The following impressions were written by gcadvanced’s Shawn Smith. XA would like to thank Shawn for contributing his time and work.
One of the most beautiful and intricately designed games for the XBox at E3 this year has to be Doom 3. To be brought to the XBox after the PC version is released, Doom 3 promises to bring lots of chills and lots of action to you home console by early next year at the latest. We sat down for a media only demo of this game, and we practically wet ourselves; both with anticipation and fear.
Doom 3 places you as a marine soldier fighting something evil and hellacious, but we couldn’t quite pry out information on exactly what it was. All we know is that its from hell, and it’s pretty pissed off. At one point during the demo, an entire room caught on fire and began throwing it’s furniture at your character for no apparent reason. Somehow, I don’t think that whatever is in hell is very friendly.
Friendly or not, it’s impressively detailed. Every single inch of the game is crawling in beautiful, beautiful textures, all with a pretty smooth frame rate to boot. Everything in the game is rendered dynamically, so using your flashlight will create realistic shadows behind whatever you are aiming at, at whatever angle you choose. The sound in the game is phenomenal, as every moan, groan, grunt, and scream will be enough to give you goosebumps. Not to mention the control, which is smooth and allows you to switch from flashlight to weapon on the fly, which is important considering how often you’ll use the flashlight. It all blends together in a harmony of eye, ear, and finger candy that’ll make any grown man moan.
Fans familiar with the series will recognize certain monsters such as imps, all of whom have custom attacks tailored to murder you with ease. The main common enemy appears to be zombies, but it’s likely that you’ll see less of them further into the game. Although we couldn’t get much information on the storyline, the simple fact that walking into a room brought you to see a tortured marine strapped to the ceiling with his torso sliced clean open suggests something isn’t quite right. Keep your eye on Doom 3 to hit store shelves by early 2005 (2004 for you PC gamers), and don’t turn out the lights.