DOOM 3,
Activision, id Software
This game is pure evil. Fiendish by design and executed with a heaping dose of graphic violence, it sucks gamers into its macabre world by playing off the most basic desire around: the need to stay alive. As a marine for the Union Aerospace Corp. shipped off to Mars, you must clean up the mess when the UAC's scientists manage to open a portal to hell. It would be nice if you could figure out what sort of research the UAC was up to, but escaping the onslaught of grotesque enemies in one piece is more important.
| | | | ___Personal Tech E-letter___ Washington Post personal technology columnist Rob Pegoraro answers reader e-mail and expands on themes he touches on in his weekly newspaper column. The e-mail version of this weekly feature includes links to the latest gadget and software reviews.
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The game play here is classic Doom -- you explore confined, painfully cramped, dark corridors, weapons in hand, then shoot anything that moves that isn't human. Doom 3 effectively amps up the suspense and horror of this situation. Most of the game takes place in poorly lighted areas, and some involve zero illumination, forcing you to carry a flashlight -- but you can't hold a weapon while you use the flashlight. Oops. Imagine walking into a dark room, then hearing a monster growl behind you; you spin around, flashlight in hand, then switch to your shotgun to blow it away. Or you're too slow on the draw and wind up a stain on the floor.
The evil minions you fight are much faster than in earlier Doom games, whether crawling on walls, jumping toward you or breaking through grates in the floors -- this is frightening stuff. Happily, all of the weapons from previous Doom games are here, including the chain gun, the plasma gun and fans' longtime favorite, the BFG 9000.
The real reason to play this game, however, is its graphics. No other titles out there, on computer or console, can touch the detail on display here. You can spot monsters' veins pulsating when they're angry (which is all the time); when your fire ricochets, you can see sparks bouncing off machinery. The price for these eye-popping visuals, however, is an eye-popping set of system requirements. Although the game can be run on a middle-of-the-road machine, Id recommends a 3 gigahertz Pentium 4 or an equivalent AMD chip, at least 512 megabytes of system memory and another 256 megabytes of memory in the graphics card alone (which had better be a GeForce FX 6800, ATI 9800 or newer). It's almost as if Id is in league with computer manufacturers -- but we did say this game is pure evil. -- Tom Ham
Win 2000 or newer, $55 (Mac OS X, Linux versions in progress)
GALLEON, Atlus/
Confounding Factor
After seven years in development -- at one time or another, this game was going to be released for the PC, PlayStation, Dreamcast, PlayStation 2 and GameCube -- Galleon has quietly set sail on the Xbox. One of the few pirate-adventure titles around, this third-person-perspective game puts you in the role of square-jawed swashbuckler Captain Rhama Sabrier; with two sidekicks -- a Lara Croft-lookalike named Faith and Mihoko, a legendary martial arts fighter -- you must uncover the origin of a mysterious ship and its cargo.
