PC Game Review: Rage 2

Originally published at https://www.vgr.com/rage-2-pc-game-review/ 

GAME: Rage 2
RELEASED: 14/05/2019
DEVELOPER: id Software, Avalanche Studios
PUBLISHER: Bethesda Softworks
AVAILABLE ON: PC (Steam), PS4, XBOX One

Rage was not a particularly memorable id Software title but it certainly had a lot going for it. Being mostly a showcase for id’s new idTech engine, it showcased a lot of impressive graphical detail for its time and certainly was unique in its approach to things like texture streaming. It gathered mostly average reviews, aside from myself who personally loved the game aside from the lackluster ending. So personally I was actually pretty excited when they revealed that Rage 2 was being made, and even better by the team who made the Mad Max game. So how is Rage 2 compared to the first game, or even other id Software titles? Let’s find out when we take a close look at Rage 2.

STORY

As a whole the tone of the game is very 90’s, and not in the good way. It just feels like the game is trying too hard to be “extreme” in every way possible and gross you out as much as possible. The entire time I was playing this game I just felt like it was trying to be this gritty hardcore wasteland game, but it just ended up making the game feel remarkably difficult to get into.

One fascinating aspect is how Rage 2 simultaneously has a better story yet somehow worse story than Rage 1. The story itself has more of an actual arc to it. The focus is on avenging your adopted mother’s death at the hands of an Authority general known as Cross. Taking down the general proves difficult however, since he has the ability to clone himself. So you have to work with three head figures of the wasteland to take him down. Loosum Hagar from the first game in the town of Wellspring, John Marshall in the town of Gunbarrel, and finally Doctor Kvasir (also from the first game) in his laboratory. Sounds all fine and dandy right?

Well, Rage 2 has some serious issues with its story in all honesty. The most glaring issue is how none of these elements are properly introduced. Instead you’re just kinda thrown into it without given much opportunity to get to know any of the characters you’re supposed to care for. Your mother for instance gets killed in the very first mission you play. Rage 2 completely misses the point of a game, where the story is interactive, to allow the PLAYER to actually feel attached to characters before sacrificing them to the plot gods. It doesn’t help if this is a good driving factor for the main character if we as players have no real attachment. Heck, even if Rage 2 was a movie, having a character die so soon that is integral to the plot would just feel cheap. And that’s how it feels here.

The game also has a serious lack of any likeable characters. Most of them feel like caricatures or one-dimensional gimmicks, lacking any sort of actual personality or likeability. It leads to a situation where you have plenty of characters to talk to and accept quests from. But due to how the game makes no effort to get you to know these characters before helping them, you’re left feeling kind of distanced from everything going on. Not that the main character Walker lacks any eagerness to do all of this but we as players certainly do not share that enthusiasm.

Walker is the main character of the game. Unlike Rage 1 where you played a nameless Ark survivor (Rage Guy if you will), in Rage 2 the main character has a voice and a name. And a gender that is up to the player. Personally I decided to go with female Walker simply because that’s the gender I always pick when I have the option. But it doesn’t seem to matter which Walker you pick since, well, both are equally boring and bland. Walker doesn’t have any discernable personality traits beyond being your basic hero and thus ends up feeling kinda boring for most of the game. You’re not even allowed to make any choices that could affect the story itself. So really you’re just kinda going through the motions as the game strings you along from location to location.

He had a bad hair day.

GAMEPLAY

Which brings us on to the topic of gameplay. Rage 1 was really a very linear game that had the illusion of being open world. But Rage 2 on the other hand is completely an open world game. In fact it’s extremely similar to Mad Max, the game Avalanche Studios were probably most known for prior to Rage 2. The main issue with Rage 2’s gameplay is its repetitive nature. Sure you have a massive world to explore but several locations you visit feel quite literally copied and pasted around with some feeling identical and some quests having you visit old locations again, giving a very intense sensation of deja vu throughout the entire thing.

