@RogerRoger Good to hear, and I hope it works out for the better and that Trico ends up being a new favorite for you. (My gut tells me it will). And consider the recommendation as payback for your high endorsement of Fallen Order — the opening hours have blown me away. I’m really impressed with the quality of the game. As a Star Wars fan, it’s currently exceeding my expectations, and as a video game fan it’s scratching the “have some fun exploring and wielding a laser sword” itch that I began to have after several hours of non-combat animal training. 😅 I have a feeling I’m going to enjoying this ride. The biggest problem with the game is how addicting it is. All I want to do is go home and play it and I’m stuck at work. I’m sure I’ll be leaving more impressions on the dedicated thread over time. Anyways, so thanks right back at ya!
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@DonJorginho Excellent review. Death Stranding is probably not something that I'd be too keen on playing, but its uniqueness does keep me very curious about it.
@Th3solution thank you man, I don't think this was bad for my first review on here! 😅
And yeah the game is amazing man, it has it's issues but really is a wonderful title and I have barely scratched the surface of what this story has to offer, literally made me cry in parts was so powerful.
I hope you really enjoy it man, and be sure to let me know how you get on when you start it!
@RogerRoger thank you for the kind words! Was at work and had a quiet period so thought why not get to writing that review, I tried my best to describe the story whilst not spoiling or confusing people so to hear your feedback is great!
This game is truly great but I had to be balanced and pick out its flaws as they really annoyed me at times and I'm someone so adored this game so didn't want to mislead people who could get easily fed up of those issues.
Might do a review on Days Gone next or Nier once I finish it, and I'd highly recommend watching all the cutscenes of this game. It was better than most big blockbusters!
@crimsontadpoles thank you so much, it isn't for everyone and unlike some fans that swear by Kojima I can respect and fully see it's issues and understand why some hated it.
If you never play it, it's worth watching the cutscenes imo
@Th3solution just a comment on TLG - I literally had one frustrating moment, that took all of 5 minutes to resolve. I guess your mileage may vary with this game, but other than that I honestly don’t look back and consider the game frustrating at all.
@kyleforrester87 Yeah, it’s weird because I even watched some YouTube videos of places I got stuck and Trico would fairly quick and easily mosey into place to do what he was asked. Then I’d try the same tactic and my Trico would be sniffing the grass and ignoring me. Honestly, I think I wasn’t doing the small things well enough like feeding him extra barrels and petting him to calm or reassure him. After I started doing that more it seemed like I struggled less.
Nevertheless, I nearly quit the game permanently at the part where there are a couple underwater passages you have to transverse through him with that I spent a good hour trying to get through. By sheer luck I happened to be diving in the first pool and he dove down too and I was able to grab him and he swam by and we went through the passage together. Then in the next pool, no matter what mechanism to encourage him to dive that I tried, he just wouldn’t go under. I yelled at him, pointed, gave him every command in the book. Jumped on him, jumped off him, gave him commands from above, below, to the right to the left.... it was maddening. At one point, I was able to encourage him enough to dive but he left me behind while he went through the passage and I was stuck permanently in the room by myself and had to reload the checkpoint. ... I resigned myself to the fact that I would not ever finish the game. Then I got on Gamefaqs and found the walkthrough. There was a special link entitled “Making Trico Dive” and I clicked that and the author said that a lot of people have trouble with it, but it’s easy if you know what to do. Simply jump in his back, push R1 and forward on the left analog, which basically makes the boy point toward the wall and Trico should dive. The next chance I got I did that and just like magic it worked! I was both relieved and upset at the same time. The solution was simple. Yet the command didn’t make sense in my mind. So for one person it would take 5 min., and for me it took and hour and then a search of the internet. I also found that video walkthroughs didn’t help as much because you couldn’t see what buttons were being pushed to get the desired outcome. Having it explained to me through written instructions helped me more.
