OPEN FOR BUSINESS... postal 2 was the first game i truly loved and it made me an fps diehard and/or brain damaged. here are my feverish ramblings about most of the ones i've played (sorted chronologically) because i care too much. feverish rambles edited by chandler. chandler does not claim responsibility for any offensive opinions contained within.
"i saw someone call postal 2 'the official game of people who've successfully recovered from using 4chan' and it's absolutely true" - yagihimesama
God only knows what i'd be without you, postal 2. maybe less of an asshole? all of my unhealthy predilections begin here: gore, busted 3d engines, exploitable jank, offensive 2000s humor, emergent gameplay, the melee-over-all mindset, hangoutable spaces, ugly graphics, civvie11, controlled mundanity, sassy protagonists, unsettling ambience, mindless self indulgence (the concept and the band), and, of course, classic fps games. given, as a proud young (unmonitored) denizen of newgrounds, i was already a fan of some of these things. this was only the final nail in the coffin. i was destined to be a piece of shit forever.
i barely touched the game outside of monday and yet i called it one of my favorite games almost immediately. you know that childhood experience everyone shares of running around bom omb battlefield and peach's castle and literally nothing else in mario 64, but still loving it? that's how i was with postal 2. making people go boom and then pissing on them feels as good on a baseline as mario 64 movement. the many houses and hidden away goodies of paradise's suburbs are as tantalizing as the nooks and crannies of peach's castle. that's damn impressive. you know what else is damn impressive? the postal 2 deagle. it's WICKED. the worst of postal 2's arsenal still have satisfying feedback and excel at making things dead. when i close my eyes, i can see a thousand cops exploding into giblets at the hand of my holy rocket launcher. rock on, brother.
there are a few episodes of ziwe i irreversibly associate with playing thursday because my friend kept looping them in the background while i was streaming this game.
it's wild how zoomers (myself included) will talk about playing doom as a child with the same reverence as people twice their age. despite sharing that experience via the flash port of doom, i had never finished the game until this year (2024). you can read my many, many thoughts from my playthrough if you scroll down to "the ultimate doom".
perhaps the most impressive thing about doom is that 30+ years later, no fps has managed to make gore more satisfying than gibbing a marine with an explosive barrel.
if you haven't watched tim rogers' infamous 3 and 1/2 hour "review" of doom, you should know it's not some overhyped waste of time like these 5 hour content farm "video essays". tim is a great storyteller and a certified Funny Dude. anything i could want to say about doom has been said in this video.
the real problem with brutal doom isn't that the weapon feel is changed or that it ruined the doom community or that marcos is a prick, it's that the gore looks like dogshit.
i've accrued 500 lifetime hours in tf2 (the most i've spent in any game) and those have been spent watching something i loved fall apart. even if it isn't dead, it's a husk of what it was. i once said that i could put aside the problems i have with the bot-riddled and lopsided casual servers when i get into a good game with my friends. i can't anymore. shame, i was starting to get kinda good at medic.
my earliest memory of playing tf2 was this one time i was playing outside with my mom. she accidentally shot me in the eye at point blank range with one of those padded bow and arrow things, and so i got to eat ice cream and play video games once i stopped crying. wicked. i sat outside on the front porch with her shitty hp laptop and failed miserably to run sydney sleeper sniper. those were good times, back when getting into a map other than 2fort didn't take 10 minutes.
last i played the game i was running heavy weapons guy instead of medic and his minigun is sick. shit's loud as hell and i find it soooo satisfying to watch the damage tick above someone's head go up as they try to run away from my line of fire. heavy's voice barks are great too- CRY SOME MORE! ya know, now that i think about it, all the window dressing like the ui or the voice acting might be more integral to my love of tf2 than the gameplay. cuz let's be honest, the gameplay has been kind of muddied by 6000 ill-considered updates. there's a strong argument for tf2 classic as the best experience solely by nature of its simplicity. for now i'm gonna stick with tf1.5, i'll let you know how that goes.
the opening hour of this game is soooooo gooood. maybe the most atmospheric intro of any 90s shooter, which is damn impressive in the face of titles like unreal. chef's kiss. by the time i get to we've got hostiles i get too bored to keep playing.
to me, half life is screwing around in fan maps, deathmatch, and some mode i forget the name of where you have all the weapons and can run around this little hub area and look at the mobs like its a zoo. i don't think i have like ANY memories of the campaign. i'm not even sure i played any of it as a kid. to be honest, i still don't care much about it (even if i adore that slow tram ride and its ridiculously good ambient track). i've been trying to at least play most of the game recently and i keep getting too bored to push through. that's not to say i'm not enjoying it a little. it's a goldsrc shooter! i love goldsrc. it's one of the crunchiest engines featuring iconic sound effects (what's the DR of half life 1?) that are shared across its whole library, great lighting, and movement that's nearly impossible to ruin (it's derived from quake, after all). i find it all super cozy, especially at its original resolution and audio quality. thing is, i could just play 1.6 or tfc. maybe i should try sven coop.
in conclusion i think half life would be better if gordon ramsey had fat titties
can't place my finger on why i enjoy half life 2. it's a gimmicky ultra-linear shooter housing a mundane - albeit well-paced - story and flaccid combat. half the weapons feel like they're shooting compressed air instead of bullets. the gravity gun is pretty cool, but it gives way to some middling puzzles and as such i will still talk shit about it. water hazard and ravenholm were two of the only sections where i understood hl2's claim to fame as the greatest fps, and one of those does away with the guns entirely. that's why i'm so damn confused. why do i remember so fondly a shooter with lame shooter elements?
