Where to start? You've heard
about it, and it's true. Doom 3 has the best graphics ever seen in a
first-person shooter, and depending on your tastes, any other game genre too.
When run on a system with sufficient horsepower, the game is spectacular. The
main point here is sustained believability. Through hours of play, we can't
recall noticing one graphical glitch or lousy texture that drew us out of our
immersion in the game's environment.
The assorted zombies and demons
that populate the game really show off the capabilities of the engine. Besides
looking convincing, they are well animated and often creepy. The various
machines that you run across during your travels are imaginative and well
realized. The amount of time that must have been put into designing the
environments boggles the mind, since even though most of the game is spent in
the hallways and labs of the Mars base, the scenery does not become
repetitive.
The highlight of the graphics,
though, is the lighting effects. We've seen games before with excellent shadows,
effects and specular lighting, but never one that put them together so
effectively and believably. Imps throw huge, crazy shadows on the walls as they
fling fire at you, fires and plasma colour the environment, and your flashlight
illuminates a pale circle of light in utter darkness, fading at the edges.
Fantastic!
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