# Doom 3

10 Hacker News commenters recommended Doom 3 and 8 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 2 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Fans praise its gritty horror look and smooth run on modest PCs; critics find it too dark, jumpy and less influential than Half-Life 2.

## Why people recommend it

- Gritty, atmospheric horror visuals (2 comments): "Doom 3 had cool gritty horror looks, but HL2 blew it out of the water SOTA wise" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48662457)) "Doom 3 doesn't look like artistic blindness." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48662747))
- Ran well on modest hardware (2 comments): "I found Doom 3 ran better on a custom built Gentoo Linux system compared to Windows XP." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46576335)) "I remember Doom 3 running FAR better than HL2." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48662881))
- Ambitious step forward for its time (2 comments): "I thought Doom 3 had that energy, but they were also clearly taking their time to get it right." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48662360)) "Doom 3 was pretty huge of a step forward in many ways" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48662402))

## What people warn about

- Too dark to see (4 comments): "Doom 3 was definitely more compromised because of it, though, with too little lighting" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48662946)) "but it's too dark that I need to actually increase brightness on Firefox reliably" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48672009)) "The problem with Doom 3's gameplay is it was too fucking dark and constantly having demons jump scare you" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48664412))
- Relies on random jump scares (2 comments): "The problem with Doom 3's gameplay is it was too fucking dark and constantly having demons jump scare you" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48664412)) "D3 felt like it was just random jump scares more than much else." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48668787))
- Gameplay failed to hold interest (2 comments): "each time I gave up before ever having a chance to fire a weapon" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48663793)) "the gameplay just didn't interest me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48664105))
- Less influential than Half-Life 2 (4 comments): "And if we consider impact on the gaming landscape, Doom 3 was if anything a dud." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48662724)) "Doom 3's push for 100% real-time stencil shadows was practically ignored by the industry" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48666293)) "The new game just didn't seem to have the same industry pushing, genre changing energy." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48662154))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Quake](https://hackerapproved.com/p/quake.md): 118 recommend
- [Doom by id Software](https://hackerapproved.com/p/doom.md): 102 recommend
- [Unreal Tournament 2004](https://hackerapproved.com/p/unreal-tournament-2004.md): 51 recommend
- [Quake III Arena](https://hackerapproved.com/p/quake-iii-arena.md): 49 recommend
- [Half-Life](https://hackerapproved.com/p/half-life.md): 42 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Doom 3", https://hackerapproved.com/p/doom-3/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).