To say the least, the game is VERY taxing, more so than even Far Cry! To be brutally honest, in my opinion, Far Cry is technically superior to Doom 3 as well. What’s more, you have to wonder how much steam was taken out of Doom, as far as graphical “wow-ness” when the Chronicles of Riddick hit the Xbox a full 2 months earlier, and accomplished many of the normal mapping feats that Doom 3 musters. Sure, you have the swell lighting, crisper details, and higher resolution, but just admit to yourselves that Doom may have hit just a day late, but thankfully, the hype did not make it a dollar short.

Visually the game is quite stunning, there is no doubt here. Especially in 1024 resolution or higher, you can appreciate what the future of technology will bring. The presentation is epic and dark and from the get go sets the tone for what lies in store for you. As soon as “all hell breaks loose”, you will become quickly familiar with dank corridors, poor lighting, and confining crawl spaces. It is literally a claustrophobic person’s worst nightmare! There are some fine moments in which original and spectacularly scary instances stand out, but between these moments, you deal with cavern after cavern of endless baddie killing. Thankfully, there are countless varieties of enemies, bent on making you their lunch. Each enemy dwells in a certain area of the world of Doom 3, this helps a ton to break up any monotony in the game. Toss in some well designed, sometimes huge, but always frightening bosses, and you have yourself a ride to remember.

The game uses a relatively new technology called “normal mapping” that should make its way into more and more games in the future. This makes textures bold and dynamic, and seems virtually realistic. This technology is used on not only the enemies, player characters, and weapons, but the entire world of Doom 3 is normal mapped to an eye-pleasing splendor. Spectacular lighting also shines bright and fantastic, and if you gather a few friends around the glow of your monitor, you had better have a bib handy to collect all the drool. All this and more can be expected, if your computer can handle it! Id, for months, have promised to optimize this game for relatively new machines, and the specs handed out were minimum at best. You really need a 3-gig machine with all the fixings in order to run the game the way it was intended. Granted, even at a medium quality and 800X600 res, the game looks gorgeous, but you still have no idea till you see what 1600 res brings. Unfortunately, not many of us own such glamorous systems. Nonetheless, Doom 3, when ran at expected levels is unmatched in visual beauty, it’s a shame most of us won’t get much more than what the Xbox version will bring the world next year.

Audio keeps the mood solemn and allows gamers to get their mindset into the world of Doom 3. Voice acting is pleasantly well done, as the story unfolds, you really feel the fear and hostility that the characters bring to the game. The music is paced much like a horror film, with a lot of silence in the tense moments, followed by upbeat rhythms when things get interesting. Doom 3 uses a nice surround sound engine, which allows for the screams, creaks, snaps, footsteps, and gunshots to engulf your eardrums from every conceivable corner. While Doom 3 will not set any new benchmarks, as they will in visual effects, you can be happy to know that the audio does compliment the visuals quite nicely.

Game play is where Doom 3 will take the biggest slam from most PC gamers. Sure, the game is spooky, it is gory, it is fun, but it is not new. Fans of the Doom series will notice the subtle similarities between old school Doom and Doom 3. While that take back and homage to the great Doom is nice to behold, FPS fans expect more than a run and gun shooter with little to no thought involved. The enemy A.I. is not spectacular or smart, and if you are caught off guard, you feel as you are cheated by the uncanny accuracy that the enemies possess. The only real A.I. you will find is in the boss fights themselves, but even then, like most bosses, once you learn their pattern, they’re toast. There are very few puzzles in Doom 3, with the exception of key cards and lab files to find. Doom 3 can be, for most, a bit longer that the average FPS. Weighing in between 15-25 hours of game play, Doom 3 may seem monotonous on the surface, but it is the engaging story that keeps you gripped tight to the end. To summarize, the game has you follow a story line, and in-between plot points, you blow things away. Sounds like Serious Sam or Painkiller right? Not quite, but pretty close to the same tedious, twitch, game play that seems so 20th century.

Overall, as stated earlier, with all the hype and delays that kept it from store shelves, no one can be totally pleased with the Doom 3 final product. I can only strongly recommend this to a particular group of people. Fans of horror, fans of relentless shooters, and those who have a fantastic PC. The rest of the crowd will leave underwhelmed from all the publicity that kept Doom 3 on the pulse of the gaming community for quite sometime. It is still a fantastic product for what it is, just not the trendsetter it was meant to be.