Let's face it; we all like to be scared, even if just a little. Doom 3 definitely has the creep factor. Disembodied voices, objects moving on their own, and things popping out of the dark give this game plenty of spooks. I'll admit, I nearly soiled myself on several occasions, but you can only ride that horse for so long, and I think id has beat this dead horse enough. I mean, why does it always have to be a gateway to Hell with mutant demons and the like? What's wrong with humanoid aliens? Or maybe guerilla rebels? Or even rebel gorillas?

There are essentially three environments in Doom 3, the torn up UAC complex, Hell, and the planet's surface. Virtually the entire game takes place in the UAC complex though. I would have liked to spend a little more of the game on the planet's surface, shown in Figure E, but there are only a few occasions when the player has to exit the complex, and only then for the few minutes of air his suit can hold.

FIGURE E


You get to spend very little time on the surface of Mars. Roll over picture for a larger image.

The excursions into Hell are rather limited as well, but by the time I got there I was pretty much sick of the game anyway.

There are some nice in-game movies, and the story expansion by way of the emails and audio logs in the PDA is an enjoyable addition to the game. Doom 3 has cheats galore too, and isn't ashamed of making them available. In fact, as I recall, god mode and its sibling cheats were features introduced by the original Doom.

Conclusion
If I can't even finish a game, then it's got to be really bad. Doom 3 has received rave reviews from many other publications, but I just don't see it that way. I can only suggest, that in my opinion, those reviewers have a tendency to rate everything as the "greatest game ever" merely to curry favor with the developers and production studios. I have long been a believer in truthful reporting, and it's my opinion that Doom 3 is a colossal waste not only of the consumer's money, but also of the time, effort, and hard work the development team put into this project.

The single largest complaint I found, which was echoed in the Doom 3 community, was the darkness of the game setting, and the inability to wield the flashlight and a weapon at the same time. If id had any concern at all about their customer's complaints these would have been addressed in a patch. But seeing as how Doom 3 has been out for several months now, I really don't see that happening. I have no notion as to why id chose to make the game environment so dark, thankfully, the gaming community has responded with a fix. Many, many fixes in fact.

I think the most prevalent game modification, or mod, I've found for Doom 3 is a flashlight mod. The numerous flashlight mods, created by the devoted gaming community developers, strap a flashlight to pretty much every weapon in the game so you can at least see what you're shooting at. Come on. Are we supposed to believe that a combat Marine isn't going to have enough ingenuity to duct tape a flashlight to his weapons when he's trapped in a dark, hostile environment? Another popular mod tweaks the game settings, making the play environment much more visible. Without these mods Doom 3 is virtually unplayable.