Doom 3

Anybody played Doom 3 yet?

The narrative is intriguing, this time.

I'm not finished yet (am on my way back from Satellite operations).

The atmospheres are often nightmarish. The odd one is genuinely freaky.
Especially the ones outside the base, in the 'open air'–and you can't
breath, so you don't have time to check it out much, but those outside
scenes are perhaps most memorable.

Just got back from being a roady for a gig in Dallas. It was in the basement
of the basement of what used to be a huge Sears warehouse. In what used to
be the boiler room. Huge ceilings, concrete pillars, and enough mouldy
concrete dust to kill a tubercular novelist. An intense setup for two days,
transforming this space into a good venue for a multimedia show on nuclear
annihilation. Sort of like a bunker.

And a wee bit like Doom.

I think Doom is made in Texas, isn't it?

That'd be about right.

I keep being reminded of my trip to Dallas, somehow, playing Doom 3.

Gotta say the experience is intense like Myst was. Only of course in quite a
freakier way. But the narrative is better thought out in Doom 3, unlike the
first one. A lot like Alien of course, like Doom 1. It's not exactly Death
in Venice concerning psychological sophistication, but it is definitely
'immersive' in the engrossing atmospheres it creates and Burroughsian
constant mayhem (as in the trilogy 'The Ticket that Exploded', 'Nova
Express' and 'The Soft Machine'). And you keep on keepin on to see what the
story is going to do. That's an important part of why you continue to play
this piece. That wasn't so much a factor in Doom 1, though it was a wee bit.

The politics of Doom 3 are ambiguous in some ways, but very clear in others.
Like it's very down on interplanetary corporations.

But the main thing is that "the gateway to hell is open" and Doom 3 is of a
savage techno hell.

On a slightly different note, I read in
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/221355_abuse23.html that "A
high-level Army investigation has cleared four of the most senior Army
officers overseeing prison policies and operations in Iraq of responsibility
for the abuses of prisoners there, congressional and administration
officials said yesterday."

ja
http://vispo.com