Yup, the opening sequences were something special. I really like it when games are doing cinematic stuff in-engine rather than resorting to movie files.

As a quick aside, just to offer closure on one of the things I mentioned earlier, the recent 1.03 patch to Brothers In Arms fixed my problem with slow level-load and checkpoint-load times, it's now playable.

So now I'm progressing through three shooter games at the same time:

- Republic Commando
- Brothers in Arms
- Doom 3 Expansion: Resurrection of Evil

I'm enjoying them all. Republic Commando is the most impressive to me, it's the most cinematic and engrossing of the three. The amount of work that went into all of the environments and assets is just staggering. The voice acting alone is impressive, there's so much of it and all very high caliber.

Brothers in Arms is good too, now that the loading-time problem is solved, but I simply have more fun directing my squad in RC than I do in BIA. And all the levels of BIA are starting to look the same to me. I'm really sick of ducking behind the same hedgerow over and over again.

The Doom 3 expansion is a lot of fun, mostly because it's not all "imp closets" like the original game was. But it's just an expansion pack, extra levels using a bunch of existing texture assets and such. So although it's fun, it doesn't impress me as having been a huge amount of work by a large team. It feels more like just a very well-done set of extra levels.

One thing I do need to say, though, is that the animations of one of the new monsters in Doom3-ROE are just amazing. There's a new kind of imp-like creature that throws green fireballs instead of orange ones. It appears to have been modeled to imitate Giger's Alien, and they've done an amazing job. It moves fluidly and convincingly, and genuinely scares me while fascinating me with its beauty. I find myself deliberately chasing them in circles around a column, just so I can watch the undulating tail animation. If you haven't seen this one yet, Loren, check it out.