"Oh god please." "Help...me." "Please, no."

Those are the haunted whispers you're likely to hear when you put a copy of Doom 3 in your Xbox, and that's just at the main menu. A montage of game footage set to the tune of a metal song -- which sounds suspiciously like it's done by Tool -- is about the safest place of this game. Once that brief little intro ends, Doom 3 gets right down to the business of setting a bone-chilling tone as early as that main menu I mentioned earlier. If you've been waiting for this game to hit the Xbox and missed the PC version last year, you can smile real wide as this game is every bit as good as its PC counterpart, aside from a few very small details.

Atmosphere and tone are what set Doom 3 apart from all the other first-person-shooters on the Xbox. Unlike the Halos and Unreals out there, Doom 3 is all about two things: frantic action and high-tension suspense. While that makes the gameplay a more simple experience at heart, it keeps the game's focus squarely on terrorizing the player and jolting you out of your seat. Personally, I found this to be the scariest game I have ever played. Coming from a huge fan of the Silent Hill and Resident Evil games, that should be taken as a big compliment for Doom 3.

A large part of what Doom 3 did so well to keep me freaked out had to do with how the game is presented. Any game worth its salt will use visuals and sounds to "sell" the experience to the player. Doom 3's graphics are the best I've seen on Xbox, hands down. There's no single area that carries the graphics either. The entire visual package is near perfection. Best of all, it is not too far behind the PC version of the game. All the details of the creeps and horrors you will find are pretty much there. The disgusting blood stains on the walls still lead the way into those rooms filled with shadowy figures that dart in and out of the dark corners. The ground is still littered with body parts and lights still flicker on and off to keep you from ever truly focusing on that beast marching down the hall after you. Aside from the way some maps have been redesigned to accommodate co-op play, it will all be just like you remember it. PC players can almost think of the new co-op design as "Doom 3 Remix". It'll be familiar, but different enough to keep you from knowing what the next room will be like.

A great part of Doom 3 is the animation. Detailed monsters with slime dripping from their jaws are nothing if they don't move realistically. Thankfully, they move all too convincingly. Early in the game, you will encounter an enemy that crawls along the walls and ceilings of a corridor. As he approaches you with incredible speed, you don't even have time to make sure your gun has been properly reloaded. All I could do was think, "Oh shit" and watch this creature shorten the distance between us. The way it clung to the walls in such a natural fashion with finesse and agility completely sold me on this creature. Once the fight was on, it snapped me back to the action and I realized I had to hurry up and kill this thing before it ripped me in half. Doom 3 does extremely well in this area.

Doom 3's environments also deserve mentioning. Space stations aren't exactly the most innovative or interesting of settings these days, but I'll be damned if this isn't the most believable one yet. It's incredibly detailed. You don't just walk around rooms with metal walls and floors either. This is a location that could actually be somewhere in some other reality. People leave coffee mugs and magazines on their desks, bathrooms have stains on the floors, and the architecture seems to make sense rather than just serve as a neat place to play a game.

If you don't have a big TV to play this on, at least make sure you play with headphones on or some kind of surround sound. Whichever one you chose, make sure you turn the volume up and play without any other noises around you. Once you immerse yourself in these sounds, you will find there is not a better audio experience out there today. I'm not just talking about how zombies moan or how your guns rattle off shots either. That could be done well, but it wouldn't make the audio special. What DOES make the audio special are the games that Doom 3 plays with your mind. Sometimes you will hear noises like voices or breathing off in the distance. Closer inspection will often lead to being attacked from somewhere, but sometimes it doesn't lead to anything. A lot of times, an effective level of suspense is reached because you know something is out there somewhere, but you can't see it and are not sure what it is.

One time in particular, I chose not to even find out. I had entered a large room with two levels and a stairway joining them together. A very loud bang would sound off from the next room over and the lights in the room I was in would briefly go off each time. As I went down the stairs to the room's lower level, I noticed a door with dents and blood all around it. A few bodies had even piled up in front of it. The red light just above the door was flickering on and off in time with each bang that got louder as I neared the door. I was so freaked out at this point, that I decided I didn't want to know what was on the other side of that door. I found another way out and never looked back while that hammering got quieter and quieter. On my second time through, I found out what was on the other side of that door, but I'm not telling you here. You'll have to find out for yourself.

My favorite example of how effective the sounds can be is probably when the bad things first start happening early in the game. The base you are stationed on is swallowed by chaos. You'll hear so many things over your character's radio channel that you may take a moment to just hide somewhere and listen to everything unfold. This part of the game is my personal favorite because I honestly haven't seen or heard anything quite like it in a videogame or movie before. As I'm riding an elevator up to the main level of the base, I hear so many awful sounds over my radio that I start building up scenarios in my mind of what I will see when the elevator stops and the doors open. Then as the elevator is still moving, the doors open anyway and a loud cackle of laughter erupts from my speakers as the lights flicker on and off. This is Doom 3. It's loud, it's dark, it's scary, and it's the first game in a long time to make me afraid to find out what is around the next corner.

Perhaps the biggest draw for players is the Xbox-exclusive co-operative mode where two players can wade through the game together via Xbox LIVE or System Link connection. This is a great time. I remember back when the game was still in development and a rep for Id Software made mention of co-op mode. He said that one player will need to hold the flashlight while the other one aims because the game will be darker for two players. This isn't entirely the case. There are some situations where you will need somebody to hold the light, but it's not through the entire game like you may think. There was more tag-team shooting going on than I would have imagined and I was glad for that.

Other alterations for co-op mode include the new designs for some of the maps. These are noticeable to people who have played the PC version, but it does not detract from the game at all. For me, it made the levels seem new again as they were slightly changed. Even the boss battles have been slightly tweaked so that two players don't just dominate the fights like you'd suspect. Instead, you'll have your hands full with some of the new changes. That said, I'd really recommend playing through the game's single-player mode first. The co-op is extremely fun, but it takes away from the moodiness and tone that the single-player mode has in spades. Plus, you do not interact with a PDA device in co-op. In single-player, the PDA is a valuable tool that lets you listen to other character's audio logs, read their emails to each other, and even watch video journals. It really helps add to the atmosphere and believability of everything and its absence lends toward making co-op more action oriented.

Other multiplayer modes are available through Xbox LIVE and System Link as well. While they max out at 4 players, the game modes here are different enough to make them worth checking out. To the untrained eye, its a lot like Quake. Fast, twitchy, and heavy reliance on weapon superiority or map control. Add to the mix what I call the "shadow effect" and it becomes a sort of cat and mouse game in the dark that is pretty unique compared to everything else out there. If I had to liken it to anything, I'd say its like a mix between Splinter Cell's versus mode and Quake 2's multiplayer modes. For a lot of players, it will not be terribly interesting, but for a certain breed of gamer, there is something to be appreciated about it.

Overall, Doom 3 is a worthy purchase for sci-fi, horror, and shooter fans alike. Anyone else questioning it should definitely rent it at the very least because it is the industry's shining example of how powerful audio can be and how sound can make or break an experience.