doom3 review

Wow. This is a cool game.

When the game starts, you are almost immediately overwhelmed by the world
you are put in. There are other people to interact with, and consoles you
can use. I thought it was funny that there were Wolf3D quality graphics
playing on one of the consoles.

The base you start in is pretty big, and dark. As you walk through the
base, check-in, and proceed to go talk to the captain, you can overhear
different people talking about some crazy rumours of freaky stuff going on
in different parts of the base. Everyone on the base wants to get out of
there...

The captain informs you that your first "mission" is to go locate a
scientist down in one of the communications areas. A small spider-like
bot leads you down to the elevator down to the lower levels.

Down there, you get some gear (armor, flashlight and pistol), and start
making your way out to find that damn scientist. Out through the airlock
and a quick dash across the martian surface gets you to the comm tower.
Just inside the tower you find the scientist.

When he sees you, he gets excited - he needs to get an urgent message out
about the "things he's seen". Just then, a huge explosion, and the
scientist gets picked by some force field and falls to the ground. Fires
and small explosions everywhere. The lights go out. Suddenly the
scientist's body gets up and starts coming after you. You put away your
flashlight, whip out your gun and put a few rounds into him. Then from
behind you, a dead soldier with a pistol is coming at you. You put him on
the floor and radio to the base that bad stuff is going down. Various
soldiers radio back that they are being attacked from all sides.

The captain orders everyone back to the base. Shit.


The action in this game is really good. It is so creepy and dark. You
can only shine the flashlight or shoot (you think they would have a
headlamp), so most of the time you can't see the zombies that are coming
after you... Your hair stands on end and a constant stream of
explicatives comes out of your mouth... Now I'm just hoping that I don't
think about this game while I'm sleeping tonight.

I was playing the game on a Athlon 2500+, 512MB ram and a GeForce3 Ti200
video card, and it looked great. I tried both High and Medium detail
settings at 800x600, and I didn't notice any difference. It looked great.

Even now, writing this up, I've still got the willies. :)

lc