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Looks like a dream, plays like a nightmare

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 13 / 15
Date: August 08, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I can only imagine the meeting that dreamed this game up:

John Carmack: "OK everyone, we've decided on the final specs for Doom 3."
Everyone Else: "Great!"
JC: "We've decided it's only gonna be playable on Win2000/XP!"
EE: "Fantastic!"
JC: "And we're going to claim you can play it with only 384 megs of RAM and a 64-meg graphics card, even though it slows down a 3GHz P4 with a gig of RAM and a 256-meg card!"
EE: "Cool!"
JC: "And you know all the advancements in FPS games, like alt-fire? Well, we're not bothering with that!"
EE: "Sweet!"
JC: "You know in Half-Life there was a torch built into your armour? We're going to make the player continually switch from their torch to a weapon!"
EE: "Nice!"
JC: "And remember the game version of The Thing?"
EE: "Yeah?"
JC: "Remember those really irritating cut-scenes that interrupted the game to show you what was going to happen, thus wrecking the flow and surprise?"
EE: "You bet!"
JC: "Well, we're putting those in too!"
EE: "Wow!"
JC: "And puzzles! Really irritating find-the-key puzzles! Loads of those!"
EE: "Excellent!"
JC: "And you all know how darkness makes for easy atmosphere, right?"
EE: "Yes!"
JC: Well this game's gonna be so dark you're gonna wonder if your monitor's switched on!"
EE: "This game is gonna ROCK!!"

In a nutshell: too linear, too predictable, too system-taxing, and definitely TOO BLOODY DARK!!

Doom 3 - Area 51 dud minus the gun

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 13 / 15
Date: August 09, 2004
Author: Amazon User

As an avid FPS fan, having played the entire Doom Series, Requiem, Wolfenstein, Medal of Honor, and many others I can state with extreme confidence the following:
The story of a new recruit thrown into a vast corporate conspiracy is cliche'. Nothing new. There are some worthy additions, such as new weapons and a PDA device which simplifies some aspects of the missions for you. This is Doom - so do not expect puzzles and mind twisters. The anticipation of the good stuff gets you through the boring beginning. The graphics and textures are what essentially sell this game for its price.

Pros:
*Doom 3 is rich with amazing graphics, great textures, great sound and colors.
*The PDA addition is nice, adds nice to the limited storyline.
*The violence and gore are good.

Cons:
*Doom 3 is too much like Area 51, where the game offers little more than Grade B Horror Film scares. Monsters pop out of nowhere and explosions occur in well-placed areas, etc.
*The game is too dark, I understand setting the atmosphere, but there comes a time when enhancing the aesthetic experience detriments the overall gameplay experience. Back and Forth with the flashlight became tiresome. How about mounting the flashlight to the damn weapon...it's the future for pete's sake.
*The play control is disappointing. I could not get the strafe to go both ways with the arrow keys. The manueverability of the character in close quarters is limited.
*The monsters are the same and so is the strategy in killing them. Basically the entire Doom Series, to no surprise, comes down to aim and ammo rationing.
*The game is too linear. You go where you are told.

Overall
I gave this game 3 stars, not because it should be penalized for not living up to the hype afforded it by its long awaited release, I gave it 3 stars because in the end Doom 3 is nothing more than any other FPS..certainly not worth 50+ dollars.

DooM 3: Groundbreaking?

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 13 / 15
Date: August 20, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Let me get this straight. Doom 3 WAS NOT, I repeat, WAS NOT supposed to have revolutionary gameplay. id Software said so in an interview. So I would like to let the people know, that if you are expecting something different other than run 'n gun, then look elsewhere, because you will not find it here, and you will most likely be dissapointed.

If, however, you are expecting just that, then read on. Doom 3 might be the best FPS released this year, along with Far Cry.

-Graphics-

Well you probably already know about this. What can I say, it is absolutely AMAZING. Lighting effects are some of the best I've seen, and enemies are meticulously detailed. I cannot say I have seen better graphics anywhere else. I have a Radeon 9800 Pro, so it helps a lot.

Yes, the game is dark, but it only adds to the atmosphere. I cannot see why people complain that its so dark. The game was supposed to be dark, and if you don't like it, then don't play it and stop complaining! That's like saying Far Cry is too bright it's annoying. I simply enjoy the overall darkness. That's what the flashlight is for anyway.

Oh, and THIS is the area where the game was supposed to be groundbreaking. And it truly did it's job.