i'd pin viktor antonov as the secret sauce. this game wouldn't hit half as hard without his stunning art direction. city 17 is unforgettable. behind-the-scenes shit has enlightened us to how much work viktor put into the city's train station in particular, and my word, it SHOWS. can you think of a more iconic opening? never before has the line been split so clean between realism and suffocating dystopia. my big takeaway from writing these blurbs is that this series is really, really good at first chapters.
half life 2 brought upon the end of what i'd call the golden age of shooters (RIP 1997-2004). valve's design decisions, flaws and all, became scripture for every shooter from bioshock to borderlands. to be clear, i don't hate everything the game inspired. i love the darkness and... uh, the list goes on. and things have to change eventually. but like, something cool like dark athena could have become the standard instead. just sayin'.
i'd hesitate to call any pre-cod-gulag raven software shooter bad, but wolfenstein comes close at times. this game taught me some important things about my taste, such as: wow! i hate waypoints and turret sections! as a stupid child i played aobut a quarter of the way through the game, and i might have finished it if it weren't for the damn turret sections. i did like the magic nazi shit and there's still a bit of pre-hl2 post-quake shooter flavor in there for me to appreciate. and like, it's raven software. the guns look and sound nice as hell. i can't remember for the life of me what blascowicz looks like, but you can bet your ass i can remember how the recoil on the rifle feels.
when i want a balls-to-the-wall stupid classic fps... i go for postal 2. on the other hand, serious sam: tfe is a damn fine alternative. it's a challenging and often dickheaded divisive piece of shit and i like it. the meatheaded arena design, dev trolling and WIIIIIIDE OPEN SPAAAACEEEEES filled with way too many enemies never don't get me my fix. who needs combat corridors when i can circle strafe your way through the deserts of egypt? all the monster designs are great too. they've got a neversoftian tboy edge to them.
the movement in the game is nice and weighty, which is important when as much of your game is spent running away from enemies as is killing them. tfe also possesses one of the Great Shotguns of Gaming. it's not just the exaggerated doom-esque animation or the delightfully crunchy noises, it's also how pretty the damn thing is. this applies to either the double or single barrel shotgun. this is one of the ONLY classic shooters i know where even the inferior shotgun feels superb. the other one i can think of off the top of my head is doom 2, a game heralded for having one of the tightest loadouts ever. that should tell you something.
feel like i should mention the secrets in some capacity cuz i don't know any shooter with as many memorable ones. running all the way out into the sand dunes to a little oasis in the first level to find a weapon made me feel like an adventurer. and giant mechs try to kill me when i grab it? that's radical, man! the mummy has been one of my favorite movies for most of my life and going hella out of the way to find "booby-trapped" treasures in tfe made me feel like brendan fraser. hell yeah.
this wretched puddle of assets puked up from other shooters onto awful textures populated by boars that are kind of annoying to fight with your flash game-ass guns that look like they're lighting sparklers more than shooting bullets is one of my favorite multiplayer games. once you get over the fact that it's lazy dogshit, there are insane amounts of fun to be had. it pretty much shits all over the things i value in a great fps, but in its own way that's a greater tribute to the golden age of the classic shooter (post-quake pre-hl2) than any of this modern "retro fps" bullshit could be.
there's a weird culture on steam where janky messes such as this end up shooting to the top of the charts. it's a rare example of mainstream gaming embracing "shitty" games and that makes me happy.
i played this game with my little brother because i felt bad about exposing him to postal 2. thought i should give him something more kid-friendly. i hated it. as an enlightened and mature adult i know find uglycute 3d environments and goober enemies super appealing, in a late 90s for-kids software kind of way. i think there's some heart here, even if it might look like a shitpost initially. probably a more accurate to 90s computer games than half these glossy modern indie games that say they are.
for some reason, i was infatuated with the n64 as a kid. sure, i wasn't allowed to play the wii or xbox in my house (for good reason, trust me), but if i was going to emulate a console, why did i gravitate towards one of nintendo's biggest screwups? i may never know. i do know that playing goldeneye 007 in project64 using GOT DAMN NES CONTROLLERS with my brother's friend's dad is one of the only positive social experiences i can remember from the old neighborhood. we had the controllers mapped as follows
it might have been the most fun i had ever had playing a video game with someone. nowadays, i think goldeneye is just ok. barebones visuals with functional-at-best guns and slow movement. i have a soft spot for it because memories.
i played this as much as goldeneye. i didn't watch south park or anything, i just liked walking around the town and looking at the pretty cartoon graphics. ultimately inoffensive; i was surprised to find out how reviled it is by gamers.
this serves a stand-in for every match of call of duty i've ever played sitting at a couch at a boy's house. i'm not sure exactly how the multiplayer in this series is so fun- i find the campaigns kind of miserable- but eating chips and drinking mtn d*w on a couch while some dipshit kid who's played this game too much calls in an air strike is perhaps the defining experience of the 2010s gamer, even for someone like me, who wasn't aware of 90% of the ps3's library until this year. i figure it's less to do with the quality of the series itself and moreso that cod games (this one in particular) are middle-of-the-road, balanced shooters that most people own and can get behind. the only other game in the series that stands out to me is black ops iii. the slide move was fun. that's about it.
i don't seem to have nearly as much of a hard-on for zombies as everyone else who played this game growing up does.
gonna use this as a catch all for every game in the series.
