nyerm

Like much of the PC-gaming public, I’ve been playing Doom 3. And like most of the PC-gaming public, I’m enjoying the hell out of the game (pun fully intended). The overall experience is exactly like being one of the Marines from the movie Aliens, only without the nasty little face-huggers.

id‘s latest game shows that John Carmack and company still have what it takes to create a wholly immersive single-player game. id’s return to its roots almost makes up for the vast disappointment of Quake 3’s “single player” game (essentially just a deathmatch against bots). The game has at least as much plot as you’d expect from the average sci-fi/horror/thriller film, and voice acting that is even more convincing than most performances from the film genre. The interactive computer displays and PDA do a really good job of adding life to what could otherwise be nothing more than a playable technology demo.

And how does it look? The screen shots posted far and wide across the Web do not do this game justice. When everything is moving, it forms its own reality, one in which happy thoughts are completely banished. The game is dark, but dark in the right places; Doom 3’s lighting reminds me of the terrifying moments I had in Doom and Doom 2 when the lights would go out and a swarm of pinkies would descend upon me.

Add the sound, and you’ve got a game that threatens to dampen your trousers at every turn. Not only are all the bad guy noises executed with appropriate menace, but the environmental sounds make the entire UAC Mars base feel like a bad place to be. You can listen to the thoughts of station personnel via audio journals while you continue exploring, and the panicked radio traffic from your fellow marines adds to the feeling that you’re going to die if you’re not really quick with that shotgun.

The AI in the game isn’t impressive. Most non-zombie opponents don’t charge straight at you, but they don’t do much other than shoot or try to rip your limbs off. After Half-Life and Halo, it’s hard to switch back to enemies that aren’t terribly bright. I’m not far into the game, though, and I have hopes that more intelligent opponents might be forthcoming.

However, lack of AI doesn’t seem to detract from the overall mood of the game due to excellent level design and monster placement. It plays a lot like the original Doom, with monsters popping out of the walls and lurking just around the next corner. This does result in some situations where the monsters are taking cheap shots at your back, but it encourages you to proceed with caution, and it certainly keeps your reflexes honed.

I’ve run across a forum posting on boosting Doom 3 performance on ATI cards, written by one of the developers at ATI. I’m running on a Radeon 9700 Pro, so I may just give it a try. The game runs well most of the time at 1024×768 on my 2.53GHz P4 system, but it does get a little choppy in some areas; hopefully the small change in shader code suggested by the post’s author will smooth out these rough edges.

There’s also a flashlight mod out there for you wimps who are afraid of the dark, which adds a narrow-beam flashlight to the shotgun and assault rifle. Personally, I don’t mind swapping between the flashlight and a weapon; if anything, it adds to the tension. You can either see what’s about to kill you and do nothing about it, or you can kill stuff but not see it. So far, it’s made for some interesting split-second tactical decisions.