PC Game Review: Duke - Nuclear Winter

GAME: Duke - Nuclear Winter
RELEASED: 12/30/1997
DEVELOPER: Simply Silly Software
PUBLISHER: WizardWorks
AVAILABLE ON: PC

Duke Nukem 3D had a few expansion packs released for it after its release in 1996. These were "Duke It Out in D.C", a capitol themed campaign through DC, "Duke Caribbean - Life's A Beach" which is more of a summer vacation themed pack. And then there is "Nuclear Winter", the mandatory Christmas themed pack which was the only one to be developed by Simply Silly Software. So while I am sitting here with my mulled wine and Christmas cookies, and having just finished my annual playthrough of this expansion, I figured I'd give my thoughts on it before the year is over. Consider this my Christmas review this year.

The story goes that the Feminist Elven Militia (... yes, you read that correctly) has brainwashed Santa and are being supported by the aliens in a plot to take over the world. This brings up a fair amount of questions... Like why is there a Feminist Elven Militia, why are they taking over the world, and how does this stop Christmas from happening? In either case, Duke has to stop the feminazi elves, evil snowmen and aliens, get Santa back to normal and save Christmas. 

One of the most interesting and surprisingly out of place things in this expansion is a partial recreation of E1M1 from Doom.

Your journey begins surprisingly by playing the first two levels from Episode 1 of Duke 3D in reverse with a bit of a Christmas twist. While it does feel a little lazy, the levels still feel different enough to be somewhat fun to play, especially since these are levels that most people have probably played a fair bit. After that you journey towards the north pole through numerous levels that all carry a pretty fitting winter theme, complete with snowy weather and icy water.

Your enemies consists of reskinned pigcops and aliens, though some new enemies make their appearance exclusively to this expansion pack. Evil snowmen replace the Assault Commanders, Pigcop tanks and also function as generic troops that throw snowballs at you. The flying ones also use Freezethrower projectiles in place of the rockets from the vanilla Assault Commanders. And of course, the Elven Feminist Militia (EFM for short which sounds like a radio station), which consists of all female elves that either use dual UZI's, shrinkers or shotguns. 

Elves have a tendency to drop gifts upon dying which Duke can unwrap to pick up extra goodies like health, armor and weapons.

The level design is mostly alright in my opinion. It might be because of how much I've played the expansion but I rarely feel lost and aside from the level designers having a bit too much of a fetish for cheap tripbomb traps, I find the levels pretty fun to play. I especially love the level set in Santa's workshop and a Christmas village at the North pole. The levels are full of cool little details like Santa's naughty list, boxes of presents for rich and poor kids, and even a launch facility for Santa's sleigh. I must admit playing this pack always brings a smile to my face the further I get into it. My only complaint if anything would be that it's probably a bit short. The fight with the evil Santa Clause feels like it always comes sooner than I expect, perhaps not helped by the fact the first two levels are just reskinned versions of older levels from Episode 1.

Santa's a bit of a dick in this expansion until you beat him.

Graphically I think Nuclear Winter holds up fine. It doesn't always impress a lot with the level design, which at times feels like it could easily be made in the Doom engine, but I still love the little "Christmas-fied" details like the reskinned enemies, Christmas trees, unique enemies and even singing carolers in the second level. The cutscenes all use pretty cheap looking CGI which even at the time looked kinda nasty and some of the sprite work is also not up to par with an official Duke Nukem product. But it gets the job done.

The game features a rather nice selection of MIDI renditions of classic Christmas music. If you've ever wanted to hear a crappy synth version of Sleigh Ride, Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer or Frosty The Snowman then you're in for a treat. Admittedly I have a bit of a soft spot for these renditions and there is something endearing about spilling a ton of Feminist Elf blood while a cheery Christmas tune plays in the background. Santa himself has a pretty crappy voice too which sounds like it was recorded by one of the dev team. Definitely no Jon St. Jon.

This ending screen almost perfectly sums up the entire experience. I especially love the cheap Arial text and the "where" typo.

All in all, Nuclear Winter doesn't really feel like an official expansion at all. It feels like a fan made mod pack that you'd download for free. But despite its somewhat amateur presentation, I do feel the people who made this game were legitimate fans of Duke Nukem and wanted to do a fitting Christmas themed expansion for the game. And while the jokes don't always land that well and stuff like the "Feminist Elven Militia" and kinda weird Mario parody almost makes me feel like the game was made by angry teenage fanboys who just kinda hate anything that isn't porn and guns, I genuinely have fun with Nuclear Winter every Christmas. Whether I play it on my PS Vita or on PC, I don't feel Christmas is complete without it. I definitely don't recommend spending a lot of money on it, but if you got it with the Megaton Edition while it was still being sold or got it for free through less legal means, I definitely recommend at least giving it a try.

Merry Christmas!

SCORE:

STORY: 5/10
GAMEPLAY: 8/10
GRAPHICS: 7/10
SOUND: 5/10
TOTAL SCORE: 7/10

PC Game Review: DOOM (25th Anniversary Review)

GAME: DOOM
RELEASED: 12/10/1993
DEVELOPER: id Software
PUBLISHER: id Software
AVAILABLE ON: PC + all major platforms

1993 was an amazing year. Norwegian electro-rock group Apoptygma Berzerk released their debut album “Soli Deo Gloria”, Intel shipped the first Pentium chips, Windows 3.11 was released and a little game from a small indie developer was released on the 10th of December. The developer was the Texas based “id Software”. The game was simply titled “Doom”.

Leading up to the date, id Software had already released Commander Keen, which became a pretty big hit for the company due to being one of the first PC sidescrollers that actually smoothly scrolled the screen similar to console games like Super Mario Bros. They had also released the grand-daddy of FPS’s, Wolfenstein 3D a mere year earlier. But Wolfenstein 3D would look a generation behind what was to come and the moment Doom released, the hype had already reached a fever pitch. Demos had been released to the press, screenshots had been shown. People already knew that what was to come would be groundbreaking.

The day it released, the server it was hosted on crashed. It became a game that would define the 90’s for gaming as Nirvana’s Nevermind album had for music. It would be installed on more PC’s than Microsoft Windows, prompting Bill Gates himself to acknowledge the game’s immense popularity in a Windows 95 press conference. And it was one of the games that prompted the ESRB rating system to be created. When Doom arrived in December of 1993, the world changed and nothing was ever the same again.

Doom was a groundbreaking title mostly for the technology behind it. Back in the days of the early 90’s, 3D was seen as the next step in gaming. A lot of developers seeked to create a 3D game that could not only deliver a fully 3-dimensional immersive experience, but also run very fast on consumer hardware of the time. Wolfenstein 3D had achieved this by utilizing a technology called raycasting, where it would only draw the parts of the world the player looked at and the rest of it would not be in memory. This had its limitations of course and id Software dropped this engine in favour of something that would make a far more believable 3D world, without actually being 3D.
Due to CPU’s of the time still not being powerful enough to actually draw a true 3D world fast enough, and dedicated GPU’s not having even been made available yet, certain tricks were employed to make the game seem 3D without it actually being it. In reality, what you see on the screen is not actually 3D, but rather a 2D plane that appears 3D. This is why you can’t look up or down in vanilla Doom, and why your aim generally doesn’t matter since if an enemy is in front of you, he’s still on the same plane even if he’s drawn higher up than you.

