Doom 3 Review
Posted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 3:27 pm
Before boarding that transport to Mars, I took some time to prepare myself for the journey ahead. I began to tweak my system in hopes of better performance. After all, I wouldn't want to present my vacation on Mars to you as a slideshow. I disabled services that I didn't use, and removed programs from the run key in the registry. To increase hard disk read times, I ran Defragmentation, and Scandisk. Knowing that spyware can bog down system performance, I ran a spyware scan using Adaware, and Spybot. To remove dead entries from the registry, I ran a registry scan using Registry Cleaner, and RegScrubXP.
For the last few months I had been hunting down the nearly impossible to find BFG GeForce 6800 GT, and I just barely got my hands on one in time. There were just a few left in stock at Fry's Electronics. I had to buy a new power supply as well. It seems that my original power supply didn't provide enough power. After installing my new card, and my new power supply, I updated my video drivers, and all of my other system drivers as well. I was ready.
On August 2nd Gamestop called and said they would begin selling the game at 7 PM. I picked up the game, and rushed home. The installation took some time. The game comes on 3 CD's after all. After the installation was finished, I booted up the game. I set my resolution to 1024x768, and my detail level to High Quality. Ultra Quality is also available, but the computer to run it well isn't. I initially set my anti-aliasing level to 8x, but I soon realized that anti-aliasing was not very necessary in this game, and that the higher the resolution was, the less apparent the jagged edges were. You can see from my screenshots (below) how the jagged edges don't impact the game very much. I also set up my sound, and control options while I was configuring things. I set my difficulty to Marine, and my journey began. The first thing I noticed was that this game is breathtaking. Every texture, every polygon, every shadow is perfect. The audio is also great. Especially if you have 5.1 speakers. Throughout my experience with the game, I was getting pretty decent frame rates. There was a few moments were the game chugged a little. Mostly during large fire fights though.
Main Menu
Info: This is the main menu. You can start a new game, load a saved game, play multiplayer, configure your options, load a mod, check for updates, view credits, or quit the game.
PDA Screen
Info: This is your PDA. Your inventory list, mission briefing, profiles, user emails, user info, and video disks are stored here.
Here are some of the demons that you will encounter:
Imp (First appeared in Doom I)
Demon (Pinky) (First appeared in Doom I)
Lost Soul (First appeared in Doom I)
Cacodemon (First appeared in Doom I)
Revenant (First appeared in Doom II: Hell on Earth)
Mancubus (First appeared in Doom II: Hell on Earth)
Hell Knight (First appeared in Doom II: Hell on Earth)
Arch-Vile (First appeared in Doom II: Hell on Earth)
There are quite a few more demons, as well as a few bosses in the game. I won't post screenshots of the bosses though. They contain some major spoilers. Anyway, I look forward to seeing you in deathmatch. Don't forget your rocket launcher.
For reference, my full system specs are:
AMD Athlon XP 2600+ 2.1GHZ
1GB DDR PC2100
BFG GeForce 6800 GT 256MB
For the last few months I had been hunting down the nearly impossible to find BFG GeForce 6800 GT, and I just barely got my hands on one in time. There were just a few left in stock at Fry's Electronics. I had to buy a new power supply as well. It seems that my original power supply didn't provide enough power. After installing my new card, and my new power supply, I updated my video drivers, and all of my other system drivers as well. I was ready.
On August 2nd Gamestop called and said they would begin selling the game at 7 PM. I picked up the game, and rushed home. The installation took some time. The game comes on 3 CD's after all. After the installation was finished, I booted up the game. I set my resolution to 1024x768, and my detail level to High Quality. Ultra Quality is also available, but the computer to run it well isn't. I initially set my anti-aliasing level to 8x, but I soon realized that anti-aliasing was not very necessary in this game, and that the higher the resolution was, the less apparent the jagged edges were. You can see from my screenshots (below) how the jagged edges don't impact the game very much. I also set up my sound, and control options while I was configuring things. I set my difficulty to Marine, and my journey began. The first thing I noticed was that this game is breathtaking. Every texture, every polygon, every shadow is perfect. The audio is also great. Especially if you have 5.1 speakers. Throughout my experience with the game, I was getting pretty decent frame rates. There was a few moments were the game chugged a little. Mostly during large fire fights though.
Main Menu
Info: This is the main menu. You can start a new game, load a saved game, play multiplayer, configure your options, load a mod, check for updates, view credits, or quit the game.
PDA Screen
Info: This is your PDA. Your inventory list, mission briefing, profiles, user emails, user info, and video disks are stored here.
Here are some of the demons that you will encounter:
Imp (First appeared in Doom I)
Demon (Pinky) (First appeared in Doom I)
Lost Soul (First appeared in Doom I)
Cacodemon (First appeared in Doom I)
Revenant (First appeared in Doom II: Hell on Earth)
Mancubus (First appeared in Doom II: Hell on Earth)
Hell Knight (First appeared in Doom II: Hell on Earth)
Arch-Vile (First appeared in Doom II: Hell on Earth)
There are quite a few more demons, as well as a few bosses in the game. I won't post screenshots of the bosses though. They contain some major spoilers. Anyway, I look forward to seeing you in deathmatch. Don't forget your rocket launcher.
For reference, my full system specs are:
AMD Athlon XP 2600+ 2.1GHZ
1GB DDR PC2100
BFG GeForce 6800 GT 256MB