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> Results: Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil
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Despite spending years doggedly pursuing games from id Software, I was not quick to jump on the Doom 3 bandwagon. Perhaps I had tired of the hype machine, but for whatever reason I just put it on my wife's "C'mon, Mike, throw me a bone here" Christmas list. By the time I played it, the reviews were largely all in, the mega-hype of the release had long since faded and the 90+% scores from the first week had faded back into the mid-80% range. I took largely the same approach with the expansion pack Resurrection of Evil. I knew it was coming, but didn't purchase it when it arrived. Recently the pricing has dropped by half, and the reviews seemed favorable enough for me to give it a try.
If you didn't like Doom 3, you won't like Resurrection of Evil. There is nothing really new. But if you did enjoy the original, the expansion offers even more focused action. The story takes off a couple of years after the end of Doom 3, and a new gateway into Hell is unwittingly opened. You play as another lone marine up against unending waves of demons and corrupted humans, aided occasionally by other survivors and information stored in PDAs left by former workers and scientists. The overall structure of the expansion is similar to the original game. But the focus on action over the constant reading of emails and listening to logs makes it feel more like the original Doom games from years ago.  Weapons and environments are new. Whereas the areas in the original were basically ﾑinside the base', ﾑinside the base with Hell spilling into it' and ﾑHell', the expansion branches into many of the dig sites, and even within the sites and bases, many new areas are shown. The new settings are refreshing compared to the original, and break up the focused run-and-gun action. The arsenal from the original game works just as well as it did, but is augmented by three very powerful weapons that form the core of your toolset for the expansion. The double-barrel shotgun is just as over-powered as it was in Doom II, and while it is slow-loading, it is invaluable in tough situations. Another new weapon is the ﾑGrabber', which is largely a gravity gun (similar to Half-Life 2, but better) that is excellent for grabbing energy bursts from enemies and launching them back. It is also good for throwing barrels at enemies to slow them down while you backpedal and reload. The final weapon is the ancient artifact that opened the gateway to hell. This artifact gains powers as you defeat bosses, allowing you to better handle situations and dispatch some of the more difficult waves of demons. The single player game lasts about ten to twelve hours, slightly shorter than the original, but longer than just about any first-person shooter since Half-Life 2. Resurrection of Evil adds a Capture the Flag (CTF) mode to the existing multiplayer and brings the number of players for both CTF and standard deathmatch up to eight at a time. There isn't much significantly new to the multiplayer, as the single player mode is clearly the focus.  Resurrection of Evil is pretty much everything you want in an expansion. It adds new weapons, lasts more than a few hours, enhances the graphics, and adds something to the multiplayer experience. It is a solid addition to a solid shooter that is graphically still one of the greatest looking games ever released, and this add-on is more satisfying and varied than the original. At the very low price the expansion now sells for, it cost me the price of two PSP rentals, it is an easy decision to give it a try. 
Doom 3 was rated M by the ESRB and Adult by GamerDad because the entirety of the game was full of scary and gory images and scenes. Resurrection of Evil does not significantly change that equation. If anything, it is darker, scarier and more intense. It's not for kids.
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