-Sound-

Excellent sound effects overall. HOWEVER, I highly suggest you download the Trent Reznor Sound Pack. It enhances many weapon and monster effects in the game, making them much much better. There is no music other than the main theme (which is awesome). Music would have only taken away the spookiness. Monsters hiss at you before attacking. You can actually hear spiders walk along walls and ceilings. Sometimes you even hear whispers from those who have fallen before you. It really contributes to create a truly terrifying experience.

-Gameplay-

Ahh, the most important part. I won't lie, Doom 3 is really just kill enemy, find PDA, open door, kill more enemies, etc. But the cool thing is how amazingly well it is all executed. I was never bored, and I have played many FPS's in my life. It's all about how much you expect from this game.

For maximum effect, just like the manual says, play the game at night, doors locked, with 5.1 speakers. When you play in the day its not that scary and kind of feels a bit different, but when you play at night alone you really get nervous about what to expect from every corner.

--

All in all I'd have to say Doom 3 is fantastic in just about every way. I cannot be more pleased with id Software for the great work they have done. If you are a Doom fan, an FPS fan, whatever, do yourself a favor and pick up Doom 3. Just don't expect the groundbreaking gameplay so many people here thought the game was supposed to have, and you will be immeresed in the dark world of Doom 3.

An average first-person shooter with a big name

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 13 / 15
Date: October 14, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Introduction:

Doom 3 is undoubtedly one of the most anticipated PC games of all time, and it's no surprise that it is. Afterall, the original Doom started a whole new revolution in computer gaming that set a precedent for all future 3D first-person shooters to follow, even to the current day. There is no question the influence the Doom franchise has had on the industry and the reputation it has built up among the gaming community. However, influence is only skin-deep and reputation does not make a good game (although it might put a game into a better light). Id's latest installment is a perfect example of this. Although Doom 3 is built on groundbreaking new graphics technologies it still fails in the area that Id has historically been weak at: gameplay. In short, Doom 3 is just an average shooter with a big title.

Background:

I've been involved in the 3D first-person shooter genre since 1992 when Id introduced the granddaddy of first-person shooters, Wolfenstein 3D. I've also been there when Doom was released and took the world by storm. Since then I've followed every major 3D game and seen the gradual progression of the genre. Now, Id has been at the center of this and have historically produced the best graphics engines which have been the basis for countless games. However, their games always seemed to follow a specific formula with little or no innovation in between. In short, each new game they produced was simply a carbon copy of their previous game, only with a better graphics engine. Although their graphics technology is renouned their gameplay is not and sadly Doom 3 follows in the exact same pattern.

The good:

First, the good stuff. Doom 3 utilizes a brand spankin' new graphics engine with a heavy emphasis on bump-mapping, stencil shadowing, and per-pixel lighting. The result is a game with very impressive visuals, the likes of which has never been seen before. The monsters in particular are very well done and the amount of detail is simply astounding. The game has reached an almost cinematic quality, yet is still playable on modern hardware. The game is a feast for the eyes and the technology is well worth praising. It's a shame the game is so dark and often times it's only with the flashlight that you can see some of the finer details. The audio is also great and there's nothing like the screech of an imp to send a shiver up your spine. Ambient voices and random noises help to create a feeling of horror and suspense and keep you in the moment. Doom 3 is a treat for your senses and is groundbreaking in its technology. However, all praises stop here when we start looking at the gameplay aspects which, in my opinion, is the more important part.

The bad:

Doom 3's gameplay consists of simple run and shoot action. While this is adequate for the most part it doesn't add anything new to the table. What makes it worse is that Id has failed to incorporate many of the standard gameplay elements present in other games of its' kind (leaning, alternate fire, alternate ammo, etc.). In short, it follows in the exact same pattern of Id's previous games like Doom and Quake with no change what-so-ever. This kind of gameplay may have been acceptable 4 or 5 years ago but now it's horribly outdated. Even the weapons are the same with little or no innovation and some have even been downgraded. I think I can safely say that this game has the most underpowered and inaccurate shotgun ever devised in a videogame. Even the alternate spray fire of the Riot shotgun in Shadow Warrior was more accurate. Weapons like the plasma gun and machinegun are also pretty standard and don't do anything special. After playing games like Unreal 2 which had a large array of exotic weapons with multiple functions and ammo types and which had unique effects on enemies the weapons in Doom 3 are awfully stale. The weapons have one fire mode and none of them have any special effect on enemies and are just used for simple shoot-and-kill action. In short, the weapons are old and sub-par and make the game rather boring.