What this meant for computers at the time was that Doom could run on any standard 486 computer of the time, and it would generally run very fast, and still deliver a world that seemed like true 3D. For many, myself included, playing Doom was like witchcraft. It turned your PC into a dimension to another world. The marine, who was left intentionally nameless (though he’s been affectionately known as Doomguy by the fandom), was meant to be you. Doom transported you into a world of demons, shotguns and heavy metal music unlike any game before it. It sucked you in relentlessly in a mercyless grip. It’s not without reason Doom was banned at several workplaces due to how insanely immersive (and ADDICTIVE) it was at the time.

Doom’s story is simple, almost cliché to a point. Science experiments on Mars’ moons Phobos and Deimos have unintentionally opened a portal to hell itself, and hordes of demonic forces have made their way through these portals and either killed everyone or turned them into zombies. Everyone except you. As the lone survivor of the invasion, it is up to you to put an end to it, and shooting, punching, chainsawing, exploding, eviscerating and all around killing every single demon that stands in your way of doing so.

John Carmack has been quoted saying “stories in games are like stories in porn movies; they are nice but ultimately pointless.” And that mantra certainly holds true in Doom as the game is almost solely about its gameplay and the story takes a massive backseat to it, almost feeling trivial as the only story you get are a few text screens at the end of each episode.
Doom is split into 3 episodes, with a 4th episode added in the Ultimate Doom retail release (which is the basis for all future releases of the game on PC).

• Knee Deep In The Dead (shareware episode)
• Shores Of Hell
• Inferno
• Thy Flesh Consumed (Ultimate Doom)

The first 3 episodes are where the main story is and the fourth episode provides little more than some extra levels of extremely high difficulty compared to the main trilogy. It ties losely into the events of Doom 2 but otherwise was probably meant more as a bonus to those who bought the retail release.

To aid you in the battle for humanity, you have access to an arsenal that would serve as practically the prototype for all future games in the FPS genre. Your fists serve as your last resort, a mostly useless weapon, unless you get yourself a berzerk pack. Your starting gun, a pistol serve as a way of dispatching with the weakest of enemies and is only useful for dealing with zombies. You’ll soon acquire the most iconic weapon of the game and its main workhorse, the shotgun. A weapon that can efficiently deal with most of the game’s enemies and has a lot of ammo available for it.

The chaingun, which you first pick up in E1M2 if you gain access to a secret area, is the game’s main automatic weapon and can easily deal with large groups of enemies. And if you look closely in E1M3 you can pick up your very own rocket launcher. A weapon that can splatter most weaker enemies and deal reliable splash damage to larger enemies. Just make sure you don’t stand too close when firing it as the splash damage applies to you too.

Of course that is just the beginning. Episode 2 also gives you access to the Plasma Rifle, a powerful automatic rifle that can deal with most enemies quickly. And if you are clever you can even get access to the legendary BFG (Big Freakin’ Gun) 9000. A weapon with such devastating power that it can clear an entire room of enemies. In addition to these weapons you can also pick up a chainsaw, which becomes the default weapon on your number 1 key. It’s a more powerful melee weapon that is useful against some enemies that like to get up in your face such as the pinky demons and the spectres.

Guns aren’t the only thing helping you though. In addition you also have numerous powerups. Green armor will boost your armor to a maximum of 100%, while blue armor will boost it up to 200%. A blue sphere will boost your health to 200%. In addition you have the invisibility sphere, which turns you invisible. You have the berzerk pack which turns your fists into some of the deadliest CQC weapons in the entire game, able to splat weaker enemies in a single punch. The radiation suit which protects you against hazardous chemicals, including lava. And finally the invincibility powerup which makes you immune to all damage while it lasts.

The hordes of hell are definitely not to be trifled with and even if most of the enemies you fight are fairly weak, they do face you in large numbers. Especially if playing on the higher difficulties. Zombies come in two varieties. The normal pistol zombie and the more powerful shotgun sergeant. The shotgun sergeant in particular needs to be a priority in firefights as their shotgun can dish out some serious hitscan damage if you’re not careful. The imp is a fairly weak demon that flings fireballs at you and does claw attacks up close.

The pinky is a lumbering pink (hence the name) beast that likes to run up to your face and eat it off. Spectres are pinkies that are invisible. Barons of hell are towering demons that have more of a typical devil look with goat legs and a bloodcurdling roar. They fling plasma balls and can take quite a beating before going down and two of them serve as the episode 1 boss fight. Later on you’ll face the cacodemon, a floating monstrosity that belches plasma at you.

Boss fights are also a bit of an ordeal in Doom. At the end of episode 2 you’ll be face to face with the Cyberdemon, an enormous towering beast of cybernetics and flesh that fires rockets at you. Best dealt with if you have a BFG-9000 handy. The episode 3 boss is the Spider Mastermind, a frightening demon consisting of a brain with cybernetic spider legs that fires massive gatling guns at you. Both need to be dealt with using superior weaponry and fast skills.

Some of the demons, such as the aforementioned cacodemon, seem to be largely influenced by DND, which is no surprise given that the game started out as a DND campaign the team were playing.

For its time, Doom’s graphics were unparalleled in gaming. It marked the point where consoles could no longer deliver an experience that PC could, although attempts were certainly made given the game’s immense popularity at the time. A lot of it stemmed from the fact that the team put a lot of effort into making its world as realistic as possible with limited resources. Unlike today where everything in a game world is 3D, given the limitations of the engine most of the in-game assets are 2-dimensional sprites and textures. A lot of the textures were made from photo-references of various things. Even a fresh wound from one of the team members was used as a source for one of the textures.

The use of real-life objects also extended to the game’s weaponry and enemies. Several enemies, particularly bosses were modeled out of clay and then digitized into the game to give them a realistic look. And some of the weapons such as the chainsaw and shotgun were photographed from real life props. The shotgun was a toy shotgun they bought at Toys R Us and the chainsaw was borrowed from one of the team members. This immense attention to detail and dedication helped give the world a more realistic feel than most shooters of its time.

The graphical display became another essential part of Doom. Not only displaying all important information about your current state, it also shows a portrait of the helpless dude you’re playing as, and as your health drops the face will get bloodier and bloodier, similar to BJ’s face portrait in id’s previous game Wolfenstein 3D.

Sound-wise Doom has since become legendary for its use of stock library sound effects for pretty much all of its sounds. This is probably the reason a lot of the sounds from Doom can be heard in a multitude of other media, especially movies. Which often makes people assume the sound effects are taken from Doom, not realizing not a lot of sounds were made exclusively for Doom to begin with. Even its music is somewhat derivative, with a lot of it almost copying other works by hard rock bands such as Judas Priest and Metallica. Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing, given the music fits the game perfectly. It’s very hard to imagine Doom without its iconic soundtrack.
But there’s no doubt that from its legendary shotgun sound, to the haunting cries and roars of its demonic hordes, and its mostly silent but grunting protagonist, Doom’s soundscape is as memorable as it is perfectly fitting its setting. id Software did a lot with very little and it paid off. And with a decent sound card such as the Roland SoundCanvas or MT-32, the music sounds amazing.

It is hard to imagine a gaming world without Doom. Doom was a groundbreaking achievement not for how well it did 3D graphics, but how well it did them for machines at the time. And while it may seem outdated and not as shocking nowadays, it is important to remember that at the time, there simply was no other game like it. It marked the beginning of an era, the true beginning of the 90’s era of gaming. With Doom came the first person shooter genre. With Doom came multiplayer, modding, and a lot of the culture we now take for granted with first person shooters. It coined terms such as fragging, deathmatches and gibs (short for giblets).

