[Phantomias]

Each girder, door, and window adds tangible substance to each scene, and even th \e effect of your flashlight shinging into a drakened corner looks ridiculosly real - as the light floods through a room , swinging back andforth, shadows are cast perfectly; dust particles gently drift into the cone of the flash light , eerily visible. And these are just the basics of the enviroment: just wait until you enter the depths of hell, and dive into some of the later mass melees,\. Doom 3, with all due awareness of hyperbole, is the best looking game you've ever seen.

Not surprising you'll need a monster system to render these monsters in all their intracetly textured glory. But the ability to play Doom 3 with all its visual magic maxed out is really a good excuse to trade up. A P4 3GHzwith a Georce 5950- class card will see u through okay.
One of our test systems had a geforce 6800 ultra and ran flawlessly at 1024x 768 with high detail. (A higher level of quality and resolution is available , but the PC to run it well isnt)nning with a geforce4 MX card and 512 Mb RAM, the texture detail was great, although the game was choppier in spots.

Bottom line: If Far Cry didnt convince you, then Doom 3 should - the time to upgrade to a next generation 3D chip , or even an all new rig, is now.

SOUND, FURY...AND SCARES

While I was expecting amazing graphics, it was the sound effects and sound design that had me reeling. Footsteps echo spookily down halls; monsters issue bloodcurling shrieks; every hallway has an audible drip of menace and dread. Doom 3 is the reason to own surround sound speakers.
The collective impact of sound design on the whole expierience cant be overstated, adding to the urge to switch out ll th lights, close the curtains, crank up the voulume, and let yourself be scared s***less.

And you will be jolted right out of your seat. I'm not going to spoil any of the socks here, but there were at least four occasions where i lunged back in y chair. Lead designer Tim wiltis is inside your head like a phycologist - and just when hes let you think you can lower your guard, he sticks the psychic shiv right into your nervous system.

Even when the scares arent heart stopping , theres a constant, simmering anxiety at each and every step. You basically subjecting yourself to a 20 hour cariac episode. At times, death brought sweet, momentery respite from the fear drenched mayhem.

The zombie plagued space station is creepy enough , but about mid way through the game you make a teleporteraided detour to hell. The whole feel of the game changes utterly - if you thought you were in desperate straits before, you now find yourself in a balls shriveling nightmare netherworld. (With no weapons!)

It's all leading up to a knees knocking climatic spelunk into the archealogical ruins beneath mars base where you enter a final showdown against evildoers amid the remnants of a fallen martian civilization. As the massive fright lifter descends so agonizingly slowly into the darkness, you may find yourself as I did, cursing out loud at the grim hold this game has on you.

Does Doom 3 have any missteps maybe just one; its attemps at humor feel way out of place. there are a few lame running gagas: PDA spam and an uber-nerdy string of emails between members of a roleplaying club. (The spam gag actually becomes a puzzle that requires you jump out of the game and use you web browser to find a code. Huh?) In one appalling instance, you even even become privy in a tounge-in-cheek directive by arcvillian Dr. Betruger, advising hellions on the proper way to prepare virgin sacrifices. These limp jokes server only to dump me out of the games carefully calibrated dread machine.

But no matter: The rest is all dynamite. Doom 3 took me 23 hours to complete on the medium difficulty setting. (For all those who rumored that the game would be over in a few hours- you couldnt be more wrong.) And for those 23 hours, you will never expirience a dull moment. Or even a less than mesmerizing one.

Doom 3 is a masterpiece of art form - staying true to the frantic legacy of the Doom series, while ambitiously reaching new hieghts and bashing down the doors of the next generation of PC shooter. The bar is raised. Lets see someone else climb over it - Dan Morris


Highs: Extraordinary graphics and sound; incredible tension, atmosphere, and mayhem.

Lows: Some stabs at humor fall a bit flat.

Bottom Line: Just as we'd hoped, it's a non-stop ride of tension, carnage and terror. A new classic.

Multiplayer: 1v1, DM, Team DM, and Last Man Standing. There are 5 DM maps shipping with the game.

SCORE: 94 %



Top 10 things you need to know bout DooM 3!

1. 6800 is a tad faster than X800 cards. Both run it in full glory

2. The game has four render paths: NV10, NV20, R200, and ARB2. All paths look awesome, even down to a g4mx, but the ARB2 path is the "full package," and is used for the R300+ and Geforce FX+ cards. It does all it's fancy **** in one pass.

3. PCI Express enhances NOTHING.

4. The difference between a 128mb and 256mb card is that the former uses compressed textures whereas the latter only compresses diffuse and specualr maps. In another words, no big deal. However, a 500mb card is needed to run the game in Ultra Quality mode.

5. 512MB is the ideal system total memory. 384 is required, 1GB is nice, but the difference is negligible.

6. Nothing special is included for a 64-bit OS.

7. A 1.5 Ghz processor is the least recommended, but a 2Ghz and above will help since...

8...The sound engine is entirely CPU dependant. Therefore a crappy soundcard works flawlessly. Not to worry, the enfine only uses a "small percentage of cycles, much less than if the engine relied on a soundcard.

9. The only reccommendation regarding faster framerates is to disable to "advanced special effects option." In other words, upgrade if you have problems.