The level designs are also out-of-date and in-line with their previous games. They aren't laid out in any logical design but are simply a maze of corridors, rooms, and doors to connect them. The environment is also stale and static. Aside from the few barrels you can blow up there's very little interaction with the environment. You can't knock over things or blow up objects like you'd expect and even fragile objects like soda pop machines and computers are apparently indestructable. The levels are also very dark, which may have been intentional but they were entirely too dark. The darkness was supposed to give a sense of suspense and terror but it was more annoying than anything else. You have to constantly switch to the flashlight to find your way around. Honestly, a brighter game with a few dark areas would have been much better. The levels are also horribly scripted and half of all enemy encounters is in the form of an ambush. I know Id was looking to create an element of surprise with this but, like the darkness factor, they overused it. After a while it becomes expected and the element of surprise disappears and is replaced with irritation. A few big surprises here and there mixed with some quiet moments would have had a much better effect.

The AI is also another area where the game suffers. The enemies in this game are utterly stupid. They don't seem to think at all simply walk towards you shooting. Sometimes they may leap or jump at you but they are simple reaction events, not the result of a clever AI. In short, they've simple reused the basic, outdated AI from their previous games. The physics engine could also use some tweaking and I've had experience with some scenarios where objects seemed to literally defy gravity.

Conclusion:

Overall, Doom 3 is nothing but eye candy. It's an old game wrapped in a new, shiny coating delivered as a horror/suspense game. If you're looking for a fast-paced game with modern gameplay this game is not for you. If you're looking to be scared out of your wits this game is also not for you as it's not that scary to begin with and any surprise or suspense quickly wears off. This game is also not good for multiplayer (VERY limited multiplayer support) and neither does it provide any decent single-player challenge. Honestly, the only people who should be buying this game are those who revel in eye candy and have the hardware to take advantage of it. Doom 3 has rather steep system requirements, although it will run on older hardware as well. I know many will be drawn to this game for its' name but that's no reason to get it. A skunk by any other name would smell just as bad and this game just stinks out loud. If not for the incredible graphics technology and the relatively good ambience and sounds this game wouldn't be worth a dime.

A good one, though short

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 12 / 14
Date: August 09, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This is a gorgeous game in terms of video presentation, but...
A lot of the visual quality is lost due to the darkness of the game. Still, this is another step forward in gaming. As a result, it taxes game PCs almost to death unless you are willing to turn the eye candy down.
That it is a replay of the original Doom storyline is both good and bad - with all the effort that went into making such a pretty game it's a shame the story could not have been expanded. On the other hand, the original twisted Doom story, though now a cliche from overuse, was a good one and it is nice to see it looking like Hell.
Sound is generally good, though there are times when strange anamolies creep in.
I get the impression the developers saved their money for the visuals at the expense of AI and design. The monster's show little subtly (always turn when you see a bad guy because the default appears to be to spawn another right behind you with no warning - another little bit of a cliche after a while) and tend to come pretty much right at you. The design is very linear and does not lend itself to much in the way of tactical movements, which simplifies AI programming, of course, but makes for a relatively fast game. And sometimes the tasks seem padded to draw out the game - go find this card, go back to that console, etc.
But is it worth this much cash for around 20+ hours of playing? Well, if your standard is Falcon 4.0 or Morrowind you won't be happy with having it go past so fast. But, then, FPSs are steadily becoming the potato chip of the game industry - they tend to be brief and hope that multiplay provides the attraction. I don't think that will work with D3 - it's multiplay needs some help and there is a ton of competition from other online multiplayer FPSs. Otoh, if you want to see a game that is able to really tax that brand new video card you mortgaged your mother's wedding ring for and you don't care much about tactics (or would just like a game where you basically just kill anything that moves and don't have a lot of thinking to do, and not everything has to involve deep thought to be fun), then you'll like D3. If you want newer shooter a little less linear, you might try Far Cry. If you don't have the rig for D3, but like a game that can scare you, you might try The Suffering.

could be better no brainer

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: August 16, 2004
Author: Amazon User

i am sure most would agree that the doom series (previous incarnations as Doom and Doom II) were pretty good FPS (first person shooter) games.

but, Doom 3 (D3), a remake of Doom/DoomII, does not measure up to the other FPSs already in the FPS market, specifically "Far Cry", "Call of Duty" and even the older "Half-Life".

measure up in terms of gameplay, interactivity and immersion.

it is difficult to define what "gameplay" is because it is subjective. i define it as the player's "ability" to choose how to play the game. how much or how little by virtue of game-design a player can achive goals.

the main goal is naturally to "stay alive" to achieve goals - the ultimate being to complete the game itself, usually "save-the-earth-from-something", meaning FPS's stories are quite arbitary - it is the getting there that's gameplay.