every time i see some modern indie fps attempt to stylishly streamline the genre into a stream of kill-guy-dopamine, i remember team superhot and how they knocked it out of the park on their first try.
superhot was different. i knew i that from the first second of its trailer. it promised the perfect playground for some twisted matrix shit. the matrix was (still is) one of my favorite movies ever at the time. so when i finally got my hands on a copy, i did something i had never done before: play a game front to back. it lived up to my hype; every setpiece brought a little more to the table without ever limiting player expression. weapons rolled out just quickly enough to keep my attention and i could FEEL the game building up to its epic finale. when it hit? raw catharsis, man.
superhot forced me not only to re-evaluate the combat of everything i had played up to that point, but to reconsider how i approached video games as a whole. it was almost as personally important of an experience as postal 2 was.
when i heard they were making a sequel, i lost my got damn mind. mind control delete is little more than a level pack with the meta packaging standard for the series, but i say if it ain't broke, don't fix it. my whole family crowded around the tv to play, swapping the controller every time we'd die in a contest to see who could get the farthest. that's the only time my entire family has ever bonded over a video game. i totally recommend playing mcd "multiplayer" style for the best experience.
superhot vr is a weird entry, cuz a huge part of the series' appeal is lost without its replay function and badass slowmo jumping. that being said, it was the killer virtual reality app before half life: alyx and remains 100% necessary ownership for anyone with a headset. you couldn't get closer to being a john woo character unless you got a job as an assassin. the lack of typical replay value doesn't matter since there won't be anything else like this out there until someone decides to make a vr max payne.
growing up was realizing that i never loved left 4 dead 2, i just loved the friends i had played it with.
and the stupid mods.
HOLY SHIT IS THAT HATSUNE MI- *is disemboweled*
csgo was my first counter strike game. that's kinda weird, considering my constant goldsrc hard-on and how cool 1.6 looked in the old gaming magazines i read. i probably picked it up because of the twins at the christian school i used to go to. they were scrawny little freaks, couldn't have been bigger than 5 foot 80 pounds. they had terrible posture because they were, of course, hardcore gamers. the smaller, blonder one never talked above a whisper unless he was on csgo. the kids who played with him said he would scream slurs like a lunatic. i was only "friends" with the other brother, so i blame him for putting me on cs:go. it wasn't as bad five years ago, but like, c'mon. it's csgo.
i actually "sold" my steam account to the brother i was friends with for 30 dollars. i had at least 200 worth of games on there and i let that son of a bitch scam me! that's one of the last interactions i remember having with him. figures, we both left the school. total shitsack of a place. years later, i'd hit him back up on discord. he saw my pronouns, called me a tr*nny and blocked me. i realized i didn't like csgo soon after that.
when i was 13, my dad made a deal with me. he said that if i could get my excoriation disorder under control (meaning no 1+ hour episodes) for one month, he would buy a new console. my favorite youtubers at the time, videogamedunkey and nakeyjakey, had been giving a laptop-only kid like me a scoop on the big console games, the aaa heavy hitters, the exquisite exclusives. and it was clear that you had to be a got damn idiot to buy anything other than a ps4. uncharted 4, the last of us, knack, bloodborne, pt - THIS was the generation where playstation was finally going to kill off the inferior microsoft. so i let my dad know my preference and began my month of abstinence.
reports vary on exactly what happened from there on out, but all the stories have one fact in common: my dad bought an xbox one. i was devastated. one month of not harming myself (not as far as he knew, anyway) and the thanks i got was the follow-up to the console that had tortured me throughout childhood?! when i asked him why he had brought that thing home, he insisted that had i failed to keep my promise and that he was only buying a console because he wanted it. i still don't own a functioning playstation console, and that xbox one s now serves as my brother's daily fortnite dispenser.
what was this entry about? oh right, halo. i pulled an all-nighter playing via game pass on legendary with my friend max and it was so little fun that he swore off halo for the rest of his life. we don't talk anymore, but i haven't seen his xbox account boot up the game since.
the xbox 360 sucks total ass. it doesn't have a single exclusive worth talking about. and don't you dare point to my Favorite Third-Person Shooter, bullet witch, cuz that doesnt count. why? cuz i said so, bitch. that's a ps2 game now. deal with it. anyway, halo 3 is... fine. just fine. suck it, chandler.
a couple years ago, some friends and i were playing payday 2 in a call and got into an argument about whether or not cops were bad. this was sparked by someone saying that we should kill cops in real life like we did in payday 2. it was during this conversation that i realized how useless cops are. it's not just "the corrupt ones" or even a flawed system that "still keeps us safe". cops suck through and through. while i don't have it in my heart to hate people or advocate for killing, i am no longer ignorant enough to have any positive feelings towards the buggers. so i guess i can thank payday 2 for that.
starbreeze, i know you're never going to make anything as cool as the darkness or dark athena again. could you at least make a payday spinoff where the only thing i do is destroy designer merchandise in malls? i'd accept it as an apology for nightmare prison and the wasted time i spent playing this stupid game.
borderlands and i have about as complicated a relationship as anthony burch and his ex-wife. in other words, some part of me still loves it, but i haven't seen it in years and most of the time i try not to think about it.
does that make borderlands 2 my rebound girl?
i have 60ish hours in borderlands 2, all of which were spent creating fond-if-fuzzy memories with my little brother in co-op. yet the game is currently sitting at a 3/5 (ie i like it, don't love it) on my account. the problem is that 60% of borderlands 2 consists of sprinting and/or driving through empty deserts between shitty waypoints. you know how most shooters ever made get to the action within the first 15 minutes of gameplay? in borderlands 2, you can spend a solid 1-2 hours before you get into your first decent firefight. i feel more respect for my time from the worst people who dine at the restaurant i work in than i do playing this.
