This can be tremendously effective, and it can also be totally ludicrous. It sometimes dares a flash of green or silver, but is mostly content to settle for beige and dark red. Doom 3's palette copies Doom but loses something along the way, with a telling lack of extremes. Instead, every corner and corridor of pitch-blackness is placed with exquisite and damning precision. Outside of your torch, which we'll come to, the light in this world has nothing dynamic about it. In this world there is no place for ambient light - everything is either visible or totally dark. There is one standout characteristic about Doom 3's look, and that is the unique lighting, which can only be described as bizarre. A world that, regardless of the plentiful monsters, is never a nice place to be. It is an environment designed to induce claustrophobia, always hemming you in and frequently blocking you off.

Doom 3 mostly takes place in an oppressive, winding research facility on Mars - a cold metal labyrinth of funnelling corridors, filled with the remnants of the recently deceased and subject to constant invasion from hell's forces. The BFG does seem to sit oddly, however, in the most recent and somewhat humourless entry in the series. In an age where arms manufacturers lobby publishers to include real-life killing machines in FPS games, there's something quite innocent, even sweet, about the idea of shooting a green plasma ball from a Big F***ing Gun. If anything encapsulates Doom, in all its wide-eyed and gory glory, it is the three letters BFG. If you're interested in the features and technical aspects of this new version, Digital Foundry will have extensive coverage for you over the next two days.

This review is intended purely as an assessment of how Doom 3's content and gameplay stand up today.

Doom 3 bfg edition multiplayer