Three days ago, Doom 3 turned 10 years old. While Doom 3 was not as action-packed as its predecessor, it did look amazing for its time. Doom 3 tried to experiment and adopted a more ‘survival’ gameplay. And while the end result may disappointed a number of gamers, it definitely looked spectacular. Fast forward ten whole years and here we are today, with a game that looks even great for today’s standards (provided you use a number of mods and texture packs).
So here is our tribute to the latest Doom game. Do note that Sikkmod, Wulfen’s Textures and Monoxead’s Textures are the major mods that have been used for capturing the following images.
Kudos to Guru3D’s Marcel and Meep, Doomworld’s Wulfen, Rage3D’s demo, and NeoGAF’s The Janitor.
Enjoy and happy birthday Doom 3!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email
Fantastic engine, best of the best at the time.
I was surprised to learn that Doom 3 is Id’s best selling game. I always assumed Doom or Quake sold the most. Hmm speaking of Quake, now I have that reinstall itch…
HOLY SHIT !
ID historically produced the most solid looking engines. With ID and Crytek falling apart, I’m afraid of what the future of FPS holds. :/
We still have Ubisoft (Far Cry, Blood Dragon), Bethesda (Skyrim, Fallout), Gearbox (Borderlands), Valve (Left 4 Dead, Half-Life), Titanfall, Star Citizen, No Man’s Sky, Deus Ex (Eidos), Ninja Warrior, and on and on.
And besides, id is still around and they are still producing games using their ip’s.
Crytek is really the only one going away for good, and they stopped being a leading force in the FPS genre yeeeears ago.
“Ubisoft (Far Cry, Blood Dragon)”
Meh. 90% wasted potential, the “story” is everything wrong with modern FPS. Blood Dragon was more refreshing but for FC4 the “story” stuff is already being hyped.
“Bethesda (Skyrim, Fallout)”
Technically these are first person and you can shoot but come on, those games are mostly about inventory management, conversations and levelling up, you don’t need FPS skills to beat them.
“Gearbox (Borderlands)”
Most overrated game of last gen, it’s literally just grinding to grind some
more. Skinner box. Only barely more skillbased than Bethesda games.
“Valve”
Inventors of unskippable cutscenes you can walk around in. The Half Life games are technically solid shooters with some great ideas here and there but they also brought us boring scripted events during which you become a viewer rather than a player. Half Life is to a large extent responsible
for this snoozefest of “cinematic” shooters we get today. The concept
that a FPS would force you to stand around while NPCs deliver their
lines is a huge portion of what is wrong with FPS right now so to name
Valve as a company that could improve the FPS genre in some way –
questionable.
I say arena FPS (multiplayer) is the ONLY bastion of classic FPS gameplay. UT2015, Toxikk, Reflex. Big budget FPS will keep its focus on consoles, see Far Cry 4, Battlefield Hardline, Destiny and Rainbow Six Siege. Those are the big FPS in the near future and they don’t give a shit about PC. Siege maybe a little bit but even that is a console game at heart, despite featuring lean.
Sorry man, we can’t be friends. My friends like gaming.
I like gaming. I like GAMES. Not movies. That’s why I’m bothered by unskippable cutscenes. And I like a challenge. That’s why I get bored when a game thinks “progress” consists of racking up higher numbers (XP) so you can dish out higher numbers (of damage).
My idea of a good game is an interactive world in which you can overcome increasingly harsh obstacles by LEARNING, by improving. Ultimately you master the game, you feel accomplished because you managed to beat it. Modern FPS is not like that. Half Life 2 is the best game of those you mentioned (or implied) as it really does ramp up the difficulty over the course of its linear campaign. If only it didn’t interrupt itself to have soulless characters chew your ears off every five minutes. HL1 only did this in the introduction and then let you off the leash. Valve got worse so I don’t expect them to make a better HL3. I want them to but I see the same problems as HL2 had pop up again. Especially since so many people seem to overlook them so easily.
LOL….wut, this whole post is full of wtf.
Those are some fancy textures. Last I checked modding the Doom 3 ultimate edition wasn’t very easy (or possible).
Just played through all of Doom 3 and the addon packs within the last couple of months – all in 3D using Nvidia 3D Vision. It was awesome!
I remember reading previews and articles about DOOM 3 before its release and everyone was just blown away by its visuals! There was nothing that even came close….way ahead of eveyone! Carmack did some amazing things…hope he does the same for VR.
Sikkmod is one of the most impressive mods I’ve ever seen. Various ssao, dof, lens flare, bloom/hdr and motions blur settings, soft shadows, ambient light, light shafts, etc.
On the top of that it has many gameplay tweaks. You can enable mounted flashlight or night vision/thermal vision with rechargeable batteries, interaction with items (like in HL2), add random encounters and randomize health of your enemies, add resurrectable zombies, change health pack management (collect health packs and use them later), and many many other settings (some of them from classic Doom).
If Wulfen/Monoxead and Sikkmod isn’t enough, you also can try parallax occlusion mapping, but it’s very demanding. There are also various texture packs for monsters, characters, weapons and objects.
Word of a warning though: DO NOT BUY BFG for mods.
1) it isn’t compatible with mods.
2) It looks worse then the original version (no shadows from flashight, sorry).
So BFG is to the original D3 and silkmod what Deus Ex HR: Directors edition is to DEHR and ENB.
mounted flashlight is for pussies! Hardcore fans play at night with 0% brightness and use muzzle flash/plasma/enemy fireballs to get visual info when fighting in pitch dark areas:D btw Doom3 is the best horror/sci-fi shooter ever!
By the way, about the flashlight. One of the moders made a great assets pack, which contains lots of new stuff. watch?v=0diW31i7NEg&t=55s
His work is included in Absolute HD 1.5 (except the sounds). Someone may want to try this mod pack, if he feel lazy enough. watch?v=ajW9LTVTRNg
As far as I understand, he made this for his own mod – Star 1088 (reminds me of System Shock, but it’s still very early in development), but shared his work with the community.
if that is the mod with headbob and aim down sights, there is NO way I’m going to download a single bit of that…:)
dunno about Star 1088 though
I modded it out last summer, it can look amazing. However… just because it’s been 10 years, don’t think some of this stuff can’t bring your PC to its knees. As I recall the POM and certain other effects were just brutal, and I don’t think it’s optimized at all for multicore CPUs.
I love the fourth screenshot and the whopping 3 FPS its getting lol.
Still one of the best shooters going around, 2004 was a special year for shooter fans – Far Cry, Doom 3 and Half-Life 3 🙂
Yep. Will never forget that year. Fantastic games.
Half-Life 2* ! Don’t need to try to stir that fanbase into a fit of conspiracy!
No LINK to mods ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEnXDnWdkpQ
Links in description.