i finished the game today and, yes you drive quite a bit in the first half of the game, and depending on how good you do on it....maybe longer. i got to the point where i just drove past many things i could tell the game wanted to explore.
if you read what i said, i didnt say the graphics are bad....just that the textures looking crappy at times.....effects like water and glass were sweet as hell and better than those in doom.....i just think Doom3 was more consistant in the graphic area. You cant even compare them though...cause they are so different.
Yeah Doom 3 was all about the lighting.. which is the best I have seen ever. Ive seen movies where the lighting was worse. They captured the atmosphere. I think the issue with textures comes from two things. One, while they had a brand new cutting edge engine... the artist making the textures were the ones from HL1 so once youre used to one it's hard to compensate for the new engine. Also, I think the focus of the engine was less on the detail of textures, but to allow a player to pretty much do all he wanted in the game. Total immersion is the key to the game... call of duty would be amazing with this engine. Youd have the physics to do anything you wanted, the immersion felt in CoD, amazing graphics, and solid storyline. Besides... the actual hl2 game isn't that important. It's the mods that follow that are. DoD Source needs to hurry up.