You've gone ahead and had the Doom logo tattooed across your chest? Drop your mouse, run to the store, and get Accolade's Eradicator. The first-person shooter is actually three games in one. Pick a new character and you have a completely different mission, all within the same cavernous fortress on a mysterious planet. And while the graphics are far from stunning, and a little dark, gameplay is fast-paced. Plus you get a mean weapons arsenal as you make your way through the fortress. Everything from poisonous gas to spinning laser balls is available - if you can find it.
Each of the 25 levels in the game is fairly challenging, with lots of nasties to annihilate on your way. But the game isn't all action. You must solve a mission objective on each level. (For instance, one of the characters is a mercenary for hire named Eleena, whose mission is to destroy a series of satellites and communication systems.) So after you've blown away all the bad guys, you still have to wander through the level and figure out what you've missed, what you haven't blown up, or what secret room you haven't found. For adrenaline junkies, that aspect of the game isn't going to be welcome. You can spend a half-hour in a single level without firing a single shot. But for power-up addicts, the more hunting you do, the more fancy and powerful your weapons become.
Of course, in the true Doom/Marathon spirit, up to eight networked players can shoot it out. And if you're serious about networked gameplay, there's a full-blown level editor, so you can create your own mazes to hold your warfare.
It's obvious that the makers of this game looked at the other first-person shooters, took the best parts, and added a few extras, and it works well. For variety, you can play in either first- or third-person views. A "picture-in-picture" view lets you eye two areas at once. And a slight third dimension is added since you can look up or down, shoot, and move in any direction, and there are often multiple levels in a single room.
Crank up the bass - the sound effects are great. But even with a fairly sophisticated video card, graphics are still pretty blocky, although movement and transition are very smooth. All in all, if you dig the sheer delight of banging away with heavy artillery, this is the one for you.
