"A Balrog. A demon of the ancient world. This foe is beyond any of you. Run!!!"

I finished beating Doom III earlier today on easy difficulty and it took me damn near 20 hours to beat it. The graphics are simply stunning: the real time shadows and lighting, the excessive amount of bump mapping (mmm bump mapping), the particle effects. For all the hype it got, the story was actually pretty decent compared to what many were thinking you could breeze through it in a few hours of gameplay, but those people were dead wrong. It was real neat how everything was interactive, the physics of objects in a room like cans, trash bins, rollie chairs, the rag-doll physics the game used (becoming quite popular for any games associated with dead bodies of any kind and boy did this game have a lot of that).

Anyone interested in playing the game and finding out things for themselves *coughspoilerscough* might want to skip the next paragraph....otherwise read on.

The whole story takes place on the Mars surface...okay, maybe not the entire story =)...but most of it takes place there inside the UAC (Union Aerospace Corporation) complex that has been discovering life forms on Mars, as well as testing a new way of making new power sources and drinking water by using some kind of technology to split Iron oxide into H2 and O2. Also, there is research being done on prototype teleporters that, well, teleport you..... Your character is a grunt from the Marine Corp who has been assigned for guard duty or some other random thing to do to ensure the integrity of the complex. You are then told to go retrieve a scientist and that's when things start to go to hell...literally. This game is a satan worshiper's best dream...or nightmare...whatever they like best. The demon's jumping at you, the pentagrams all over the walls and floors, the eerie resounding laugh of satan, the zombies, the blood spattered walls. This game has got to be the scariest game I have ever played in my entire life...ever. Imagine walking down a corridor and suddenly the power surges and when it comes on again, there's a creature on the floor that jumps at you from 20 feet. Other than your weapons, you only have a flashlight to see down the dark halls and rooms. I don't feel like rambling on about the entire game, but there's two things that were pretty kick ass and pretty scary too and that is 1) The teleporter takes you to the bowels of hell for a couple hours and 2) the last boss battle is against a Balrog.

Overall, I thought it really was a great game compared to what I expected it to be. The graphics were amazing...probably the best I've seen in a video game yet. The story line was well thought up, but still pales in comparison to Halo. Controls were real nice and the way to interact with computer terminals and your PDA were just dandy. Sound made it very creepy at times. Anyone capable of running this powerhouse of a game on your computer, I advise you to do so...with the lights out, volume up, and a clean pair of shorts handy. Anyone NOT capable of running this thing can just wait for it to come to XBox.