D3, imo, is behind in gameplay. basically you move from "room" to "room" until you get to the end. in each room there are a number of enemies of various types and "style" of attacking you. zombie soldiers, demons creatures, whathaveyous.

the problem is the confined spaces leaves you little options to no options when enemies "spawn" (appear) in front and behind you. it seems to me they are just "waiting" for you to walk by. enemies that seem to have the, ah-hem "supernatural" ability to detect where you're at. enemies do very often will appear behind you in the dark, or from behind wall panels - who put them there in the first place? and the rooms are very dark. you do have a unlimited (crappy) flashlight but does the game allow you to use both hands - one to hold the light the other a weapon? or tape the flashlight to the weapon? no. how silly. you can carry about 9 heavy weapons but not stick a flashlight to any of them. or wear a helmet with an attached flashlight ala aliens? is this designed by design? ok...oooh it's really dark, i have to slung my BFG and take the cute flashlight out of my pocket...ok looks clear up ahead, one corridor with two possible turns...i have to put the flashlight back in my pocket where its safe...i'll takeout the shotgun this time and proceed down the very dimly lit path...uh-oh i hear a evil growl from behind or to my left? i cannot see anything in the darkness, d*mn why did i put my flashlight back in my pocket! i better take it out again and put the shotgun away...wow. fantastic gameplay.

flicking lights and gloom add to the claustrophopic atmosphere but seriously limit your movement or tactics. actually, there is only one tactic: you blast away at anything that move towards you growling menacingly. often picking up armor or health trigger the appearance of yet more enemies from directions indentify-able by your superior sound-system. hurray!

now repeat the above for every room. interesting? hardly. hardly any variety in gameplay not having much choice. much like sitting through a ride (you don't control pace - you can *sit* in the dark but that's not nearly as fun) in "haunted house " amusement park ride, things pops up and you shoot them before they claw you a new one. ok, so they are supposed to be "demons" or aliens or something but they "die" when shot right? what about enemies that do not "single mindedly" want to be shot but run off to recover or rustle up a gang to work cooperatively against you? the game setting is just right for cat-and-mouse gameplay.

environment interactivity is low. you cannot try to be "inventive" such as tossing a rock to "test" the area for enemies. or bang on the wall to attract enemies towards you. you cannot/don't have the chance to push that flamable drum to ambush something heading your way. pushing buttons on lockers and touch-screen computer terminals and riding on lifts are about all you do while not pressing on the mouse-button-one (fire button).

speaking of which, the choice of weapons are poor and the sound they make weak. the grenade is something of a joke - bouncing around like a rubberball - often back at your face. the ridiculous grenade is a "twist-top-both-hands" thingy. what happened to pulling the pin with your teeth so that your *other* hand readies a weapon?

while your visual senses are deprived (very dark) your audio senses are sometimes overloaded with noise and haunted-house soundtrack.

in wide contrast "far cry" is on the opposite end of the FPS spectrum. open spaces, plenty of hiding places. how you achieve your goal is very much up to you - although it is also pretty linear. you can lure enemies or rush in with guns blazing or stalk or avoid. you can walk, run, drive a vehicle, a motorized boat, hang-glide. the playing-field various from water, shoreline, jungle, hills, beach, caves, and sure there are a few closed areas like installations and labs but you can still run and hide and vary your tactics and gameplay.

by immersion, i mean, believability and ease of "loosing-yourself" into the game for hours, "buying" into the game. perhaps the (over) designed "scares" were over the top and recur with clockwork monotony. where's the fun when you know that there are things waiting for you when you enter an area. there is no positive payoffs for varying your tactic or weapons. just use the "strongest" until ammo runs out, then the next "best" and so on. picking up PDAs and discs left lying about and spending time listening to tedious 2nd-rate voice-acting wating for mention of locker-codes (often at the end of such long-winded "voice-memo" recordings) does not add but subtract from immersion.

D3 is no brainer shooter with low-fun re-playability value. take away the eye-candy, the low growls and window-dressing and you are left with quite a contentless game. i don't know about other doom-fans but i cannot see myself saying "alright, i'm going back there with a better way to straighten out hell-on-mars!" but if you are a Doom fan or a FPS die-hard it is a "must have" just by virtue of its existance. honestly, i don't expect hi-brow intellectual mumbo-jumbo or discover profound realisations from FPSs. don't get me wrong there are less technically advanced and poorly designed games and game-engines out there but some of them didn't leave out the creativity, the orginality or the fun.

