The Bathroom, Monsters, and Death

The bathroom scene

In perhaps the most impressive sequence, our hero enters a bathroom with tons of smeared bloodstains and wall to wall mirrors. As we glance at the mirrors in the bathroom, we see in the mirror that one of those four legged cyborg monsters pops out of a stall and starts snarling. The hero runs around to the other side of the bathroom and does a peek around the corner. From there we see the cyborg monster’s attention focused on a fat zombie’s lifeless body in the center of the floor. The cyborg monster starts taking bites of flesh out of the zombie with roars and a disgusting squishy/tearing sound. All the while, the fat zombie has a disturbingly contented, almost happy look on his face, as if he is asleep and having a wonderful dream. The most demented part of this sequence is that after the hero comes around the corner, shoots the cyborg monster to death and turns around, the fat zombie that we thought was dead and was being eaten by the cyborg monster GETS UP and starts attacking the hero. It was being fed upon while still “alive.”

The bathroom scene - the monster takes a bite and rips out entrails from that belly

Monsters

We’ve talked about three monsters so far – the zombie soldier with the minigun, the fat zombie humanoid, and the four-legged dog-like cyborg monster. Other enemies we saw in the video included regular sized zombies based off not-so-fat humans, and a smaller four-legged zombie with incredible leaping skills and the ability to throw fireballs. The speedy jumping zombie reminded me a lot of the Reaper from Quake 1 with its ability to gobble up huge distances with one quick jump. Another humanoid zombie that was encountered several times had one arm mutated into a long tentacle-like whip, which he would use to strike out at the hero from long distances. Finally there was a huge, bi-pedal monster that appeared to be about twice as tall as the hero and about two and a half times the weight with its musculature. It would be this creature that would be the death of the hero in the end of the Doom III movie.

Zombie with mutant tentacle-whip

Death

Near the beginning of the action, the hero comes across a bi-pedal monster, hearing it approach with its thundering footsteps. He immediately hides in a dark, shadowy corner of a sideroom escaping its clutches as it walked by the hallway, shadows menacingly dancing on it from the swaying overhead lights and fans. Though the hero escaped notice that time, the encounter was foreboding of a later demise. Later in the game we hear the familiar thundering, and the hero runs down hallways trying to escape. Jumping down a short flight of stairs he stops, thinking he’s safe while staring at his shadow on the wall right in front of him. Immediately, we see a huge shadow loom in the wall right over the hero’s shadow, just like a horror movie. Turning around, the monster is there, and after vainly pouring some lead into it, the monster strikes the hero down and he dies, crumpling to the floor in a heap, with the camera never leaving the player’s first person POV during the death sequence. This results in us seeing some of the limbs flop in front of our eyes, a lifeless hand clutching a gun that could not be the hero’s savior this time.

The monster lingers next to the dead hero, roaring and snarling with glee. It picks up the hero’s body by the head, severs the head from the body (the camera is still “in” the hero’s head), and examines it as we look back at the monster’s face up close and personal. After a little more roaring and snarling, the monster opens up and eats the head, swallowing the camera in the process, ending the presentation with a flourish.

This isn’t the same Doom you remembered with hordes and hordes of enemies coming at you from all sides. If that’s the gameplay you want, then Serious Sam 1 and 2 are out there and are excellent. Doom III maintains that same feel you had before, but is obviously going for a more scary type of gameplay than one that is wall-to-wall guns blazing. This is not to say id is making Resident Evil – there was plenty of shooting involved in our little demo. Just don’t expect the zombies to go down with one blast from your double barrel as they did in the first one. The monsters from Doom III may just get back up.