DOOM 3 sports a brand spanking new game engine that's a marvel to see. The amount of special effects that master programmer John Carmack has whipped up show us environments that we've heard about but have never seen before. ID has made an engine that specializes around the type of game they made: dark, scary, and intense. The game takes place on a base on Mars in the year 2145. The environments will give you a feeling of claustrophobia, which is only heightened by the game's dark atmosphere. Every light in the game is cast by some actual light source somewhere. If there's no lights on in the room, you'll see literally nothing and will need to turn on a flashlight. Shoot out a light in the middle of a battle, and you'll need to fight blindly. Sometimes, graphics do truly contribute to atmosphere as well as gameplay and with DOOM 3 it's obvious that id understands this better than most game developers.

In a weird way it's almost impossible to fully describe what the game looks like, but needless to say it’s well beyond anything to date. Multi colored per-pixel lighting on bump-mapped surfaces on each and every object in the game, including the teeth of the monsters you fight cast dynamic shadows, but not the jagged kind you may’ve seen in other recent games. The shadows are done using Carmack’s own algorithm. I’m sure many of you have upgraded specifically for this game, but it appears as though the video card is by far the most important piece of hardware needed. Even at the lowest resolution with the lowest amount of detail it looks jawbreaking.

When looking at AA and AF tests in combination with the game's high quality mode things change rapidly. You need to stick at 1024x768. The ATI x800 series is simply not capable enough for this title in the highest resolutions.