Doom 3 - Game on the month (10MB of screen shots!!)

Dave Day : 05/10/2004 hengrocher park AYR42412

Still on awaiting the arrival of Half-Life 2, Doom 3 has been one of the most anticipated games of this year with many previews covering the stunning graphics to the required spec of your PC and graphics card to run the game.

Being a complete newbie to the Doom games, I didn't know what to expect. Once installed from the 3 CDs, there wasn't much of an intro on the game start up. But when you start a new game you get the necessary cinema to tell you the story line.

THE STORY : Based in the not too distant future, you are a Marine who has been assigned to Mars where a globally dominant company, UCA, has set-up base and is conducting experiments to turn the desolate planet of Mars into a habitable world for the survival of man kind, amongst others. But the story line is based around research on a teleporter system that can transport matter through a kind of sub-space, but doing so, scientists find that candidates that go through the teleporter come back freaked out, and mentally disturbed, and it turns out that the sub-space they are travelling though is actually another dimension, one that would be left unleashed. All fine and good, but of course, there's a twist involving a crazy scientist doing dumb experiments beyond the boundaries set in his job description and sending in troops to bring back samples from the new found dimension! (muppets!)

The game starts with your arrival to the Mars base, one of the features of the game is the use of PDAs, every character on the Mars base has one, each containing personal e-mails, voice logs which add to the whole atmosphere of the game, and security clearance. Another, what I think is an excellent feature, is the fact that you can walk up to computer consoles, move your crosshair onto the console screen and it turns into a mouse pointer! And you can use the console to perform tasks or gather data.

The atmosphere of the game has a creepy and eerie feel to it, and is a very dark game, and isn't for the faint hearted if you do as the box suggests and play in the dark with the sound turned up. Each character to approach is jumpy and seems scared abot being there, every e-mail you read and every voice log you listen to on your PDA is packed with strange creepy reports and rumours of the goings on of the base, voices being heard though the walls and more!…

As you walk though the base, you gradually freak out more and more as your commander pushes you to hurry over the radio and report to relevant check points, until you meet a scientist, at which point the whole game kicks off….but the surprise is yours to experience.

THE ENEMY : Every character you previously came across has turned into a zombie, which as scary and freaky as it is at first, but there's only 2-3 variants of this type of villain and becomes a little repetitive after a short while. But these zombies die quite well, slumping to the ground, and after a battering on the floor to vent any frustration, they explode, rapidly disintegrate with a lovely squelching sound and a brain bouncing away. The flesh rots quickly away from the skeleton which soon turns to dust! (nice!)

But to keep you gripped into the game, new evil characters are introduced at just the right time in just the right way. Each time you come across a new beastie you have a little cinema introduction to them showing them appear from the darkness and showing your face scared out of your wits! - this leaves you feeling "how the fu*$ am I gonna get though this!!" as the cinema intro throws you back into your body facing you new found friend!

As you kill the screeching enemies hurling towards you, they hit the deck, turn into cindering charcoal and disintegrates into a yellow cloud of dust, an amazing effect as seen in Blade 2 when Mr snipes kills a vampire - a very well done special effect!

THE GAME PLAY : As far as the game play goes, it has everything you'd expect from a FPS. Unfortunately you lacks ability to lean around corners in game play, this is a feature that has almost become standard in FPS games, so why it hasn't been added, im not sure. But all in all, the movement and speed of the game is very good. A feature that has been included is the stamina bar, but unlike other games, this doesn't deplete after sprinting 10 meters! So a gold star is awarded there.

At a few points in the game, you may wonder into a wash room and catch your own reflection in a mirror. From here you can see that your character movement is quite smooth and would swap weapons in a realistic manor in a multiplayer environment.

Another con/benefit (depending on how your dickey ticker is) is that you can only hold the torch OR a weapon at any one time, this adds to the game atmosphere as you'll find yourself blindly shooting into the darkness.

GRAPHICS : The graphics are quite simply superb, and the game is designed to run best with the Super fast graphics card, the FX6800 (only just available on the writing of this). Skin texture is highly detailed, the environment is well thought out and packed with textures and often blood stains all over the walls(!),smoke and steam pour out of the walls with a realism I've never yet seen before. The monsters are highly detailed (if you dare get close enough to appreciate!), although the movement is not quite up to scratch of game such as Far Cry, as some of the monsters tumble and "rolly polly" to the ground from a standing still position. And I will say that as good as it is, the environment is very angular for the majority of the game apart from when the walls have turned into churning bloody flesh, but this wasn't often enough for my liking. Small Items such and coke cans dont tumble and roll amazingly well, but you CAN dent them which is quite kool.

Well, thats all your getting as we dont want to spoil the game for you. All in all, an excellent FPS game that has a very atmospheric and creepy feel to it when you let yourself get into the game. Well worth its wait the original Doom Players have had to endure, and well worth every penny you pay for it. An exciting and gripping game.

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