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Release Dates Out Now (North America) Out Now (Europe) |
Review
Doom. For hardcore gamers, the name conjures up a cold quiver, a feeling that someone's just walked over your grave. The influence of id Software's seminal work has permeated the world of computer games for a decade and still has the power to shock you out of your skin. Unparalleled, it remains one of the best games (of its type) of all time. The prospect of a return to the Doom universe has been high on Xequted's wish list for many years and now, finally, we're back on Mars.
Doom 3 is set in a remote technical development lab on Mars that specialises in research that pushes normal moral and ethical boundaries -and occasionally passes through them. It's all in a day's work for the Union Aerospace Corporation and you, as a UAC Marine, are there to provide security on a base that everyone seems to want to leave.
Upon arriving in Mars City, you are summoned to the security HQ for an urgent assignment; a scientist at the base has gone missing and you need to track him down. Your commanding officer, Master Sergeant Kelly (a typically gruff military type), plays a major part in the game, updating your objectives throughout your time on Mars.
As you traverse the dark corridors and dusty, oxygen-free landscapes of Mars City, you're immediately drawn into id Software's nightmarish vision of the consequences of tampering with the unknown. The base itself is a hellhole. A maze of dank corridors and flickering lights create an atmosphere that's part Aliens, part Event Horizon and totally unsettling. It's clear from the outset that this is not going to be a holiday.
The story that unravels over the course of Doom 3 isn't much more than a thinly-veiled attempt to distract gamers (and critics) from the fact that there isn't much of a story and that the game is all about shooting things as efficiently as possible -without getting killed. Admittedly, the previous Doom titles suffered from a more extreme version of this absence of story and Doom 3 does at least attempt to introduce gamers to a conspiracy (however clichéd) involving a scary-eyed Dr Betruga, whose experiments on Mars are bordering on the, ah, shall we say, 'dangerously insane'?
Although much of the gameplay centres on shooting up your enemies, there are a number of small puzzles littered around Mars City that you need to solve in order to progress. These puzzles take the form of 'find this key-code to open this door' and despite the old-school roots of this type of gameplay, having to track down the PDAs of dead scientists to upgrade security clearance wasn't as much of a chore as we first feared it would be.
The PDAs themselves contain all manner of weird and wonderful emails and audio logs that just serve to draw you even further into the workings of Mars City and some of the reports (especially those pertaining to the deteriorating mental state of many of the workers in the base) help add a extra chill to the proceedings as you watch the dead workers' worst nightmare take place around you.
Graphically, this game is a remarkable leap forward -if you've played FarCry and thought that it was good as current technology could get, then you'd better look again. Even before 64-bit computing takes a major hold and PCI Express takes graphics to a new level, id have taken the concept of an immersive gaming world and turned it upside down. How can we say this without sounding like a bunch of fan-boys? Doom 3 looks absolutely astounding. There, we said it, so sue us.
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