Platform: PC, PS4, XBONE, Switch, Switch Lite (reviewed), and a dozen older consoles as well
Completion: Completed all four episodes, although my actual completion rate within each level varied. Some levels I missed a bunch of stuff, whereas, in others I found all items/secrets and killed all the enemies. I also replayed an episode or two on PC.
~ ~ * ~ ~
DOOM is commonly regarded as one of the most important and influential video games of all time. Besides helping to spread the popularity of the FPS genre, it also made at the time unparalleled use of 3D space, full texture mapping, extreme violence, and uneven level geometry within 3D space. I've never actually given this series a go beyond the widely contentious DOOM 3, however, so I wanted to change that. What better place to start than with the demonic grand-daddy of the genre itself?
The structure of the game is very weird. The first episode of the game, titled Knee-Deep in the Dead, featured eight episodes and was distributed as freeware. This, more than anything else, contributed to the game's almost immediately titanic impact on the industry, having been installed across 10 million computers by 1995 (following its 1993 release). The second and third episodes, The Shores of Hell and Inferno, were contained in a paid version that was only available at the time via mail order. It was only upon the game's re-release as a boxed, commercial product that the fourth episode, Thy Flesh Consumed was released.
Every episode features eight normal levels, one boss level to cap off the episode, and one secret level. Progress carries between levels in an individual episode, but not between episodes, meaning that, at the beginning of every episode, you're forced to scrounge for ammo like at the beginning of the game. Despite this, there are little screens featuring narration that give the episodes of the original DOOM a minor sense of continuity.
I do want to emphasize how minor this is, though. Aside from these screens and some early bosses showing up later in the game as minibosses, the original DOOM (or "The Ultimate DOOM," as the commercial release in 1995 was called) is really just four short games packaged together. Episode themes as well as level design varies drastically between the various episodes.
The first episode features one of the most iconic environments in video game history, and begins in a UAC (Union Aerospace Corporation) facility on one of the moons of Mars, Phobos. You play as a nameless space marine (dubbed Doomguy by fans, who seems slightly distinct from the Doom Slayer of DOOM 2016 and DOOM Eternal) who fights off a demon invasion and, eventually, fights against two Barons of Hell so that he can transport to Deimos, which is also overrun by hellspawn. The militaristic and technological setting of this episode combines with maze-like levels. In general, you'll spend the bulk of these episode trawling the hallways of various installations looking for blue, red, and yellow keycards in order to unlock various doors. A level will end when you reach a specified endpoint, with the level completion screen afterward informing you of how many secrets you found, what percentage of the monsters you killed (there's a fine number in each level), and what percentage of the level items you collected.
The second episode is set on Deimos, and, thematically, is similar to episode one, except for certain changes that emphasize the increased demonic influence in this location. Some levels, for example, require colored human skulls instead of key cards to open doors, and the misty mountain view from Phobos has changed to one outlined by blood red clouds. At the end of the episode, you defeat the Cyberdemon in charge of the invasion of this moon and, discovering that the moon is hovering directly above an opening to Hell, decide to rappel down to the abyss itself to confront the forces that engineered this invasion in the first place.
Episode three is set fully in Hell. The walls have become more fleshy-looking, impaled humans and lava are everywhere, and, in general, the architecture is and level structures are less orderly in terms of their design. It's here you confront the Spiderdemon who engineered the demonic invasion of the moon bases.
Episode four is supposedly set on Earth, although its chaotic, fractured level design and demonic design motifs seem to suggest otherwise. It's in this episode that we learn Doomguy's true motive (it was probably a joke, but I like to think it's true, and it's in the game's narration, so... sticks out tongue): he wants revenge for the death of Daisy, his pet rabbit, making him, I guess, the supernatural, sci-fi-themed version of John Wick. Anyway, the (ostensibly) Earthly setting of this episode suggests that it's a sort of prequel to DOOM II: Hell on Earth.
