Darkness Surrounds
Doom 3 is more of a retelling and re-imagining of the events in the first Doom. The game seems to have been designed all around showcasing the real-time lighting effects. Which is ironic when you consider how frequently the game will take all light away from you. Technical specs aside, it's a solid first-person shooter that does not involve cover based shooting galleries, or automatically replenishing health. All the old weapons from the original Doom return with the inclusion of grenades. Many of the old monsters return, along with a few that come from Doom II. Throughout the game are scattered PDAs that tell the story of how all hell began breaking loose. There are TV monitors that sometimes show vital information if you linger around long enough to watch and listen. There are also "spam" e-mail messages stored on the PDAs that if you investigate further out of game that can lead to a bonus in-game. This was one of the first games that used the "scattered data" to tell part of the story. It's a mechanic that now seems to be used in Dead Space, BioShock, and more survival / horror games. Doom 3 is a clever and still technically impressive game that creates a sense of tension I haven't felt since.
