Actually, I've played D3 in the end, wanting to see what the hype is about - since my expectations were virtually zero, the game did surprise me by being better than the complete crap I was expecting. <!-- s:P --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_razz.gif" alt=":P" title="Razz" /><!-- s:P --> Seriously, some of the graphics was really cool and the gameplay was less horror and more action than I thought after developer interviews and press (p)reviews.
Maybe it's because I was always playing FPS differently than other people, even back in the mid-90s I was just charging into a big room filled to the brim with monsters instead of stalking around corners, trying to pick them off one by one, being safe but also being bored to death by the gameplay. I think that's why I loved Unreal's gameplay where Skaarj were coming from all sides in those spaceships, you never knowing where the next one will hit - they were placed and launched to continually surprise a stalker-gamer from behind, but the way I was running around wildly in those corridors, I actually came on the Skaarj from behind quite a couple of times, LOL.
Same applied to DOOM3 in quite a big extent, instead of being scared to death by monsters constantly surprising me from behind, many a time I was already expecting them and looking that way - indeed especially in the early game I was often complaining when I expected someone to turn up behind me and there was nobody there. <!-- s:P --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_razz.gif" alt=":P" title="Razz" /><!-- s:P --> Also, about that dodging stuff with imps and narrow corridors, I just grabbed the shotgun and charged straight at them, firing into their fuck faces at point-blank range which also means less shots are needed to get rid of them.
All in all, the game was a lot better than I expected, but still not THAT good... while it was mostly fun playing through, I'm not sure I'll ever again play it through, which puts it into the same category as Half-Life, which is claimed to have revolutionized the FPS genre, whereas IMO it nearly succeeded in destroying it. Thankfully, there are still some developers out there who realize some people might want games with replay value, not only in multiplayer (where UT & co. is perfectly filling the need), but also in SP.
Oh yeah, before I forget, the coolest thing in DOOM 3 weren't the shadows and lights and other "revolutionary" graphics things, but the PDA - ugly and out-of-place at first, I quickly learned to appreciate it, since the often hilarous entries in there made up roughly half of all the fun in the game... <!-- s:lol: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_lol.gif" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing" /><!-- s:lol: -->