If you were to compare Doom 3 to one of it's contemporaries, Half Life 2, I think there's an interesting contrast. The change in environment in HL2 goes hand-in-hand with change in combat. In order the main combat sections went:

Canals in urban area (on foot, low powered weapons vs combine)
Canals in outlying area (in boat, long helicopter chase)
Creepy abandoned town (zombies vs gravity gun and traps)
Coast road (in a buggy vs combine and antlions)
Prison (on foot with antlion allies or Alex)
City 17 (leading squads vs combine with Striders)
The Citadel (super gravity-gun)

It wasn't just the environment which was fresh, it was the gameplay too, and the interaction between place and gameplay reinforces that. I'll admit I haven't played Doom 3 as much as Half Life 2, but the combat all blurred together like the environments, the only parts that I remember feeling different were the bits where you were outside with limited oxygen. 

I think anytime you recall levels or missions from a single game there's a tendency to want to believe they all looked the same, because in a way they do.

Most games are made with a specific overall "style" from the beginning. I think this is called "art direction".

But if you actually go back and replay those games you see that they were in fact made up of many unique and interestiong locations. 

When you can only see it on your second/third/tenth playthrough, well, I don't think it's merely art direction. 

Most games are made with a specific overall "style" from the beginning. I think this is called "art direction".

I tend to be more interested in the artist that paints a variety of landscapes equally well, rather than that guy that only ever paints oak trees with a horse standing underneath. 

personally, I just can't get enough of horses under oak trees :D 

I tend to be more interested in the artist that paints a variety of landscapes equally well, rather than that guy that only ever paints oak trees with a horse standing underneath.

But what if there was also a lion and some cows too? 

roger dean still waits for my U1maps thanks to the broken editor. 

Goddamn, I love all that 70s style of fantasy art by people like Roger Dean and Rodney Matthews.

A colourful, modern take on Unreal 1 that looked like that, would be better than all those desaturated grey/brown greeble games that the Unreal engine just turned into a factory for. 

But... 

Yeah for some reason during the unreal engine 3 cycle, every game had a complete hard-on for sticking a post-process filter on that sucked the colour out of everything in the scene and made the whole screen the same hue. It made Quake look positively colourful. 

Honestly, the Quake games were a lot more colourful in comparison to the GoW games and UT3 etc...

http://i.imgur.com/y5464dA.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/VhFJVNh.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/U5DjHke.jpg 

quake's colors are fairly saturated. They're certainly not garish or even vibrant, but they're not as dull as some make them out to be either. 

I like the Quake palette. Although some of the more vibrant colors weren't used all that much. 

Dunno, I think the Quake palette is one of the worst designed palettes I've ever seen in a game.

The pink/purple stuff was a massive waste of time, as was the cyan, yellow and bright blue lines.

And of the colours they actually use in the game, there's a ton of redundancy across the similar brown/green shades.

Ugh, such wasted potential. 

...the more monochromatic textures anyway.

Then there's the brown that is comprised of green and purple... that's fine from a distance, but at close range there's no way you're gonna make that look good. 

I've heard people saying that Quake 2 palette is better. I dunno. Maybe for amateur player skins or something.

In any case, there are uglier palettes than in Quake.