Doom 3: BFG Edition Review 

Just a reminder, this is more aimed at PC gamers, not people playing Doom 3 on consoles. Enjoy the video! Also you can download the Doom 3 source port here: dhewm3.org/

"The weapon muzzle flashes don't light up the environment anymore" THAT WAS WHAT THREW ME OFF I KNEW SOMETHING ABOUT THE LIGHTING WAS WORSE

15:30 After you. No, after you. No, I insist. After you. After you.

Always remember the HUGE amount of complaints the original DOOM 3 had over the fact you couldn't use a gun and a flashlight at the same time. Then someone made a "ducktape mod" which allowed you to.

The separate flashlight in the original was apparently a decision made for peformance, since having a flashlight out all the time meant rendering shadows more. Plus Carmack said himself "the game would have been more enjoyable if people could actually see it"

The biggest injustice I see with the BFG Edition is that by replaying the game, I was reminded that we will probably never get a Super Turbo Turkey Puncher 4.

Talks about Doom Mods Features H-Doom "yep" *sip*

"Zombiemen have as much intelligence as people who do reaction videos to movie trailers" Thank you

I think we can all agree that Doom 3, Alan Wake, Dead Space and F.E.A.R. proved how important atmospheric lighting can be in horror themed games.

A lot of younger player cant appreciate the huge leap in technology DOOM 3 was back in 2004 along with Half Life 2.

Gman: Why does Sgt. Kelly look like he’s in pain Military veteran: The military happened

IIRC People complained about Doom 3 not being enough like the classic games, so they made BFG edition to be more fast paced with more ammo and the flashlight being automatic. Which goes to show you can't please everybody

Gman: If you get that reference, we should be friends. Me: Gets the reference but plays everything in easy mode. Gman: Never mind.

Ion Fury: not enough ammo Doom 3: BFG Edition: too much ammo sometimes you just can't have it your way :P

*Hears the "Can I play, Daddy" reference* But Gman, I am death incarnate!

"Makes me sick. Makes me SICK!" i fuckin' love that part, always makes me smile.

Next : Enemy Territory Quake Wars Followed by : Delta Force Black Hawk Down

not survival-horror but *"action-horror"* - you have the horror setting and themes but enough firepower to feel relatively secure on lower difficulty settings. is that fair to say?

One thing the bfg edition also messed up is the arcade machines. You can only play super turbo turkey puncher 3 on all arcades, while on the original roe you can play 3 other variations, like hellanoid. And the forced random pitches on doom 1 and 2.

Speaking of the flashlight, I loved the gimped co-op campaign on the original Xbox. My friend would hold the flashlight and I’d have a minigun. It really required teamwork and was a blast.

11:10 - Given the later part of the game, Sergeant Kelly's existence absolutely is pain.

"mods really extend the shelf life of a game" *shows H-doom* classy

8:30 they also added a horrible beeping sound on every keystroke 🤬

Another change to the DOOM 1 & 2 WADs is that you don't have fast monsters on nightmare difficulty. I'm not sure if you can enable it through console commands since cheats are gone, too.

Having an inability to use a flashlight and a weapon at the same time may be how Id originally intended the game to be played, but that doesn't make it a good decision.

The handheld flashlight was just a stupid decision and didn't made me feel more vulnerable, it made me feel pissed off. So the first thing i did back at the time was downloading the duct-tape-mod.

Anyone remember that leaked Doom 3 alpha from 2002/03? It was a demo for conventions like E3 and featured a lot of early content. Some of it's in the final game, like enemies, some level design, even cutscenes. It ends with a Hell Knight ripping the Doom Guy's head off and eating it. (a scripted scene, of course) Might be hard to find but there's RU-vid playthroughs of it, naturally.

3:55 HDoom, I see Gman is still man of culture xD

The original flashlight also had true 3D volumetric lighting I think, which gave very realistic looking shadows cast on objects and enemies which grow, shrink and skew based on the distance away, as well as changing the shadow from lighter to darker. In the BFG edition it was significantly simplified to these static looking 2D shadows that are pre-baked to either on or off with nothing inbetween when using the weapon mounted flashlight.

I understand why the simultaneous flashlight and gun is antithetical to the game's more horror themes and setting, but personally I think it puts it more in line with the rest of the series. Running and gunning more freely feels a tad more like Doom.

I remember the first time I seen that mirror scene. I was wearing over the ear headphones and almost shit myself.

