So there I am on a Sunday evening, standing in line with some people at the local game store, waiting to get my hands on one of the first copies of Doom 3 for the Xbox console. As we're standing there, one guy, who identifies himself as "Rebel86" online, started to talk about games that scared the crap out of you. He mentioned Splatterhouse, an old Namco favorite with a psycho in a hockey mask slashing through hordes of monsters. Another guy piped up about the Silent Hill games. When I was asked, I shrugged and said, "Anything with Mary Kate and Ashley." The group laughed over it, but, hey, I was being honest.

I haven't really been shaken up by a video game in a while in terms of being genuinely scared, like a good horror movie did to me back when I was a kid. But all that changed about an hour and a half later, as I sat in my gaming lab and found myself frenetically switching between a flashlight and a gun as a lumbering hell demon chased after me, through hallway after hallway.

Doom 3 is a damn scary game, that's for sure. When id Software released it last year for PC, their intent was to reintroduce the brand of Doom on a whole new level. Most of us grew up into the art of Doom, pioneering the first-person shooter genre miles above the pedestrian Wolfenstein 3D and giving us a lot to shoot at, in the form of hellish creatures ranging from frantically pacing demons spewing fireballs at us to huge, fearsome eyeball creatures ready to munch away at our precious energy. My, how times have changed. You can thank technology for that.

Now it's on the Xbox, with the port being handled in conjunction between id and Vicarious Visions, a company that Activision's worked with for some time now. They've mostly done handheld stuff over the years, like ports of Tony Hawk and Spiderman games for the Game Boy Advance. But Doom 3 is an effort that shows they are truly a dedicated game studio, as it's one of the better nerve-wracking first-person shooters for the Xbox out there. All the atmospheric terror of the PC version is fully intact, and there's even some great Xbox Live support on top of that to make this an unbeatable game in this, the post Halo 2 era and the calm before the Xbox 2 storm.

The game's plot is still about as basic as they come, pitting a lone soldier against the demons of hell. This time, though, it takes place in an outer space station, where a marine has just arrived for a regular check-up in terms of operations. It seems this base is the home for the opening of warp gates of some kind, allowing the scientists and researchers to get a better look at what other kinds of life exist. And, firsthand, you discover the bitter nature of this research as the group suddenly opens up a doorway filled with spewing fireballs and demonic screams. Yep, hell. They try to close it, but it's pretty much too late, and most of the employees are overtaken by the demon forces, leaving you to fend for yourself and scramble to find a way to stop the menace before, God forbid, it finds its way to Earth. Of course, saving your own ass is a good idea as well.

As the game proceeds (and you avoid hell demon after hell demon making your way to crucial areas), you'll find yourself using a PDA device to download information on other employees, gaining access to codes that will allow you to move on and even gain access to lockers containing new weapons. It took a minute to kind of get used to the access system that the PDA provides, but it really is a helpful tool and helps keep you moving.

But the game is hardly about any kind of technical nature. In fact, it's a simple "kill or be killed" mantra, as you'll find yourself in huge, vicious battles against all sorts of hellions, from overtaken humans who unload their ammunition on you to screaming beasts with the ability to throw glowing fireballs in your direction, to larger monsters like the hellion I mentioned above, who must've taken hundreds of rounds from my shotgun but showed no signs of slowing, leaving me to run for my very life. The game is simplistic in nature, but by no means simple itself.