by: John Olin

November 10, 2005

The same time Resurrection of Evil was coming out for the PC, us Xbox gamers were just finally getting the Doom 3 game, a few months later we finally have Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil, and it is great. Those of you who don’t have a PC that could do RoE right or are a Mac user (like me) you finally get the have pretty much the same experience sans as crisp of visuals and different control. The game takes place sometime after the events in Doom 3, and for some reason or another marines are instructed to go into Mars again, and there the marines find a demon heart artifact, that the nameless marine you will become touches, and thus releases the demons of Hell once again on Mars, and then the fun starts. Basically you have to undo this, by taking the demon heart back to Hell, but first you have to figure out how to get there.

Basically the game follows the same traditional and strict meat and potatoes path of Doom 3, where you go into a room, blow some demons and zombies up, have the occasional boss fight, fight more demons, find keys, find power cells, turn stuff on, go through stuff, etc. You have a good amount of weapons here as well such as a machine gun, rocket launcher, plasma gun, and BFG9000. You start out with a pistol that actually has a light attachment to it! So no longer are you stuck switching between a gun and a light attachment all the time. The game also seems a lot less dark, but still extremely moody, so the use of a gun with a light isn’t as needed. Besides that, there are a lot more monsters, and guns, that will throw very bright projectiles that help light your way better. The BFG9000 as infamous and fun as it is to use, isn’t the overall most powerful weapon in the game. Strangely, it is a double-barreled shotgun that you find, and with this gun, one well-placed shot in front of a monster will kill them instantly. Of course with the bigger, hulking demons this isn’t true, but you will find yourself using it an awful lot. It also seems to me to be the most rewarding weapon as I never got tired of hearing it tear the flesh of zombies, and then listening to the sound of having to quickly reload it again, and hearing the snap back of the barrel against the stock.

The most interesting weapon in the game is basically a gravity gun that is obviously borrowed from Half-Life 2, which is on it’s way to Xbox this month. With it you can move objects around, throw them at enemies, or get into an area and grab some ammo or armor shards. Even cooler than that, is when a Imp, or some sort of demon throws a fireball at you, you can grab it, and let go of the left trigger, shooting it right back at them and instantly killing your opponent. It is very fun for a little bit, but is only helpful if you more or less know the enemy coming up will throw something at you. Otherwise it is best to have your shotgun out. You actually have to use it in one boss fight, where two parts are letting off energy, in which you grab, and throw at the hulking demon throwing fireballs at you.

Right after you beat that boss, the demon heart that you have gets powers that let you slow time down. When you use the demon heart, it will slow time down, and later on you gain the ability to hurt monsters better, and then closer to the end you become invincible when using it. You have three times you can use it, and when those are done with, you have to find dead bodies and suck their souls! The artifact itself is really creepy, and pumps in your trembling hands when it is out, letting out deathly and hellish sighs of air, and creepy palpitations.