The PC games I've played in the past two years I could count on one hand, namely
Unreal 2: The Awakening,
Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness,
Tron 2.0
and now Doom 3.
Most of these end up on a console like the Xbox, and I've come to generally prefer this but figured I'd
give the PC a try as the duffer that was
Thief: Deadly Shadows
did its best to make me lose faith in that thought! Also, I gave this a chance due to
Doom's original PC roots.
The reason I prefer a console as I don't like the PC going wrong due to games going awry, and I can't write
a game review while the PC is otherwise engaged. Still, with a P4 2.66Ghz PC using WinXP and
512Mb RAM, I got good results with the GeForce4 MX440 graphics card when playing
Tron 2.0
last year.
The sound FX are bog-standard, although I wasn't listening in Dolby Digital 5.1, just plain surround
sound so maybe that didn't help, although earlier PC games have excelled in that capacity.
Doom 3 has nice lighting, but overall is disappointing, particularly due to its very stodgy framerate.
It played 'sticky' on a resolution of 800x600 and 'high quality', but was a tad better on the
medium alternative. Apparently, the 'Ultimate' setting is for cards that haven't been invented yet(!)
How odd. Also, this game started making my PC begin trying to cool itself down. Why? You look through
mostly dark areas, use your flashlight to see the baddies, put your light away to get out your gun
and then you can't see him!! Then he gets too close and takes a swipe. Ow!
None of this makes for fun - it just annoys!
Even
Thief: Deadly Shadows
seemed intelligent compared to this, despite the enemies' dumb AI. Doom 3 is way too linear.
Back in 1993-95 we had different tastes, but I don't think you can get on with excuses like
that now. It may well have lots of deadly creatures, but blasting away zombies just isn't
massively entertaining these days like it used to be ten years ago.
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