GamersInfo.net

Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil (or RoE for short) picks up where the original Doom 3 left off. The storyline has you returning to Mars two years after the original incident that shut down the UAC. One of the UAC satellites still monitoring Mars picked up a beacon coming from the red planet inside the research facility. Oh lovely, this surely can’t be a trap, can it? Sure enough once you return to Mars all hell breaks lose once again and you alone must stop hell from escaping.

Your arch nemesis in this game will once again be the stubborn Dr. Betruger; well actually it will be his head. Remember at the end of the last game you see Betruger’s head on the end of that demon’s tongue? Yup, that wonderful creature will be the final boss in the game, and boy is he ever tough. I hope you have lots of ammo saved up when you get to that guy.

Considering this is an expansion pack you would expect more new levels and different weaponry in the game. Unfortunately you get very little of either one. Most of the levels are very similar to the ones you spent most of your time fighting through in Doom 3. By the end of the game you are actually trying to work your way back to one of the main buildings that you fought your way through in the original version of the game. I know, how very original.

As far as new goodies are concerned there are three, and only three, new weapons you get to choose from in this expansion pack version. The first, and easily my favorite, is the double barreled shotgun. This bad boy will kill nearly any demon in one well placed shot. The only downside is that the gun takes considerably longer to reload then most of the other guns in the game. This can be a problem if you’re surrounded by a horde of demons. Next up we have a weapon called the Ionized Plasma Levitator, AKA the grabber. I found this weapon useful early on in the game but then it became pretty much useless.

Last, and certainly not least, we have “The Artifact”. Sorry ya’ll, you don’t have Soul Cube to do all your dirty work in this one. You have the Artifact throughout the entire game, so you don’t have to wait to get it. It doesn’t really become useful until the second level when you face the first Hell Hunter. These bad boys are big nasty demons who chase after the Artifact and in order to unlock the abilities the Artifact has you have to kill all three of them. Once you kill the first Hell Hunter you unlock Hell-Time followed by Quad-Damage and Invincibility once you’ve killed the other two. The Artifact absorbs the souls of corpses lying around in order to charge it, so pay attention when blowing your way threw those packs of demons.

Outside of those minor additions the game is pretty similar to the original Doom 3 game. The gameplay is still excellent as are the graphics. The game still has moments of shock value as well; it had me jumping out of my chair a few times. However, if you’re looking for a totally new experience from the original Doom 3 then you are going to be very upset once you’ve finished this game. Don’t get me wrong, the game is fun to play with outstanding graphics and a passable storyline. You would have thought though that the folks over at id Software would have been able to change the game enough to make it unique in its own right, but that just isn’t the case.

On the plus side though the folks over at id Software were nice enough to include some nice bonuses with the expansion pack. Included on the same disc as RoE is Ultimate Doom, Doom II and the master levels for Doom II. The only problem with this is if you have the Collector’s Edition of Doom 3 then you already have Ultimate Doom and Doom II. So in reality all you’d be getting is the master levels for Doom II, not really a huge bonus if you think about it.