I was a Doom 3 fan at the time and I was surprised at its reception. It was almost entirely duct tape discourse at the time, when having to choose between seeing and shooting was obviously intended. This was universally treated as an oversight, and not an experiment in FPS horror.
By the time Doom 3 was released, your typical Doom fan was zooming around custom WADs filled with hundreds of enemies. The series was defined by action rather than horror. A power fantasy, which is what 2016 got. I many were expecting that in Doom 3 and were disappointed in not getting it.
I don't think the Doom WAD scene was exactly hopping in the mid-2000s, and the people complaining about Doom 3 were not diehard fans deeply immersed in that subculture, it was everyone.
The Doom WAD scene has been hopping and hasn't stopped hopping, Nightdive's core staff is greatly composed of people who got their start there and it's a natural start point for many aspiring game developers.
That said I don't like Doom 3 even on it's own merits. Needing to switch between being able to see and being able to shoot is certainly *a* mechanic, but I don't think it's a fun one. It's annoying rather than tense and most of the actual jump scares are monster closets, contrived and boring.
Don't forget obligatory monster spawn behind your back every time you pick up a medkit. It was so bad that halfway through the game people started picking up medkits while walking backwards.
The use of diagetic storytelling via logs spread throughout the environment, the use of keycodes found within them to unlock storage containers, it contains some influence from imsims.
One of their big features to show off the tech was the ability to interact with computer screens and Interfaces in the world with GUI surfaces you could click
That was entirely different. If you look through the screenshots it's a not very serious edit. But it was big at the time. Probably because my buddy ran THE BBS called simply DooM BBS and I was immersed in everything doom at the time.
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I believe is what I am thinking of.
Just finished the Romero autobiography.
I'm sure the reskins got an official release under another name but it's been a while since I played them...