Aside from the story missions, you have a number of different mission types in Rage 2. Bandit Dens are essentially outposts where the goal is to clear them out. Crusher Nests are dungeons with a boss at the end. Road Chokers are more basic road blocks where the goal is to raise the roadblock and clear out enemies. Authority Sentries are massive turrets that deal a shitload of damage to you, but are worth a fair bit of XP to take out. Mutie Nests are nests of… you guessed it, muties, where the goal is to take out all of their eggs. Pit Stops are places where the goal is to blow up all the gas tanks. Repowering Stations are places where you have to overload some energy Pylons until they overload from waves of enemies.

The main issue with all of these locations is that all of them feel the same. You mostly kill enemies, gather loot and rinse and repeat. And that brings me to my biggest gripe with Rage 2. The loot and how it ties in with your character upgrades. All of your character upgrades are locked behind resources of some kind. And instead of these upgrades being out in the world for you to find, each location only gives you seemingly random resources to spend on these upgrades in the menu. There’s really no rhyme or reason to it and it feels extremely boring to essentially grind resources from location to location, rather than perhaps more locations being built around getting certain upgrades or ability upgrades.

The only locations that offer anything worthwhile are the Arks which offer either a new Nanotrite ability, or weapon. I kind of wish more locations would feel like these ark locations and offer more unique loot rather than just spewing resources at you.

Yay. An Ark chest. Another one.

That being said, what the game does well and what makes the game somewhat fun is the combat. Given all the nanotrite abilites you can find and the various weapons you pick up, it becomes sort of a combat playground where you’re free to approach combat however you want. Your nanotrite abilities allow you to several cool things, including shattering enemies with a kinetic push, slamming down into them, or even creating a vortex that sends them flying into the air.

You also get a fair amount of weapons to play with, including wingsticks from the previous game. All of the weapons are pretty fun to use and all have different tactical uses depending on the type of enemy you’re facing. Another cool addition is the overdrive mode which boosts all your weapons and your strength. Unfortunately even on Hard mode this ability becomes insanely overpowered once you’ve leveled up your abilities, and allows you to pretty much be in Overdrive continuously as long as you have enemies to kill.

The combat is not perfect however. One major issue is that the enemies just kinda blend together in the end. All of them just kinda act the same way in terms of AI with no real threat or challenge once your character is upgraded enough. I played the game on Hard difficulty and after a while it just felt like I was breezing through the game on Very Easy unless the game got cheap and faced me with obstacles that killed me in 2 hits or less. Sure, some enemies charge at you with shields but you can just shatter them or throw grenades at them. And then there’s the issue with the BFG 9000.

The BFG 9000 is a deluxe edition exclusive weapon that is pretty much the game’s kill button. It can take down most bosses in one or two shots and is devastating to the Authority Sentries you meet. Sure, the ammunition for it costs 1000 bucks per plasma cell, but even that is pretty cheap when you consider how easy it is to earn money in the game. It creates a situation where you have this weapon that is ridiculously overpowered, and very easy to get ammo for. The weapon ruins all the challenge in the game and feels like a cheap way for people to just get a pay-to-win weapon.

SPLAT!

The game also has a lot of driving in it, which feels exceptionally clunky and unresponsive. Which is a shame given you have to actually drive some races to progress the story in the game. Unlike the first game the only thing you get from driving are auto parts you can use to upgrade your vehicles. It’s nowhere near as involved as the first game, making racing almost feel like an afterthought in Rage 2. Though given how clunky the driving controls are, it may be a blessing in disguise.

One of the main issues with the car controls is how the turret will lock onto things. Why is this a bad thing? Cause it also locks onto things that aren’t a threat to you! I’m serious, the turret locks onto to empty cars and even loot! WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU HAVE THE TURRET LOCK ONTO THINGS THAT POSE NO THREAT TO YOU?!!! Especially during car combat where you NEED to shoot things that have a higher priority this is infuriating beyond belief! I cannot stress how bad of a game design decision this is!

