Well on the one hand these in fact are examples for sort of new games (although Doom 3 isn't quite new) having a SciFi design that follows that concept pretty well. On the other hand those all are horror-shooters. It's crucial to have dark lighting here for shock effects and a scary environment...

It's not just about this dark & dirty aspect only - e.g. have a look at that Privateer screenshot posted by BoH_Havoc or the Crusader video I linked in the opening post. There's no dark lighting at all and yet still you can see this certain style. I don't know how to express this - things sort of look "interesting" there. I guess it's partially about faces not being very flat which is what you see in modern SciFi all the time. Maybe some pictures for expressing this with television examples:




The surfaces are just flat and boring often making them look fake because they look too new and shiny (especially for that Star Trek scene). It seems to be a general rule for today's SciFi as games tend to end up the same way...