Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil Preview

Well I thought I had come to terms with and conquered my desire to ditch my ATI 9800 Pro and get a 6800 GT. I first got the urge last year when Doom 3 went gold. Back then I spent 2 painful weeks in my own personal Hell, coming up with schemes to raise extra money to purchase the new card, then convincing myself it was not necessary; that I could find a better use for $400 bucks. When Doom 3 finally came out, reason and responsibility triumphed. I ended up playing the game on my 'old' video card and using the money I saved on something less fun. Like rent, electricity and food. Well Activision and id are prepping the add-on for Doom 3, titled, Resurrection of Evil (RoE), you can read our preview here. After playing part of the single player story and the new multiplayer features, I am starting to get those upgrade twinges again.

You bastards! Leave the poor hellspawns alone!! Free hellspawns!

Novel heating system... I like it.

Set two years after the original Doom 3 story, a strange signal has been received from the surface of Mars and this time a team of Combat Engineers, rather than Marines is being sent back in to investigate a planet that is supposed to be dead. Upon arrival, things get off to a rapid start as your team finds a strange Alien artifact and the forces of Hell stream forth to do what they do best: kill people and break things. Soon your team is dead and you are alone trying to battle your way out of a nightmare. A squad of Marines would be perfect right about now.

This time, instead of starting in a space station, the action starts in the middle of an archeological dig site. The abandoned research equipment and bits and pieces of old alien buildings make for a creepy setting to fight your way out of. While the game engine itself did not get any major updates, that is not too surprising as Doom 3 was, and still is, a bleeding edge game engine. As you progress through the single player portion of the game, the story is advanced with cut-scenes, data logs and radio communications from team members still on the surface.

In typical add-on fashion, you do have a few new weapons to help you fight your way out. The first is the alien artifact itself. As you encounter and defeat boss monsters throughout the game, the artifact absorbs some of their powers and transfers them to you. These powers will help you defeat the legions from Hell by using things like Hell Time, which slows everyone and everything down around you (Yes, just like Bullet time in the Max Payne games). I was told that once the artifact is fully charged, you'll be able to go into a berserk mode where you can do incredible amounts of damage and also invoke the power to become invulnerable for short periods of time. For traditional weapons, the double-barrel shotgun from Doom 2 is back in all of its destructive glory. While it cuts quite a swath through Hell's hordes, it also makes quite an impact in multiplayer as well. More on that in a minute.

Also new to the mix is the Ionized Plasma Levitator (IPL), which is a fancy name for the grabber. Also acquired early in the game, I found it much handier in combat than the gravity gun in Half Life 2. As enemies came swarming at me through the hallway, I was able to pick up advancing spiders and fling them at others, or as the Vulgar, (an updated, creepier version of the imp) began tossing fire balls at me, I was able to pluck them out of the air and fire them right back. The space in front of the gun distorts and curls as you activate it, which is a nice little visual effect. It's clear from the time I spent playing, that the IPL is going to be used for much more than moving crates.

After taking on a couple of levels on my own, one of the multiplayer stations opened up and I sat down to try my skills against other humans. Multiplayer in RoE has expanded the player cap from 4 to 8, includes Capture the Flag as done by ThreeWave Software, and will come with 8 new multiplayer maps, 4 of which are specifically designed with Deathmatch in mind.

Who's that handsome guy lurking in the dark? Oh it's my high-school Biology professor!

I am very pissed... I look horrible.

The maps themselves are pretty well laid out and made for some very exciting games. When I first joined the match, I was able to get into the other team's base pretty quickly. As I made my way towards their flag, I picked up extra armor and weapons, zigzagging around obstacles and other players. After taking out a couple of members of the other team, I made my move and took the flag. No sooner had I gotten outside their base, when I was met by one of the enemy and his double-barreled shotgun. I went down like a sack of hammers when he unloaded both barrels into my face at point blank range.

Over the next 20 minutes the score went back and forth as we all settled into a rhythm with our impromptu team. That is, until the guys from id sat down. What had been a relatively exciting match, now took on a whole new frenzied feeling as we had some real competition. By the time the game was over, our side did not win, but we at least were able to stay within 3 points of the other team.

While the team has said that RoE will be about half as long as the original game, you can bet that it's going to be a much more intense ride. After receiving feedback about what players did, and did not like from the original game, they tried to distill all the things that worked well in the first game, along with a few refinements into the add-on. After seeing and playing Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil, it appears id and Activision have made an add-on worthy of the original game. The single player story seems engaging and keeps enough of the original play style while mixing in some enjoyable new features. One thing I know for sure they have succeeded at is in resurrecting my desire to upgrade my video card. So the struggle between my hunger to acquire a new video card or doing the responsible thing with my money continues. Sometimes I hate being an adult.