The only sad thing about Doom is really what it could’ve been. Originally it was meant to have more RPG elements, and more of a story and be a more cinematic game. The team even envisioned hub worlds that one could travel back and forth in. Imagine how groundbreaking the game could’ve truly been if the team hadn’t decided to make a pure action game. But perhaps the world was not truly ready for that yet and needed Doom as a stepping stone. Because as fun as it is, Doom is also repetitive and very little new is added in each episode. And once you have completed it in its entirety, there’s not much incentive to revisit it beyond playing mods. It’s not a game that is fun to play for long periods given its lack of story and gameplay beyond simple shooting. But it’s definitely really good at what it set out to do.

And regardless, Doom is a true classic in every sense of the word. A game that despite showing its age will continue to age like wine. Or perhaps blood. Because Doom has served as the life blood for so many following games after it. Games that will be remembered for a long time in the future. And with Doom Eternal soon showing its face, there is certainly no reason to stop celebrating this game’s 25th anniversary any time soon!

SCORE

STORY: 8/10  
GAMEPLAY: 9/10  
GRAPHICS: 10/10  
SOUND: 10/10

FINAL SCORE: 9/10

PC Game Review: Fallout 76

GAME: Fallout 76
RELEASED: 11/14/2018
DEVELOPER: Bethesda Game Studios
PUBLISHER: Bethesda Softworks
AVAILABLE ON: PC, PS4, XBox One

Thanks to my friend Kira for helping out with screenshots.

My first memory of the Fallout franchise comes from when I was in junior high, around 2001 or so. My mother subscribed to this gaming mag that would come with free full versions every month. One month it came with this game called Fallout 2. I blame this game solely for me missing school several days in a row. I was obsessed with Fallout 2, so much it took up nearly all my free time. It was the game that introduced me to RPG’s as a whole, and to this day remains my favorite in the franchise.

Later on I played Fallout 3, and became hooked again. Another game I played almost religiously and the amount of hours I have in the game is probably only rivaled by the amount of hours I have in Deus Ex. Fallout New Vegas I dug as well but didn’t play as much. And of course, Fallout 4 I loved (make sure to check out my review of it in case you don’t believe me).

So my point is I’m no stranger to this franchise and it is one of my favorite franchises in gaming as a whole. And it’s probably the reason I was really on board with the idea of releasing a multiplayer Fallout game. In fact, me and my friends discussed it as we played through the aforementioned Fallout 3, New Vegas and 4. What if we had a big wasteland to explore together, could form different factions and all around go wild in a multiplayer Fallout game?

Well, it seems we weren’t alone in thinking this, because Bethesda has now released Fallout 76. And as you may already know, it is the first game in the franchise to be a multiplayer focused Fallout experience. You may also already know it hasn’t exactly delivered on that promise to any satisfying degree. But I’m not here to tell you what other people have said about the game.

Nothing like walking around in power armor and kicking ass.

A Different Fallout

Fallout 76 sets itself strictly apart from earlier entries by being the first Fallout game without any human NPC’s. In Fallout 76’s setting of West Virginia, which takes place shortly after the bomb fell, the vault dwellers are the only humans that exist. Which means the only humans you’ll run into are other players. The game is still full of quests to do and unlike what people will tell you, it does actually have a story. Just not one that is straight up told to you, you will have to read a lot of emails and listen to a fair bit of holotapes left behind by the people who died.

It takes a bit of an oldschool Bioshock approach to storytelling which to me feels a bit refreshing. While it does make the world feel really void of any friendly life, it does make it feel more like the humans you meet in the world aren’t just glorified quest-dispensers, they’re actual people. And you’re never left in a situation where you’re caught in a conversation with a NPC while something attacks you out of nowhere, which was common in Fallout 4.

The main story is basically just figuring out what the heck has happened to the world, and digging into the backstory of Appalachia, of which there is a fair bit. Most of the quests are related to sort of fixing the world and rebuilding it, trying to just sort of survive and make a new world out of the ruins. It’s a theme that fits the multiplayer approach the game is taking. A lot of focus is put on survival and exploring the world of Fallout 76.

Crafting is back in Fallout 76, with recipes found in the wild that you can use to cook up anything cool or tasty.

Exploration

And there is a lot of incentive to. Exploration rewards you with caps, recipes for your crafting benches, enemies to kill which grants you experience and holotapes, terminals and notes that offer a look into Appalachia’s past. And when you’re not exploring, you can build your own place and deck it out with paintings and other decorations. Unfortunately, the building leaves a lot to be desired as a lot of restrictions are put on you. For one you can’t really build anywhere you want, your camp must be plonked down in an area that is free of obstructions, nowhere near an established settlement and you’re given a strict budget that means you’re limited to how much you can build.

Compared to Fallout 4 where you could build entire settlements, it feels a lot more scaled down. It’s pretty much like comparing EA’s Sim City reboot to older Sim City games. You’re mostly left with an inferior experience that is fun, but could be better. It doesn’t feel like you are rebuilding the world as much as you are simply making your own little cabin in the woods. And the building itself can only be described as… finnicky. It’s very particular in how it allows you to place parts. It likes flat terrains in general and as you will soon find out, Appalachia is anything but flat. So finding a place to build can be a real challenge.

There’s also the issue of your camps disappearing after a while in-game. Your stuff is thankfully stored in your inventory when that happens, but you still have to find a new place to place your camp when it’s removed. Generally there are a lot of these minor annoyances that don’t really ruin the game but does make it feel like it could be a lot better.

Building houses is easy but a bit finnicky.

Crafting

Crafting is pretty much as easy as it was in Fallout 4. You gather junk and can even break these down into materials that you use for everything from crafting building materials and pieces of armor or weapons. You’ll need to find specific plans for some things if you want to craft them, which adds some further incentive to explore the game world. But overall it’s pretty simple. You can even craft your own ammo if needed and overall I find the crafting a lot more fun and deeper than it was in any previous game.

There is a photo mode where you can freely move the camera, add filters, adjust FOV and generally take really good screenshots. Even better, the game will display your screenshots on loading screens, which I wish more games would do. An even bigger bonus is that you can customize your appearance anywhere you want (as long as no enemies are nearby and such). Just having this option without having to pay a plastic surgeon to do it makes the game a lot of fun for me, since I love customizing my appearance a lot.

You can share items with other players in the world by dropping them on the ground. And thankfully items that are stored in containers are client-side so you don’t have to worry about people taking stuff in front of your nose too much. I did notice items that appear in the world itself are server side though. And someone taking it before you do will remove it from the world (for a while anyway). And in your camp you can store items in your own stash, which helps if you need a place to store stuff like junk or legendary items you don’t want to sell or scrap.

Fallout 76 features quite an additional and unique cast of enemies, some inspired by West Virgina folk lore.

Enemies and Weapons

Enemies range from the expected Super Mutants, ghouls, mole rats and radroaches to more unique enemy such as the game’s Scorched faction. Which are semi-ghouls who can wield guns and other weapons and pose more of a threat than regular ghouls. There are also things like Mothman, Scorchbeasts and Grafton Monsters that can seriously ruin your day if you come across them. So don’t piss them off. Ghouls and Scorched are fairly easy to deal with. But the more powerful monsters will require a lot more manpower to take down.

The weapons also feature a lot of series mainstays such as the 10mm pistol, pipe rifle, pipe pistol and hunting rifle, but also more unique melee weapons such as the fire axe and golf club. Playing a melee focused character in this game was a lot of fun for me because of all the different melee weapons. And you can customize your weapons as well, adding all kinds of new things like rocket engines to your sledgehammers.