15:28 Zombot: You move aside! Costellie: No you move aside! Zombot: He's got a grenade, ya mook! Costellie: Who're you calling a mook, ya palooka! Zombot: Who I oughta... *Boom*

4:36 The music order is unchanged because of lazy porting, the original XBLA release of Doom 2 had a different music order for NRFTL.

When Ressurection of Evil was brought to the Xbox, they mounted the flashlight to the pistol. Personally, that felt like a decent compromise: You're able to defend yourself against some lighter enemies while being to see, but you'll most likely need some better firepower later on.

If you played Doom 3 when it initially launched you would realize that a whole lot of people disliked the swap between gun and flashlight. That is why they did that.

I actually like the new sound for the shotgun. Vanilla D3's shotgun seems to be nonexistent and all you hear is just the impact sounds; making the shotgun sound like you're just banging metal bars together. BFG's shotgun at least sounds like a shotgun with some power to it.

"Doom 3 is an action game, not a survival horror game" "Flashlight adds survival horror mechanics and is their original vision." Ion Fury: "Not enough ammo." Doom 3: "Too much ammo for a survival horror game." 🤔

I'm someone who played Doom 3 on release (I remember even saving up for a nvidia 6800gt which came with a copy of the game on 3 CD's), and I perfectly understand the design intention behind the flashlight being a separate weapon, I just fundamentally disagree with this design aspect being applied to a Doom game, and when I installed the duct tape mod all those years ago, I found that when you could actually see what was going on that it played much more like the Doom sequel that I wanted. On the topic of the BFG edition though, they have actually ruined it by brightening up the areas basic lighting, because it means there are much less chances for the lighting and shadow to fully contrast; I don't think having a flashlight isn't a sin, because you are still getting these amazing lighting and shadow effects in your peripheral outside of the beam, but by brightening up EVERY area it means this is less pronounced and makes the game look a LOT worse than it's 2003 version. Also boomer time: remember when every game coming out in the mid 2000's had incredible hard lighting? things like Doom 3, FEAR, Thief: Deadly Shadows, etc, I really miss stuff like that, it created very atmospheric scenes when everything cast a long and dark shadow, nowadays all soft shadows are blurry blob messes, and whilst soft shadows may be more realistic, I think it's also a lot LESS artistic

When you said, "Can I play daddy?", all I could think of was the Wolfenstein guy with the bonnet and pacifier.

With that ductaped flashlight on every weapon you kill what made the original game great

They complained about the flashlight when it first came out now they changed it and they complain again lol

Funny thing, there was this bit towards the end of Alpha Labs 2 where you had to fight a horde of Trites to get a ladder raised. There's a health station on the wall close to the ladder and in the BFG Edition, I was able to jump on top of the health station and then finally jump to the exit on the upper floor, cutting out the first horde of Trites entirely. In the original, I couldn't do that no matter *what* I tried.

i think the bfg edition was meant to make doom 3 more like classic doom. i mean with the flash light, double ammo, etc.. it's almost like they thought making doom 3 survival horror was a mistake, so they cobbled together doom 3 bfg to make it more like classic doom. to be honest, i dont mind the bfg edition. im kinda someone that prefers action-y doom. but i can see why people don't like it.

The BFG edition was closer to the original Doom games than the original Doom 3. Huge improvement. Didn't buy Doom 3 to play a survival horror game. I wanted DOOM.

Jarek would be proud of the FOV slighter.

BFG Edition also supports 3D, which requires a work around in the original. Doom 3 4K 3D is REALLY a looker.

I've played both editions and I wouldn't say the BFG Edition is bad - it just has a few questionable design choices, which can be overlooked (unless you're really nitpicky). I actually prefer the original flashlight because it doesn't run out of power after 30 seconds (I hate that). The only thing that really annoyed me in BFG Edition is that they cut some stuff from Resurrection of Evil (e.g. the HAZMAT suit, the dimensional shift effect in Delta Labs, and a whole freakin' room in the final level) - it is quite ironic that the newer and (supposedly) better engine supports fewer stuff than the older one. I know the classic Doom WADs got some censorship too, but I never bothered playing them - I have the original 1993/1994 versions and they are not censored in any way. Plus, you can grab the NERVE.WAD file and play it in ZDoom :)

The only moment i got "no ammo" in Doom 3 was on level 5 in RoE, and even without bullets, i still had 34 grenades

I would love a review of the original Xbox version of the game it was how I first played doom 3. The load times were abysmal

I thought Carmack made the modifications to make Doom 3 runnable in VR..

"Zombie men has much intelligence as people who reacts to movie trailers" SHOTS FIRED I REPEAT SHOTS FIRED

I’ve always enjoyed doom 3 because of its survival horror aspect and that the monsters are still a threat to you.