whenever brother and i do arrive at whatever waypoint to ambush a camp of psychos with elemental rifles, the game becomes - if only for a moment - more kickass than any other co-op game money can buy. i figure i was able to put up with painfully boring downtime for so many hours because i had the lil bro there to shoot the shit with. as usual, he is the mvp of my gaming experiences... or he was, at least. nowadays, he's a fortnite-obsessed antisocialite who convulses violently if you suggest that he do literally anything else.
impressively forgettable.
impressively frustrating.
when i first booted into doom 2016 on my xbox, i was beyond excited. everyone and their mother was heralding this game as a return to form for shooters. so i start the game and... oh. this is kind of hard to look at. the textures scream "unreal 4 built-in effects" and not in a good way. everything is weirdly shiny and i feel like i'm straining my eyes just look at the environments. maybe the contrast is too high? i try adjusting the video settings to no avail. whatever. i play on and- man, there is a lot of shit going on in these menus. the fact that i have to be text-tutorialized and waypointed in a doom game is pissing me off. still, i haven't gotten into the combat yet. i could still enjoy this game if the gunplay is fun. it's doom, after all! doom is the PREMIER demon killing series.
so i get to the first big combat room. the music ramps up. suddenly, i see demons scampering towards me from the side. i whip around, pull out the (shiny) shotgun, prepare to fire, and...
muzzle flash. shit sound effect. i feel nothing. three levels later, i uninstall the game.
doom 2016 is what happens when you wrap seran wrap around the messy grit of doom so that it won't get your hands dirty. doom 2016 is a quick-dry high-gloss finish on doom 1's loadout crammed into into a bethesdian pseudo-rpg weapon upgrade system that makes my skin crawl. doom 2016 is a careless mashing together of doom 1 and 3 like action figures, by a team with next to no experience making a classic fps. what the fuck is a glory kill? why am i constantly encouraged with garish flashing lights to sacrifice my speed and control for a cutscene where doom guy punches a demon (scored, of course, by this games WEAK audio feedback)? why are maps so damn messy? did i just go out of my way for 5 minutes to find a shitty collectible? why are all the weapon feedback noises so heavy on bass and treble with almost no mid? why are the enemies so non-aggressive? who is responsible for this disturbed-esque (perjorative) art direction? who the fuck is mick gordon and why does anyone enjoy his djenty, overproduced, asinine "industrial" metal? i would rather have to listen to the worst disturbed song on loop for the entire game than put up with another second of mick's guitar taking a HaRdCoRe fat shit in my eardrum.
if this is doom, then i guess the Nerf N-Strike Mega Elite DoubleBreach Blaster at my local target is doom too. no, this is a washed-up id software sci-fi shooter wearing the skin of doom. take your stupid little shotgun rocket mods or whatever and get the hell out of here.
if i had to explain to a borderlands fan why people despise the series, i'd boot up the pre-sequel and walk away. "handsome jack origin story" is an idea so incredibly stupid that i'm 100% randy pitchford came up with it. who wanted this? no, seriously. who wanted this? whichever one of you pieces of shit is responsible better speak up or i will find you myself.
with the exception of mick gordon's soulless metal (which i recommend turning all the way down in the settings), doom eternal is an improvement on everything from doom 2016. just listen to these magnificent gun noises! the shotgun is the most shotgun a shotgun has ever sounded, the heavy cannon uses my ear like a speed bag, and you know what? this might be the best sounding arsenal of guns i've ever heard. i'm practically drooling. you might point out that sound direction is very similar in both games. i think it's eternal's execution that's worlds apart. the combat has gotten a massive upgrade too, thanks to the gnarly new grapple hook and doom blade. i'm at little irritated with some aspects of eternal's combat in retrospect, as it has bled into nearly every new retro fps in much the same way half life 2 bled into every got damn shooter. however, in the context of 2016 vs eternal, the reworked combat is damn impressive. smooth, dynamic, and simply doom-like. glory kills make a little more sense when i can pop off a shotgun blast while grappling to a distant bastard and snap to him with the glory kill the second i'm in range. they're nearly as quick and intuitive as firing a gun. perhaps the most important improvements are in visibility and environmental design. the new maps are quite atmospheric, as well easy to navigate, and the game isn't ugly as sin (still hate the nu doom aesthetic though). even the story's a good time! everything id could have done to sell me on their version of doom has been done. i'm just gonna say it: THIS is what i call a doom game.
or at least, it would be, if it didn't require me to use 90 gigs of my ssd and a heap of invasive bethesda bullshit to play. where's john carmack when you need him? anyway, i hope the devs are proud of themselves. they've made fps history as the first id team in 23 years to make a proper doom sequel. and i hope the higher-ups at bethesda die horribly or are at least blacklisted for their embarrassing handling of every release they have ever published.
my review of ed was, in my opinion, the first good thing i ever wrote about video games. i've been trying to write game ""reviews"" since i was like 11 and while i still haven't written anything great, i feel proud that i'm writing things that are at least readable and interesting now.
as much as i praise postal 2, i have to admit that it was sort of shit on release. luckily, we had the awip team and whatever edgy bastard that made eternal damnation come along and make some improvements (most notably weapons) that would later be added to the base game. engine-destroying gore was NOT one of these improvements, and interacting with this piece of weird (read: fucking awesome) misogynist fanfiction is the only way to see it in action. shotgunning zombies has never felt quite this laggygood.
