I agree, Doom 3 overuses the "jump out of a walk in closet" tactic of surprise horror, to the point that you a) wonder why there is so much storage space in this station and b) know exactly to point your gun when you enter a new room/corridor. TO change things up, they teleport in sometimes, but that just makes them even less frightening. As soon as you see a bright orange flash marking the spot they are about to teleport in on, stand over it with a chainsaw. The game becomes a lame version of whack-a-mole.
The only interesting enemies were the spiders, which swarm your ass. They were the only good bits. I was actually finding the audio logs more atmospheric and interesting than the action.
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Also agree.
Also the omnipresent darkness made the game more annoying to play than scary.
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Doom 3 forgets what made the series so good
Doom was praised in its time for its atmoshpere. Its dark hallways, flickering lights, enemies that could sometimes seem to come from nowhere and surprise you, and odd "sci-fi meets supernatural horror" style.
But what it's really remembered for, is its fun gameplay.
Doom 3 totally forgets that. Instead it tries to aim for creating a dark, spooky atmosphere, with enemies that come from nowhere, and the "sci-fi meets supernatural horror" style, and superficially, attempts to be what Doom was, only enhanced. But in the process, it forgets what made Doom good.
Doom and especially Doom 2 had fun level design, and enemies that were a blast to fight. They had a good weapon balance, with pros and cons to every weapon. The action was fast and fun. Multiplayer was both cooperative and competitive. Finally, there was an absolutely massive community based around creating new levels, modifying graphics and sound, and trying to build onto Doom. The game had a lot of love.
iD Software seemed to forget all that when making Doom 3. In their interest of trying to scare players, they made the action slower, and came up with cheap gimmicks like having enemies appear out of every dark shadow in existence. My brother quickly wised up to that trick when he was playing, and would aim straight at every dark shadow just in case some monster magically came out of it, which they inevitably would.
Cooperative multiplayer was tossed out, though later added in a port. And as for a modding community? Forget it. You won't find the countless thousands of levels for this game that its predecessors had. Modders just don't care for it that much.
But another thing that gets me is some of the design decisions the company made without thinking. Players come across audio logs recorded by unlucky people, that have useful information (usually passcodes to open doors or lockers), often at the end of the message. Why can't you fast-forward through them? Has technology gotten worse in the future? There's a TV showing a news report at one point in the game, but all it is, is a reporter talking, with no footage of the news stories themselves actually shown. How lame! All the "future" tech is outdated!
Doom 3 fails both as a sequel, and it fails at what it tries to do differently.