If you ever wondered how you would look without power armor while wearing power armor, now you know… and I bet you wish you didn’t…

Glitches and Bugs

The game does have its fair share of glitches which range from mild annoyances to straight up hilarity. Sometimes the game will just give up, have a complete seizure and things will go horribly wrong. Such an experience was when a world I was in for some reason wouldn’t let me equip power armor. Instead it would disappear from my inventory and leave me a horribly disfigured glitchy mess until I rejoined the world. I think I must’ve gone through like 3 power armors this way since all of them disappeared. Luckily I’ve never had any crashes or seriously game-breaking bugs. So my experience has been fairly tame compared to what I’ve heard from other players.

I’ve also never had any particular issues with the game’s performance and it’s been fairly decent on my rig. Granted my PC is pretty powerful, but not more so than what other people are running. I’ve heard the game plays a lot worse on console though so take that into consideration. I’ve had some server issues of disconnecting, stuff that’s completely expectable in an online game, and not really that annoying.

The game might be the most colorful in the entire franchise, with a very beautiful autumn atmosphere to it. Beautiful godrays also help make the game look rather beautiful.

Graphics and Sound

Graphically I’ve heard people say the game is pretty ugly. I’m not sure if I agree with that as I honestly find the game rather beautiful. Especially if you compare it to earlier titles like Fallout 3 and even Fallout 4. The amount of color in the game is amazing. The game has a very appealing Skyrim-like feel to it with a lot of nature, hills and very dynamic terrain to explore.

Other Fallout games so far have felt kind of flat so Fallout 76 feels extremely refreshing to explore as a result. I very much have enjoyed all the vistas in the game so far and continue to sort of just get taken back with how good the game looks. That is when the lighting doesn’t glitch out or textures don’t load properly. Sometimes the game just doesn’t seem to know what to do with the lighting. Which is a shame as the game does look really good otherwise.

Sound-wise the game is pretty good as well. The soundtrack is amazing, with several great songs to listen to. The voice acting is generally good across the board as well. It’s a shame most of it is limited to holotapes and such, but it’s good enough to make me engaged in the game. Weapons sound pretty good as well and overall I can’t complain about the sound in the game.

Given Fallout 76 is an online game, you cannot wait or rest and skip time so you sleep in real time and heal up while doing so. Thankfully the game shows you in third person while you do so, much like many mods for Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 did.

Final Thoughts

As it stands, Fallout 76 is not the best game in the franchise. But is it the worst? I’m not really sure. The game is still awaiting private servers which may add more mod support. And patches keep fixing the worst issues of the game. But how much you’ll enjoy the game will definitely depend on your expectations. So if you expect a typical Fallout experience you may be pretty disappointed by Fallout 76.

But if you are willing to embrace it as a multiplayer Fallout game where you can bring some friends, share some Nuka Cola and explore a beautiful wasteland while listening to the Beach Boys, then I definitely recommend getting it. Definitely not at full price as it’s not worth $60, but definitely around $20-30 which is what the game seems to have dropped down to pretty quickly after launch. You can definitely go worse than Fallout 76.

SCORE
STORY: 6/10
GAMEPLAY: 7/10
GRAPHICS: 8/10
SOUND: 8/10

FINAL SCORE: 7/10

PC Game Review: Quake

GAME: Quake
RELEASED: 1996
DEVELOPER: id Software
PUBLISHER: GT Interactive (Original release), Bethesda
AVAILABLE ON: PC, Mac, Amiga, N64, Sega Saturn

Screenshots are from the DarkPlaces source port of Quake on PC.


Back in 1996, it cannot be understated what a massive influence id Software had been on the entire gaming landscape at that point. Their shareware hit Commander Keen had gotten some attention, sure. Wolfenstein 3D had become an even bigger shareware hit. But their 1993 game Doom was the game that truly made id Software into game development legends. Suddenly these guys were on top of their game. Doom was installed on more PC's than Microsoft Windows and by 1995 Bill Gates announced a Windows 95 specific version of Doom.

But Doom could only take them so far. Ever since the days of Commander Keen, the team had tossed around the idea of "The Fight For Justice", a VGA RPG side scroller featuring the hero Quake, wielding thunderbolts and a Ring of Regeneration. And while this original idea was scrapped, the team picked up the name Quake once again after finishing Doom. Quake would become the final masterpiece from id. And personally to me, Quake became the end of an era for id. After Quake, John Romero left the team, and id's games would become increasingly tech focused, to the point where Quake II did little to innovate over its predecessors on any gameplay or story level. Quake 3 forewent any story entirely and was purely a multiplayer game. In many ways, Quake was the final game in id's masterful classic FPS trilogy of Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake. This (un)holy trinity of shooters not only were excellent games in their own rights, but also provided tools and engines for other developers, with remnants of Quake's code possibly remaining in engines that are still used today. Quake was the game that tore id Software apart. The game that marked the end of their incredible streak. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honour to present to you, Quake.

The slipgate awaits...

An Introduction To Madness

The moment you start up Quake, you might be lured into thinking the game is another Doom. Industrial rock music, courtesy of Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor fills your earspace, pumping you full of adrenaline and getting you ready for the adventure ahead while a demo of gore and explosive weapons plays. Then... the music dies down, becoming a series of drones and ambience. The shift in tone the Quake theme has perfectly symbolizes Quake's subversion of expectations. Of turning the familiar into the unfamiliar and unknown. Of taking what you know and love and may even expect, and twisting it into something different. 

Nothing about Quake is as you would expect. Instead of a simple menu like you would get in any other id Software FPS, you're placed right into the world, instead using portals to choose your desired difficulty from Easy to Hard respectively (with a fourth Nightmare difficulty hidden from the player). From there you are given four episodes to play, each with their own themes and gradual increase in difficulty. While you can play the episodes in any order you desire, you will no doubt have the best experience playing them in order on your first few playthroughs, due to the rise in difficulty and because the first episode serves as a tutorial of sorts. 

Quake's levels are at times abstract to the point of making you feel like you're playing inside someone's dream.

Once you enter your episode of choice through any of the four slipgates, your adventure begins. And yeah, the first level of each episode begins in a base of sorts. These levels are extremely deceiving as they feature rather weak enemies and have almost more of a Doom feel to them, focusing on fast action. It's very easy to be mislead into thinking Quake is just another Doom upon playing the first level alone. In a way this is a genious move though as most players of Quake would no doubt have played Doom beforehand and having the first level be more of an easy Doom-esque FPS romp eases you into the world of Quake. And into the world of 3D, seeing as Quake was id Software's first game utilizing a true 3D renderer. No more sprites and fake trickery to achieve a 3D effect, this is the real deal.

It is only when you enter the slipgate at the end of the first level that the true nature of Quake starts showing. The music becomes increasingly menacing and terrorizing, levels take on an otherworldly feel as you enter a different dimension entirely. The effect of this is achieved by not re-using ANY of the enemies from the base levels, none of the same textures or architectures or music theme. This theming is what sets Quake apart from practically every other id Software shooter before or since. Each episode, each level and even the way the game is structured is done with incredible attention to detail and gives you the feeling of stepping into a world you should not have stepped into. And this is what brings me onto the horror aspect of Quake. Because Quake is nothing like Doom. Gone is the fast paced combat against hordes of enemies. Gone is the fun heavy metal music. Gone are the colourful levels inspired by real life buildings. 

...crap.

