Price: £39.99 Players: 1-online System requirements: Windows 2000/XP Pentium 4/AMD Athlon 1.5Ghz 384Mb RAM Hard disk space: 2.6Gb 64Mb 3D hardware accelerator video card DirectX 9.0b (included) It's fair to say that Doom 3 has been one of the major releases that deserves the tag "long-awaited" since it was originally intended to hit the shelves approximately a year ago, and definitely in time for Xmas, but while its other major rival, Half Life 2, gave the lame excuse that half the code had been nicked (yes, of course!), this one kept quiet about all that and just got on with being late.

So, what's the backstory to Doom 3, then? There isn't one. This isn't to say that that's a problem, since as long as you have a well-written and structually-sound game to play with the all-important 'Wow!' factor, you're in no danger of getting bored. Sadly, Doom 3 is not that game. All you seem to do is wander from room to room, seek out the baddies unless they do this first, shoot away in a bid to be the one NOT to die, pick up their ammo and weapons and move on. Often you'll come across locked doors that can only be opened by some of the other employees on-site, but since they're now part of the undead you'll have to kill them first. Once done, steal their PDA and download the information onto yours (i.e. just walk over it to pick it up, so no expertise required), after killing their newly-diseased owners, and get out. In other words, it's like picking up the key to unlock the door. Shooting other humans is nothing to worry about. The game tells you not to, but why? It makes no odds and one shot kills them, another turns them to a skeleton and they fade away.

The PC games I've played in the past two years I could count on one hand, namely Unreal 2: The Awakening, Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness, Tron 2.0 and now Doom 3. Most of these end up on a console like the Xbox, and I've come to generally prefer this but figured I'd give the PC a try as the duffer that was Thief: Deadly Shadows did its best to make me lose faith in that thought! Also, I gave this a chance due to Doom's original PC roots. The reason I prefer a console as I don't like the PC going wrong due to games going awry, and I can't write a game review while the PC is otherwise engaged. Still, with a P4 2.66Ghz PC using WinXP and 512Mb RAM, I got good results with the GeForce4 MX440 graphics card when playing Tron 2.0 last year. The sound FX are bog-standard, although I wasn't listening in Dolby Digital 5.1, just plain surround sound so maybe that didn't help, although earlier PC games have excelled in that capacity. Doom 3 has nice lighting, but overall is disappointing, particularly due to its very stodgy framerate. It played 'sticky' on a resolution of 800x600 and 'high quality', but was a tad better on the medium alternative. Apparently, the 'Ultimate' setting is for cards that haven't been invented yet(!) How odd. Also, this game started making my PC begin trying to cool itself down. Why? You look through mostly dark areas, use your flashlight to see the baddies, put your light away to get out your gun and then you can't see him!! Then he gets too close and takes a swipe. Ow! None of this makes for fun - it just annoys! Even Thief: Deadly Shadows seemed intelligent compared to this, despite the enemies' dumb AI. Doom 3 is way too linear. Back in 1993-95 we had different tastes, but I don't think you can get on with excuses like that now. It may well have lots of deadly creatures, but blasting away zombies just isn't massively entertaining these days like it used to be ten years ago.

Of course, no-one's saying the word Daikatana by a long chalk, but while Doom was the original PC first-person-shooter, they really needed a way of updating it to keep it fresh, while games have stolen its thunder such as the coolness of Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II and those that incorporate stealth elements like Hitman: Contracts and the best of the 'Thief' series, Thief II: The Metal Age. Despite the faults that games like GTA on Xbox and Driv3r have, you can't beat their realism for simply interacting with real people, and some of the above-named examples have the right combination of arcadeness with stealth. That said, I'd like to give Doom 3 a blast on the Xbox to see how it translates to console where you don't have to worry about graphics cards and settings and PCs going screwy, not that mine is, but I just get nervy about that sort of thing sometimes.

When you do run out of the limited amount of ammo, and I didn't want to resort to using a cheat to get unlimited amounts, the stupid amongst you can even pick a fist fight amongst the enemy. This is often necessary, but while stumbling about in pitch blackness, you just know you're going to get capped before you find a health point to draw from, in similar fashion to the original Half Life. Let's face it. Doom was of its time. Quake I & II advanced it nicely with its lush textures (I didn't welcome Quake III for throwing away the single-player element), but surely those can be recreated without being so damn CPU-hungry? Just what the hell is going on that requires it to be like that? And why can't they make a lower-res version for those of us with a decent machine that is too lowly for this game, despite surpassing the requirements? There is a multiplayer option, but this kind of game doesn't do it for me in that respect, simply because I end up getting shot to pieces too quickly. I prefer online games that I can at least have a fighting chance at, such as Xbox Live versions of Midtown Madness 3, Moto GP2 and Project Gotham Racing 2. I'll wait for Half Life 2 and see if that fares better, although frankly I can't see how it could be worse.

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Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2004.