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.
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Doom Eternal
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?
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30 Years of God Game History, Indigo Gaming
There’s a very interesting note that Peter Molyneux wasn’t involved much in Syndicate, because he was always focused on a single game at a time.
Another interesting difference from the show: Stormfront in the comics is a guy, and he must be quite old, as he’s met Hitler. He’s a Nazi version of Superman, basically, but with lightning bolts from hands instead of lasers from the eyes.
He isn’t a major character, though, and with the help of the Soviet superhero The Boys beat him to death, in an allegory to WW2.
I’m not sure what the authors tried to pull off with Frenchie and Female origin stories. Both are extremely weak. Mother’s Milk origin story is slightly better. Sickening, but that’s Garth Ennis for you there. In short: he’s called Mother’s Milk because he can’t survive without it. And he’s a grown up man now. As I said, Ennis is a sick bastard.
In the show, it’s Homelander who’s obsessed with breast feeding.
Actually, the further in the comics, around the 40s chapter, the less I understand where it’s heading. There’s an arc on retarded supes. Literally retarded. And besides adding the twist of Butcher suspecting Hughie to be a spy, I don’t see much point to that arc either.
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Doom Eternal
“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.
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Avengers Endgame
A very strange one. It starts with Iron Man almost dying, and then Thanos killed in 5 minutes.
Then in turns into that postapocalypse and “bringing the old team together”. There are a lot of references, some I did get, some I didn’t.
Then is the last part, Armageddon all over again. But I’ll admit, it’s slightly better this time.
Captain Marvel is a horrible character. I can’t believe they are trying to make a third movie about her.
It’s the epitome of a Mary Sue with a Karen attitude on top.
There’s no challenge, no conflict, just a one-woman-torpedo:
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Year of Rain
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 🤷♂️
Finished watching Dopesick. There’s very little justice in real life. Although this is just part of the story, as the last episode focuses of indicment of a few Purdue managers, and we’re never told how Oxycontin sales were stopped, for example.
John Brownlee is a real prosecutor, although not as handsome in real life as depicted in the film.
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:
Completed Hades.
I didn’t think I’d manage to beat it once. Now, what do I say when I escaped 10 times?
Had a good run with the Sword, using a hammer that halves your HP, but leeches life. Until I got to Hades. He just deals too much damage for that.
Then I escaped with “magnetic fists” without dying even once, I think mostly thanks to Athena’s Legendary boon.
This game really grew on me, I must admit. Although I usually dislike permadeath games, to the point I rarely touch them. But I like the art, despite it’s supposed to be very “woke”, I like the story and the very British writing. And after 50 attempts, I stopped minding dying that much 😅
The only bit that annoys me is that even after 50 attempts and 10 escapes, I opened just a single hidden aspect. That’s grindy as hell, I’d say.
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Darkwatch review by GmanLives
Mostly interesting because I remember the cover, but I always thought it’s a third-person shooter, and not an FPS:
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Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep
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.
There are no supervillains. Everyone was just “doing their job”. Marketing marketed the drug, sales pushed it, doctors did their due diligence. It’s all a composition of small little lies. So, it wasn’t a cited study, but just a letter to the editorial, but who cares, right?
The series has almost a zombie apocalipsys feel to me. To the point of “nothing will save you from this”. Not Anonymous Alcoholics. Not rehab. Not Jesus. There’s no escape.
Rosario Dawson performance is astonishing. Such as shame it’ll be wasted on something like Star Wars.
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Well of Ascension, Brandon Sanderson
Zane was the only interesting character in the second book. I’ll be sorry if he doesn’t return.
All that “love” between Vin and Eland is cringey as hell. They are in relations for two years, constantly thinking how they “love” each other, but Eland hadn’t even seen Vin naked? And then they decide to marry. Yeah, makes sense. If you’re a Mormon, maybe.
Ok, after writing this I discovered that he is literally a Mormon. I rest my case now…
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.
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Street Fighter 6 AKI
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.
Turrets in this game are annoying. They shouldn’t have anywhere as much HP as they have. Super tanky. And on top of that, the tendency of the enemies to spawn behind you, in an area you already cleared, is annoying as well.
This stops mattering us much once you buy and upgrade the minigun, though. It, and the spiderbots that you get from the mid-game boss. Spiderbots are amazing, because they deal all types of damage at the same time. So no matter who you face, they will always deal maximum damage.
All I can say about the game story: it exists. You serve a mob boss, and as the Ascent supercorp that controls everything goes bankrupt, you try to reroute some energy from one of its reactors. You’re then hired by another corp, to steal the logs of Ascent. Turns out it went bankrupt because it was putting all of its money into a Secret Project.
New areas of the city open as the story progresses. But sometimes you’re given a sidequest in an area that hasn’t been opened yet. And there’s nothing telling you that you just wasted your time getting to a blocked path.
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Hardware bug 🐞
Today I was suddenly bitten by a hardware bug, and decided to install two additional Noctua coolers I had stashed for a year or two on the sidepanel of my BeQuiet case
After all, it’s a full tower, should have plenty of space for that. Took me an hour, and ended in a failure.
First, I installed the coolers on the sidepanel where the motherboard is. But there’s clearly no space for them to fit. And when I tried to install them on the opposite side, first the cables to the motherboard make opening the case very precarious, and then I also discovered I have to move some of the HDD cages up to free that space, and maybe that will stretch the cables too much 🤦♂️
Also, since the panel is so heavy, it almost tore one of the fan power supplies out of the motherboard and bend it badly when the panel fell out.
So I ended up just opening the ventilation windows a bit, and returned everything else to where it was 🤷♂️