Who wants bomb? Do you, boy, do you? Good boy!

I just finished feeding the bomb to Doom3, so I thought I’d make one last entry, then call it quits on this title. Overall, I have to say that id did a good job with this game, but it’s not the kind of game that rewrites a genre. Although generally I couldn’t play this game for more than an hour or two because of my nerves (more on that later), on the occasions that could, I kept wishing the game would come to an end. However, I always came back to it and usually enjoyed it after a break.

There’s no question that technically this game was fantastic; the light and sound effects were phenomenal and I think they set a standard for future FPS games. Jeff once gave me grief for turning up the gamma correct on my games and made the comment, “if I’m not supposed to see it, I don’t want to see it.” Normally, I tell him to take the attitude back to Cuba, but on this occasion I have to agree. A big part of this game is the tension and suspense, and both the lighting and sound were critical aspects of the game as a whole. If the levels had been uniformly well lit it wouldn’t have been half as good. Things will skitter and breathe in the dark, shadows will shift and crawl, and I was never totally sure if I was alone or not.

The level design was also excellent. I genuinely felt claustrophobic on a number of occasions and the game really made me feel like I was on an oppressive and crumbling Mars station. One of the major themes of the game is creeping insanity, and wandering around the levels really makes you understand why everyone on Mars goes crazy eventually. I did have some gripes with the levels - particularly Hell which, for reasons I can’t pin down, I hated - but for the most part their worst sin was being a little long as a whole.

I had a few other, minor, complaints. Things like the lack of a decent long range weapon (I’ll admit to having sniper tendencies) and one of the genre’s worst cliche’s (being teleported to an alien world) are concessisons I’ll make to the Doom franchise: Doom1 had no sniper rifle, and Doom2 did take place in Hell. What I really hated though, was the I’ve-been-captured-and-lost-all-my-weapons moment. Is there ever really a useful point to that? It’s like getting slapped in the nuts: it doesn’t hurt too much, but it’s really insulting.

Replay value on this game is slim, especially given that most of the entertainment value is contained in shock and surprise, but admittedly I’m not a multiplayer kind of guy. I like to game like I like to drink: at home, alone, in the dark.

If you’re going to play this game, though, you really should do it alone in the dark. This is the first game in a long time that genuinely had my heart pumping and my hands shaking. It sounds juvenile, but I never played this game expecting to get a good night’s sleep afterwards - it’s really that startling. Despite the fact that it was a little repetitive (basically you got ambushed in every room), knowing there was a trap didn’t make setting it off any better.

If you want to get surprised - a lot - definitely pick this game up, but don’t feel like you can’t wait for the discounts to kick in.

I think they’re trying to say “John Carmack has your money.”