Doom 3 Review

Even so, there are a number of reasons why I felt compelled to play on. One is of course that this is one incredibly intense shooter. Secondly, id has managed to emulate successfully Valve's work by doing a great job of moving the story along while creating the impression that it's the player's actions that are generating the plot. The levels have been excellently designed, not only in the sense that they look like works of art, but also how they keep the game pace high at all times, not giving the player a moments rest. In itself, the maps are mostly linear but some of the choices you'll be making in the game aren't, so at least you get the illusion of open-ended game play at certain parts of the campaign.

Finally, the weapon arsenal is vintage id stuff. This is something that will possibly attract people to the multiplayer game, even despite the fact that it's limited to just four players. The usual mix includes such legendary weaponry as the chainsaw and of course the BFG. Weapons are excellently balanced and beautifully modeled. I mean, it just feels GOOD blowing zombies up with them. The only minor, minor gripe I have with the arsenal is that the BFG is not nearly as powerful as it once was and that the chaingun has a much lower rate of fire. I rather preferred the Quake 2 chaingun to this one, but that's really just a matter of personal preferences.

Doom 3 is a great game. It's a thrilling, immersive, atmospheric ride through the bizarre world created by the legendary designers. It literally takes you to hell and back.

John Carmack's latest technology is indisputably great, but it's also not without its faults. The same can be said about the game itself. This is probably the best game that id has ever made, and in that sense, I agree with John Carmack when he said, "I think it is the best game we have ever made, and it exceeded all of my expectations." However, the game play itself lacked more versatility and bona fide innovation to deserve the moniker of "Groundbreaking". Either way, my dear reader, if you're a shooter fan, you'd be a fool not to buy this one.

As a final note, I played the game on an Athlon 64/1.5GB RAM/ATi 9800XT rig, and it worked smoothly in 1152x864 and on high settings most of the time. More intense scenes and elaborate boss encounters would bring the frame rate down to something like 15-20 FPS however. In case you've been living under a rock someplace, in order to best experience this OpenGL based 3D game, you'll want to have something like my above specs and an NVIDIA 6800GT card to play Doom 3 without any hitches on 1280 and with FSAA turned on.