"While we've played dozens of deathmatch games -- and DOOM 3 doesn't deviate far from the standard formula -- the game's advanced technology changes the game in a number of ways. As id's Todd Hollenshead explained to us, DOOM 3's multiplayer features "per-pixel hit accuracy," a far cry from the early days of deathmatch when player models were inside an invisible bounding box, allowing you to "hit" players even when you've actually shot the area just next to them. It's now possible to watch a rocket pass under a player's arm, and the overall effect is that you need to be a bit more accurate with many of the weapons.

The game's advanced lighting does a lot more than offer eye candy (which is considerable in itself). From a strategic standpoint, we could occasionally catch the shadows of other players as they approached, giving that extra split-second of warning that sometimes means the difference between getting the frag or getting killed. One area had a light switch that could be turned on and off, and other lights in the level could be shot out for the duration of the level, forcing players to resort to a flashlight … which might as well be a big, neon "SHOOT ME" sign."

"OK, first things first - how good is Doom 3 deathmatch? Only one map, with no name, was playable, supporting four players (we don't know yet if this is the maximum number of players in deathmatch), but how good is it?

"It's f***ing cool, it's really cool. It looks superb. Everything in it looks superb, just like the screenshots really," spouted our man at the event. Cool."

"In terms of general impressions, it's a far cry from Quake III - it's not like pure skill-based deathmatch. It's set at a much slower pace, and there's so much going on that it's also quite disorientating. There's really is an enormous amount happening at once in the environment."

"It's intense. You're still running, but not as fast as you do in Quake III; but when you do run into someone it goes a bit crazy. It's very hard to achieve headshots and so forth. But it's all just so incredibly detailed. Not that we ever doubted it, but we must stress again - the game looks amazing."

"Visually, Doom III looked very sharp. We couldn’t find out what the hardware specs were on the demo machines," [Paul: was running GFFX5900 Ultra for graphics] "except that it was running at 640x480 resolution with no AA enabled. Despite this low resolution, Doom III is one of the best looking PC games we have ever seen, with very detailed character and weapons models, some incredibly realistic level textures and of course the Doom III lighting model, which makes dark spaces very dark indeed. You can even shut off light in certain areas in order to hide from opponents."

"Rag doll physics was in evidence during the Doom III multiplayer demo, including objects like boxes and barrels that could be moved by weapons fire and a dead body hanging from the ceiling during one portion of the level that could also be moved by weapons fire. Some glass windows could also be smash but unlike most glass in games the window didn’t shatter all at once but rather in pieces."

"For reasons not quite fully explained, Hell invades the very structure of the UAC base, taking over not only the personnel, but the environments too, turning both into a bizarre amalgam that let Id's art team's imagination run riot. Willits showed off the Administrator Complex after hell has invaded, with your base "horribly outnumbered". Humans become eyeless, shambling zombies attacking everything that moves, while everything else is some twisted unrecognisable malformed creature from hell. Funny that. Where they came from, we're not quite sure, but we assume the research team has brought along some kind of Noah's Ark with it, and it's all gone disastrously wrong."

"Before you all ask, Activision has politely informed me that we have to remove the article until September 23rd. There was an NDA doing the rounds at Activate, but I never got it. The usual print mag shenanigans."

"To better facilitate the feeling of terror - and to let players get truly freaked out by the monsters id has created - Doom III's gameplay will be noticeably slower than that of the two previous titles. Instead of being able to blast through a room just looking for the door, players will find each battle intimate and interactive. You will have time to see blood dripping from fangs of imps, or cybernetic attachments coming from Spider Masterminds while backpedaling for all you're worth. It's basically what Carmack and Romero had in mind when they created the first title, only without the limited PC technology that existed at the time."

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Nvidia has today announced that it is the title sponsor for the QuakeCon 2003 event being held in Dallas later this month. The company also announced that its GeForce FX 5900 Ultra graphics card has been named the official GPU of the event and will be used to showcase Doom 3.

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"Vicarious Visions will be handling the Xbox port of DOOM III according to Id Software's Todd Hollenshead speaking to EG at Activate 03 last week. We think this is "known", but we thought we'd mention it anyway as we couldn't remember hearing it."

"While covering SWAT, [..] I came upon this nugget regarding the long delayed film. Seems the writers of SWAT (Ron Mita and Jim McClain) have beeen hired to write the script for DOOM. This is according to sources at Sony and verified by the media kit for SWAT in the writers Bio. We can only hope that this might make it to the screen after all. Now can Half Life be far behind?"