go read the review if you want my complete thoughts, this museum isn't meant to be the end-all-be-all for my opinions on the games.
post void is currently tied with putting together this website as the "activity i enjoy that's most likely to give me an rsi in my pinkie finger". shift keys truly are a menace upon society.
gilw (gosh i love wallspamming)
joining a hardcore server full of portuguese people with too many sound effects is some of the only fun to be had in a game for people this terminally online. even my beloved baby, tf2, is nothing but frustrating nowadays. i can play 1.6 at no detriment to my mental health and that achievement alone easily makes this the best competitive shooter on the market. plus, i LOVE the ak-47. a top 10 video game gun for sure, boosted by the crispy chonk of the goldsrc engine. more people ought to have made non-half-life shooters in it.
sorry, everybody: i think f.e.a.r. is just ok. those here only for the admmitedly wonderfun slow-mo shotgunning (listen to that shell hit the ground, holy hell) and the fancy enemy ai are gonna have a good time. i find f.e.a.r. underwhelming in nearly every other facet.
my main gripe is the combo of flaccid storytelling with shallow and repetitive environments. i cannot remember a single facet of f.e.a.r.'s plot, despite how often the game insists of dragging down the pacing to convey it. i had to look the details up just to write this entry. it's soooo mundane and the weak ambience throughout the every level only makes it more painful. the finale is the worst offender. i should be eating paxton and alma's relationship up. alma could have been one of history's great traumagirls (please give me a darkness-esque game starring her). in practice, i found it hard to even pay attention when i wasn't being forced to play target practice with the ghosts. everything feels rushed, rushed, rushed.
thing is, i don't think f.e.a.r. was supposed to be monolith's definitive statement for this series. that rushed energy to everything other than the legendary combat makes sense if you view the game as a tech demo or a pilot episode with the bones of an interesting world and spooks. the problem is that the series that followed got screwed over by publisher bullshit. regardless, i'm going to try f.e.a.r. 2 and see if my hypothesis is right. perhaps it will be the full experience i'm looking for.
"who did you expect at the end of all this? God? the devil? no, it's just..."
"...ME."
i'll have you know that this "blood quake sandwich but with less meat and extra mayonnaise" was prep-cooked by the Gordon Ramsay of Modern FPS Design, david syzmanski. put some respect on the damn name
...ok, ok, i'll admit it: this game is hardly perfect. episode one is a slogging, tedious mess by a then-amateur level designer. everything is functional, sure, but it's never fun. episodes two and three though? impossibly rare examples of a retro fps improving on the formula of the classics. they're easily the best things to come out of new blood interactive. the unnecessary-but-cool touches (item kills, crossbow jumping, backflipping, pretty colored lighting) are free to shine with the brilliance of 1000 suns once the map design matures. the art direction is awesome too, largely due to david's penchant for horror. the man's a genius and one of the best modern fps designers, and one of very few to fulfill the retro fps mission statement: to stylishly mashup old titles on modern hardware with the focused vision of an indie team given the advantage of 20 years of hindsight. the only thing it's missing is gianni matragrano (though i'd argue stephen weyte makes up for it).
i'd be tempted to think the scene peaked here if a much, much greater retro fps hadn't released later. then again, i'd be an idiot to dismiss a level as masterful as homecoming. i think i'll keep an eye out for whatever this sizzlemanky guy releases in the future.
FOR ONE MUST ALWAYS REIGN BENEATH...
feel weird including cruelty squad in this museum. it's less of an fps proper and more of a first-person action game or 3d platformer akin to mirror's edge or thief or some shit. i guess you could argue that about a number of fps imsims but those lay their priorities in their combat (such as peripeteia), whereas combat feels like a means to an end in cruelty squad. am i crazy? maybe. i want you to play archon grid and tell me that feels like any fps level you've ever played
the hyperidealized triple-distilled megaspeed superfucker idealization of the zoomer retro fps. i feel about new blood how a24 haters feel about a24.
in any case, ultrakill is here to stay and i'm forced to reckon with its combination of doom eternal, devil may cry, and quake. i find that the gameplay elements aren't combined in any meaningful way. i figure i sound like one of those dumbass vaporwave detractors from like a decade ago when i say this, but i could go play devil may cry and enjoy myself even if i'm not strafe jump shotgun blasting people. i also prefer the 6th gen flavor of emo edgy bloodthirsty gaming over dillweed abenante's testosterone-poisoned nu-doom aesthetic
i sometimes wonder if i'm stupid. every person i know who has played ultrakill loves it with their whole guts (which this game can now rearrange, thanks to its official sex toy support). then again, the only reason i bought into the modern "retro fps" wave was david szymanski. if he had designed this maybe i'd like it more
FANS OF GLORIOUS JANK, COME ONE, COME ALL, TO THE SCENECORE ARENA SHOOTER TO END THEM ALL: Nightmare.
this game is held together with duct tape and elmer's glue in the same sense that a good fromsoft or super mario 64 are. nightmare is on its knees, begging you to pry it open and exploit every single one of its mechanics. the most defining of these is the "time freeze". unlike other shooters with time manipulation, this ability does not slow down time. it instead operates like the stasis from breath of the wild, allowing the player to spam bullets which will all hit the enemies at the same time upon deactivating the ability. combine this with the stacking knockback from every weapon and enemy death and you've got a recipe for madness. there's only one arena and a handful of enemy types and weapons. the game is giving you just enough resources to finagle a high score out of this brutal dopamine machine. who knew all you needed to balance an unfair video game was to make every aspect of it broken?
