like it isn’t quite thoroughly married to the mechanics, as the scares only work once, and in part the game is still designed as an action shooter in the vein of the originals. You aren’t resource-starved or helpless enough for it to really feel like it’s mechanically designed around horror, but it also isn’t varied and engaging enough with its gameplay to feel smartly designed around action or, again, make those runbacks (which it will require) consistently fun.
• At its best, though, it still feels like Doom and reminds me of the fun of Doom, just with different priorities. There is still acrobatic combat in maze-like levels…just with those elements toned down in favor of the horror, which was also part of the original concept. As a one-off, fair enough. Being a horror-action tech demo is right in the original Doom’s DNA as much as anything. The emergent arcadey level design preferred by fans (including me) and more strongly associated with the series feels in part accidental, due to the mechanics and monster design.
• I like the weapons balancing. The shotgun tends to get guff, but I actually think it was a fair balancing call to make it high-risk, high-reward and to have certain enemies/scenarios (Imps and Maggots at close range) it works better on. While the shotgun or double-barreled shotgun is your default weapon in the classic games, here it’s the new machine gun instead, which was actually a bit of a missing “standard weapon” niche in the classic games and one that works well here.
• Reloading plays well as a concept with the less numerous but more dangerous enemies, and running through a clip in an encounter can be a genuinely punishing mistake.
• The enemy roster is…somehow higher in count but less diverse. Enemy behavior is simultaneously too much but not enough. Every enemy in the classic games has a simple and singular mechanical role that makes it a unique gameplay obstacle (though you could maybe argue that Hell Knights are just buffed Imps), which is part of what lends so well to mixing and matching them with different level geometry to craft various encounter scenarios. Here, basically all the demons are variants of having a dodge, a lunch, and a projectile, walking toward the player. Each one can do more things than the simple behaviors of the original bestiary, but they’re also less unique, to the point that it almost feels like movement speed and health is the only thing separating them. They’re much less distinct gameplay pieces than the originals, which makes combat feel samey. I’m not sure you could design controlled, clever encounters around these enemies in the same way the classics have lent themselves to over decades of fan maps.
• Fundamentally, this game does seem like the only time in Doom’s history that the gameplay design was reactionary rather than charting its own course. This is very much designed in the shadow of other immersion-based shooters coming out during its era. Maybe as a consequence, this also feels like the only Doom game that isn’t fully, confidently invested in a particular set of mechanics/design choices. (Except, uh…maybe the TNT half of Final Doom, which coincidentally similarly tries to juggle immersive environment exploration with shooting-action mechanics at the expense of its own fun sometimes.)

I’m intent on finishing it, and like I said, at its best, it still captures the fun of Doom, explored through a different lens. Holistically though, I think it’s gameplay is a little…troubled and scattershot.