Surprisingly, the highlight of QuakeCon 2003 isn't its new venue at the fabulous Adam's Mark Hotel in Dallas (moved from the event's traditional home in the neighboring city of Mesquite), but rather, a playable version of the multiplayer component from id Software's highly anticipated first-person shooter sequel Doom 3. We were able to jump in for a few rounds of head-to-head deathmatch play, though the graphically impressive shooter will also support other multiplayer modes, including team deathmatch. However, the developer has stated previously that it has focused most of its efforts on Doom 3's single-player game, which will make use of id's powerful new game engine and its ability to render impressive real-time shadows and portray its characters with extremely high polygon counts and realistic physics. So we were intrigued when we heard that Doom 3's multiplayer would be on hand at QuakeCon, especially since the game's extremely high-end graphics seem like they'd be restrictive in large-scale multiplayer matches with lots of character models onscreen at once, and since many of the game's levels will be dark, tightly enclosed areas designed to induce claustrophobia.

Doom 3 will feature multiplayer modes in addition to the single-player game.

The level we played took place in a futuristic starbase into which demonic influences had just begun to encroach--this influence was represented by a few specific areas of the otherwise sleek, high-tech base being covered by a pulsating, fleshy mass. We played a few sessions of four-player free-for-all deathmatch in this small level, whose layout seemed a bit reminiscent of a few of the smaller deathmatch maps in Quake III. The two-level map was set around a gigantic, churning reactor whose center had apparently been corrupted by demons, such that falling through it would churn you through a swirling red portal and teleport you to another part of the map.

The center of the portal also housed the "berserk" power-up item, which, just like in the original Doom, lets you completely obliterate your enemies with a single punch. Considering that many of Doom 3's levels will be more tightly knit (and offer less room to run away) than the larger levels of Doom II, berserk seems much more dangerous, which is apparently why it's also so obvious. Picking up the berserk item causes your character to briefly go insane--you still have complete control of your character, but your screen flashes red, like in the original Doom games, and your character screams at the top of his lungs (which is audible from a distance) and is surrounded with glowing red rings.

Still another reason why the berserk item seemed more effective than, for instance, using the close-range gauntlet weapon with the quad damage item in Quake III Arena, is that, as id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead explained, Doom 3 features per-polygon hit detection, rather than the typical Quake II/Quake III system of using an invisible bounding box for hit detection. Though the run speed in the multiplayer games we played didn't seem especially fast, it was more than adequate to dodge incoming fire from our opponents, especially around the map's tight corners. Close-quarters battles seemed to get especially tense at times because of the game's disorientation effects, which cause your onscreen vision to blur if you take a direct hit from an enemy weapon--especially a point-blank blast from the shotgun, which not only blurs your view considerably, but also briefly jolts the screen.