Об играх
Gave Borderlands 3 a try.
Gunman class is… interesting. I mean, you start your game with a shabby pistol like everyone else, but then you can also summon a mech with minigun and a railgun to waste everyone, from the get-go. Character design is clearly stolen from Tank Girl, and mechanics are from Overwatch, but that’s besides the point.
After two hours, though, I still felt bored to death.
I decided to give Heretic a go as well, since I never played it properly. It’s an interesting experience after Doom.
First of all, there are a lot of enemies. And I mean a lot. I think Civvie11 mentioned that in his retrospective, but a rare Doom map has over 100 enemies. In Heretic, every map has more than that. I don’t know if it’s an attempt to make the game harder/longer, or maybe they had more resources, or put those Tomes of Power to good use. But you get tired of killing all of them. What’s more, unlike Doom maps, that are quite “abstract”, Heretic maps have more of a “hub” design. That means all those monsters come at you at the same time, from different directions.
I didn’t notice previously that although you have inventory, not all items are persisted between levels. Seems like you can carry just one Tome of Power, and no Wings. Probably that was an attempt to balance the game.
Probably one of the biggest disappointments in the first episode is the fact that there are just 4 weapons available. Which is as boring as playing the entire first episode of Doom without a rocket launcher.
Interesting that the first episode of Doom put two Barons of Hell as the end bosses. And Heretic puts two Iron Liches. Speaking of which, the whirlwind attack that raises you is a neat trick. As well as the “explosive barrels” that can be moved on that level.
Completed Doom Eternal.
In the end, I got into it. Even managed to collect all secrets, including assembling Unmaykr, the new version of BFG (taken from Brutal Doom?)
Khan Maykr is a trick boss in a trick game. I’m happy they added a few unique bosses, but still, it just shows how the entire game is build around very particular way of playing. You can damage the shields with any weapon, thanks at least for that. But then you need to pull yourself using the shotgun’s hook, and to punch her with the blood fist. And do that six times. What’s more, the only way to replenish your ammo is to headshoot infinite drones. As I said, a trick game.
Marauder is the one most annoying enemy in the entire game, because it’s the only enemy that has that repeated counter mechanic.
Icon of Sin is a great reimagining of the Doom 2 finale. But it’s also a complete chaos, with the screen flashing and shaking so much I could hardly understand what’s going on.
The game is a still a beautiful single-player shooter, quite rare. But they did try to milk it all the way, didn’t they? The online features are so annoying that I had to block the game in firewall to avoid them. And all the hints Samuel gives you are behind a paywall of two DLCs.
Completed Doom.
I don’t plan to play the extra episode, as I read it was mostly just bunch of levels hastily put together.
Third episode is even more hellishly designed than the 2nd one. But then some secrets are sometimes just doors. Not really a secret, are you?
My problem is that if I don’t play one game after the other, I forget the experience. But if I do, I get tired of it by the end. So, I got tired of hunting all the secrets without a guide in this last episode. First, because on House of Pain the door script got stuck, so I had to use IDCLIP cheat, but it annoyed me.
And then the secret in Mt. Erebus where you need to basically do a rocketjump in order to get in is ridiculous as well:
The secret level is fun, though. It starts same as the first level of this episode, but then there’s again that “fake exit” moment, and you need to fight a cyberdemon and backtrack to the start of the level.
Final boss battle isn’t particularly hard, but for two factors. It has a hitscan attack, so you’re constantly getting some chip damage. And there are no healing items on that level. Only later I discovered it takes just 2 shots from BFG to take it down.
Second episode is rather tight on ammo. Barons of Hell are now regular enemies. And there are also Cacodemons. And you get the plasmagun. So, there’s a bit more variety.
But the level design is somewhat hellish, with mazes for the sake of mazes, and endless amount of crates. Crate mazes:
And there are again some one-time-secrets. Containment Area is especially nightmarish in this sense.
“Halls of the Damned” is funny, because they added a false exit, that is actually a trap.
The cyberdemon was first introduced as the boss for the second episode as well. Which is a lot of investment, to have that huge sprite just for a boss. And as a kid playing from a keyboard, I would have been scared shitless by that. Although now it’s such an easy fight on a large arena with a lot of pillars for cover.
Twin stick looter-shooter with permadeath, with strong 80s vibes.
