Even though I’ve had the game since Tuesday morning thanks to nu3r0, last night was the first time I was really able to sit down with the game. Although ironically, I never really played the game last night. What I did do was stay up until 3am trying to get the game running decently. I tweaked a bit here and there, and then right before I went to bed I started downloading ATI’s Doom 3 video card drivers for my 9800. This morning when I got up I installed the drivers and loaded up Doom 3. It’s still not as smooth as I would like, but it is very playable and did not crash on me once. So, now that I have about a good 40 minutes into the game I thought I would share some thoughts on the game everyone knows I have been waiting over 4 years for…
To say that this game is a breakthrough in gameplay would be an understatement. The firstime you a re left in the dark with nothing but your falshlight to light your way, it is truly amazing. The only way to describe the signifigence of this would be to comapare it to the first time you saw OpenGL Quake and saw dynamic lighting for the first time. That’s how amazing this is. Sure, other games have used flashlights before, but never in the way this game as. It is simply breathtaking. But thats’s only a small bit of the whole goodness that is Doom 3. The sound, simply put, is out of the world. The music is incredible and sets every mood, the sound effects are first rate, and the surround sound, even with only my 4 speaker setup, is still enough to give you chills. I’m thinking about taking my rig into the living room on Monday and hooking up my digital optical output from my motherboard to my surround sound to get the true 6.1 audio experience.
For the first time this morning, I also got to get a weapon and shoot some stuff. While there’s really nothing fantasic that I noticed about that, there was something that did give me chills. This would be the first time you see the newly improved Imp. Wow. I’ve seen screenshots and was never too impressed, but to see these things charge at you hauling off fireballs directly to you face, it does give you chills.
However, this was one major draw back to playing the game this morning. This game really needs to be played at night with all the lights off and the sound cranked. This is how I originally played through Doom 2 for the first time, and I suspect that all my Doom 3 playing will be done in the same manner. I would love to play it during the day, but reflections really ruin the experience. Granted, I probaly will play during the day, but at night is where the action will be had most.
Since I only played about 40 minutes of the game or so, I really haven’t experienced too much yet. Although much to my chagrin, I have found the all mighty shotgun. That my friends puts a smile on my face. I want to do a little more tweaking tonight since it still does run a bit choppy in certain high volume areas. There are still a few areas I can cut detail out of without cutting out all of the ooie gooieness that is Doom 3.
Unfortunatley, I have to woek tonight, and again tomorrow night, so that means playing tonight may be limited to only an hour or two and that may be limited to further tweaking. But that’s alright in my book. I’ll be home tomorrow night by 7:30pm, and I’ll have plently of time to make a nice dinner, clean up, and then by the time it’s nice and dark, I can play Doom 3 until the sun comes up since I am off all day on Monday. I think U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” will be tomorrow’s theme song. Later…
Twev1701.net is written by Trevor Shafer. Here you will find interesting articles about science fiction, computers, technology, and life in general. You may also find not-so-interesting articles about the weather, his cats, how he tends to hurt himself quite often, and life in retail. You will also find lots of half-naked women populating these digital pages. 