Existential Dread - The Gameplay of Quake

Quake in many ways is id Software's game that truly explores horror. Its Lovecraftian influence is particularly strong in some of its levels. Quake goes out of its way to make you feel alone, vulnerable and constantly struggling for survival. Supplies are finite so careful play is rewarded over running and gunning. Enemies are no longer plentiful and weak, but few and strong and each of them can ruin your day if you don't watch your step. Particularly the Shambler and the Vore are exceptionally powerful enemies but even regulars like Fiends and Ogres with their clanking grenades can be a bitch to deal with. I don't think I like any of the enemies in Quake. Instead, they make me feel anxious, panicking at times. They induce a feeling of unease and fear that so far is unparalleled in id Software's catalogue. The only enemy that comes close is the Arch Vile from Doom 2. The gameplay in Quake has a disjointed feel to it where you're often required to be fast and nimble when combat does break out, but also careful and meticulous in your approach to avoid taking damage. Especially on Hard difficulty the game becomes incredibly tense and truly brings out the survival horror aspect with much stronger enemies assaulting you.

As a side note, Quake may have been the first game where the WASD+mouse control method originated. While the game originally did not have any mouse look option in the menus, you could enable it by typing "+mlook" in the game's console. Up until WASD though there was really no standard for how people played Quake and people would often come up with their own ways of playing. Personally I played Quake with a keyboard only, much like Doom when I first played it in the late 90's (with my dad not knowing I did), and it did take a while for me to adjust to WASD+mouse controls, but nowadays of course it's impossible to play it any other way. Most modern source ports however come with mouse look enabled and buying the game on Steam or GOG will have the game come with WASD controls preconfigured.

Something about Quake feels otherworldly beyond what even Doom achieved. Because nothing in Quake feels familiar. The levels often have heavily abstract layouts that would make no sense in reality as we know it, but make perfect sense in the game itself. This gives Quake an almost dream-like quality, a feeling of exploring a nightmare as you play it unlike any other game I've played. The levels are never too maze-like though, and you can find your way if you spend enough time exploring them. If there ever is a Quake remake, I would love this dream-like aspect to be explored even further. And each episode features unique level textures and designs that help each episode feel unique, with Episode 1 featuring an almost medival theme, Episode 2 continuing that theme with castles and forts, Episode 3 having more of a nightmareish feel with numerous traps that invoke all kinds of phobias and fears, and Episode 4 being the most difficult with the most dream-like quality of all of the episodes. The biggest moment where Quake made me feel like I was playing a dream was when I exited from a pool in a castle into a graveyard outside. This would make no sense in reality, but in the game it makes perfect sense to suddenly be in a graveyard. The only way I can describe the level design in Quake is that it's incredible and still holds up today.

He seems pissed I grabbed his rune.

The Armory of Quake

While Quake does a good job instilling a feeling of fear and vulnerability, you aren't completely defenseless. The game features some pretty classic staple weapons such as the Shotgun, Super Shotgun and the Rocket Launcher. However it does have its own spin on things with the Nailgun and Super Nailgun, both using nails as ammo (with the ammo boxes bearing the Nine Inch Nails logo in a tongue in cheek reference to Trent Reznor's band), as well as the Thunderbolt which fires a constant stream of electricity (although its ammo is incredibly rare in all but the fourth episode where it's definitely needed), and Grenade Launcher which fires bouncing grenades. 

You can also pick up items such as Quad Damage (which multiplies your damage by 4 as expected), Pentagram of Protection (makes you invulnerable and sets your armor value to 666), Environment Suit (allows you to swim without drowning as well as swimming through slime without taking damage) and Ring of Shadows (makes you invisible). All of these activate upon pickup and expire after a while.Most of these are hidden in secret locations though, so exploration is often greatly rewarded.

Mandatory Dopefish cameo

Graphics

It's often said that Quake is not the prettiest game to look at. And there may be some truth to that. The colour palette in Quake is often incredibly drab and with very little colour variation. Levels are often painted in tones of brown and grey, with some episodes having more of an azure theme. However, this does aid the atmosphere in Quake, adding to the feeling of dread and alienation you feel. It's really hard to imagine Quake would be a better game if it had more colour as that would almost ruin the entire feel of the game.

It's very easy to say Quake has aged a bit in terms of fidelity. The low poly models tend to look slightly like papermache figures at times, and the choppy animation of the original builds of the game definitely makes the game feel like it at times suffers under its limitations of the time. However with a decent source port like DarkPlaces or DirectQ, or even the original GLQuake port, you can achieve some pretty good results. DarkPlaces in particular offers some stellar lighting effects and smoother interpolated animation and is the port I recommend playing for the best experience on modern PC's.

Quake running in DarkPlaces with max lighting effects. While this dips the framerate considerably at times, it does look amazing and brings new life to the game.

Sound

Of course it would be a crime not to compliment the sound in Quake. With all of it done by Trent Reznor and the Nine Inch Nails, Reznor has managed to craft a soundscape that is entirely unique to the game. From the moment you hear that opening theme, those droning ambient soundscapes that creep in on you like a blanket of pure terror, you really feel immersed in Quake's otherworldly atmosphere. And it doesn't stop with the amazing soundtrack either. Quake's sound effects are equally terrifying with the Shambler's roar, the Vore's alien shrieks, and the Ogre's animal-like grunts and groans making you feel like you're facing creatures born from nightmares with no shred of humanity to them. It is hard to imagine Quake without its sound as it helps give it so much of its identity. If you can I highly recommend ripping the game's soundtrack to .ogg files and running them from the hard drive in DarkPlaces to get the music playing without the need to have the game CD inserted. If you bought the game on GOG or Steam there are also ways to get the soundtrack online and add it to the game yourself.

While it is easy to say Quake has a very boring palette, it has a beauty all of its own at times with its dream-like architecture and design.

Final Thoughts

The only bad thing about Quake is that id Software never fully resolved its story or fully realized a lot of its potential. A lot of things are explored in Quake but never completely fleshed out. And the fragmented development of the game does show in how Quake feels pieced together by so many different ideas and concepts. But I wouldn't have it any other way.

Quake is a masterpiece in every sense of the word. It may be easy to dismiss Quake as a Doom clone but that would be doing it a disservice. With meticulous attention to detail, Quake gets your adrenaline going in ways that Doom never came close to. Quake is about true horror, about exploring the unknown and facing creatures beyond your capability of understanding. About exploring impossible places, places that could not exist in our dimension. They exist in dreams, in our nightmares, in the space between death and life itself.  Quake explores themes that seldom are explored in games and for the time and even today remains entirely unique.

And perhaps, we all are in the end, figments of some creature's imagination. The very thought itself sends shivers down my spine. 

SCORE

STORY: 8/10
GAMEPLAY: 8/10
GRAPHICS: 9/10
SOUND: 10/10

FINAL SCORE: 9/10

PC Game Review: Call Of Duty - Black Ops 4

GAME: Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4
RELEASED: 2018
DEVELOPER: Treyarch, Beenox
PUBLISHER: Activision
AVAILABLE ON: PC (Battle.net), PS4, XBox One

Even before Black Ops 4 was released, I was disappointed. The news that Black Ops 4 would ship without a campaign hit me hard. I’ve always been one who enjoyed the campaigns in the Call Of Duty series. Especially in the latest games where the facial capture and motion capture has been unparalleled. It’s something I’ve always been excited about, as the campaigns has been the mode that most efficiently puts the money on the screen. They have showed what a AAA game can do in terms of storytelling on a grand scale.

I also heard that like with WWII, the game would be boots on the ground. No exo suits. It seemed in all honesty like they were removing everything that the franchise had done to re-invent itself over the years. It felt like several steps back and no steps forward. And having gotten my hands on the game and given it a few hours, I feel I am finally ready to give my honest opinion on Black Ops 4.
This review will focus on each of the three available game modes. Multiplayer, Blackout and Zombies, as well as the Specialist HQ training mode. I will also give my thoughts on my experience as a whole. So let’s get started.

