Think of the early days of Technicolor, or the introduction of colour TV's. The combination of a novelty and the disappearance of limitations with it inspires a 'because we can'-type of reasoning in making design choices. People bought TV's with colour saturation turned up to the maximum and kept it there, never mind that those red lips were much more red than the real thing. It took a long while before new monochromatic movies were accepted as being so by design/choice, rather than by a lack of funds -- you were going to make a serious moving picture? It was going to be in colour. Ofcourse, after the novelty wore off, people sort of regained their grip on normality, and saturation was toned down and more subtle colours seemed to be allowed to predominate on even mainstream movie's sets.

Hence my conviction that the engine change, in this case, might have been enough to result in a rainbow-coloured game. 32-bit coloured textures is pretty much the Technicolor of the gaming industry.

Bright sunny days and hot weather isn't my thing. I actually prefer rainy days and grey skies.. thunder/lightning storms are even better. I love talking walks in such weather.. seems uplifting to me, both because of the weather itself, and that I know most other people don't like it (seems to make me enjoy it that much more). I even prefer the moon over the sun.. just too bad street lights block out the awesomeness of moonlight. I've never seen the town more beautiful than during a blackout at night, lit only by the moon.

*cough* Anyway.. I couldn't resist posting my opposite preference. Sorry for the 'off-topic'-ness.

regarding Quake 3 A 2 i hope that there is more of a gen feel to it and not just q3a with D3 and q4 weapons added

as for D4 i'm not looking forward to it D3 ruined the doom series for me and RoE was a hideous HL2 Styled Expansion

as for rage i'll wait and see

Yeah that mod is good. Shame it's only one level, although apparently there's a sequel in the works. Music was a bit cock-rock for my taste, though, so rather than turn it off I replaced the .OGG file with some old-skool NIN goodness. Can't beat it.

Yeah, Doom has a high speed but not for running and cowering in the shadows.

I think part of D3's non-DooM-ishness can be blamed on the lack of corpse decorations, like the writhing upside-down guy with his ribcage torn open.

Aye. The one good time to study a model/skin's features is when a monster has finally stopped moving. Instead, I get to see a cheap-assed shader effect briefly, then nothing. Thankfully there are mods to change that..

The strange thing is, run and gun is no longer acceptable for first-person shooters, despite the fact that FPS is inherently run and gun.  The idea is that everyone wants something more, so more is added - PDA's for storyline, or NPC's, vehicles, etc.  "Find key, open door" is replaced by "fulfill objective, advance to the next area", which is just FKOD with more visual glitz.  What's the difference between shutting down the pumping station so you can divert power to the Phobos Labs teleporter in Resurrection of Evil and flipping a wall switch to raise a set of stairs in Doom?  One just looks more plausible as a real goal than the other, but effectively it's the same thing.  Let's consider a few of the latest gimmicks in FPS games and see how innovative they really are.

Vehicles - First saw them in Shadow Warrior best I can remember - 2.5D sprite-based shooter.
NPC's - Napalm/Nam had them, Doom engine (I have a copy but never got around to playing it).
Realistic physics - Tresspasser had it long before Doom 3 or Half-Life 2.
Skeletal animations - Tresspasser also had these before Doom 3 or Half-Life 2.
Objective/Mission based play - Quake 2 introduced this.
Scripted actions - Half-Life introduced this, along with Unreal.
Cinematic cutscenes - Wing Commander series introduced this.

So what's really new about what's in the newer FPS games?  Best I can tell it's using everything all at once, bumping up the visual detail, etc.  You have the basic FPS play, but all this extra stuff thrown in like light and shadow, vehicles, rag doll, objectives, cut scenes, etc.  The extra stuff complicates and expands the game, which may or may not be a good thing depending on how the player sees it.  Serious Sam is the only game that has moved away from this trend, but I think it went TOO far in the opposite direction.  I've not played Serious Sam 2.  From the screenshots I saw, it looked like it went a bit on the silly side - even more so than the Second Encounter - and I'd prefer something a bit more, well, serious.