Warning: this post is a brief review of Doom 3, so if you don't like computer games, you will hate reading this. Move along.

I've been playing Doom 3 lately. Technically, it is very good and the atmosphere is great, but here are some of my gripes with the gameplay:

- There are never more than 2 or so enemies on the screen at the same time. The models are very detailed, so it would be impractical to have 8 or 10 enemies on the screen at a time. Considering that this was a stable of Dooms 1 and 2, it's a bit disappointing.
- The weapons, except for the plasma rifle, seem slow. The fire on the assault rifle is inconsistent and unsatisfying. It seems that by the 22nd century they would have rifles that fired at an even rate.
- It's too predictable. This is a very common scenario: you're walking down a dimly lit corridor. You hear some growls. You pick up an ammo pack. You turn a corner, and an imp jumps out behind you. After a while it just becomes annoying, not scary.
- Multiplayer is lame. The only two modes are dm and team dm. A glaring omission is the cooperative campaign, another mainstay of the original Dooms.

In the end, I think that Doom 3 will be judged by the games that take advantage of its technology. It's not that it does things other game engines haven't done, such as dynamic lighting (Splinter Cell), efficient and tasteful use of shaders (Halo), or overall impact graphically (Far Cry), it's just that it does these things so well and puts them together in a package that runs very efficiently even on modest systems. Everybody wants to compare Doom 3 to Half-life 2, but I think the better comparison is to Quake 3. Will Doom 3's engine spawn as many quality games as Quake 3 (RTCW, Jedi Knight 2, Call of Duty, Medal of Honor), or will other developers be scared off by its relatively high requirements? Will action gamers be so busy playing CS: Source that it won't even matter? Time will tell.