Multiplayer

At the end of each match, rather than showing final kill, it shows best play.

If you’ve played any Call Of Duty in the past, then multiplayer should be familiar to you. That is, if the last Call Of Duty you played was Black Ops II. In terms of abilities, scorestreaks and weapons, everything has been massively scaled back. The most obvious change is that you no longer have exo suits. You’re firmly grounded, literally, and while you can slide, mantle and climb ladders, any verticality from the previous games is entirely gone. I know it was an unpopular change among some of the fanbase, but I see no reason why they chose this direction.

The maps feel like they were originally made with these abilities in mind. Not to mention coming from Black Ops 3 and Infinite Warfare makes it feel like someone clipped your wings. It’s not a very nice feeling at all. And this is still a fairly futuristic game with the specialists from Black Ops 3 returning, so why they chose to scrap the exo abilities is beyond me. It feels like a blatant attempt to satisfy the fanbase, instead of sticking to what I felt reinvigorated the franchise.

Scorestreaks have been scaled back to the point where they almost feel trivial. You no longer have memorable ultimate streaks like the nuke that would turn the entire battlefield into ruins. Or the exploding balls of doom. As the ultimate scorestreak you get to shoot people from a gunship. I’m pretty sure this was a lesser scorestreak in earlier games. All in all the entire scorestreak selection feels laughably pathetic. There’s no real sense of doom or danger from the final scorestreak and everything just feels kind of there. The sniper nest is annoying and frustrating when anyone calls it in, but it never feels threatening since you can just shoot it out with a couple rocket launcher rounds.

And speaking of Specialists, you get 2 females and 8 freaking males. The ratio of males to females is absolutely insane and what you often end up with is that people who wish to play as a female all pick either Battery or Seraph, while the rest are stuck with the male cast. Say what you want about Black Ops 3 but at least it had 3 females so there was one more to choose from. Look, I have nothing against males, but some equality in the gender representation would be nice. I really hope more female characters will be added in the future because this is pathetic and feels like they’re trying to avoid getting flack for having too much focus on strong female characters. What they end up with is the other extreme, that females are hideously underrepresented in the game.

The game is hardly good-looking by any standards and mostly just looks bland.

On the other hand, the specialists do have abilities that synergize very well with each other. There is a sort of rock, paper, scissors feel to the dynamic between them and how they interact when put against each other. For instance, in a recent match I was playing Battery (as I tend to do, given she’s one of only two female characters) and threw her sticky cluster grenade on someone playing Ajax. Ajax’ ability is that he has a riot shield that makes him pretty much invulnerable to any incoming damage from the front. Of course, Battery’s cluster grenade made that shield entirely pointless. It’s that sort of feeling of being able to completely out-smart your enemy with your abilities that brings some fun to the gameplay.

There are several playstyles as well. If you want more of a support role you can play as Crash who supplies the team with buffs. If you want to be a tank you can play the aforementioned Ajax. And if you wanna be a complete asshole you can play Firebreak. Nobody likes Firebreak. There are several other specialists to choose from, all with their own abilities so if you wanna read more about that, check out my article on them. And do you want more outfits for the specialists? Tough luck. All of that is locked behind a massive paywall as only people who bought the deluxe edition have access to extra skins for the specialists. Presumably more is to be added in the future, but, as I have stated before, the selection right now is bloody pathetic.

Another notable change to the formula is that players now have a lot more health than in previous games. While this does make the game feel more fair, as you are less likely to be insta-killed (unless you face someone who love sniper rifles and quickscoping a bit too much and have probably spent far too much time playing the game), it can also make combat feel a bit spongy. Players tend to soak up a lot more bullets before going down than in previous games, and can even heal themselves on the fly with stimpacks. This isn’t really an issue for me as it does make the game feel less about getting kills and more about staying alive.

Where’s your head at? No seriously, where is it?

Another thing I find a bit lacking is the weapon selection. You have 5 SMGs, 5 assault rifles, 3 tactical rifles, 3 light machine guns, 4 sniper rifles, 3 pistols, 2 shotguns, ONE freaking rocket launcher and ONE freaking melee weapon! I assume more weapons will be added later but as of now this is a genuinely lackluster selection. And guess what, none of the pistols can be dual wielded. Dual wielding has been a staple of the franchise for a good time now. With games like Advanced Warfare and Infinite Warfare providing ample amounts of them. And in Black Ops 2 and 3 you could akimbo pretty much every pistol. But not here.

I’m not sure why this was done, if it was because everyone complained about akimbo weapons, or because they felt it was unrealistic. Regardless this is extremely disappointing and makes it feel very boring to use the weapons. One of my favored playstyles has always been running up in people’s faces with dual machine pistols and unloading on them. Granted, one of the operator mods allows dual wield for the Saug 9mm but you don’t unlock that weapon until level 52 which is 3 levels from the level cap. Which means you will spend most of the early game unable to use a single akimbo weapon.

Oh, and multiplayer is a hot mess at the moment. I’ve had more crashes and glitches than any of the previous games. Whether the game crashes because I use a broken attachment (specifically the FastLock attachment for the rocket launcher) or whether it just crashes for no good reason, Black Ops 4 seems to crash almost every session for me. The worst part being it doesn’t crash to the desktop. Oh no, this baby freezes so you have to force quit it in Task Manager. Which locks up my computer for a solid minute before I can do anything again. Yeah, not so much fun. Some glitches have been funny and harmless like Battery suddenly missing a head in multiplayer. Some have not been, such as my game crashing during a training mission in the Specialist HQ training mode.

And if your connection dies and you wanna play some offline bot matches or training missions… well f*** you. The game refuses to even show the main menu unless you have an online connection. Meaning that if your connection dies or the servers shut down, you can’t play the game. It’s entirely bricked. Over 50GB of data locked behind a connection error. Welcome to 2018.

If I were to describe multiplayer in a nutshell, then I would say it just feels par for the course. It’s not memorable or amazing, but it is fun. The specialist HQ training mode has some funny voice over lines by Frank Woods, and some impressive cutscenes, but overall feels pointless.

Blackout

Time for the somehow mandatory Battle Royale mode.

So let’s get to their excuse for having no campaign. The Battle Royale inspired Blackout mode. I was completely indifferent to this when I heard about it as I don’t exactly play Call Of Duty to play Battle Royale. I’d play Fortnite or PUBG for that. And yeah, Blackout just feels… out of place. It feels like someone took PUBG and slapped a Call Of Duty skin on it. And so far it’s not even particularly fun to play.

You often face people who have snipers, rocket launchers and otherwise way stronger weapons than you. People love to kill people on their own team since friendly fire is on by default. And yeah it has the biggest map in CoD history. But that kind of leads to spending most of your time on it just hiding from people and trying not to get killed and it often just feels kind of empty. Sure it’s fun if this is your thing. But it’s not my thing and never will be.

The worst part about Blackout however is the lack of customization. You can choose between 4 heads per gender, and that’s it. That is seriously it. Oh, you have a LOT of characters to choose from but… GUESS WHAT! THEY’RE ALL F****ING LOCKED! You have to complete really specific challenges and go through hoops to unlock them which feels entirely unnecessary. WHY have extra characters when your players most likely cannot even play them? And why have such absolutely pathetic customization options for players? Have some hairstyles, have some different outfits. Just… SOMETHING! This is 2018 for f***’s sake! We have better customization in other games and have for years. Jesus Christ.

Blackout. The mode where you either die quickly because everyone else have better weapons than you. Or you die slowly because everyone else have better weapons than you.

