Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

The Doom³ Pack delivers a tightly woven blend of frenetic combat and atmospheric tension that defines the modern survival-horror-shooter genre. In the base game, you assume the role of an unnamed Marine sent to Mars’s UAC facility, where your progression hinges on scavenging ammo, keycards, and health packs while navigating claustrophobic corridors. The pacing is deliberate—encounters with possessed scientists, imps, and hellspawn force you to manage resources meticulously, heightening every firefight into a nerve-wracking test of skill.

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Resurrection of Evil expands the formula with new weapons like the Genesis Device’s grabber arm, allowing you to hurl objects and enemies into hazards or switch up your own arsenal on the fly. This addition adds a puzzle-like element to encounters, rewarding creative use of the environment. The pack’s AI opponents respond dynamically to your tactics, flanking you through air ducts or raining fire from elevated platforms when you least expect it.

Both titles emphasize exploration: hidden lockers brim with armor shards, clips, and energy cells, encouraging careful backtracking to unlock secret areas. Environmental storytelling abounds in audio logs and computer terminals, giving clues to upcoming threats and keeping tension high between combat sequences. Elevators, maintenance tunnels, and dimly lit labs all feel distinct, yet part of the same overarching nightmare.

Multiplayer enthusiasts will appreciate that the core Doom³ combat mechanics—strafe-jumping, precisely aimed shotgun blasts, and rocket splash damage—translate seamlessly into online deathmatches. While the pack’s focus remains on its single-player campaign, fans of classic arena shooters will find enough depth in modded servers and community maps to prolong the replay value.

Graphics

Powered by id Software’s id Tech 4 engine, Doom³ Pack was groundbreaking for its time, pioneering real-time dynamic lighting and shadowing that still impress today. Flickering lamps cast elongated silhouettes around every corner, and your flashlight beam becomes a strategic tool—embrace it to illuminate demon-infested rooms or switch it off to conserve battery, owning the darkness to catch foes off guard.

Textures in both the base game and Resurrection of Evil showcase worn metal grates, corroded laboratory surfaces, and gory organic matter with remarkable clarity. Gore and particle effects—blood spatter, acid pools, and peeling flesh—combine with skeletal remains strewn across facility floors to reinforce the pack’s oppressive, Hell-touched aesthetic.

The expansion pack introduces new environments, from Phobos’s barren landscapes to the infernal vistas of Hell itself. Lava flows cast an orange glow on surrounding architecture, while the Angel of the Seraphim’s grand temples feature ornate reliefs and vast open chambers that contrast sharply with the claustrophobic UAC hallways. These visual shifts prevent monotony and underscore the narrative’s escalating stakes.

When run on modern hardware or enhanced with community-made texture packs, the pack’s visuals can be pushed to even greater heights. Anti-aliasing and higher-resolution textures sharpen weapon models and character details, making demonic visages all the more grotesque. Even without mods, the core graphical fidelity holds up surprisingly well, offering a chilling backdrop to the relentless action.

Story

At its heart, Doom³ Pack tells a tale of corporate hubris and cosmic horror. The UAC’s secretive research on teleportation opens a rift to Hell, unleashing a torrent of demons that overrun the Mars base. You’re the lone Marine caught in the crossfire, entrusted with the dire mission of sealing the breach before humanity is lost. This setup leverages classic sci-fi horror tropes—isolated installations, malfunctioning systems, and whispered audio logs—to weave a narrative that rewards attentive exploration.

Resurrection of Evil picks up the story months later, luring you back to Mars to recover stolen Seraphim artifacts. As you chase cultists across Hell’s realms, the plot deepens with mythological underpinnings and brief interludes of the game’s signature dry humor. The addition of Dr. Betruger’s notes and cultist dioramas enriches the backstory, revealing the UAC’s morally ambiguous experiments and the occult forces at play.

While Doom³’s dialogue occasionally leans on cliché—stern commanders barking orders or scientists panicking—the ambient storytelling more than compensates. Flickering monitors display terrified video messages, and environmental cues hint at the facility’s rapid descent into madness. The sparse cutscenes ensure that most of the terror unfolds organically, placing you squarely in the role of a desperate survivor.

By the end of both campaigns, you’ve experienced a cohesive narrative arc: from Mars’s sterile labs to Hell’s fiery spires and back again. The finale ties together the themes of forbidden knowledge and sacrificial heroism, delivering a satisfying payoff that justifies the pack’s dozen-plus hours of tense exploration and combat.

Overall Experience

The Doom³ Pack offers exceptional value for horror and shooter fans alike, packaging id Software’s seminal work alongside its standout expansion. Purchasing on Steam grants easy access to both titles, with Steam overlay support, achievements, and community workshop integration for custom maps and mods. For newcomers, the pack provides a definitive Doom³ journey; for veterans, it’s an opportunity to revisit a genre-defining classic with fresh enhancements.

Resurrection of Evil’s unique mechanics—particularly the physics-based grabber arm—inject welcome variety into the established Doom³ framework. The expansion’s artifact-hunting side quests and new monster types extend replayability, ensuring that you’ll return to its demons long after the base game credits roll. Together, the two campaigns form a balanced package that artfully blends horror, action, and exploration.

Performance-wise, the games run smoothly on modern PCs, and a vibrant community scene offers fan-made graphical overhauls, quality-of-life tweaks, and total conversion mods that breathe new life into every corridor. With adjustable difficulty levels, both veterans and newcomers can tailor the challenge to their taste, from methodical immersion plays to run-and-gun firefights.

In summary, the Doom³ Pack remains a must-own for anyone interested in horror-inflected shooters. Its compelling gameplay loop, pioneering graphics, and immersive storytelling coalesce into an experience that still resonates decades after its original release. Whether you’re facing down Imps in zero gravity or battling cybernetic Hell Knights in molten Hellscapes, this pack delivers an unforgettable descent into darkness.

Retro Replay Score

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