The game distinguished itself upon release by being a very fast, brutal game. The antithesis of the sort of plodding cover shooters that were en vogue last gen, DOOM is a game where you will die if you are timid. The best defense is a good offense, and nowhere is that more true than in this game, where you best chance of survival is usually to charge into the fray and start gunning down demons like a maniac. That doesn't mean you don't take note of your environments, of course. There are a variety of ways in which you can minimize damage from large groups of enemies, and certain bosses pretty much require you to take cover behind buildings and walls, but, in general, I found that when I was sprinting around at full speed, shooting my enemies point blank with a shotgun, they often didn't even get a chance to damage me.
The narration screens in DOOM often opt for eye-bleedingly awful color combinations, for some reason, making all this damn text a bit difficult to read at times
The biggest downside of DOOM is the enemy variety. For a game where you kill demons, there just aren't a whole lot of different ones here. You have a couple of demon types that look like generic soldier dudes, complete with guns. You have Cacodemons, which are like giant floating balls that spit fireballs at you. You have Imps, which... shoot fireballs at you. There are normal pink demons which aren't really much of a threat, because they can only hurt you if you let them get right up in your face. There's also an invisible variation of this enemy, although their outlines are clear enough that they're still easy to avoid and kill. Finally, there are Lost Souls, which are flaming skulls that flying around and try to bite you.
Considering the saminess of the attacks patterns and enemy types, there isn't a lot of strategy involved in this game, and you can pretty much mindlessly run around shooting everything without much of a concern. The game is challenging (on higher difficulties, which I played on... starting with Hurt Me Plenty, and then the one above it), but mostly for reasons that I think weaken the game as an experience.
The few bosses there are seem kind of weaksauce as well. The Barons of Hell... throw green fireballs at you instead of normal ones. They deal a lot more damage, but they're not tremendously harder to avoid. The primary annoyance of this enemy is how long it takes to kill one with normal weapons. The Cyberdemon is better insofar as he actually has a unique attack, which is... to spam rockets the instant he sees you. This means, antithetical to the rest of the game, you'll need to slow down to a crawl, hug buildings, and take potshots at this annoying dude until he dies, which takes a while. The Spiderdemon is even worse in this regard, because, while you can avoid the Cyberdemon's rockets, the Spiderdemon's chaingun attack is pretty much impossible to dodge if you're exposed. So... again, hugging the walls and taking potshots around corners until he's dead. DOOM is at its absolute worst combat-wise when you're fighting these things. Unlike the rest of the game, speed and ferocity are punished.
The level design in this game... a lot of people like it, but I didn't really take to it. The early levels are manageable mazes, but I disliked the game's tactic of having walls randomly open up behind my character and being hit with a barrage of enemy projectiles all at one. The secrets are mostly mindless, and often involve running around hugging the walls of the UAC facility, trying to find random locations that'll open up and reveal bonus resources. The puzzles throughout are also a bit braindead, and involve a lot of running back and forth between areas to hit switches.
Later in the game (particularly episode 4), the level design breaks down, as it relies on bizarrely uneven floor space, poison/lava floors, and enemy ambushes to increases the difficulty. Perhaps this is meant to reflect the character's increasing closeness to demons and Hell, although I didn't really appreciate the design cheapness in many sections.
I alluded to this just a moment ago, but in lieu of actual enemy variety, the game likes to throw giant hordes of demons at you to freak you out, sometimes trapping you in rooms without warning. Of course, there's little in the way of space or objects to interact with, so, more often than not, it just becomes a matter of whether you have the ammo to mow down the enemies quickly enough because they can gang up and kill you (there's no jumping in the console versions of this game, so it's not like you jump over enemies when their sprites are hogging the screen around you.
One really high point of this conversion, as of the latest patch, is the framerate. While I'm not sure how helpful it actually is, since I believe the enemy animations are still animated at 35fps, the general feel of the game has been boosted to 60fps, giving movement that lovely, butter smooth feel that games with higher framerates tend to have.
Otherwise, this release was patched to correct image quality issues and deliver a really authentic DOOM experience.
