For those who have been stuck beneath a rock for the past years let me bring you up to speed; Doom 3 is a first person shooter in its purest form. Just as Speed mentioned in the PC review; it’s not the first shooter (that would be Wolfenstein 3D) but the original was an early bird to say the least. Don’t expect any difficult puzzles, deep storyline or any commitment with the characters in the game. Your main goal in Doom 3 is to survive and that’s also your main concern. It suits perfectly in the genre of survival horror games where you’re mostly under a lot of stress, looking for ammo in order to survive. This obviously boosts the level of fear in the game. With only your flashlight on, sneaking from corner to corner, hoping to find some more rounds for your shotgun and then discovering that there’s a huge monster leaving a breath of not so fresh air in your neck. I can assure you; a night walk on a cemetery is less frightening.

This is also the strongest asset of Doom 3’s gameplay. The disadvantage is however that you’ll discover a pattern in the actions of your opponents. Every time, after closing a door, some sort of freaky monster sneaks up on you. And if you feel happy when stepping in to a fully lit room, don’t be, because most of the time all the lights will go out and monsters start attacking you all over the place. This predictability however doesn’t make Doom 3 less scary. Even if you know for sure what’s about to happen, you still shit your diaper of fear. The constant pressure you’re under did make me lose my appetite to keep playing. This only got worse when it took for hours until the next cut scene, because believe me; the cut scenes offer you the time to take a breath of fresh air and get back to reality. The monotone gameplay really affects my will to play. The game is of course a full on first person shooter where your only task is shooting the hell out of your enemies. I however long for some variation from time to time and that isn’t the case in Doom 3, aside from a new weapon from time to time that is.

As I already mentioned in my lead, this game isn’t the smartest girl in the street, but it is the cutest. The appearance of Doom 3 gets your more addicted than the gameplay. How much I like to use gamer statements such as: “gameplay is more important than graphics”, I have to change my mind on this one. The game is simply so beautiful you just want to keep playing to be able to get some more drooling moments. Don’t get me wrong however, Doom 3 sets an atmosphere of which the gameplay benefits from time to time, but you’re mainly stuck in the same pattern of silently walking and shooting your way from one level to another. And this started boring me. This is also due to the rather boring level design which is often covered up by the lush lighting effects but it overall gives a slightly simple feel in comparison to first person shooters today.

New weapons made my boredom go away. Especially the chainsaw offered me some great gameplay moments. The developers did obviously understand the fun of the chainsaw as numerous zombies will attack you once you get hold of this lovely toy. You should know that these zombies are the perfect and real easy bate for your chainsaw. Aside from this great weapon there are of course other more destructive weapons to be found in Doom 3.

If you’re part of the group of gamers that has friends, you should praise the lord, for you are a lucky man. Doom 3 namely offers you a co-op mode that gives you the opportunity to blow your way through the story line together with a friend. The social aspect of this gameplay ability is of course a nice plus but the number of scary moments reduces enormously; and that’s one of the biggest advantages of the game. For those you played the PC version ‘till they dropped, this might be a decisive factor, although I doubt if it’s worth the 60 euros. Aside from this co-op mode you’re also able to go online via Xbox Live or System Link. This online mode however can’t compete with Halo2 but that’s not a bad thing. Doom 3 is mainly focused on the single player mode and the little online mode that’s given in the game is just a nice variation.

The sound department did equally well as the graphics department. All sounds in Doom 3 sound freaking realistic; from the numerous spoken logs in your PDA to the disturbing yells for help during certain missions. The sounds and sights in Doom 3 gave my bottom a hard time of keeping all the shit together. Lucky for me the bathroom isn’t far away from my Xbox or else things could have gotten a bit out of hand.