"SGT Kelly looks like his existence is pain" - thats literally every Marine I've ever met lol.

I for one would of liked a flashlight upgrade later in the game to be attached to a pistol or something. That way you keep the spooky atmosphere at the beginning, but give you much needed light sources at the later levels.

3:22 Damn Gman just burned so many people it deserves a "Schwacked!"

*GONNA HAVE TO DISAGREE WITH YOU THERE BRO ...* You are a Marine, you WILL have a flashlight mounted either on your shoulder or on your weapons. Even today's soldiers have mounted flashlights - so a soldier of the future MUST have even better equipment than soldiers of today.

"This is the 'can I play, Daddy' version of the game." Damn, son. Shots fired. I won't lie. I wasn't expecting to agree with this one, but the cross change, removal of the haz-mat suit, and other things take away from what might have been.

Actually, the reason for the separate flashlight in the original was that there were performance issues when they always displayed the light.

Funny story: One of the first video games I ever remember playing on a computer was Wolfenstien 3d. I think I was maybe 3-4 at the time and when my father was setting it up, he explained to me that he was putting it on "Daddy Can I play?" Being that age I didn't understand the joke and thought it was a game mode specifically designed for gamers like myself at the time (children). So, yes GManLives, we should be friends ;-)

3:18 "seeing as the zombie men have about as much intelligence as people who do reaction videos to movie trailers" GOLD

I got the "Can I play daddy" reference, and I've played the original Doom(s) many times and guess what: The mounted flashlight and the enhanced lightning, imo, are improvements. They make the game a bit more playable. But hey I probably have bad taste for not enjoying getting swarmed with monsters in tight corridors with barely any lighting. I will agree on the ammo and save popups, but I don't think the rest deserves to be criticised that way. Not every original is superior. Then again, everyone has their own preference.

God... I remember I had that one friend that had a PC powerful enough to run Doom 3 at high settings at release.. it was magical at the time. I couldn't believe a computer could render graphics like that without melting.

Grabbed this thing for switch. No regrets whatsoever

"Now they just clip through each other like this horrible looking mess" "Ad for mobile game plays" Perfect timing

"Too much ammo 1/10" -GmanLives lol

11:27 Fun Fact: Id Software wanted to have the flashlight shoulder mounted in the original Doom 3, although they didn’t since they feared it would mess uo the performance. In short, the mounted flashlight is correct in some way.

I think the debate over the flash lite is more representative over the divide in the fanbase the game created. People who appreciated the game forcing you to chose between light or protection to build tension were all on board with the game's shift towards horror, while players who wanted to have the flashlight mounted and available at all times were more interested in the franchises original play style focusing on action and making the player feel powerful. P.S: No matter how good of a tension builder it is the lack of a mount for the light is it's still unrealistic, and the fact that you can't even hold a pistol in your other hand while it's equipped is so dumb I'd say it counts as a plot hole.

May be working a 7-7 on a Sunday, but hey, get to watch this during my break. I'll take that small victory. Edit: what kind of psychopath actually liked the handheld flashlight? The shoulder one fixed one of two major issues with DooM 3 on consoles, plus everyone uses the duct tape mod on PC anyways. Why would you ever want the game to be more clunky?

The BFG PC version implemented some interesting 3-D monitor modes, back when 3D was sort-of a thing. I had a 3D monitor and tried the BFG in 3D, it was the best 3D experience I had with a shooter (i.e., wasnt that great but better than anything else). Precursor to VR, perhaps they will do remakes of these classics in VR.

remember kids: play bfg edition only for the lost mission and no rest for the wicked play only DOOM 1 2 and 3 orginal on pc

8:04 I played the BFG Edition as my introduction to Doom in general and when I saw the opening text I thought "Well this is just stupid and amateurish." I had no idea that they'd changed in from the original game, where the music and visuals actually made it work decently.

For me BFG version's major advantage was you could play it in 3D and boy.. 3D in this game works!

I actually prefer the shoulder mounted flash light. It's more immersiv,

Hard to swallow pill number 666: Original Doom 3 was a genuinely good game, despite what all the critics say.