You also have the Mutant Bash TV arenas making a combat with the incredibly unlikeable Desdemonya as the new host. Her entire personality is that she’s old and gets off on murder. The arenas lack any sort of original gimmicks and feel like complete rehashes of the ones from the first game, making it feel entirely pointless and like the racing it feels like a complete afterthought.

Such a beauty.

And let’s get talking about the controls as a whole. For the most part, the game controls fine on PC and on console I can probably see no issue with it other than the fact you’re playing a FPS with a gamepad which to me just feels weird. But the PC version has some notable missing features, such as being able to bind the mousewheel. By default the mousewheel is bound to up being your next weapon and down being your previous weapon. This is actually the opposite way to how I prefer things. Which drove me absolutely insane at times where I meant to switch to the next weapon, but accidentally picked the previous one.

Oh and despite the game having a ton of pitch black areas, there’s no button for a flashlight. Go figure. I mean when Doom 3 had more features than you, you know you have issues.
And whoever thought it was a good idea to have messages that pop up and cover the screen for every time you complete objectives needs his ass kicked. Especially whoever thought requiring the player to press ENTER to get rid of them was a good idea. Because you may be aware that on a keyboard, Enter is on the right side. Which is very awkward when you have your hand on the left side and your right hand on the mouse, having to move either hand away from those positions to press Enter whenever any message is on the screen.

In all honesty, having popups that pause the gameplay in any game like this is a crime. It baffles me that they still have some instances where all you get is a simple message that shows up on the screen without pausing the gameplay. Why couldn’t the rest of them act this way?

Uhm... that looks kinda threatening.

SOUND AND GRAPHICS

For the most part the game sounds pretty good. You have some really good weapon sounds and crunchy headshot sounds. All good stuff. The voice acting unfortunately is often so boring to listen to that I praised the gods the game had an option to skip dialogue. I mean, it’s not easy to make the dialogue interesting when it’s written like it is to begin with, but the voice acting did not help. I also ran into a pretty annoying bug where voice clips would randomly not play or were playing at such a low volume they were inaudible. This wasn’t even just voice clips from NPC’s, it was all kinds of things. Sounds just not playing for various reasons. And the music is okay. It suits the mood. Nothing memorable, nothing bad. It’s there.

Graphically the game looks as you’d expect. For the most part. They decided to put a very saturated color filter on it that enhanced pink and blue colours, giving the game a very intense neon look that makes it hard to look at at times. Especially during the overdrive mode where everything just looks like you took an overdose of LSD. It has a fair variety of areas to explore but never really looks all that interesting. I did like some of the Authority base interiors though, simply because they really reminded me of Doom 2016.

Oh and the game is extremely prone to crashing for some reason. Not sure how well it plays on consoles, but on my PC system it wasn’t unusual for the game to crash like 3 times in half an hour. Especially near the end of the game or when certain events happened. It was especially common when driving around. That coupled with the game having abysmal performance drops very frequently made it a chore to get through it. I was running the game on low to medium graphics settings and would still get frame dips into the 30’s and even 20’s occasionally. And I have a fairly decent system with a Ryzen 7 1800X CPU.

Character models tend to look… questionable.

SUMMARY
 

All in all, Rage 2 is an extremely underwhelming game. It does some things right but ultimately does a lot of things that just feel like it’s checking things off a checklist. The difficulty for the most part is way too easy once you’ve got some upgrades going. Or too difficult in places where you’re either in a vehicle or faced against a really cheap enemy. But even those fall victim to the BFG 9000 which ruins any challenge the game could pose you. It’s a bug-ridden mess at times too, prone to both crashing and just not working as you’d expect. At times it gets so close to being good. But whether it is the weapons just not feeling strong enough, or the locations not feeling interesting enough, or the story just being both predictable and completely incapable of engrossing the player, there’s always something that ruins the experience.

