HEATHER'S FPS MUSEUM 2

"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, melee combat supremacy, hangoutable spaces, ugly graphics, civvie11, controlled tedium, sassy protagonists, unsettling ambience, mindless self indulgence (the concept and the band), and, of course, classic first person shooters. 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 of my destiny, to be a piece of shit forever...

i barely touched the game outside of monday and yet i called it one of my favorites almost immediately. making people go boom and then pissing on them feels as intuitive on a baseline as mario 64's movement. the many houses and hidden away goodies of paradise's suburbs are as tantalizing and alive as the nooks and crannies of majora's mask. 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 snoozefest. 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 it's "not doom" 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 of 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 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.

2 year update: i've since re-installed the game and there's... no bots. like at all. i've made 2 incredible friends running casual once a week or so and met many more wonderful weirdos. this is the most i've ever loved tf2. thanks, everyone.

for all the mythology of city 17 (whose concept art i adore as much as anyone else), nothing puts you in your place and invokes the fragility of our perception world as well as half life 1's opening. the slow tram crawl, with its lavishly rendered utilitarian architecture. the npcs busyboding about the black mesa lab. what tension one might attribute to the oncoming tragedy reads more to me as the depression of life spent boxed in a sterile lab. chef's kiss. valve's greatest achievement. by the time i get to we've got hostiles i get too bored to keep playing.

outside of that, 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 love the aesthetics of 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). still not enough to make me love this campaign. i feel that it is too invested in trying to evoke cinema and not enough with its own medium. the opening does a brilliant job of interacting with the player by forcing you to be patient and engage with the meniality of the lab via timed obstacles and giving you a lot of rooms to just fuck around in. then, you receive items and the laboratory receives changes in geometry. you're now moving through and interacting with the environment in different ways. that's fucking great storytelling, no dialogue or setpieces or cinematic framings required. that's what i wish half life was all the way through.

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 AT ALL. it's a gimmicky ultra-linear shooter housing a mundane - albeit well-paced - story, flaccid combat, and very little interesting ludonarratively past the halfway point. 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 even a little fondly a shooter i talk so much shit about?

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 iconic. 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. 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 good at first chapters.

i had love tara playing in the background for a portion of this playthrough i got stuck on on hard mode. GREAT album. would recommend.

i'd hesitate to call any pre-cod-gulag raven software shooter bad, but wolfenstein comes close at times. it taught me some important things about my taste. such as: wow! i hate waypoints! wow! i hate turret sections! as a stupid child i played about a quarter of the campaign, and i might have finished it if it weren't for the goddamn 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 a single mission for the life of me, 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. fuck combat corridors, i'm circle strafing through the desert BITCH. all the monster designs are great too. they've got a neversoftian tboy edge to them. [edit: what did i mean by this.]

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.

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 waaaaay 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 shooters. once you get over the fact that it's lazy dogshit, there is insane amounts of fun to be had.

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 more accurate to 90s computer games than half the glossy indie games that say they are.

i don't know why i was infatuated with the n64 as a kid. 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

• up - move forward
• left and right- turn
• down - look down
• b - reload
• a - fire
• select - switch weapon

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 looking at the snowy cartoon town. ultimately inoffensive; i was surprised to find out how reviled it is by gamers.

i have nothing to say about a series as utilitarian as call of duty. i will be playing modern warfare 4 when it comes out, because this is perhaps the most brazen piece of propaganda i've ever been subject to in the youtube advertisements. i could dissect these 30 seconds for 3 hours, but i'll save it for the eventual review.

when i, a rabid young matrix fan, downloaded a copy of superhot, i played a video game from front to back for the first time. the campaign's evolution from "clipfarm fps" to "shooting-based puzzler" demanded my attention and follow-throughedness. superhot's wrangling away of your expression as it doles out new abilities and reveals its authortarian narrative was one of the first times i was cognizant of mechanical storytelling in a video game. it forced me not only to re-evaluate the combat systems (and narrative implications therein) of everything i'd ever played, but shaped how i approached video games as a whole. this makes it at least as radical as postal 2s.

when i heard they were making a sequel, i GOT DAMN LOST IT. 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.