Something went wrong...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: January 31, 2005
Author: Amazon User

During the development of Doom 3. What could have been one of the most amazing, atmospheric games became instead an amazing graphical tour-de-force marred by repetitive gameplay.

The GOOD: Graphics are top notch, the sound is terrific and scary as anything, and the general mechanics of the game (move, shoot, etc) are well done. The idea for the story is also fun and creepy, and this game is quite atmospheric and effective in its scare tactics.

The BAD: This game is incredibly repetitive. Run around post-industrial levels looking for a key to move on to the next area. The levels are fun at first, but when you realize that you'll never go out on the Martian Landscape or even see a room bigger than a closet, you start to get bored. The idea of making the game essentially pitch-black must have sounded good in development, but is incredibly frustrating and not fun in its implementation. You can only hold a flashlight OR a weapon, meaning that you can either see the enemy and die, or shoot around in the dark and die. Mmmmmmm... fun. Thankfully the mod community has created a mod based on the assumption that duct tape still exists in the future, and thus allows you to tape the light to your guns.

I would have hoped for more varied levels, more wide open areas (see Doom 1 & 2) and frankly, better gameplay. The "find the key, open the security door" gameplay is so incredibly dated that I can't believe ID had the nerve to include it in this "next-gen" game. What the heck were they thinking, that we wouldn't notice?

Third Time's the Curse

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 10 / 11
Date: August 16, 2004
Author: Amazon User

12 years after wincing my way through the originals, I picked up id Software's latest from my local Fred Meyers last Tuesday. By Saturday morning I watched the end credits scroll past my traumatized eyes. Clearly, id went old-school gameplay with the latest graphics in *Doom 3*.

*D3* plays like *Quake*. It's dark and alien looking. Doors open automatically or you use the fire key to activate buttons. You have no alt-fire, stealth, lean, or use functions.

You do have a story for once. *Half-Life* owes about half its plot to the original *Doom*: both games are about clearing research facilities of teleporting monsters from another dimension, and id did it first. But *D3* plays like a devilish mod of *Half-Life: Blue Shift*. Both titles send a lowly guard to some forgotten corner of a massive research facility. Hell breaks loose as soon as the player reaches their respective destinations. Barney and the "Marine" must work their way to a portal to another world. They fix some critical problem in the other dimension and return to Earth for a final battle in some other forgotten corner.

That's okay. *D3* is a hard core game. It's also a hardcore system hog-with my AMD 64 FX-51 CPU, my 512MB Registered ECC RAM, and my Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB AGP the game lagged in places, particularly around doors, on the "High Detail" setting with 1092 x 768 res. The last few levels just killed my framerate.

Speaking of hardcore killing, *D3* is all about overkill. Beginning with the opening scene this game is just plain dark; and I don't mean subject-wise: apparently nobody has heard of floodlights in 22nd Century Mars. Id likes shadows long and deep. Id also likes blood: just about every room the character wanders into is caked in blood. That and red lights and disembodied voices form the primary chills in this game. And to rub it all in, id makes sure that enemies jump out of every nook and cranny, often teleporting all around the character while evil laughter echoes through the area.

Id's obsession with atmosphere affects gameplay. What good are shadows if the player can snag night vision goggles or a radar? That's right: the staple of many first and third person shooters is absent. Instead, the player wields a heavy flashlight which doubles as a useless club against the thick-skinned opponents. To use a gun, the player must sacrifice light. This can make self-defense rather challenging.

The old-school weapons challenge the player too. Aside from the fancy skins, the weapons might as well date from World War I. Given the anachronistic pistol with its wooden revolver grip and steel semi-automatic slide, I'm surprised the game designers didn't just go for a past/present motif all around. The "machine gun" sounds and behaves more like a 1920's Tommy Gun anyways. The shotgun has a semiautomatic bolt and charging handle, but operates strictly pump action. And *D3's* "chain gun" fires unusually slowly from a ridiculously limited ammo pool. All weapons other than the BFG 9000, the rocket launcher, and the "soulcube" appeared to have the same strength. Even the plasma cannon hit the same as the pistol, shotgun and machine gun.