But what would an discussion of DOOM be without focusing on the weapons available to the player, especially given the game's laser focus on demon-killing action? The arsenal isn't terribly diverse by modern standards, but it was a massive selection of weapons in a game released almost 27 years ago. You start off with the pistol, which... sucks. Thankfully, if you like to poke around, it's not long before you stumble across your first shotgun, which has much more of a visceral feel to it. And, considering how accurate it is even at long distances, it's usually my weapon of choice in this game. Over the course of the game, you gain access to the chaingun, which uses pistol ammunition, but fires at an incredibly high rate, making it ideal for taking down mobs of weaker enemies, the plasma gun, which is possibly one of the most powerful weapons in the game at both close and long range, the rocket launcher, which... has some uses against bosses, or in LARGE arenas, but makes it so easy for the players to damage themselves accidentally by standing too close to the target of their aggression, and the BFG9000 (which, yes, very famously stands for "Big F***ing Gun"), a hyper-powerful nuke of a weapon that is unfortunately so slow to fire and cumbersome to use in general that, more often than not, I just ended up ignoring it.
Melee-wise, you can get a chainsaw, which is cooler than it sounds, because you REALLY want to keep your distance from most of these enemies. You can also punch demons, but, really, don't. It's neither satisfying nor effective, and is only a last resort when you find yourself out of ammunition.
The 'feel' of the controls in this Nintendo Switch Lite playthrough were my biggest issue with the game. I don't know how much of this is the Switch Lite having thumbsticks utterly unsuited to games involving aiming and how much of it is my long-standing issue with playing shooters on consoles in general, but I generally found it really difficult to precisely aim at enemies as quickly as I needed to. After trying out a source port on my PC to compare the feel, the difference was astounding. Playing this with the stick felt sort of akin to being bundled up in a straight-jacket.
Thankfully, for people who do like to play shooters on consoles, aiming is far easier in DOOM thanks to the complete lack of Y-axis control. This game was originally designed to be played with just keyboards, so if you have an enemy lined up on your X-axis, you'll hit them, even if they're at a radically different elevation to you. It takes a bit of getting used to if you only have experience with most modern shooters, but it does lead to very fast, fluid, satisfying carnage with a minimum of aiming needed.
I also love how fast you can blow through rooms and even entire levels by holding down the run button. With the right guns, this can lead to lightning-fast gameplay that's really cool in the moment.
Conclusion
Despite all of my complaints about the game, I actually really enjoyed it, and think that it has aged rather well, all things being equal. Despite seeming very basic and rudimentary now, the game was visionary at the time, and light-years ahead of the competition in many respects. Playing it entirely on a handheld device was pretty neat, but I do think that perhaps other platforms might be more ideal to experience this game. Certainly PC, where the mouse gives the player absurdly fast control over where they're aiming, but perhaps, if the thumbstick aiming feels more accurate, on PS4 and Xbox One as well. 6/10 for me, although there is no way to attach a number to just how influential this game was.
Ya know I have DOOM for PS1 (Which is actually a mix of DOOM 1, DOOM 2 and some brand new levels) and I've played it a number of times over the years... But I've never actually got all that far in it at all to be honest.
Nothing wrong with it and I certainly didn't hate it or anything. Just never fully commited to playing it fully for some reason.
DOOM 2016 was the first DOOM I actually played all the way through (Which I think you'll quite like if only thanks to more modern design choices (though levels can still get a bit labyrinthine at times)).
Actually playing DOOM PS1 properly might be just the thing for me to do for a breather (amongst a few other smaller games) after I finish off Divinity.
Your review is great as always @Ralizah and I can certainly agree with a number of points you said from what I remember about some of the design... even if it was made 26 years ago now!
... I also did not know about the rabbit thing. That's totally 100% canon in my head now that the Doomguy is supernatural John Wick 😂
-EDIT- Nice assortment of screenshots too! Even the red text on the beige background one... Though it is eyebleedingly awful to try and read! 😅
Darn, now I wish I could have seen what sort of embarrassing flub y'all are referencing.
