RE: Doom 3

I’ve actually had Doom 3 since Monday night.

The Graphics are beyond amazing. They are in all honesty, unbelievable in a computer game. If you saw the movie ‘Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within’ and thought the graphics were good in that movie, I would say that the graphics in this game are on par if not better.

The game blows away most horror movies I’ve seen as far as immersion. You have to compare it with some of the best suspense movies in the genre. I would say Event Horizon actually is pretty comparable for the suspense.

Gameplay: Smooth, if you are a fan of the FPS genre you will feel at home with this game.

Graphics: The full potential of the graphics hasn’t been realized because the systems today don’t have the CPUs / GPUs powerful enough to truly max out the graphics. Although on my system which is almost 2 years dated it still looks visually stunning. They do a LOT with dynamic lighting. Everything object has texture. Literally if you see a pimple of a person’s face it can give off a shadow. There are some still cheesy things, I have only noticed this in the multiplayer maps but like the outside environments were obviously just pictures and not full 3d rendered objects going beyond say a window. I don’t know how that is going to play out in the actual single player experience because I haven’t experienced it.

Sound: Very atmospheric, at various times during gameplay it will have a radio communication link establish and you will hear people talking and screaming (lots of death). I was standing in a room and I heard someone say ‘help me’ very quiet with a kind of a moan. And I couldn’t tell where it was coming from (don’t have 5.1 set up), and I just sat there looking around then after a minute I looked up and there was a body suspended on a rope, and that was the person who was asking for help. Of course I had to shoot him then but ya know ;).

Overall:

The game scares the crap out of me. I am not a fan of horror films, never have been. I am forcing myself to play this game for 2 reasons:

1) It is just so awesome in its technology that I am amazed every minute I am playing it
2) In all honesty, it is a fun, challenging game.

9/10 in my opinion.

Thanks,
Eric