A very obvious course correction from the mixed reception of the base game but doesn't play to any of the strengths of it. What we ended up getting is an awkward middle ground of how doom 3 plays and how the originals play. But its just a worse version of both styles. This is what really is the lopsided mess that doesn't know what it wants to be that doom 3 gets billed as.
You have the cramped level design of doom 3 since most of the expansion is repurposed levels from the base game. But the enemy encounters are kicked up to 11 and plays like a shitty community .wad that throws as many enemies as it can before it would tank performance. You can't walk two steps without fighting an enemy and having a new one spawn directly on top of you (which makes you take damage???). Its just a conveyer belt of shitty enemies for 4 hours straight. This makes combat really awkward since you will find yourself reloading and taking hits to the face since there is no where to move and there is endless amounts of enemies. These levels weren't designed with this many enemy encounters in mind the base game is much slower paced than this. Despite fighting way more than the base game this somehow has less ammo than the base game where it was so annoying to end up having half of my guns empty near the end of the expansion.
Everything new outside of the super shotgun sucks. The gravity gun that can catch enemy projectiles and send them back is a cool idea but is terrrible. Has no range, can't hold the projectiles that long and what you catch obstructs your vision so you can't even aim it well before the gun makes you throw the fireball. The shots end up going in random directions and is a waste of time to use outside of when the game forces you for some encounters and boss fights.
The Artifact heart bullet-time shit is terrible. Feels like an awkward new mechanic graphed onto a game not meant for it. Makes you move like its DOOM 1 and increases your damage so much you one shot all the major big enemies. Makes the game feel like a chore and redundent to even play. Doesn't follow well in with your combos or how the general flow of combat works since its slows down time which makes enemies spawn in slower so you just stand there waiting for them to come out of their portals. Then at the end of the expansion when they are throwing 50 enemies at you in a single encounter they don't give you any bodies for this power despite dripping over bodies you syphon to power the artifact in all the earlier levels when you don't even need it????
I know its easy now to say "just stick to the survival horror gameplay of the opening hours of the base game." when its so far removed from the intial pushback of Doom 3. But it would have a far better expansion if it was a tense slow paced survival horror game instead of this frankenstein pig slop that doesn't please either camps (those to liked doom 3 and those who liked how the originals played/don't like doom 3)
You have the cramped level design of doom 3 since most of the expansion is repurposed levels from the base game. But the enemy encounters are kicked up to 11 and plays like a shitty community .wad that throws as many enemies as it can before it would tank performance. You can't walk two steps without fighting an enemy and having a new one spawn directly on top of you (which makes you take damage???). Its just a conveyer belt of shitty enemies for 4 hours straight. This makes combat really awkward since you will find yourself reloading and taking hits to the face since there is no where to move and there is endless amounts of enemies. These levels weren't designed with this many enemy encounters in mind the base game is much slower paced than this. Despite fighting way more than the base game this somehow has less ammo than the base game where it was so annoying to end up having half of my guns empty near the end of the expansion.
Everything new outside of the super shotgun sucks. The gravity gun that can catch enemy projectiles and send them back is a cool idea but is terrrible. Has no range, can't hold the projectiles that long and what you catch obstructs your vision so you can't even aim it well before the gun makes you throw the fireball. The shots end up going in random directions and is a waste of time to use outside of when the game forces you for some encounters and boss fights.
The Artifact heart bullet-time shit is terrible. Feels like an awkward new mechanic graphed onto a game not meant for it. Makes you move like its DOOM 1 and increases your damage so much you one shot all the major big enemies. Makes the game feel like a chore and redundent to even play. Doesn't follow well in with your combos or how the general flow of combat works since its slows down time which makes enemies spawn in slower so you just stand there waiting for them to come out of their portals. Then at the end of the expansion when they are throwing 50 enemies at you in a single encounter they don't give you any bodies for this power despite dripping over bodies you syphon to power the artifact in all the earlier levels when you don't even need it????
I know its easy now to say "just stick to the survival horror gameplay of the opening hours of the base game." when its so far removed from the intial pushback of Doom 3. But it would have a far better expansion if it was a tense slow paced survival horror game instead of this frankenstein pig slop that doesn't please either camps (those to liked doom 3 and those who liked how the originals played/don't like doom 3)