The heroes are all vaguely based on the cyberpunk action heroes of that era: you can recognize Judge Dredd, Robocop and probably a few others.
We’ve seen this in Broforce and recent Huntdown. The twin-stick part is pretty self-explanatory by now. Game plays a lot like Hades, in the sense that you have randomly generated arenas, and after a fixed number of arenas you get to fight the boss. And if you die: you start from the beginning.
Everything drops weapons. And there are more than 100 of those, of different varieties and rarities. You can carry multiple weapons and multiple types of ammo, unlike some other games that force you to discard the previously picked arm.
After my success with Doom 2, I decided to give Doom a try, since I never actually finished it. When I was a kid, I started with Doom 2.
It is definitely slower paced. But also it’s secrets structure is crazy. Consider the 3rd level of the 1st episode, Toxin Refinery. You find the yellow key, but you don’t need it to exit the level. Instead, the yellow door is behind a secret.
One element that I like more in Doom is how they show you progress on a map:
The first episode is rather boring. There are just a few weapons: shotgun, chaingun, rocket launcher. And only a few enemies. Two barons of hell are the final boss.
It’s a very weird design decision to first pit you against a boss, and then immediately throw you against two weaker versions of the same boss.
Also, those Purple Levels, whatever they’re called, pit you against enemies that you haven’t yet even met before. One pits you against two cyberdemons at the same time. This one was brutal. Then there’s a later one, that is mostly soldiers.
I don’t like the episodes where the researchers worship the Doomguy. But I’m glad that they didn’t try to voice him, and how his actions always show impatience: in cutscenes, he pushes every triggers multiple times until the turret fires. That’s a nice detail.
I’d be honest, the entire BFG episode made me smile, and like the game a bit more. The whole concept of Doomguy without asking anyone blowing a hole in Mars, then catapulting himself through that hole is hilarious, and so over the top it hits the tone perfectly.
Completed Doom 2.
“Citadel” has this feeling of abstract art. It’s not that you absolutely couldn’t build something resembling the real world with the Doom Engine. The creators of Doom 2 just didn’t want that.
“Gotcha”, the level where you’re pitten against Cyberdemon and giant spider at the same time, almost “got me”, as that last secret was super hard to find.
Turned out to be a hidden door near one of the teleporters in the winding tower.
And following “Nirvana” felt like someone didn’t have enough time to finish it properly. There are no secrets on that level, and you can literally pass through blue bars without the blue key.
I thought I remember that “Monster Condo” level had some kind of a crazy secret. And it actually does! In has a room that’s open only for the first 30 seconds of the level.
Interesting how in the pre-final level, Living End, you can just run past the final Cyberdemon.
When I was a kid, I thought that the final level is just a phylosophical message, neverending wave of demons. Once you know where you need to shoot, though, it isn’t that hard. That, and the mouselook.
Speaking of which, it’s easy to say how brilliant I am now, compared to how I was struggling with this game as a kid. But it’s important to remember that now, with the GZDoom, the game looks like this:
As a kid, the game looked like this:
And I was playing it on a shitty monitor, so it was even more blurry and dark and distorted. And I didn’t know about the Doom engines limitations, like the fact there are no rooms above rooms. And there was no mouselook, of course. Just arrow keys, and the strafe was on Alt.
I can’t even blame this game for being too hard. I expected to spam save/load all the time, but I actually do that very rarely.
I think there are a couple of no-escape pits here and there, “Tricks and Traps” final room for one. And in the “Factory” you’re teleported in the middle of imp cluster.
In “Inmost Dens” I find it puzzling that they simply forgot to count secrets as secrets. There are still secret walls and all, but the number of secrets on that level is 0.
Speaking of secrets, I’m still going strong, and even found the secret and the super-secret Wolfenstein levels.
I wasn’t joking when I said I prefer to play the original Doom 2 to Doom Eternal. I got the GOG version first, which is called Doom 2 Enhanced. It supports horizontal mouse look and autorun, but not much else. Then I tried the original Doom 2 with GZDoom. This one has full mouselook and the ability to jump, which makes getting some secrets easier. The original Doom didn’t have jump, so you had to do awkward run-jumps instead, which are still hard to pull out sometimes, even with WASD. Imagine how hard those were on arrow-keys.
My favorite levels yet are “Dead Simple” and “Tricks and Traps”. I think “Tricks and Traps” is one of my favorite levels ever, with its hub design.
