Doom 3

My favorite baddie - the Hell Knight!

        Doom 3 is as "Back to Basics" a first person shooter as it's possible to imagine. It's a claustrophobically linear corridor shooter packed to the rafters with more devilish, gore, demonic imagery than Clive Barker flick.

      Sinister mega-corporation UAC is tinkering away on some radical new teleportation technology. Headed up by the obligatory psychopath, the experiment goes to Hell and a wormhole to Hades pops up on their creepy Mars outpost.


      As crazed, bloodthirsty demons swarm into the universe, one heroic marine is only mankind's only hope. If you want to know what happens next, just think of something along the lines of Aliens, Evil Dead and Resident Evil and you're halfway there. Doom 3's level of polish is unparalleled, making it the video gaming equivalent of Titanic. No other Xbox game comes close to touching it from a graphical point of view. Forget Halo, Oddworld or Riddick - Doom 3 craps on them all from a very great height. Models, particle effects, lighting - you name it, this beast does it best.

     Critics have bemoaned the fact that, cutting edge visuals aside, Doom 3's by the numbers gameplay is painfully dated. And they be right. Well, kind of. It's true that you can't peek around corners, while the physics system is basic at best and enemies tend to be even thicker than most game show hosts.

     So, it's nothing more than a corridor crawler, but what a corridor crawler! The whole Doom 3 experience feels far more comfortable on console than it ever was on the PC. Its linearity can surely be excused when the weapons, levels and enemies are all this mind-blowingly fantastic. Chuck in some bombastic boss battles and Hollywood-esque production level and you have an instant classic.

   

Doom 3 isn't perfect. The section in the Alpha Labs/Empro facility drags on for ages, while the potentially terrifying vent sections are woefully undeveloped. The inability to wield your flashlight and weapon at the same time is puzzling, but then isn't this game that's all about suspending your disbelief.