It also feels like it has no original cell in its code. Everything feels derivative, with the open world feeling literally copied from Mad Max, the suit you have and its abilities feel copied from Doom 2016, and a lot of the elements that were in Rage 1 are also here but feel completely soulless and copied over just to be there. It is a sequel that completely lacks the charm and likeable characters that made Rage 1 fun to play.

That being said if any of this looks like something you’d have fun with, you’ll probably enjoy the game. Because at times, it is enjoyable. But it’s not great. The game is currently available on Steam and from Bethesda. And if the game’s current story is not enough for you, there is more DLC coming in the near future.

Damnit, Willits. Stop putting your sausages in games.

SCORE

STORY: 2/10
GAMEPLAY: 5/10
GRAPHICS: 6/10
SOUND: 5/10
FINAL SCORE: 4/10

PC Game Review: Anthem

GAME: Anthem
RELEASED: 02/22/2019
DEVELOPER: BioWare
PUBLISHER: Electronic Arts
AVAILABLE ON: PC (Origin), XBOX One, PS4

BioWare's Anthem

It's been a while since I was really into a game. And I'm talking beyond just enjoying it. I mean like compulsively obsessed with it. For me, Anthem has been one of those instances where a game has occupied my headspace more than most games I've played. A game that I've not only thoroughly enjoyed, but a game that has really clicked with me. Ever since it released, I've played Anthem almost to a religious degree. Aside from going to work, sleeping, working out and all that important stuff, I've done nothing but play Anthem.

I already knew the game was going to be special when it was first announced at E3 2018. I was a bit shocked to hear about BioWare of all things releasing an online multiplayer shooter. It's not really the first thing that comes to mind when you think of BioWare. The company is probably more famous for their work on games such as Baldur's Gate, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Dragon Age and of course Mass Effect. Not only that but we haven't really seen a new IP from BioWare in quite a while. It would seem EA were more than content to delegate BioWare to making Mass Effect sequels.
Then again with Mass Effect Andromeda being rather badly received, it makes sense that EA wanted to give the old BW a chance at something new. And in a way, that does make Anthem a truly special game. A new IP in a new universe, with a whole new style to it.

Anthem lets you customize your Freelancer by choosing your gender and appearance.

In either case, Anthem spoke to me in a way few games have done before. I immediately felt almost drawn to the game, in a way similar to how people in the game itself feel drawn to the Anthem. As soon as I saw those early demos where you could see people in different Javelins flying together, I could already just feel how fun the game looked. And that's something I hadn't really seen from EA in a while. A game that simply looked fun.

Fast forward to late January and I was lucky enough to get invited to the VIP Demo (which you can read my first impressions of here). And while my experience was no doubt buggy, the experience did leave me hungry for more Anthem. After having played the open demo a week later, I knew this was a game I was going to love. And even before the game launched, I saw negative reviews. The game was being absolutely torn apart by critics. I became anxious, if the game I was so hyped for, felt so much attachment to would prove to be a disappointment.

Luckily, when I played the game on its launch day on February 22nd, I felt the entire opposite reaction. I was not only having fun, I absolutely loved it. Yet that makes it even more confusing to me why so many people hate this game. That being said the game is not without its flaws either. So without further ado, let me go into detail about what I love and what I dislike about BioWare's Anthem.

From beginning to end, the world of Anthem is a gorgeous place.

A Different Place, A Different Time

Anthem takes place on an unknown planet in an unknown time, giving it a bit of a Star Wars feeling where it could be the distant past or the distant future. The planet is covered in relics of advanced technology, all harnessing an immense source of power known as the Anthem of Creation. Unfortunately these relics can at times get unstable, doing all sorts of unpredictable stuff. Which includes terraforming, mutations and spawning in hostile creatures. The most unstable artifacts can envelop an entire area in storms, energies and creatures. Known as Cataclysms, you were once sent into one, known as the Heart of Rage. Unfortunately things didn't go as planned and most of your squad were killed, leaving you alone as one of a few survivors. And those who survived were both mentally and physically scarred.