Speaking of the level names, when I played Doom my English was mostly nonexistent. So even “Downtown” was something I hardly understood.
I also surprisingly remember all the secrets until now, completing every level with 100%.
Speaking of secrets: fuck you, Refueling Base, for having 18 of them. No, really, fuck you.
For each weapon you can unlock one of the two alternative modes. Then for each mode there are two upgrades, which unlock the third upgrade.
Then you can also upgrade your health, armor and ammo capacity. And pairing some upgrades gives you additional upgrades, like longer ammo pull.
Then there are runes. Which mostly enhance stuff like your finishers.
Then there are armor upgrades. That don’t upgrade your armor, but can, for example, reveal all items on the map.
Then there are fortress keys, called sentient batteries. Those unlock access to armor and weapon upgrades in the hub.
Then there are Purple Keys. Collecting a key and finding a door on a level throws you into a challenge arena. And if you complete 6 of those, you get the superweapon, Unmaykr.
You see where this is all going?
“I see what you did there.” Doom was technogenic. Doom 2 was more occult. Now, Doom 2016 was technogenic, and Doom Eternal is more occult. At least some of us are old enough to remember that the Doom series tried to make a game in a modern setting, but it was canceled. It’s ironic that they managed to pull it off in the end.
You can carry very little ammo, so the game forces you to use the chainsaw all the time since enemies killed with it drop ammo of all kinds in a rainbow explosion. Similarly, you need to execute enemies to get healed and to burn them to get armor shards. While performing executions, you’re invulnerable as well. So the game quickly turns into this repeating spree of animations.
Then there’s the power punch, the double jump, the double dash, and double dash refills. With all that, the game feels to me more and more like a trick-shooter than Doom, which makes it harder and harder to convince myself to play it.
Also, they added “extra lives,” which, for me, completely breaks the flow of the game. I would prefer if I were given a choice whether to use the extra life to respawn immediately or to save it for later. Instead, you get respawned from an enemy appearing nearby, and even if you reload, the extra life is lost. Infuriating.
An extremely literal Warcraft 3 tribute. To the point of “5 workers per mine”, “4 skills per hero” and the visual queues. It would be more fun, though, if there were saves during the mission. And the pathfinding is absolutely atrocious, I must say.
I dropped the game on the 4th mission, which was yet another hero mission, where instead of building stuff and doing, you know, strategy, I had to read bosses telegraphs.
From reading reviews on Steam, the game was released half finished: without the promised saves, that make the game half unplayeable, and with only 1 campaign out of 3 🤷♂️
It’s time to admit – I can’t play games anymore unless I know they’re being recorded. For PC it is granted. With GeForce Experience it captures the last 5 minutes of gameplay. With Switch, it also works well, it can capture 30 last seconds. But it means I has to play on the original gamepad, because no other gamepad has the “capture” button. Or, I could connect the console to a laptop running OBS Studio. Which I do.
For other consoles, such as PS2 and Neo Geo, it’s the same setup. I didn’t touch my Neo Geo for months, until I figured out that setup. Because if I can’t record it, I can’t remember it, and if I can’t remember it, it’s not fun, so why play it in the first place?
I enjoyed those two videos far more than I should have:
Yet another reminder that I can’t stand Borderlands. Enemies are bullet sponges, weapons do very little damage, and I eventually always run out of ammo. And I don’t appreciate either art style or humor.
I just love to see the character development:
Completed Ascent.
I must give this game some credit. At first I thought the arsenal to be boring: regular pistol, EMP pistol, regular assault rifle, EMP assault rifle, regular shotgun, EMP shotgun. But there are some more interesting pieces later on. Flamethrower is a lifesaver. But then there’s also a LMG with explosive bullets, ricocheting SMG and a combination of a shotgun and a minigun.
Also, one of the skills I liked the most lets you summon an exosuit, that you can fight in. Can’t go wrong with an exosuit.
The final rush through Silo 86 requires some endurance. Too many mutans, not enough opportunities to heal. The carnage is satisfying, though, I must admit.
But the final boss, or rather just four waves of enemies separated by some button presses, is rather fair.
I’m pretty excited about Street Fighter 6. After adding a Drunken Boxer, now they add a proper Snake Style fighter:
Clearly same mechanics as FANG, but looks so much better.