this game is so ludicrously awesome and dedicated to The Bit (i assume the terrible mouselook and janky physics are intentional) that i'd feel bad for calling it a "throwback fps" or "boomshoot" or whatever. so i won't. it's not one. what it is is an arcade arena shooter with a visual style that destroys worlds, a strong contender for the most aggressively late 2000s video game soundtrack, and a 5 star experience. play it for 5 minutes, play it for 5 hours. i don't care. just play it.
as a final note, the character on the main menu never appears in-game. she is adorable and i love her
man the more i think about half life 2, the more i realize that its THE premier male fantasy simulator. fitting considering that it's often referred to as the best video game of all time by ignheads. this episode basically consists of bad things happening to alyx, you help her, she thanks you profusely, rinse wash repeat. despite supposedly being an example of a "strong female character", that sentiment and the gameplay are at odds with each other by making her constantly need help from the player. and when you do something good, she's like "wow! you're so amazing! you're so heroic! can i blow you?" it's lame. thank God they made half life alyx.
about 90% of this dlc is spent in combat gauntlets, or, in other words, the absolute worst parts of half life 2. at least this garbage is only a few hours long.
some real 5 star standing ovation type shit. alyx acts like a character rather than fantasy fulfillment, all of the combat setpieces are fun and brisk, the vistas are breath-taking even by modern standards- i've yet to play infra, but it's hard to imagine how one could top this scenery in source engine- and the devs finally realized that we don't like hl2 shooting unless its the gravity gun or an explosive or both. and i'm happy to say that i felt compelled by the story where i hadn't before! half-life 2 had a lot in the way of imposing environments and atmospheres, as well as some entertaining character interactions, yet i cannot remember a single story beat. i didn't like episode one, much less what little plot it has. here, i can finally understand the hype for half life 3. as someone who's been playing half-life 2 pretty much since they were allowed to be playing video games, i got emotional seeing the ending after all these years. i wouldn't say i'm particularly attached to the characters, but i am attached to this world. and though this isn't the end, it was a bittersweet goodbye nonetheless. mostly bitter. voice acting is too good so now i'm sad cuz its like i watched real people die
with all that said, prepare for unforeseen consequences. (consequences include buying half life alyx at full price)
oh also THEY BROUGHT BACK THE MICROWAVE CASSEROLE THAT MADE ME SO HAPPY :DDDD
retconning postal iii and then releasing this massive second campaign, which bestowed upon us everything from weather effects to COWBOY ROLEPLAY FEAT. THE TERMINATOR 2 SHOTGUN was one of the boldest comebacks since jesus christ rose from the dead. paradise lost is as much an apology as it is the swan song of my favorite fps developerโ . no matter how much i may adore the first campaign, i gotta admit that saturday and sunday suck. mad cow mike j is one of the lamest "shoot it until it dies"-type fps bosses. pl opens with a hysterical first day and only improves from there, culminating in insane shit like the ninja wife boss fight. all killer no filler.
why are you still reading this? did i really need to say anything other than the cowboy thing to get you to go out and buy this game? go watch the trailer if you need convincing, it sells itself better than i ever could.
โ : my favorite developer in general is cavia.
THIS EXHIBIT COMING SOON (i want to replay the game before i make any bold claims, because i will be making bold claims in the vein of "this is the best throwback fps")
it's unsurprising that the bethesoid doom sequels disappointed my purist ass, but doom ii was the same team, hot off the heels of a masterpiece and ready to make their big, sexy sequel. more guns, more enemies, more crazy level design shit because everybody was already down with doom. this is going to RUL-
sweet Lord it's all sandy peterson and american mcgee levels.
listen, i 100% respect he hell out of these two crazy bastards. american mcgee is one of the coolest creatives to ever grace the games industry. but there's a difference between mapping a level that's out there and wild and different and mapping a level that's fun to play. hell beneath was cool because it was a wild troll level in a fairly restrained game. doom ii consists solely of american mcgee psychotic episodes and sandy peterson puzzle levels. it's EXHAUSTING. i played this game over xbox live with a friend a while back, and we hit brick wall after brick wall until it wasn't fun anymore. a big factor in the longevity of doom 1 is that it works on practically anything on both a technical and playability level. i can't say that much about doom 2; use mouselook or pay the price.
i'm gonna come out and say it: i think the super shotgun is overhyped. genre-defining in the same way the original doom shotgun was? sure. a noticeable improvement over the original? no! the original doom shotgun was a beautiful machine, calculated to be exactly as powerful as it should be. the super shotgun wonks the game balance. i'll double back and say that i respect how little they stuck to the tight balance of doom 1. it's a miracle that 2 "works" at all - but it barely works half the time, and its only as good as the original in its best moments. newflash, id: you didn't make doom better. you just made it bigger.
halo: ce and doom ii should have a fight to the death to see which overrated fps has worse level layouts.
maybe the best entry in the postal series when you don't have some asshole screaming at you about TEH EARLY ACCESS WUZ BAAAD AND IT JANK AND CRINGE. yeah, i'd like to see your indie studio pull off an open world shooter. i'm not saying it's flawless or anything, but... i mean, it's getting there.
so little of this game is spent first-person shooting that i'm not sure it actually counts as an fps. this is great, because the shooting is dogshit and everything else is awesome.