As a Freelancer, whose gender and appearance is left up to the player, it is your job to keep the hostile monsters and factions brought on by the Anthem at bay. You're given a Javelin, a powerful exo suit with flight capabilities, as your main weapon. In addition to flight, the Javelins are also equipped with powerful abilities and weapons that can strike true fear into your enemies. Your main goal becomes to put a stop to the Dominion, a hostile group whose goal is to use the Anthem for their own purposes. In other words, you have to keep it from falling into the wrong hands. Which is easier said than done when you have no way of returning to the Heart of Rage where the Anthem is located. And such it is your job to find a way to return and keep the Dominion from obtaining the Anthem.

Customizing your Javelin with different weapons and abilities becomes necessary to survive.

Fort Tarsis - Where It All Begins

Outside of missions you'll be spending your time in Fort Tarsis, which serves as the game's hub. This is where you'll interact with NPC's who you can have a chat with or get missions from. As a bit of a nod to BioWare's earlier games, chatting with someone will bring up dialogue choices now and then. Unfortunately these are always simple binary choices of mostly a positive and negative response to the NPC. It almost feels superfluous to have choices at all if you're not given a more extensive dialogue tree. Though it is nice to see how your dialogue choices affect the NPC's decisions. I just wish the game allowed for a higher degree of roleplaying and more dialogue options.

That being said, generally the voice acting is great and the writing is really good. And not to mention funny, given how many times I laughed out loud during NPC interactions. And given how quirky and interesting the characters are I always found myself talking to them between missions for no other reason than just the joy of doing so. I just wish the conversations weren't always so binary. But for how engaging the writing is and how much I grew to love the characters, I can forgive it.

NPC's in Anthem definitely have some interesting fashion choices...

Your Javelin

Customization seems to be a huge aspect about Anthem. While I wish the character creation for your Freelancer was more indepth, given how little you actually see of their face it makes sense that you wouldn't need to spend a lot of time on it. The options you get are there to help immerse you into the role. The Freelancer is nameless and fairly bland in terms of personality, making them more of a shell for the player. So customization in that regard is adequate in my opinion. Heck, it's great to see some customization at all given the demo only had a choice between male and female voice for the Freelancer.

Customizing your Javelin becomes almost 50% of what you do in the game as well. Using The Forge you can customize your Javelin's gear and appearance. I was a bit afraid that cosmetic customization would be very restricted, but I am happy to say this isn't the case at all. For one, you can basically choose any colour you want, you can access any part of the Javelin's body you want to paint, and you're even given a bunch of Vinyls to add from the get-go.

And any kind of cosmetics you want to purchase can be purchased using in-game currency. I'm a huge fan of how this game approaches microtransactions since they are entirely optional. And you can easily save up some in-game currency for that item you really want. So far I haven't spent any real money on the game but it is nice knowing I have the option if I absolutely want to.

My absolutely BAMF Storm Javelin that I used for most of the game.

Strong Alone, Stronger Together

As you progress, you can unlock a new Javelin at levels 2, 8, 16 and 26. While you only have four to choose from, you can unlock any of them you want during these moments. The Ranger is the marksman and soldier type, focused on using grenades and artillery to blast enemies into submission. The Interceptor is a smaller and more agile Javelin, focused on melee and agility. The Storm has weak armor but packs the most punch, able to deliver elemental attacks that can set enemies up for combo attacks. And finally, the Colossus is the tank of the group. It's able to shield allies from enemy attacks and draw enemy fire. It also is the only Javelin capable of wielding heavy weapons, at the cost of not being compatible with pistols. You can read a more in-depth look at the Javelins and their capabilities here.

