Looks like you had a bit of lag while fighting the final boss Thumper....13 frames = teh bad
Anyway, I just beat the game myself about 20 minuites ago (and I'm glad I did before reading this thread as those screen shots contain many spoilers.)
My first thoughts about the game as a whole are good, but not great. Obviousally the graphics are spectacular, and the sound is used really effectively as well. They did an amazing job of creating a frightening atmosphere by using both lighting and sound, and playing in the dark with my headphones on it was easy to immerse myself in the world, and drink in all the imagery surrounding me.
At first this was all wonderfull, and the fact that the monsters kind of "spawn in" through these hell portals made it so you never knew where the next hit was going to come from. Unfortunately after a while, all the killing, and the screaming, and the flying bodies, and the flashing lights, just became tedious. As I was clearing out a room for the second time in yet another run of the mill lab deep within the complex, I realized that I just wanted the game to be over...there are only so many times it's interesting to watch the lights turn red. I was tired of killing the same enemies over and over again in the same way, with so little progression of the story. I think there are only about 5 or 6 times in the game where you actually meet other characters, and these in game cut scenes are brief and usually uninteresting. At some points I felt more like I was playing Serious Sam then Doom 3.
Now, I realize that this game is trying to be true to the original, which was admittedly just a long, slug it out, frag fest. That was fine for the time, but we've come so far since then that I think a game needs more than that to be more than mediocre. It was fun to pick out enemies that I recognised from the original and to see them rendered with such detail, but this novelty also soon wore off. I found the story to be weak (kind of a rip-off of half-life.....and yes I realize that HL ripped off Doom 1, but HL did it so well and Doom 3 kind of falls short), the cut scenes too short, the length too short (although this was almost a blessing as it was so repetitive), and the interactivity sub par. I think there is way more they could have done with the story, and that much better games will come out of this engine.
Of course, this may all be a moot point. We all know that ID has never had a stong single player in their games, and their strength is in engine building and (of course) multiplayer. The problem is that I have also played the multi-player and didn't find it to be anything special, I hope that Quake 4 will set the bar higher and deliver the truly spectacular multi-play we have all come to expect from an ID powered game.
In the end Doom 3 was fun in the beginning, and I did enjoy the ending, but the middle leaves much to be desired. ID has come a long way from Quake 1 and 2 where the story was practically non-existant, but they have a long way to go to create a truly high caliber single-player experience.
7.0/10