there's a glaring gap in the coverage of this museum spanning the late 2000s. thing is, i grew up with xbox 360 trash bad enough to make me write off the 7th gen. the writings of chandler and thorhighheels have since turned my opinion around... though a bit of vitriol still lingers for the fpses in particular. my favorites are barely 3 stars. "but heather!" you scream stupidly. "the darkness is in your 5 stars!". well, i was setting up an exception for dramatic effect and you ruined it. jackass.
if you are even remotely on the fence about playing this, i want you to go watch the opening cutscene. raw magic. damn thing sold me instantly, though i wouldn't end up sitting down to play the game until a couple months later. i came down with a rather nasty illness called phariyongcongjungtosvitis or something and the darkness was the PERFECT pick for a sick game. it's slow, wispy, and smoky... real quiet too, if you play with the music off by accident. which i did. for the entire game. who cares, the soundtrack's lame anyway.
i already wrote a pretty in-depth review about all the cool aesthetic and story shit, so i'm gonna write about the shooting here. it's great! not ravensoft great, but all the guns look pretty and make nice sounds. i also love the pinpoint aiming reticle and if you complain about it, yousa bitch. the real star of the show, however, is the mike patton growing out of your back. don't feel like wrestling analog sticks to hit a guy in the head? enter Mike Patton Mode and bite his dick off. it's clunkier and less flashy than the darkness ii's ability system, but honestly? this whole game is slower and less snappy/dopamine-y than the darkness ii, and i prefer it that way. i won't play the sequel even if you ask nicely.
Like Quake, But Stupidโข
chasm is strikingly standard - which is exactly what i like about it. your weapons include the shotgun - super shotgun - chain gun - projectile weapon - rocket launcher - bfg combo that doom ii popularized. everything feels. looks, and sounds nice and responsive (if unexceptional). as expected, you use em to mow down jobbers and hunks in a hunt for keys. you could call this game "generic", though it feels like a passion project by a bunch of fps fans rather than a cynical cash-in.
the personality of these avid fans shines most in the silly level design and dismemberment. chasm's 5ish hours will be spent turning a corner and walking directly into some kind of ambush. get out of the way, fight off the troublemaker(s), rinse wash repeat. it reminds me a bit of the meatheadedness of serious sam: tfe or the meanest moments of quake. so hold s a lot and be prepared for a monster closet if you see an item. one of the most common foes in episode 2 deals 40 damage in one hit and takes 4-5 shotgun blasts to kill! the dismemberment helps out with heavier enemies like that. it's a lot easier to focus on landing your shots when you're not dodging attacks, so blast off a limb or two off to limit your enemy's movesets. oh, and the way enemies change up their strategies to account for missing body parts is so sick. the game also keeps it fresh with new baddies and settings every few levels, like a colorful taste test of different classic shooters. derivative though it may be, it's never stale. my favorite enemies are the jesters in the middle ages, who dismember real easily and have super silly death animations. awesome.
my favorite level is e3m1. the slow movement, tight corridors, and lack of verticality that made the previous episode so tense are re-contextualized as cozy in this quaint little village. after murderkilling everything, i took time to drink in the lantern-lit libraries and shanty shacks. i find chasm rather pretty in a crusty dos kind of way. the BEST kind of way.
sometimes i just wanna shoot bad guys with a nice shotgun in some diverse n cozy levels. chasm: the rift does the trick more than f.e.a.r. or any modern fps imitating these old titles ever could. i might prefer this to dusk. it's that AUTHENTIC shit: flat levels at a low resolution with unstable performance and janky mouselook. the gamefeel is more than i'd expect from an early quake clone too. man, i need to finish quake. it'll definitely end up in my 5 stars. for now, this clone's pretty cool.
update: i got a 65% off discount code for the chasm remaster in my email, so i bit the line and tried it out. not a fan! it feels "off" even by the standard of a port of an fps to a modern engine a la nightdive. there's no fun options either. oh well.
this is the worst pistol in any fps. why hasn't anyone mentioned this? the terrible animation desyncs from the audio after the initial shot, some shots are missing feedback, the whole screen flashes white every time you fire, there's a shitty 1px wide white bullet trail (is that the bullet? is this a projectile weapon instead of hitscan?!), the casings fly up in your face real distracting-like... how did this happen?
oh. this was developed by probe entertainment. that explains
brutal doom for the video essay generation well, color me impressed. this is actually cool!
the house of leaves inspiration is blatant enough as to call it an adaptation. there's no point in dissecting it, but i'd like to use it to explain why my house doesn't suffer from the pitfalls you might expect. remember how house of leaves has a bunch of hidden shit inside of it that redditors have been talking to death for years? well, you don't need it to enjoy the book. it's an addendum for people who wanna go crazy over that kind of stuff. my house is the same way with its metahorror. the creepypasta elements are contained in the downloadable journal rather than the game itself. the "deeply emotional" (read: tactless and generic internet psychological horror) themes fans don't shut up about are contained in secret content that you won't find unless you're looking for it. in that case, why *should* you play the wad?
cuz it's a damn good time! if you liked lost in vivo's combat-heavy take on otherworld from silent hill, you'll like my house. the maps are super pretty and fun to explore. there are cool new enemies too! if nothing else, play it to see a modern action horror doom map with strong atmosphere. it only took me 30 minutes and i'd recommend it even if you already know the "twists".