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*

it's a little weird that csgo was my first counterstrike, considering my aforementioned 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 feet, 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 the last interaction i remember having with him in real life. figures, we both left the school. total shitsack of a place. a few years ago i hit him back up and he called me a tranny lmfao

when i was like 13, videogamedunkey and nakeyjakey were the only way a laptop-only kid like me got The Scoop on the big console games, the aaa heavy hitters, the exquisite exclusives. and it was clear that you had to be a fuckin 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 struck up a deal with my dad involving some personal details a previous version of this museum openly spouted - weird! - and let him know my preference of console.

reports vary on exactly what happened from there on out, but all the stories have one devastating fact in common: my dad bought an xbox one. one month of rule-adiding (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 fulfill the deal and that he was only buying a console because he wanted it. 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,

a couple years ago, some friends and i were playing payday 2 in a call and got into an discussion about the ethics of cops. 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. 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 gta v lookin aesthetically barren repetitive game-awards-trailer-core piece of shit.

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 on my backloggd account. the problem is that 60% of borderlands 2 consists of sprinting and/or driving through ugly faux-cel-shaded deserts between waypoints. but whenever brother and i do arrive 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. little guy's got about as complicated a relationship with technology as i do. hope he figures it out.

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 REAL MANLY FISTFUCK 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 subversive way. my eyes kinda are kinda straining. 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 throwing me off. still, i haven't gotten into the combat yet. no need to make judgment calls before i've as much as fired a gun. it's doom, after all! doom is the PREMIER killfucker series.

so i step into 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 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. 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 sfx)? 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 egregiously scooped? why are the enemies so pathetic? who is responsible for this disturbed-esque (perjorative) art direction? who the fuck is mick gordon and why does anyone enjoy djent? 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 e-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% sure randy pitchford came up with it. who wanted this? no, seriously. who wanted this?

with the exception of mick gordon's soul-crushing djentcore (which singlehandedly justifies music sliders in game settings), doom eternal is an improvement on everything from doom 2016. just listen to these magnificent gun noises! this might be the most shotgun a shotgun has ever shotgun. i'm practically drooling. one 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. glory kills make a lot 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 was told 2016 would be.

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) ao3 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. dork.

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 (god i love wallspamming)

joining a portuguese hardcore server with too many sound effects and 20 billion blaring ak-47 shots is an unrivaled attack on the senses.

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 read the wikipedia synopsis 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. alma could have been one of history's great traumagirls (please give me a darkness-esque game starring her), but in practice, i found it hard to pay attention to much of anything 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 unfinished energy in 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 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 name

...ok, ok, i'll admit it: dusk is far from perfect. episode one in particular is a slogging, tedious mess by a then-amateur level designer. 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, very resident evil in the way it starts as a rustic horror environment and evolves into a more alien, cosmic kind. dusk joins the ranks of those that fulfill the retro fps ideal in my mind: a stylish mashup of old titles on modern hardware with the focused vision of an indie team given the advantage of 20 years of hindsight and accessibility features, while avoiding too much qol. the only thing 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 have to 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 the 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. the (admittedly gnarly) combat feels like a means to an end, even discouraged at times. 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 synthesized in a way that provides any meaningful inter-system interaction. it's a functional approach to mechanics design reminiscent of an arcade machine, minus the simplicity and format that makes an coinslot interesting. i feel like f*nt*no reviewing floral shoppe lol. 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).

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 many a fifth gen "hidden gem" is. nightmare is on its knees, begging you to pry it open and exploit every single one of its mechanics [edit: oh my god talk about choice wording]. the most defining of these is the "time freeze". unlike the payne-ian slow motion, this feature operates like the stasis from breath of the will. spam the everloving shit out of bullets and they'll 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 its brutal machinery. who knew all you needed to balance an unfair video game was to make every aspect of it broken?

nightmare is so ludicrously awesome and so barely functional in the same way many dos b-games 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. i could wax poetic about how it makes me FEEL and something something audhd queer themes but i think you should just play it. play it for 5 minutes, play it for 5 hours. i don't care. play it.

as a final note, the character on the main menu never appears in-game. she is adorable and i love her

this expansion's greatest contribution to half life 2 is letting the base game's shit ideological implications boil to the surface. here is the PREMIER piece of male power fantasy software; fitting considering that it's often referred to as the best video game of ever by ignheads. episode 1 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.

about 90% of this dlc is spent in combat gauntlets while npcs glaze you, or, in other words, the absolute worst parts of half life 2. i'd say "at least it's only a few hours long", but it coulda been like... 1 hour long.

some real 5 star standing ovation back on my shit type shit. alyx acts like a character rather than fantasy fulfillment, all of the combat setpieces are distinct and brisk, the vistas are breath-taking even by modern standards - it's hard to imagine how one could top this scenery in source engine - and the devs finally realized that hl2 shooting drags unless its the gravity gun or an explosive or both. i'm also happy to say that i felt compelled by the story where i hadn't before! for all the imposing architecture and environmental setpieces of the base campaign, i cannot recall a single story beat. it's here that i can finally understand the hype for half life 3. as someone who's been playing half-life 2 since they were allowed to be playing video games, i got emotional seeing the ending after all these years. and though this isn't the end, it was a bittersweet goodbye nonetheless. mostly bitter. the voice acting is too good so now i'm sad cuz its like i watched terrible things happen to real people.

