ohn Carmack, the man behind Doom, has long been heralded as a genius and the godfather of first-person shooters. After a long absence from the scene, his triumphant return to prominence is finally at hand with Doom 3. To be sure, this title is in many ways as much of a landmark in gaming as its ancestor; however, the FPS landscape is no longer the clean slate it was back in the day, and there are definite cracks that show through Doom 3’s design.

The thing you’ll notice first when playing Doom 3 is that it’s no Painkiller-esque run-and-gun through hordes of enemies. The emphasis here is on mood – and by mood I mean making the player so on-edge at all times that nearly every encounter is pulse-poundingly intense. Everything about every area that you explore screams terror, and the lighting engine is absolutely brilliant. Enemies are disturbing to the point that to look upon one is to know fear, especially when they slither out from complete darkness into sickly lighting with your death on their minds. Frequently while playing you’ll have to stop and marvel at how well technology and design have melded to create an atmosphere that will likely be held up as the standard for years to come.

In Doom 3, you’re constantly faced with the dilemma of keeping your flashlight out to try and pierce the omnipresent darkness, or having your weapon ready for when you inevitably get jumped. Fortunately, the flashlight effect is the best to be done to date and, together with the general ambience of the game, it’s very easy to feel that you really are a stranded space marine on a Mars that’s being slowly corrupted by Satan. I’m not afraid to say that more than once I jumped and cursed in fear to the amusement of my fellow editors.

Though there are some cool sequences sprinkled throughout your quest to fight back the legions of Hell, like piloting a freight lift through an area infested by evil, gameplay does fall into a bit of a formulaic rut at times. "Kill some demons, get some power-ups, more demons spawn behind you, kill them, repeat" is the order of the day more often than not. The weapons, too, are nothing you haven’t seen before, and they lack any sort of scope or more precise aiming mechanism. Also, while I do like the way the story is told through the PDAs of fallen personnel, it is kind of hammy and predictable. The screams of dying allies through your radio and audio logs of people now dead do give the world more of a personal feel, though.

As much as I may nitpick and call out some minor flaws here and there, at the end of the day Doom 3 is one hell of a play. Even if you get bored with the somewhat repetitive single-player after a few hours, that time will be one of the most intense, visceral gaming experiences you’ll probably ever have. And it’s no secret that there’s a gigantic mod community already starting to find its groove (see Mod World on page 153), so it’s a pretty good bet that a few months from now we’ll start seeing some crazy things done with this amazing technology.