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Over a decade ago the original Doom was released. Doom single handedly revolutionized PC gaming forever. Now its 2004; will Doom 3 be able to capture gamers in the same way as the original did in the 90s?

iD's games always contain technology which influence gaming for years to come. The original Half Life was based off of the Quake engine. Half Life and its mods, most notably CounterStrike, remain one of the most played online games and continue to draw in new fans. If you look at it from that perspective, expect games in 2010 to still contain remnants of Doom 3 code. What this means for you today is that Doom 3 has the most impressive graphics you have seen in any computer game yet! Thats right, after playing Doom 3 Unreal Tournament 2004 looks stale.

I remember when I saw the first video of Doom 3 released to the public. It blew me away. Today, seeing Doom 3 running on high-quality settings is absolutely jaw dropping. If you have a performance gaming machine don't finish reading this review. Doom 3 is a must have.

Doom3 Multiplayer

Multiplayer Doom 3 is limited to 4 players. We suspect this is because a 32 player game of Doom3 would be laggy as hell (pun intended.) Forget 32 player, a 10 player server must be laggy if they are limiting it to 4 players.

Is multiplayer Doom 3 fun? The fairest answer to this question is that it is one of the weaker elements of Doom 3. Ironically, 5 years ago, game reviewers were complaining about the weak single player element of Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament. Well, now we have the exact opposite problem with Doom3.

No, Doom 3 multiplayer doesn't suck. Doom 3 multiplayer is great for a small LAN party with your friends. Me, I don't expect to be playing it a year from now. We are living in an era where multiplayer gamers drive sales years after the release date of the game. iD better cross its fingers and pray that good modders use Doom 3 rather than flock to Half Life 2. We aren't going to forget Doom 3, but unfortunately as of right now, the multiplayer element is a bit forgettable. It is hard to imagine a successful dedicated server of Counterstrike or Quake3 that was limited to 4 players.

Doom3 Singleplayer

Usually the single player elements of a game are the first thing covered in a review. Not here. We save the best for last.

iD software is not well known for having games with an excellent storyline. Scratch that last sentence. iD software is known for producing games with little to no storyline. Doom 3 breaks that mode. For a game equipped with an engine that renders photo-realistic faces and lip-syncing animation having no storyline would be a crime.

In Doom3 there is a solid storyline loosely based on the story of the original Doom. You are on Mars, a portal to hell opens and hordes of demons come out. Need I say more?

The levels are dark. Painfully dark. The lighting plays an important role in the gameplay. Imagine walking along minding your own business. Ah, there is a power up right over there. The coast looks clear. You jump down and grab it. Suddenly a flaming demon jumps out from a mysterious opening in the wall that was covered up a moment ago. In fact, Doom 3 makes a great cure to constipation when taken with a laxative. In other words, the game is scary. Take our advice and play it at night (if you buy the game you'll be up all night playing it anyways.)

There is more narrated voice than you probably care to hear. It looks like we have finally left the years of reading text narration in pc games in the dust. There is a downside to this. iD cleverly hid combinations to vaults at the end of these voice recordings you pick up during the game. You will get board unless you are into the story. If the speed of the last iD games is any indicator of fan's attention spans this is a bad thing.

Will Doom 3 run on my computer?

You don't need a killer Alienware machine to play Doom 3. Nor do you need a $500 video card. In fact, a GeForce 4 Ti4200 on a decent system will run Doom 3 quite well. However, if you want to crank the graphics up to 1600x1200 with anti-aliasing, you bet you are going to need a killer gaming machine.

One suggestion we have for optimal performance is to ensure that you have the latest drivers and firmware for you motherboard and videocard. It can really make a difference.

When Half Life 2 is released, stop back at CounterFrag where we will compare both games head to head.

So how did CounterFrag rate Doom3? Take a look.

 

Graphics.......... Excellent
Sound.............. Good
Singleplayer.... Excellent
Multiplayer....... Good
Overall Rating...... 95%