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Tech Demo Your first two or three hours in Doom 3 will be amazing. In fact, you'll sit there thinking "how could all those reviews be so wrong?" After several hours, though, you'll realize that this game is an incredibly polished tech demo, and it's a shame. The technology behind this game is amazing, as expected from Id. Unfortunately, the game itself is not nearly as amazing. The polish is there, and the plot (which is a Half Life ripoff, but a well done Half Life ripoff) is engaging and well delivered. What is not there is game design itself. There are two main problems: 1) Every level is nearly identical, full of identical rooms with identical traps, leading to severe monotony. 2) You get nearly every gun very early in the game, leaving little to look forward to. The first is the true killer. You run from dark room to dark room killing monsters, spawning monsters behind you, killing them, triggering a closet to open with more monsters, killing them, and moving to the next room. This would have been AMAZING had it been a quarter or even third of a game, but as the entire game it gets dull and monotonous within 2-4 hours. The second is bad as well. The pacing is simply not well done. Withing those 2-4 hours you'll find all but the final weapon. This simply compounds the above problem, as you'll have no new way to clear out those rooms. The writers of the game deserve some credit, especially for the little delusions your character keeps experiencing. Carmack deserves credit for the amazing engine. The art team deserves credit for the models (and the death scenes. Shotgun blasts don't splatter the inflicted area as they should, they vaporize all but the brain which is even better). The rest of the design team, however, needs to focus on making a more engaging game. Perhaps a new lead designer would be necessary. This game was a near miss - great fun for a short period of time and then entirely forgettable.