But id's interesting design choices don't stop there. I can see why so many reviewers gripe. The gameplay consists mainly of the following formula:

1. Walk into a dark, confined room filled with flickering computer lights. Then:
a. A monster lurches out of the darkness.
b. A monster teleports into the darkness.
c. A ghost whispers something creepy.
d. A panel blows out of the floor or wall.

2. Next, walk into a dark, confined hallway filled with flickering overhead lights. Then:
a. A monster lurches out of the darkness.
b. A monster teleports into the darkness.
c. A ghost whispers something creepy.
d. A panel blows out of the floor or wall.

3. Then, walk into a dark, confined elevator filled with flickering touch-panel lights. Ride the elevator into one of the previous two locations.

Id varies this pattern with cute little horror movie scripts. Walk up to a bathroom mirror and suddenly a grainy red filter descends as laughter echoes and your reflection ages into one of the hapless zombies you kill. Walk into a control room and loose objects agitate violently, suddenly shooting across the room inches from your face. There are blood-soaked elevators with elevating body parts, skeletons that shift a few feet, bodies dangling from ceiling cables-just all kinds of nasty stuff.

Monsters included. *Doom* featured a bestiary right out of medieval Christianity. *D3* draws zoological inspiration from contemporary sci-fi horror like *Alien* and John Carpenter's *The Thing*. Id kept many of the *Doom* names, but the faces are far different, and new critters join the polygonal parade.

Little of this resembles the original and its pixilated 2D twitching-torso-on-a-stake decoration. *D3* brings a Satanic Invasion to the 3D realm (cough, cough) with an engine that sure renders light effects. Yet I can't tell much between it and *Far Cry's* Crytek engine. Id has certainly spent years crafting a grim-looking funhouse out of any Dark Castle picture. But Crytek could probably duplicate *D3* texture for bump-mapping for spectral if it wanted to. The only tech difference I detected were *D3's* totally cool computer screens clear enough to actually read, watch, and manipulate in-game.

Manipulation defines this black masterpiece. There is no multiple path option, no stealth mission, no player traps to spring. There is only the bloodstained hallway, the hum of a dying fluorescent light, and the total absence of anything safe and familiar. It is you and your shotgun versus Legion. It is awesome when it isn't repetitive.

I hate it and love it. *Half-Life* continues to be the PC bar to beat as far as balance and overall gaming excellence. *Far Cry* provides competitive graphic engines and effects. But when it comes to hotrod violence and horror, *Doom 3* is "it" in my limited library.

How much fun? 2 stars. Overall? 3 stars.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 13
Date: August 05, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Doom 3 wasn't worth the hype or bs wait. It's a good game. But it's not a great game. You can wait for this one to go on sale. The graphics are a nice taste of things to come but the gameplay is pretty lame. It doesn't have the feel of the original Doom games and it's not supposed to. As I'm sure you've heard, the storyline is crap. That is very true. The characters are cool and the voice acting is great... but the overall story and the way the game plays itself out is rather dull. The graphics in Doom 3 put games like Halo and Ut2004 to shame... but those games are much more addictive and will stand the test of time. Doom 3, sadly, will not. If this game took 4 years to make, 3 of those years were spent on the engine. Doom 3 is cool at first, but when all is said and done, it's just not all that much fun of a game.

*Doom 3 looks great even on lower end GPUs.
I ran the game on a 2.8ghz machine with 512mb of ram. I used a Geforcefx 5200 (bottom of the barrel as far as the Fx series goes). - The game looked amazing and ran smooth at medium quality graphics with an 800x600 res. -

*Update your drivers.
The game ran terribly until I went to NVIDIA's site and updated the video card's drivers. Once updated it ran great.

*Play Doom 3 on Marine (medium) difficulty your first time through.
The lowest difficulty is way too easy and you wont get the full effect of the game on account of the monster's being so simple to kill. Adversely, playing the game on Hard (Veteran) the first time through isn't recommended either. It's no fun dying every 2 minutes.

Decent game, but not what we were waiting for.

In a nutshell...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 11 / 13
Date: August 19, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I'll make it quick.

Doom 3 is graphically amazing. It looks fantastic, if your hardware can handle it.

It's also something we've all played before. At least, we self respecting PC (and even console) gamers have.

Once the awe from the visuals wears off (which it will), you're left with a pretty standard PC shooter, along with some annoying design flaws.

The graphics are enough that most people will forgive the shortcomings. But really, it's just like a stereotypical summer movie. It's got some great effects, a few cheap screams, great sales...and not a whole lot of substance.

Come to think of it, that's probably what most people are looking for.

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