SOLD
played via crispy doom (all enhancements disabled, i only prefer it to chocolate doom for the fluidsynth support)
THE KEYBOARD-ONLY RUN (UV, E1-3)
well, i lied about not being stupid. about 20 minutes ago i beat doom for the first time, keyboard only, on ultraviolence with no mid-level saves (alright i cheated and used one midlevel save in e2m6). a number of levels were completed in a locked bathroom with the lights off.
my biggest concern for episodes 2 and 3 was that sandy peterson created all 20 levels in 10 weeks. if my doom ii entry didn't make it clear, i loathe his levels in that game. i couldn't imagine what lazy bullshit he'd be making in such a short timeframe. so i'm utterly shocked to say that i think the latter two episodes are awesome. sure, neither is as consistent as romero's episode (e2m1 is DOGSHIT), but slough of despair and mt. erebus are my favorite maps period. i even like fortress of mystery!
this, of course, raises a question: if sandy peterson is a great level designer, in his best moments capable of keeping up with john romero... HOW DID HE FUCK UP DOOM II SO BADLY? if his maps had sucked i could have blown him off entirely! finding out he's capable is somehow worse than suffering through more shitty levels would have been. jeez, man!
on topics other than my obsession with a zoologist and tabletop rpg designer turned id team member, i want to recommend y'all try playing doom the same way i did. ultra-violence is a really special experience cuz you need to know the combat mechanics in and out to win. compare that to hurt me plenty where one can blaze through nearly the entire game spamming the shotgun. berserk always seemed like a pointless powerup to me, but on this playthrough i used my punches more than my fucking chaingun. the lack of mid-level saves also enhanced the experience; i can now say i'm intimately familiar with every map and the secrets contained within because i had to be. as for the keyboard controls, they're just plain fun and satisfying.
infinite ink has been splorched over doom's gamefeel, and rightfully so! it's flawless. you know what i haven't heard enough about? how awesome the whole thing looks. i've been listening to a shit ton of megadeth lately (the only thrash band i like) thanks to chandler and it's given me a new appreciation for doom's amazing style. people tend to critique sandy peterson's levels for being ugly, but like... it's hell. the baron's lair in e2m4 is the perfect example of his distinct garishness in action. i dig it. the body horror wall right before the exit door is great too. i think "great" describes that whole level, the psychotic barrage of barons included.
anyway, i've got a kb+m playthrough to finish before i put this entry to rest. i'm not playing sigil on ultraviolence, so i'll be running all episodes on hurt me plenty for consistency.
THE KB+M RUN (HMP, E1-4)
hurt me plenty is laughably easy for the first 3 episodes. to make up for this, i decided to fist-only as much of episode 3 as i could (ie. everything except dis, which i pistol-started). it wasn't very hard until limbo. i hate limbo! it's one of very few doom levels i'd call shit. onto episode 4 we go.
the difficulty of e4m1, hell beneath, has been hyped to death and back. i'm gonna pin that on a sort of dark souls syndrome; it seems impossible when you start because you haven't "learned" it yet. once you know the tricks it's easier than, say, fist-only limbo (why did i think that was a good idea). i almost considered turning the difficulty up to ultra-violence!
and then perfect hatred hit.
perfect hatred is mean. perfect hatred is ugly. perfect hatred is
๐๐๐๐๐๐;
most of all, perfect hatred is the best doom level. a critic may view a late-night crunch as a frantic attempt to make up for procrastination, but any artist knows that magical moment when creativity strikes late at night and you won't - no, can't sleep until you're finished with whatever masterpiece struck you. i see john romero's manic midnight-oil genius in this sadistic enemy gauntlet of a speed level.
i think those first two puzzle-box-esque levels embody everything that makes doom downright beautiful. so believe me when i tell you that i want to love the rest of the episode as much. the problem is that outside of the visually imposing e2m6, thy flesh consumed is boring, forgettable, and mostly easy. the final level managed to somehow make the spiderdemon easier. i was hoping i'd have a better note to leave off on, some sentiment about what is otherwise one of the best experiences i've had in a shooter. nah. thy flesh consumed burned me out. thank God for sigil.
my final episode ranking: 3>1>2>4
john romero pulls up to this shit like a maestro. john romero pulls up to this shit like doom's his dimepiece and it's club night. john romero pulls up to this shit like he's been touched by the hand of God. anybody - and i mean anybody - who says that sigil isn't the best episode of doom is lying through their filthy fucking teeth. i want anyone who disagrees with me to show me a smarter doom level than abaddon's void*.
the audacity of this romero, to map his enemy encounters and ammo stashes (and light sources!) like a survival horror title. either you grind out those secrets or you play sigil like it's resident evil with no inventory. enemy prioritization here is more important in half these levels than perfect hatred on ultraviolence. even with the secrets (which i found about half of) i was forced to run away from many enemies, rather than spill their guts. those baron of hell placements are perfect hatred pure evil. glorious, glorious Evil.
speaking of glorious, the music. Lord have mercy on my soul, these are the most killerest of tunes! i'm of course talking about the james paddock soundtrack that comes with the freeware version as filtered through my lovely timbres of heaven 3.4 soundfont. the buckethead soundtrack is... fine. i will take james' absolute mastery of midi rock over it any day. there is no truer joy than knowing that sigil's soundtrack sounds good through opl3 emulation. doom's soundtrack has always sounded like dogwater in opl3, but james... he gets it. he really gets it. if you won't play the wad, at least do yourself the favor of listening to its soundtrack.
it only took 25 years, but the truly ultimate doom episode that thy flesh consumed was promised to be is here. my hat is off and my knees are bruised. john romero has made me his bitch.
* = (i might prefer slough of despair, though i don't respect it nearly as much. )
no, i was right. half-life is boring.
