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It’s been a long wait for Xbox owners looking to get a piece of the Doom 3 pie. After many delays, and a lot of nail biting, the first person behemoth is finally upon our little black and green box. How does the console version hold up to the PC version? Pretty damn well, actually.

We’ll start off with a recap of the story, for those of you that missed out PC review some time ago: You are a nameless Marine assigned to a security post on Mars. When you arrive, you are assigned to find a missing scientist who has disappeared some time ago. It seems that all manner of strange happenings have been going on at the facility as of late. Workers are calling in sick every day, and requesting transfers off the Mars facility. Everyone is scared out of their faces because of a few accidents, missing persons, and who knows what else.

It’s simple, it’s straight forward. Some will love it for not getting in the way of the action, while others will hate it for not being more involved. Let’s face it, though, none of the old Doom games even had a plausible story, so we’re calling this a step forward, folks.

The story moves forward with a variety of short cutscenes, as well as using PDAs as a medium for communicating the happenings in the facility. It’s through picking up these stray PDAs that you’ll begin to unravel the mysteries of the facility, as well as find key codes to lockers that house extra ammunition and health, both of which you’ll need on a regular basis.

Xbox gamers might be disappointed to know that their version isn’t quite the same game that has been on PC for almost a year now. It’s the same game generally speaking, but a few corners have been cut here and there to make the game work on the Xbox. For example, the entire first room of the game has been cut off for play, and is instead replaced by a cut scene of your character being bio-scanned and prepped for work. It’s a small change, and Xbox gamers that have never played the PC version won’t miss it. Other small things, like certain rooms or halls have been cut to make some of the areas more straight forward. The part where you get to go out onto Mars’ surface has been cut, as well. But while the surface segment was great to see on the PC, it served no real purpose other than eye candy, so it’s absence on the Xbox game isn’t really missed too much.

Other than that, the Xbox game is chalk full of all the same enemies, creepy lighting and cheap, yet fun scares. On top of that, Xbox owners get online co-op, where PC owners don’t. See? Sometimes it pays to be patient.

The Mars facility you spend the majority of the game in is full of claustrophobic hallways, dimly lit rooms, and an eeriness you could cut with a knife. Turn up the volume, and turn off the lights, folks. You’re in for a hell of a ride.

That is, if you can bare it. Though Doom 3 is one of the best looking games on the Xbox, some gamers might be turned off by it’s linear gameplay. Yeah, you get to trot around and shoot at amazing looking enemies, and traverse through a stunning facility filled with great lighting effects, but the actual gameplay itself is pretty much aim, shoot, repeat. Enemy AI is very simplistic, they see you, they charge you, you shoot them, they die. It’s fun for a while, but before the end of it, you’ll wish for something more.

Controlling your character on Xbox feels smooth and efficient. PC gamers will always prefer mouse and keyboard to a controller, but console gamers have grown accustomed to their way of play, and will be happy to know that the games controls make the transition smoothly. The D-Pad is even used as shortcut buttons for your most commonly used weapons, and is customizable to your specifications. This is something we need to see a lot more of in the future. You can walk, run, jump, all the normal stuff, nothing special. For some reason, I kept getting the Y and B buttons confused for switching weapons. They both switch your weapon, but one goes forward in the line while the other goes back. For some reason, I could never keep them straight, and ended up punching an Imp in the face, on one occasion.

Online co-op is something that hardly any game for consoles has right now. Chaos Theory was just released with an online co-op campaign, but other than that, your choices are severely limited. That’s what makes Doom 3’s online co-op so refreshing. First off, you don’t get something like that packaged in your game too often, secondly, it still looks fantastic. A lot of the game is altered from the single player scenario to accommodate 2 players, such as wider halls, less levels, etc. but the overall experience is amazing. Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, the co-op portion of the game suffers from a fair bit of slowdown.

Respawning in co-op is something that should have been totally re-thought pre-distribution, but since the overall experience is so good, it’s hard to fault them for it. When you die, your character respawns all the way back at the beginning of the level you are in. You then have to trek all the way back to your partner and your belongings, which can take several minutes depending on where in the level you are when you die. Thankfully, your partner can’t pick up your things, so you don’t have to worry about some goon ruining your experience on you.

The Deathmatch multiplayer is decent, offering up some fun, but gets tired after only a couple hours of play. It’s the sort of thing you’ll want to play in short bursts, opposed to the hours long marathons you’ve had playing Halo 2 on Live.

PC gamers still got the best deal when it comes to graphics, but the Xbox game still looks phenomenal in it’s own right, ranking in as one of the best looking titles available for the system. The facility itself is a marvel to behold, with some of the best lighting effects you’ll ever see on Xbox, and the character models are top of the line. Watching an Imp brake down a foot thick steel door and come charging at you is just plain cool. Especially when you consider the fact that the games frame rate almost never stutters to the point of significant slowdown.

Audio plays just as big a part in immersing you into the atmospheric Mars facility as the visuals do, since you’ll almost always hear what’s coming before you see it. Monsters squeal, scream and growl with sharp, realistic tone, often times more frightening than having them standing right in front of you. Surprisingly, the voice acting is pretty good. Your commanding officer is a charmer, to be sure. Your character has no lines, but for some reason still makes it around the facility talking to people just fine. There’s quite a bit of dialogue, especially when you factor in the PDA logs, and it’s all exceptionally performed, sucking you into the experience even further.

I don’t know how Vicarious Visions managed to pull this off as well as they did, but they’ve set a new standard for PC-console ports. While some minor content may have been cut, the game is just as fun and atmospheric as it ever was. The online co-op is a great way to make up the difference to gamers, even with it’s few problems. There’s not enough here for owners of the PC game to want to bother with, but any Xbox owner would do themselves well to have a copy of Doom 3 sitting in their collection.