I’ve realized a new appreciation for music composers in video games

Doom 3 is one of my all-time favourite games. I really don't understand the design choices in this BFG Edition. If the original has cut-scenes that can't be skipped it's obvious they'd think it was a mistake and in the re-release they change it so they can actually be skipped. However, with this BFG Edition they've done the exact opposite. How could they've ever thought: "Being able to skip cut-scenes was a big mistake. We should really make them unskippable." The same with unlimited saves. How could they ever think: "Unlimited saves was such a failure. Let's implement limited saves that are shared across all three campaigns." What a waste of time and money this BFG Edition is. Another thing about the flashlight: Wasn't the whole point of the game this UAC facility suddenly literally going to Hell? In this kind of situation I wouldn't even expect them to be fully prepared for a massive invasion of zombies and demons. It makes sense to have a flashlight lying around in a locker which you take with you at the start of the game. However, immediately equipping a newly arrived marine with armour that has a flashlight mounted to it or a shotgun that has a flashlight attached to it doesn't make sense when not even one zombie or demon has been seen. Yeah, people working at the UAC did have some visions and did hear some strange sounds, but does that mean you'll immediately have to equip a newly arrived marine with the most high-end military stuff? Stuff that's probably not even that accessible, because they're on Mars which means they can only use whatever stuff they've got until the next shipment from Earth arrives. Yes, they do make all kinds of things at the UAC, but you'll still need resources that have to come from Earth. Of course, being completely prepared for an outbreak of zombies and demons isn't the first thing you think of when going to Mars or even after you've been running an industrial company on Mars for many years. Having an old-fashioned flashlight just makes much more sense when walking around a facility like UAC that suddenly goes to shit.

15:25 : "after you my good Sir. no no after you. Oh no i insist, after you"

lol. i had a fun experience with this game. i played through all of it after 24h sleep depravation. right after i gone to sleep i just closed my eyes and as if i was instantly pulled down to hell abducted by a burning vile presence it felt so real.. it was bonkers.

The thing about the flashlight is that instead of actually contributing to the scary horror atmosphere like it was intended, it just made things annoying, because you were forced to trade off between actually being able to see the environment, and having to suffer through the annoyance of waiting for the switch-to-gun-animation to finish before shooting an enemy. I understand what they were trying to accomplish with the standalone flashlight but I don't think they actually accomplished it. Most gamers just felt annoyed rather than scared.

Saw one of the devs discuss the fact that a mounted flashlight was the original intent, for technical reasons they couldn't do it.

I've only played Doom 3 BFG edition my entire life(PS3,PC,Switch) never knew there was this many differences, time to go buy Doom 3.

As far as I'm concerned, both versions are legit versions and neither is "worse" objectively. It just depends on what you prefer.

3:19 “seeing as the zombie men have about as much intelligence as people who do reaction videos to movie trailers”. Tyrone Magness : “so you have chosen death”

I agree with you on pretty much everything except the flashlight. I understand why they did it in the original game, but I still think it was an overall cumbersome and frustrating part of the game rather than enhancing the atmosphere. It's a similar argument I see for tank controls in early survival horror - it was done as an early effort to adapt to changing camera angles when people weren't used to 3D, but some people praise them in retrospect for 'enhancing the atmosphere by being clunky and making you fumble in scary situations'.

BFG Edition is superior for a few reasons: You can change the lighting back with launch commands. Widescreen and higher resolutions. Built in duct tape mod. Proper controller support.

The biggest problem I've had, is when I played it for the first time I knew about the changes and didn't mind them because I heard how "bad" the original was. The only thing the BFG addition did was make me want to play the original Doom 3, which is hard enough to find, and gave me access to Doom 1 and 2 that I've been wanting to play again even if the controls were kinda weird with the Xbox controller.

I started with the vanilla versions of Doom 3 and Resurrection of Evil, and the only reason I have the BFG edition is from sales bundles. I actually felt the vanilla game had some survival horror aspect to it. Yes, you had a fair bit of ammo, but not for the guns that can easily help you get you out of a tight spot until you get the BFG. Most of the times you're in such tight confines that the rocket launcher would just be harmful to you instead. The fact that you needed to reload still limited the amount of firepower you could throw out, finding times to reload while being closed in from several directions and in generally areas too cramped to simply run away from. I personally felt the survival horror aspect to the game was in juggling the original flashlight, and having to double back for health at higher difficulties. Did you want to fight in the dark, or take the risk to run through to a better lit area and hope you don't encounter anything you can't run past? Or knowing that the health and armor pickup in front of you is definitely a trap, but you needed to risk picking it up anyway. Plus in Nightmare, your health constantly depletes and you needed the Soul Cube to keep your health topped up. But yes, Resurrection of Evil pretty much went all out action, and there was almost no survival aspect to it, though it was a pretty decent expansion taken on its own merit. And I must say, once you get the chainsaw in the campaign, you could just cut your way through most of the enemies you'd find in areas you'd need the flashlight for, and the game loses most of its scare factor by then. I really didn't like what was done in the BFG Edition. The Lost Levels weren't bad per se. But they felt more like something made by a competent modder than something id made themselves. It made sense that they were cut from the base game, because while it wasn't bad per se, it wasn't necessary, and just more of the same stuff which had already been done better in the campaign. And limiting your saved game slots was just an incredibly stupid idea which can easily be fixed had id been arsed to, but nope. It doesn't even make sense, since Doom 3 wasn't eating up so much space that even consoles didn't have room to save as many slots as you wanted.