There really isn't any wrong Javelin to choose, each of them support wildly different playstyles. And there is no wrong way to play any of them either. Due to how versatile the Javelins are there are multiple ways to use them. Since all Javelins can use pretty much all weapon groups, with the only exception being the Colossus, you're really not that limited in terms of range either. The combo system allows you to prime enemies using certain attacks. A combo can then be detonated by a different attack. These combos are often related to elements, as using elemental attacks will prime enemies for combos. This allows multiple Javelins to work in sync and time combos, often to devastating results.

Yes, Anthem has warp pipes. Off to minus world!

Iron Man - The Game

The above statement really sums up the experience of playing Anthem. While there is a slight learning curve to the controls of your Javelin, once you get used to them, playing Anthem is almost an intoxicating experience. The moment you realize how quickly you can go from running on the ground to soaring in the air, you really feel like you're Iron Man. Exploring the world in Freeplay mode is really where you get a sense of absolute freedom, exploring the world at your own leisure and casually doing world events with other players. The game almost beckons you to explore every nook and cranny of it, to uncover collectables and bits of lore. A thing I enjoyed in particular was how seamless the transition between water and air was. Essentially when you're under water, you're still flying. So when you exit from a body of water you go straight into flight seamlessly.

As fun as this is though, the core of Anthem's gameplay is still that of doing quests. And similar to older BioWare titles you have "Critical Quests" that are essentially story missions, "Agent Quests" which serve as side missions, and "Contracts" which are basically just shorter "go here do this" missions that serve as more of a way to level up than serving any actual story purpose. And while you can do all this in public matchmaking, and are encouraged to do so in order to have a full squad, I would say I never really enjoyed the game much in this mode.

Nearly all cutscenes in the game are in first person. Luckily the face capture is excellent.

Especially on a first playthrough, playing in public mode pretty much ruins the experience. The issue is that when you're playing with strangers, you really have no idea how they are going to play with others. And sad to say a lot of the time you risk running into people completely ignoring you when you're down and need repairs. Or worse, rushing ahead. And thus forcing you to follow them since the game will automatically respawn you with the group if they advance too far ahead. Granted BioWare did address this issue by making the timer more lenient, but it's still an issue when you're not allowed to play at your own pace.

Thus I highly recommend playing the game in Private Mode on a first playthrough. Even if you're just playing with a single friend, it's totally worth it. This allows you both to enjoy the game at your own pace. As well as listen to the dialogue which in all honesty is far too good to be ignored. Anthem is truly a game that comes alive when you can play with a group of close friends, and all of you can communicate with each other while playing. That's not to say public play doesn't have its place though. During Strongholds and Freeplay, which are essentially public game modes, it's never really much of an issue. Since there isn't really much story to pay attention to and you're just there to earn some XP and loot.

Similar to vistas in Guild Wars 2, the game world is full of spots where you can stop and take in the view. It really lets you appreciate the amount of work that's gone into creating the world of Anthem.

Looter Shooter

Anthem gives loot to the player in mainly two different varieties; crafting materials and items. Crafting materials can be embers, plant material, mineral material or Javelin parts. All are necessary in order to craft your own weapons and gear. You can also craft sigils which are single-use items that grant you certain bonuses for a single mission. Whether you wanna focus on defense or offense, these sigils actually make a fairly significant difference in gameplay. And it's highly recommended to at least use one for each mission.

Items can be anything from weapons to gear for the Javelin you're using. Now here's where a little confusion comes into play. Items have a rarity and a Power level. The rarity doesn't really seem to mean anything as it seems to scale with your level. And since all item drops are client side, if an Epic item drops for you, it doesn't mean it will be available to other players. So the rarity doesn't seem to affect all that much, other than the fact the more rare your item is the better stats it will have.

