When Doom III originally tripped out onto the PC last year it was met with near equal amounts of praise and derision. Initially I defended it for what it was - a technological revamping of an arcade classic which should be taken as that, and not what it perhaps misleadingly claimed to be (”a new era of gaming”). It was as simple a first person shooter as you could ask for; it wasn’t perfect, but when it was good it was..good.

When Half-Life 2 arrived, things changed. HL2 was - is - no where near as graphically advanced as DIII. It does not need a next-gen (or this-gen) computer to run it, or a room full of fans to keep the computer from overheating. I can run it on my laptop and it still looks gorgeous. It looks gorgeous despite the fact that is slightly less than cutting-edge (compared to DIII’s then bleeding-edge), thanks entirely to incredible graphical design by Valve encompassing everything from the play area to facial expressions. I never actually completed DIII before HL2 arrived, and within a week I had sold it after giving it less than five minutes more of my time. Now it was truly a thing of the past.

Flashforward to last night. Hellish thunderstorms and no small amount of rain, a perfect evening to sit down for a quick bash around on the Xbox release. I rented it especially to suit up for the co-op play with a friend who’d done the same, fully expecting to be switching off within the hour. Things change. Two hours later I was exhausted and exhilirated, soaked through with sweat, having enjoyed one of the greatest gameplay experiences of my life. Nothing has ever matched this. Stripped of the clunky cutscenes and the in-game filler material (the whole intro sequence takes less than a minute, compared to 10 or so on the single player release) Doom III co-op over Live is what it should have been all along: slipstreamed run and gun action coupled with continuous holy-shit moments, with absolutely no let up of tension. Hellish indeed.

Anecdotes come easily. There’s the sequence where you play in near pitch-black, and navigate through a room of endless girders and unexpected dead ends. One person is meant to be holding the torch, but when something growls you can forgive him for locking the shotgun in. If only it wasn’t so damn scary. Fire explodes from.. somewhere.. he ducks left to deal with the demons. “HAVING A LITTLE TROUBLE HERE!” We’re separated and alone and I’m running around trying to find him, being pursued from behind by something that I can’t see, trying to clear the path whilst dodging missiles from every angle. “WHERE ARE YOU?! WHERE ARE YOU?!” Eventually I find a quiet corner to reload my weapons, and in the silence I can hear screams and whoops in my earpiece, then nothing. “ALRIGHT I THINK I CLEAR- WHOAH… YEAH I.. OKAY IT’S CLEAR OVER HERE.” “WHERE ARE YOU?” “IT’S DARK AND I CAN’T SEE SHIT. WHERE ARE YOU?” “IT’S DARK HERE TOO. I DON’T KNOW, I WENT ONWARDS AND I’M IN A CORNER SOMEWHERE. SHINE YOUR TORCH SO I CAN SEE YOU” “ROGER THAT.”

In the silence I stumble around the jungle of metal crossbeams and pipes until I see his torch blinking off and on in the distance. I head towards it. The light goes out. “UH, YOU GOT YOUR TORCH ON?” “YEAH?” “UH, OKAY..” More blinking. Probably nothing. Probably not nothing. My footsteps on the metal below. His breathing in my ear. The sudden thought of “WHAT THE HELL IS TH-” as something leaps out from beneath me, I start swinging my torch wildly and backpeddling. Laughter in my earpiece. The demon flicks on his torchlight. “YOU FUCKING BASTARD.” “AHAHA. SCARED OF THE DARK? COME ON, LET’S MOVE ON.”

“ROGER THAT.”

I’m back!

…although I’m not sure everyone can read this yet. I’ve switched hosts (finally!) and therefore this .com address now points to a different “place”, to different nameservers. Imagine invisible - and quite non-existent - nanobots whizzing along datapipes telling everyone where to go and you get some idea of the propogation process. My new ip is 79.9.248.26, if you want to get pedantic, and that’s where you are right now. If the upshot of this is some of my google traffic getting lost along the way then that’s no bad thing. Moving on..

Before I rang the changes a few days ago I’d already been absent for what seems like ages - I blame that partially on not wanting to backup any more new blog posts, but also on Things. Various projects - most fall into the housekeeping category, some fall into the ‘ooh-this-is-exciting-but-might-not-work-out’ category (and thus remain blissfully unmentioned), and some are in-between.

I’ve aquired a laptop for Uni and spent the last week-and-a-bit fiddling with it. This is the first time I’ve owned my own system outright and so whilst I’ve been tweaking and stylising the hell out of it I’m also incredibly wary of anything going wrong, which accounts for frenetic moodswings from hyper to panicky to aghast when I realise I’ve just uninstalled the internet, or something. I’ve not yet managed to break anything beyond repair, though. Widescreen takes a bit of getting used to, but already I feel like trumpeting some kind of 16:10 revolution. It’s quite fantastically sexy. What’s also good is film editing on the move. I can shoot onto DV, run it down a firewire and edit it wherever I happen to be. And then upload it wirelessly. I’ve yet to take full advantage of that, but it’s pretty exhilirating nonetheless. I’m going out to shoot some footage right after I hit the Publish button on this.

Which is about now, just my luck. More soon, friends.