14:35 "At this point people still wanna say it's survival horror?" It is for the demons xD

(7:35) Ugh. Yeah, the "beep beep beep!" sound for every character that appears on the screen in the BFG edition is downright ANNOYING! Yeah, they totally borked the original creepy introduction... Why? WHY??? :/

Also it's funny how people hate on BFG for being too bright and having too much Ammo. Don't get me wrong, I love all Doom games, and I loved Doom 3, but I mean a lot of people hate it because it's more of a horror. I mean, doesn't BFG bring it closer to the original? Just play on harder difficulty, and you get your classic fast paced gameplay, you don't have to worry about light or ammo, you just shoot things.

"can I play daddy". Old vid, but spot on. I remember back in the day when Quake 3 arena was the shit, and I had trouble playing past bring it on mode back in the day. The key reason why I sucked so badly was because I was not aware of "WASD" until college. So I literally played using arrow keys to turn and not stafe. It was not until playing crysis in college (2008) that I discovered wasd. I revisited Quake 3 arena, and was able to play it on nightmare with the only extremely tough challenge being xaero in the last level. That is until I discovered you can trick his AI to jumping into the crusher.

Somewhere down the line, would you be interested in taking a look at the Doom 3 BFG UltimateHD mod in an episode of mod corner? It turns up the difficulty by beefing up the enemies but balances it out by making your weapons more impactful (with new animations and textures for both). It also nerfs the amount of ammo you can carry at one time to mitigate the changes that the BFG edition made to the ammo pickups. Certain weapons like the shotgun and the chaingun are just fire now. Here's a link for the mod authors latest update video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-nZTqRkBE_0E.html

Actually there is a super easy way to have original Doom3 working on pc with proper eax 4.0 reverbs, fixed textures, 16:9 resolutions and so on. There is a source port dhewm3

It's been 6 years but for me, gggman is the shit! The most honest, in your face, game reviewer. There is no comparison. For us FPS fanatics, it's either him or civvie 11. Reasons? No pandering to the lowest common denominator. No forcing political narratives in your throats. Respecting the old FPS gamers intelligence. Honesty and not getting blown away by modern game gimmicks. And That Australian accent. I grew up playing these games, so for me..... Best FPS game reviewer. Bar none. You Go Gmalives! Respect from India.

I miss the Doom 3 horror 1st person shooter

6:30 "Some people say it's survival horror but this is completely false" 12:40 "...reinforce the game's survival horror aspect" So which one is it bruv??? You say it's not a survival horror game but then keep panning it for its lack of survival horror elements I'm so confused.

Over the years I've come to understand the real issue with Doom 3. An identity crisis. It was clearly supposed to have a Horror focus with action elements but that's really difficult to do as they directly oppose each other. Just ask Dead Space 3. Some fans latched on to the horror, some the action. That's why it's so divisive.

There's a mod for BFG Edition called Doom 3 BFA that fixes or reverts some of the changes. It restores the muzzle flash lighting, and there is a menu option that lets you swap out the shoulder flashlight for the hand one, but only for New Game. Including a third option that adds the shoulder version's limited battery to the hand flashlight. Apparently it re-adds mod support, but I haven't messed around with that yet. Also it adds features for the Classic Doom games that restores cheats, adds widescreen, crosshair, free aim, jumping, etc. Then there are certain separate mods online that restore the red cross symbols and the Wolfenstein levels, and another one that makes the music for Classic Doom use the more familiar midis. I think these are good options for anyone who bought BFG Edition first and don't want to double dip for the basic Doom 3. www.moddb.com/mods/classic-rbdoom-3-bfg-edition

Oh yeah forgot to mention. If a developer's Vison or intent severely hampers or interferes with a player's immersion. then that vision and intent were flawed from the beginning.

good critique. I still love it though as a contemporary way to experience the game. I find myself just never using the shoulder flash light, truly the atmosphere is just too delicious to contaminate with that.