Blackout just feels uninspired. It feels like a cynical attempt at excusing a lack of campaign, and selling more copies to people who are hooked on the mode. The game blatantly rips off games that already do Battle Royale way better than it does. It does a good job at it, sure, but that’s just it. It’s still a knockoff. A good knockoff is still a knockoff. Regardless, it’s there. If this is your thing you’ll probably love it. But the lack of customization options and the unbalanced gameplay just kind of ruins it for me. It would be nice to have the option to vote for friendly fire. And it would be nice to have more customization options. I am not very likely to spend a lot of time in this mode at all.

Zombies

Welcome to Titanic. Now with zombies.

Obviously a major reason people buy the Black Ops games is the staple Zombies mode. And yeah, it is here and surprisingly the most fun I’ve had in the game. Probably because it doesn’t really need exo suits to be enjoyable and it offers a co-op option in a game where two of its game modes are competitive. Yeah you know how Black Ops 3 had a co-op campaign which meant it had 2 co-op modes to choose from and one competitive? Wasn’t that great?

Anyway, you have two maps to choose from at the moment. IX which is set in a gladiator arena during the roman empire and Voyage Of Despair which is set on Titanic. You also have a third map called Blood Of The Dead. But you can’t play it unless you buy the season pass. Another example of how something is locked behind a paywall. And I highly doubt you’ll be able to play more zombies maps without paying for that season pass. As it stand right now, both maps are fun to play and can last for hours if you play with good people. But you’ll probably get pretty tired of them eventually. I know I do. Especially given the repetitive nature of constantly shooting the same enemies over and over as they get increasingly spongy and you die more and more.

Look, Zombies is not my thing. It has never been my thing. While I enjoy the co-op aspect it simply gets too boring and monotonic for me to really enjoy. It’s fun for maybe 5-10 minutes but after that it begins seriously outstaying its welcome. But I know a lot of people buy Black Ops 4 for Zombies and if you wanna do that, then you won’t be disappointed.

If shooting the same enemies over and over with weapons that feel out of place from the era, then Zombies might be your thing.

Graphics And Sound

Graphically the game looks alright. I won’t say it looks amazing. It has really great pre-rendered cutscenes but it often just looks kind of bland. On my Ryzen 7 1800X PC, running the game with an RX 580 8GB GPU gave me a very solid framerate that never dipped below 70 fps. It definitely runs pretty well, that is when it doesn’t crash or lag due to bad connection. Due to the nature of multiplayer you won’t really be able to enjoy the scenery much. I think the zombies mode definitely looks the best of the 3 modes. The effects on the Titanic level are seriously cool to look at. But for the most part, it looks average.
I would probably say the same about the sound. It’s average. The voice acting is pretty good, I like the dialogue in the zombies mode and some of the banter in multiplayer. And Frank Woods as the training instructor is a stroke of genius, and pretty much saves that entire mode. But overall, the music is forgettable, the sounds feel typical and nothing stands out.

Final Thoughts

Call Of Duty Black Ops 4 is a colossal disappointment. It’s not a bad game by any stretch but it misses so much of what used to make Call Of Duty fun for me. I was looking forward to the campaigns, I was excited by the new stuff they added. Black Ops 4 has one new thing, it has a battle royale mode. But everything else feels scaled back just for the sake of scaling back. It’s reached the point for me where the entire experience just feels mediocre. It’s fun, when it doesn’t crash. But it’s so lacking. It lacks customization options, it lacks weapons, and it lacks a lot of what I enjoyed about the previous games.

Most of all, I miss a co-op campaign. I miss a story and being able to experience it with a friend. If there is one single thing I would want back then it is a co-op campaign. I don’t care if the exo suits don’t come back. If Activision wants to keep everything “boots on the ground” then that’s fine. It feels even more lacking than Titanfall. Because Titanfall was a new IP, there were no preconceptions of what it should be like.

But as it stands, Black Ops 4 is NOT, by ANY STRETCH OF THE WORD, worth $60. It’s worth it at a 90% discount. Because most likely you are getting the game for only one of the modes. I cannot recommend this game unless you are either a hardcore fan or have too much money to spend.

Because if that is a legit problem you have, then Black Ops 4 is literally the same as burning money.

SCORE

STORY: N/A
GAMEPLAY: 5/10
GRAPHICS: 5/10
SOUND: 7/10

FINAL SCORE: 5/10

PC Game Review: Alpha Prime

GAME: Alpha Prime
RELEASED: 2007
DEVELOPER: Black Element Software
PUBLISHER: Bohemia Interactive
AVAILABLE ON: PC (Steam)

Alpha Prime is a game that I've had in my library for a while. I probably picked it up at some point due to its low price (it's pretty much a $1 game at the moment on Steam). So I figured it was about time I gave the game a playthrough. Here are my thoughts on this 2007 FPS from the Czech Republic.

Looks like we've got ourselves a corridor shooter. Oh boy.

The game starts off on a mining colony on the distant titular planet of Alpha Prime, where a group of miners are unearthing what seems to be Hubbardium, a powerful substance that when injected into a human being has the effect of slowing down time for the user (similar to the drug SlowMo in Judge Dredd). Rumors begin spreading of the drug coming from some kind of living deity on the planet, which the miners have dubbed Glomar, and it seems the use of Hubbardium is turning a lot of the miners insane. Soon all hell breaks loose when what is said to be the Heart of Glomar is found, which seems to be the source of Hubbardium. Your mission as Arnold (who I have a suspicion is named after a certain action star) aka Arnie is to stop the wrong people from getting their hands on the Heart of Glomar while also finding out who the bad guys is as you're caught up in a conspiracy involving your ex girlfriend Livia.

The story isn't really that well written in the game. It is told mostly through lengthy cutscenes that aren't particurarily engaging nor well acted and through conversations that are equally lengthy and boring. For most of the game I had difficulty paying attention to what was going on story-wise as the story just seemed to not really go anywhere until the latter part of the game. It involves an Italian (who is fittingly voiced by an Italian with a very lacking grasp of the English language), a black dude who couldn't be any more "bro", and a scientist, as well as Olivier, the leader of the mercenary group sent to retrieve the Heart of Glomar, who turns out to be the game's main villain. The side characters in the end only serve as reasons for you to go after Olivier, who may or may not be on the same side as your ex girlfriend. I dunno, it just seemed like the story tried way too hard to add twists that you could see coming a mile away or that didn't make much sense.

"So. You got any porn on that computer?"

The gameplay in Alpha Prime feels like very much a product of its time. There isn't much that is particurarily original about it, and a lot of it feels taken from other better games. The main gameplay feels heavily influenced by F.E.A.R. with the slowdown mechanic that was already used in games like Max Payne, the aforementioned F.E.A.R. and Doom 3 Resurrection of Evil. The slowdown mechanic becomes something you'll rely on a lot due to the game's rather unforgiving and unbalanced difficulty. Even on Easy mode enemies can fire at you with pinpoint accuracy no matter their distance and deal a lot of damage which can easily kill you within seconds of engaging the enemy unless you're taking cover. This makes the slowdown mechanic come in handy since it allows you to react faster to enemies firing at you, though it doesn't seem to boost your health in any way, meaning that you can't really rely on it too much for close quarters combat.

