Doom 3 (2004)
Doom 3 is a 2004 shooter video game made by id Software and Aspyr Media.
Doom 3 trades the original's breakneck pace for claustrophobic dread. A routine day at the Union Aerospace Corporation's Mars Research Facility ends when a teleportation experiment opens a gate to Hell and the lights go out. You are a lone marine working through narrow corridors with a flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other, though the game's most notorious design choice forces you to choose between them. id Software's 2004 entry leans on atmospheric horror, sudden monster closet ambushes, and a slower, grimmer version of the franchise's carnage.
Quick answers
What is Doom 3 about?
Doom 3 trades the original's breakneck pace for claustrophobic dread. A routine day at the Union Aerospace Corporation's Mars Research Facility ends when a teleportation experiment opens a gate to Hell and the lights go out. You are a lone marine working through narrow corridors with a flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other, though the game's most notorious design choice forces you to choose between them. id Software's 2004 entry leans on atmospheric horror, sudden monster closet ambushes, and a slower, grimmer version of the franchise's carnage.
When was Doom 3 released?
Doom 3 was released on 3 August 2004.
Who made Doom 3?
Doom 3 was made by id Software, Aspyr Media and Activision.
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Doom 3 in our writing
- Companion guide: id Software: Doom, Quake and the Birth of the Shooter
- Companion guide: Space Horror
A few thoughts on Doom 3
The DOOM: Original Game Soundtrack captures a harder, more aggressive id Software than Doom 3 presents, useful for reminding yourself where the series went afterward. Doom is the contemporary film adaptation that tried to translate the Mars setting directly, results vary.
Trapped alone in a research facility where something got out
Doom 3 strands a lone marine in the UAC's Mars facility after an experiment tears open a gate to hell, and the horror comes from what might be waiting rather than what charges you. The Doom movie shares that same siege, Portal and Portal 2 trap you in an equally hostile research facility, and FROM keeps you cornered by something that will not let go.
Body horror and monsters wearing a human face
Doom 3 leans on slow dread and grotesque transformation as much as gunfire, marines and scientists turned into something else by the hell breach. Tomie's undying horror and Fullmetal Alchemist's ruined transmutations carry that same body horror, Ghost in the Shell's unsettling cyborg dread sits close behind, and American Psycho's hollow, monstrous narrator proves the scariest thing can still look human.
Industrial and metal soundtracks for descending into hell
Doom 3 trades the franchise's usual speed for a slow, industrial dread that still explodes into chainsaw-loud violence. The DOOM: Original Game Soundtrack carries that same heavy, mechanical menace, Leprosy and The Fat of the Land bring the same aggressive, industrial-edged sound, Leather Teeth adds a horror-rock snarl, and Universal Migrator, Part 2 supplies the same mythic, hell-adjacent scale.