This year we’re putting together a list of 31 Retro Horror games. Games that have come from dead console generations, back to haunt us. Sadly, not all of these games will be available for you to play due to the complicated nature of video game preservation. However, we’re going to note if it’s possible to play them on modern hardware. We'll be covering games from the Seventh Generation (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii) and earlier. So basically anything before 2006.
Day 11
Doom 3
Okay, so this series ended up having a ton of id Software developed games. I’m obviously a fan–but id Software was on the cutting edge of graphics and gameplay for a significant chunk of my youth. And that was still true for Doom 3.
I vividly remember the first tech demo showing off the first look at the engine running Doom 3, and realizing I would need a much better computer. The lighting and character animations looked even better than big budget computer animated TV shows from a decade earlier. It was truly groundbreaking stuff. And it was all going to be used in a game designed to scare the crap out of you.
Doom 3 adopted a slower pace that is almost antithetical to what Doom stands for today. In fact, Doom 3 isn’t even considered canon while others like Doom 64 have a place in the story, but wasn’t considered a main line game by fans of the time. That makes Doom 3 a strange outlier in the Doom franchise.
So you’re playing as a marine, but not the Doomguy. That means you don’t casually run around at 30 mph while ripping and tearing. Instead, action is slower paced with jump scares aplenty, and enemies lurking in shadowy darkness. The original game even made it impossible to have your gun out at the same time as your flashlight, so you had to stay in the dark if you wanted to keep your defenses up. Mods, and later remasters of Doom 3 would change this–but those of us who were there originally remember.
To this day I fondly remember Doom 3. It was almost like a prototype to Dead Space. The atmosphere and deliberate slow pace really gave Doom 3 a sense of dread and horror that no other id Software game managed. Even while you’re mowing through hordes of demons, you still feel vulnerable–a far cry from the tanklike DoomSlayer.
Doom 3 even did enemies well, though you never really encounter more than 2 or three at a time. But id Software did a good job utilizing the shadows the game’s engine was capable of producing to create some truly dreadful encounters.
If you want to play Doom 3 today, it’s not as hard as other games on this list–in fact, it just barely makes the cut off to be considered a retro game based on the criteria at the start of this article. But even so, Bethesda has been really taking care of the Doom IP, and has released Doom 3 as the BFG Edition available on modern consoles.
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