Unlike a lot of modern shooters, you aren't limited to only 2 weapons though, and can carry an entire arsenal, similar to other oldschool shooters, with ammo for weapons being dropped by enemies and found in lockers and other parts of the levels. You start out with an axe as a melee weapon, but quickly acquire a pistol, a shotgun, an assault rifle (which fires like a miniature Gatling gun), a sniper rifle, a rocket launcher, a flamethrower and grenades which you toss at varying distances depending on how long you hold down the trigger. Most of the weapons feel kind of underpowered and lack any sort of "oomph" to them. The shotgun is fun to use but requires you to be somewhat close to the enemy, which as mentioned already might not be the best idea given how easy you die, so most of the time I used the assault rifle or the sniper rifle and just kind of leaned out of cover to avoid taking damage. The shotgun and flamethrower probably became some of my least used weapons in the entire game due to how pointless close range combat is in the game. The rocket launcher is probably the most useful weapon since it can easily dispatch groups of enemies and take out heavily armored ones in a couple hits, although ammo for it doesn't become common until the latter parts of the game.

Leaning out from behind cover is the best tactic when engaging the enemy in Alpha Prime.

Also unlike modern shooters, there is no regenerating health, but also unlike older shooters there is no armor either. You have to rely solely on refilling your health using health stations and medkits to stay alive. Personally I feel the game could've used an armor system similar to Quake 4 to at least make it more balanced given how some of the later enemies can take multiple magazines from your assault rifle while you go down quicker than a horny teenager at a stag party.

One of the game's somewhat more unique mechanics is that you can hack certain objects using what the game calls the ReCon (short for Remote Controller). By simply aiming at what you wanna hack, the ReCon does everything for you, making it more akin to something like Watch_Dogs where all you do is pretty much aim at something while the game hacks it for you at the press of a button. This mechanic is highly contextual though and doesn't come into play for a lot of the game, only during certain parts where you may have to rearrange objects using a lifter robot, or increase pressure in pipes to blow them up close to enemies.

The game technically lets you hack some things, but not everything and it's not exactly letting you actually hack something...

Some of the faults of the game come into play with the controls and physics. The game's physics can best be described as... floaty and slippery. Stairs in particular seem to absolutely hate you in the game and will refuse you to stand still on them, making it impossible to aim at enemies while standing on stairs since you will automatically move down the stairs even when you're not moving. Jumping on things is also a huge pain, given that the collision detection seems way off for how you land on things and you end up slipping and sliding all over the place. This can be particularly painful when trying to jump on top of objects like boxes to reach higher places where you may overshoot or undershoot the jump since there is no good feedback from the game on how you will jump due to how unpredictable the physics can be.

Most surprisingly the final boss is... kind of a pushover. You shoot him with the rocket launcher until he becomes weak then turn on the generators in the area to fry him while he's recharging and then fire some more. His rocket projectiles are incredibly easy to avoid since they aren't hitscan weapons like the soldiers in the game are using. Given how utterly devastating the common enemies in the game can be, the final boss fight felt almost insultingly easy at that point.

The movement in general feels a bit weird, especially when you have to ride anything that's moving. There is a part of the game where you have to take trams, similar to the ones in Doom 3, except in these ones, while the tram is moving, you don't seem to really follow the tram's speed very well and kind of move all over the place, which makes it particularly difficult to aim at enemies attacking you while you take the tram. Similar to Doom 3 there are sections of the game where you have to preserve your oxygen. Thankfully oxygen dispensers are plentiful during these sections.

During conversations with other characters, you cannot do anything but listen to it as the game goes into third person.

I was also not a fan of how whenever a character talks to you via your com, the game, for no good reason that I can tell, takes away control from you, forcing you into this view behind the character during the entire conversation. I would prefer a more fluid way of delivering exposition, again I would prefer if the game was more like Doom 3 or Quake 4 in this regard, giving you exposition without taking control away from the player. Having to sit through conversations without being able to move is really boring. I was also not a fan of how lengthy the cutscenes were. Thankfully you can skip them but if you want the story, be prepared to sit through some really awkward and lengthy cutscenes with pretty terrible acting.

There are also sections of the game where you are required to control robots and vehicles and the controls for these are just awful. Straight up awful. Controlling the loaders feels really stiff and unnecessarily sensitive at the same time. The same goes for the vehicles you drive on the surface of the planet. A simple press of a direction will send you flying in that direction and the slippery physics makes driving a nightmare. It was an enormous chore getting through the driving sections, especially when having to drive on top of any object. Involving the horrible driving controls AND the wonky physics when moving on top of objects at this point in the game just seemed like a horrible idea...

Dat skybox tho.

Luckily there are some good things to say about Alpha Prime. Graphically the game is gorgeous and follows a similar aesthetic to games like Doom 3 and Quake 4 with a heavy emphasis on very metallic industrial corridors and brown/greyish surface surroundings. The game is fairly heavy on bloom like a lot of games from the mid-late 2000's, but the texture work is really good and the detail on the guns are also really well done. The game is no Crysis, but it definitely feels on par with other mainstream AAA shooters of its era. I was seriously loving the art style in Alpha Prime, despite it feeling at times like somewhat of a straight up ripoff of Doom 3/Quake 4 and even F.E.A.R. to an extent. But I do love those games and I guess it's true that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. If anything the game could be considered a lesser homage to classic sci-fi shooters.

I did encounter some minor graphical glitches, especially during some of the surface parts where the draw distance seemed very low, and parts of the terrain would glitch out into weird shapes. Also during the cutscenes, it has to be said the facial animation is not the greatest. It's not even on par with Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 which launched 3 years earlier, with characters often having a very dead eyed stare and robotic lipflaps. But for the most part, it's a really nice looking game, especially if you are into that 2000's sci-fi aesthetic of industrial corridors. With everything maxed out and running at 1080p, the game still runs at a smooth framerate with hardly any crashes or hickups. It definitely feels like a rock solid engine most of the time.

I feel like I've done this before...

On the audio sound of things, things could be better. As mentioned before, the weapon sounds feel a little on the unsatisfying side, and the voice acting leaves a lot to be desired. A lot of the time, the actors feel like they are simply reading a script and not really acting, and while the script isn't the best in the world I feel they could have done a better job. For a lot of the game I just didn't feel invested in the characters at all, especially Arnie who is meant to be the protagonist and the one you relate to. Rule number one for any FPS game with a talking protagonist is to give the protagonist a strong personality. This is why games like Duke Nukem 3D, Sin and Shadow Warrior are so fondly remembered, because they had memorable one-liners and trash talking protagonists who didn't take everything too seriously. Sure, Arnie has his moments now and then but for the most part he's just boring and completely silent during the gameplay which makes absolutely no sense given how talkative he is whenever a cutscene or conversation happens. I just feel giving him some more personality and making him more of a badass would've helped make him a lot more likeable. Especially when the rest of the cast are equally forgetable.

That being said, the soundtrack is definitely one of the strong parts of the game. Ranging from orchestral ambient music that perfectly builds atmosphere as well as some pretty asskicking industrial rock tunes that play during some more intense moments, I was really enjoying the soundtrack for most of the game. It was definitely a strong point of the game for me.

The game gives you a ton of ammo before the final boss fight against an enemy that is easier than even the basic soldiers you fight in the game, making the final boss fight a joke.

Alpha Prime is kind of a mixed bag. It doesn't have any strong memorable story or main protagonist. It ends on a sequel-baiting cliffhanger that leaves what story there is unresolved since there has never been a sequel, and the gameplay feels both uninspired and misguided with it being too difficult to really be enjoyable since the difficulty feels incredibly cheap. It also suffers from numerous issues with the engine's physics and controls. But on the other hand it's only $1, is piss easy to get running in 1080p on any modern PC and looks really good for its time. But you could probably spend that dollar on something more worthwhile since in the end, Alpha Prime doesn't really satisfy anything for me.

SCORE:

STORY: 4/10
GAMEPLAY: 5/10
GRAPHICS: 6/10
SOUND: 5/10

FINAL SCORE: 5/10