@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Thanks! Yeah, the rabbit thing is communicated near the end of the game, and took me by surprise. Nice little touch, though, and humanizes classic Doomguy a bit. I've not actually played through DOOM 2016, other than trying out the demo a few times (which, yes, I'm expecting to love, because it looks like modernized DOOM gameplay combined with amazing enemy variety and Metroid Prime-esque level design and platforming), but I get the sense that the Doom Slayer in that game is scarier than any of the demons he kills.
I... actually didn't know Doom on PS1 was another custom version. I should check that out. As I go through the series, I also plan on playing DOOM 64, which people tell me is essentially DOOM 2.5. I do sort of miss when consoles would get unique versions of games.
@RogerRoger Oh man, Episode 4 is such a kick in the teeth, especially on higher difficulties. Putting aside the borderline illogical level design, they start you off (thus, almost no weapons) in a level that's widely acknowledged to be one of the hardest in the entire series.
In general, it was the low-point of the game, and unlike the rest of the game, doesn't really have a coherent theme to it.
Speaking of DOOM and sacred cows in the industry, I'm eager to get to DOOM II: Hell on Earth and DOOM 3 as well, considering those two games are... well, they're sort of maligned when compared to the original. Like you, I have a habit of disagreeing with the public consensus on things, so I'm curious to see if that will extend to these games as well.
Yeah, in general, I find thumbsticks with gyro to be substandard for shooters, and then when you consider the Switch Lite has smaller than average ones... definitely not ideal, to the point where I bucked my own Nintendo preferentialism and went to PC to finish the series.
Currently Playing: Fields of Mistria (PC); Cookie Clicker (PC); Metaphor: ReFantazio (PC); Overboard! (PC)
@Ralizah DOOM 2016 is great fun. And it keeps in with the style of play you describe for original game in that running and gunning is the way to play most of the game.
@Ralizah Wonderful review. Doom is one of those that I'm unlikely to ever want to actually play (ultra violent shooters just never appealed to me), but it's fun to read about it since it's a classic as well as being revolutionary at the time.
@Ralizah Great review. It’s not a game I have any plans to ever try (maybe I’ll eventually give the 2016 reboot a go) but it was an enjoyable read, all the same.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution You absolutely should. It's probably the most fun shooter I've played in a long time.
Have you played the new Wolfenstein games? It feels fairly similar but is even more silly (in a good way), fast paced, and all about getting in the enemies faces rather than hiding away.
Yeah apparently there's 28 levels from Ultimate DOOM, 23 from DOOM 2 and seven brand new (& secret) levels bundled into DOOM PS1 @Ralizah
From what I'm reading about the port it's similar to the Atari Jaguar version for the most part with some of the level geometry made easier, larger levels were cut entirely, there's less enemy variety per level due to hardware limitations and one enemy was cut...
... Though we got this negative-like version of the spectre demon to compensate
It also has no memory card function and uses passwords...
...I think I remember why I never got far into it now 😅
I also replied to you in the chit-chat thread if you weren't aware 😁
Like Thrillho says @Th3solution DOOM 2016 is a pretty darn fun shooter! Get with the ripping and tearing like the rest of us! 😉
@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy@Thrillho I have never been much of a FPS fan, but I like one every now and then for variety. With Doom Eternal set to release later this year, maybe they’ll give Doom 2016 away on PS Plus soon, which would be a good opportunity for me to try it. I’m not much of a fan of horror / demonic themes either. I can take it in small pieces, especially if it has some humor / comedy.
I haven’t played any of the Wolfenstein games either, for the same reasons. Also, I hear those are really hard.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution The first Wolfenstien I did not find too hard. I've only played a few hours of the second game, but found the difficulty all over the place. There are several difficult levels so you can always adjust it if you find it too difficult. You might be surprised at just how good the story and character development is though.
Life is more fun when you help people succeed, instead of wishing them to fail.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
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