DOOM 3 Preview

The ruins of an ancient civilization on Mars have yielded one of the greatest scientific discoveries ever – the key to teleportation. The Earth-based UAC wants that technology and a lab is set up, with a group of Marines on site to guard it. But something goes terribly wrong.

The gateway has been opened and hell, with its minions, is pouring through. One man is left to stand against them. One man, wandering a barely functioning base, full of monsters ready to tear him limb from limb, is all that stands in the way of an invasion that would go beyond Mars.

Doom 3 released for the PC in August 2004 and had players glued to their seats, when moments of fright did not have them elevating inches above, with its moody atmosphere, fast-paced adrenalin rush of shooter action. This was a game that reset the tempo in the horror FPS genre in terms of fright.

Get ready console gamers – the thrill ride that PC fans have come to enjoy will be coming to an Xbox near you come early April.

This is a port of the PC game with a few differences. The lighting has been tweaked to make it a much brighter game than the PC version. Why? Because television screens are inherently darker than computer monitors, that is why. The maps are a little smaller, with some of the fat being trimmed from the expansive PC maps. However, smaller maps don’t mean for a smaller game. The developers, id Software, promise that the full PC experience is intact.

The controls settle into the Xbox handheld gamepad with ease, and the game demonstrates the graphical power of the Xbox. This game looks terrific on the platform. If the control scheme does have any drawbacks, it would be that the vertical targeting controls seem slightly more sluggish than the horizontal controls. It is easy to pan, but targeting up and down seems to move at a slower pace. But that is no big deal. Players can also map weapons to the D-pad for quick switch-outs.

In addition to the regular game, the Xbox port will also feature co-op play and deathmatch via LAN and Xbox Live.

As one member of the id Software team stated, the Xbox port maintains the basic level design and remains true to the PC version.

“Wow!” is one word that comes to mind when looking at what was accomplished in moving Doom 3 to the Xbox. But that word soon gets strangled with the quick intakes of air as the action ramps up, the mood thickens and the game becomes the fast-and-furious excursion to hell and back that delighted gamers in 2004. If you are a fan of first-person shooters, and an Xbox gamer, you will not want to miss this release.

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The Xbox Doom 3 preview was part of an event held in San Francisco Wednesday, February 16 at the Clift Hotel. The event, sponsored by Activision, allowed a host of journalists to wrap their hands around the controllers for the Xbox, indulge in a little multiplayer action, as well as get playing time with the upcoming PC expansion of the Doom 3 title, Resurrection of Evil, under the watchful and often helpful eyes of members from the id Software team.

Embargoes on release of the information concerning the PC title limit what can be said about that program until Friday, February 25. So look for a hands-on preview of the pending PC release of Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil, on Feb. 25, along with an interview with id Software designer Matt Hooper, who talks a little about the creative process that went into creating the expansion pack.