I feel like there was a period in time when Id was trying to push DOOM as a brand into the horror genre. The PlayStation port of the original Doom featured slightly darker graphics and famously took out all of the original music, replacing it with a tense atmospheric drone. Doom 64 would later come along and do something similar.

But the culmination in trying to play up the horror of Doom is clearly Doom 3.

Indeed, my earliest memories of Doom 3 involve renting the 2005 Doom movie on DVD, and if playing inside your Xbox would gain you access to the game's demo. This would then involve me and my friends daring each other to play it late at night and in the dark.

But playing it today the main things about Doom 3 that are horribly dated are its horror elements. It honestly feels like baby's first survival horror game. So much of the game is you wandering into an empty corridor or hallway, the lights flicker off and out pops a demon (typically Imp #112). It gets old relatively quick. The darkness was a consistent issue for players, and not being able to hold a gun and flashlight at the same time is a classic blunder (thankfully newer editions have rectified that).

But my biggest issue with Doom 3 is still its pacing. Unlike the previous Doom games where you'd get introduced to tougher enemies and trickier puzzles as the game picks up, Doom 3 plays a lot of its cards early and just kind of spins its wheels, making it kind of a slog to play the entirety of. That is until we get to Hell, and the game ramps up from there. Its for this reason I actually prefer the original Xbox port of the game, overseen by Vicarious Visions. A slightly condensed version that may have chunks cut out of it, but does result in a tighter paced version of the same game.

While the game's constant attempts to scare the player now come off as cheap and overdone, its atmosphere is still strong. You do get a genuine sense of isolation and that you're the only human left alive. Even when you occasionally come across another human character they very quickly become demon chow. And arguably more than any other installment in the franchise, Doom 3 really plays up the Hell factor of it all. At the time I honestly had never seen so much dark satanic imagery shoved into a game.

So the game is kind of a mixed bag, and is the weak link of the Doom franchise, but I do find myself returning to it every number of years or so and usually have a decent time with it.

Been my go to Halloween game to play annually for a few years now, because fewer games have ever embraced such a "Halloweeny" atmosphere as much as the original MediEvil (something certainly lost in the, in my opinion, far inferior MediEvil II).

Graveyards, zombies, scarecrows, shadow demons, skeleton pirates, killer pumpkins, wolves, minotaurs, imps, it really has it all.

The changes in the PS4 remaster are subtle but important, like most of the camera angles and platforming, which were things improved upon.