The only thing nicest about Ice Nine is the sniper zoom. Perhaps DOOM and in turn also the similarly (same engine) coded Duke Nukem don't look slick blown up, but on the GBA they're the high tier non-polygonal 3D stuff. To be fair one thing I have noticed, and the GBA isn't at fault here, is that they raycasting '3D' engine that DOOM likes use on the GBA also look horrendous on all the other consoles too, and worse the larger the screen gets. SNES DOOM, PS1, Saturn, Jaguar, they're all pretty rotten since they're taking a 320x240 type setup and the larger the screen the blockier it gets. But when they're run on smaller screens or for the original on a 20" or less PC monitor they look great.
By far though with actual models Wing Commander trumped the V3D engine. When you're out of the drawn imagery on the ship (had to cut corners to fit the game) and in space everything but the cockpit is 3D models, even the shield glow when hit and explosions and it looks amazing. It still surprises me how well the fit that PC CD game onto a GBA cart, even retaining some of the speech too from in flight.
Don't get me wrong I think the series is definitely saying enough, more than enough perhaps at what you said 3 hours? But still it's covering things well enough.