It's pitch black. I'm crawling through a small tunnel system underground, lighting my way with the flash light. After the guy I had to protect had died, I saw no other way out than these tunnels.
I lose my sense of orientation completely, it all looks the same. Have I already been here? Sometimes I don't even know whether I'm looking up or down. I start feeling panic, it's getting claustrophobic.
I have found an exit. I hope it's not where I entered the tunnels. I'm in a room, still darkness everywhere, my eyes start hurting from following the small cone of light of the flash light. But I'm feeling free, I don't have to crouch anymore. Again, no discernible exit, just a button for extending an emergency ladder. I press it. Suddenly the spiders are everywhere. I use my shotgun and try to move, killing as much as I can while avoiding their bites. It's so dark I don't see where I'm moving to, I hope I can't fall down. My adrenalin level is at a high, I'm near death. The reloading of my gun takes much too long while I'm getting beat and hurled around by those damn spiders.
No spiders anymore. I'm alive.
I'm half-way through Doom 3, and so far this has been the most exciting scene. After that I gladly went for 90 minutes of cycling and walking in the sun to get down again from my adrenalin rush.
Doom 3 is abolutely no surprise. The graphics are stunning. The physics and gameplay are very realistic, sometimes too much (you lose orientation everytime you get hit by a monster). This is cutting edge, like it was when Doom, Doom 2, Quake etc. came out. As always, the story is like the one in a porn movie: It's just there but you (and the author obviously) don't really care. Having to listen to a whole audio log just to get the digits for opening a cabinet is boring. I switch to the PDA only in emergencies, like when I'm running out of ammo and a closed cabinet happens to be near.
Article comments