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 GIGGLE :DDDD

retconning postal iii and then releasing this massive sequel, 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 developer†. 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. paradise lost 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.

†: my favorite developer in general is cavia.

wolfenstein 3d is, aesthetically, one of the best first person shooters ever created. its building blocks are simple, bold (color-wise and content-wise), a little garish, leaving the variety primarily to be evoked via raw level design. the way you interact with your environment is similarly simple, bold, and a little gruesome. the citadel is wolfenstein 3d if it relied on guro rather than nazis for shock value. it adds a skill tree and an unrelently oppressive atmosphere to the formula, counteracting wolf 3d's greatest downfall: repetition. if you can stomach a concept as YMMV as this, the citadel may very well be among the best shooters ever made.

sometime i'd like to dig into the brilliant encounter design, but i'll need a replay first.

picture this: id software, hot off the heels of their lucrative masterpiece, doom. they're revving up to make the biggest sexiest sequel ever made. more guns, more enemies, more crazy level design shit because everybody was already down with doom. they're flavor blasting the shit out of this thing this is going to RUL-

dear God it's all american mcgee levels.

listen, i 100% respect the hell out of mcgee (and peterson!). he's 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 such ballbreakers, and the downtime is sandy peterson puzzle levels. this is EXHAUSTING, and FOR WHAT!! 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 you can Play it On Everything. yeah man good luck trying to play doom ii without mouselook. well, i mean, some people played final doom on ps1. i'm probably gonna play final doom on ps1. that game's funny though and this one decidedly isn't.

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 well-oiled machine, whose calculated cooldown frame-pacing allowed for precise encounter design. the super shotgun wonks the SHIT out of balance. on one hand, i do respect how doom ii has NO respect for its forefathers balance. 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. ya 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. OWNED.

maybe the most impressive postal when you don't have some asshole screaming at you about TEH EARLY ACCESS WUZ BAAAD AND THE JANK AND THE CRINGE. yeah, i'd like to see your indie studio pull off an open world shooter. i need some of the internet denizens with tolerance for dated busted overambitious AA games to hop on this thing if they can tolerate a few eyerollers. the ps5 is the worst way to play this thing and yet it sported such incredible moments as a cop bursting into a restaurant i was chilling in, shooting one employee, and then sauntering back out. wonderful.

so little of the runtime 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 wonderful. you know how a lot of games are movies? this one's a tv show.

i've barely touched the console shooters of the aughts. 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 as if an insolent child. "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 ruins it anyway.

i already wrote a 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, both for its minimalism and how it coaxes you into using the mike patton growing out of your back. don't feel like wrestling analog sticks to hit a guy in the head? enter Creature Mode and bite his dick off. it's clunkier and less flashy than the darkness ii's ability system, but honestly? i haven't found an point where the clunkiness hasn't made it more interesting. otherwise we'd have another corridor shooter. yippee.

Like Quake, But Stupid™

chasm doesn't stand out - which is exactly what i like about it. your loadout is the doom ii standard. everything feels. looks, and sounds nice and responsive. as expected, you use em to mow down jobbers and hunks in a hunt for keys. it is defintionally generic, though it feels the product by a bunch of fps fans rather than something cynical.

the personality of these avid fans shines most in the 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, since it's a lot easier to focus on landing your shots when the approaching threat has no arms with which to shoot you. oh, and the way enemy animations change 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, bottlenecks, 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 and enjoy scenery while doing so. chasm: the rift does the trick. it's that AUTHENTIC shit: flat levels at a low resolution with unstable performance and janky mouselook. 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. probe entertainment. that explains

brutal doom for the video essay generation well, color me impressed. this is actually sick!

the house of leaves inspiration is blatant and largely uninteresting, 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 forumbugs 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 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 detailed, fun to explore, and full of cool new enemies. 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 (SHOUTOUT FLUIDSYNTH)

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 pull together in such a short timeframe. so i'm SHOCKED to say that i think the latter two episodes are awesome. 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 written 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 fixation 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. rightfully so! it's fuckin heavy. fuckin METAL. 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 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

𝐁𝐑𝐔𝐓𝐀𝐋

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 with 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.