The power level also doesn't really seem to indicate much, other than how powerful the weapon is. But since weapon stats are completely random, it's possible to have a weapon with a higher power level, but with WORSE stats than a similar weapon with a lower power level. The game also had a bit of an issue of assigning useless bonuses to several items. Though BioWare did thankfully address this in a recent patch. But it seems as a general rule the rarer the item and the higher its power level, the better it is. Just keep an eye on the bonuses and stats as well since it might not always be the case.

People who played the demo might remember the Cataclysm event at the end. A foreshadowing of things to come it would seem.

Not Always Well

Generally I would say Anthem has been an amazing experience for me but that's not to say I didn't run into some issues with it. The menu system is extremely confusing to navigate, with several menu options often being placed at the bottom of the screen in small text. I've had a hard time just finding where things are and I wouldn't exactly call the menus intuitive at all. It took me an entire day to realize where I could claim my pre-order rewards.

And it doesn't exactly help that a loading screen separates you from customizing your Javelin. And you have to wait for it to load every single time you want to customize, which is going to be a lot I promise. Luckily some of this is addressed by the fact you are given the choice of going directly to the Forge screen after a mission. There's even a public lobby option called the Launch Bay where you can access numerous options between missions.

Anthem is simply a fun game to play, no matter how you put it.

And of course, I would be remiss to not mention the numerous bugs that are still in the game. Often it can be very minor things like enemies glitching out, items and quests being wrongly marked as new, the wrong mission being played, or servers failing to connect. Or it can be major things like the game crashing or audio completely cutting out. I wouldn't say these bugs have been severe enough to ruin the game for me though. And they haven't been frequent enough for me to consider them a massive flaw. But it's definitely something to be aware of.

And yeah, the final mission did feel quite anticlimatic. I wouldn't exactly call it bad by any stretch, but it wasn't what I was hoping for either. Calling the puzzles in the game puzzles is also a stretch. I've seen more challenging puzzles in children's puzzle books. And then some missions suddenly throw really obtuse puzzles at you that takes you ages to solve. It's either too easy or going full "what the heck do I do". The game also feels a little barren on content as it is, but given BioWare's plan going forward, I am still looking forward to what's to come for Anthem. Because despite all these issues, I've had an amazing time with Anthem. So far it's been one of the most fun experiences I've had in 2019.

"Yes. It is true. People hate this game."

A Beautiful Anthem

In terms of visuals, Anthem is absolutely gorgeous. And running perfectly smooth on my Ryzen 7 1800X rig with an 8GB RX580. I haven't run into any kind of major performance issues, with the game generally running at a stable framerate, and very rarely dipping below 60 FPS despite pushing my hardware to its limits. Of course, the Frostbyte engine has always been beautiful and Anthem is no exception.

I especially love the animations and motion capture work. It truly feels like a lot of it is acted in front of you, and it helped me get really engaged in the story. I also loved just taking in the gorgeous landscape, and I love the fact the game has a seamless day/night cycle. There's also an incredible attention to detail, with your Javelin looking increasingly damaged as it takes more and more abuse. Stylistically it does look similar to games like Warframe and Destiny, but still stands on its own. It's really hard to compare it to anything in terms of setting, and the world feels like a mix between various cultures. It often clashes but in a beautiful way that almost symbolizes nature's and humanity's diversity.

Underwater segments of the game are particularly noteworthy, showing off some amazing lighting and designs.

I've of course already mentioned the voice acting which I think I have nothing bad to say about. Everyone gives a great performance here. Even the main character I enjoyed who has an almost dry wit to them. Sound effect work is also really good, I especially love the combo sound and the sound work on the attacks and weapons. The weapons just have a really satisfying punch to them, especially the shotguns.

And while I wasn't 100% into the music and I'm still not as orchestral music isn't my cup of tea, it has grown on me considerably and I found myself enjoying it a lot. Even if some of the instrument choices such as using a didgeridoo felt a little weird to me. It still isn't a soundtrack I've enjoyed as much as the original Mass Effect. But it serves its purpose for sure.

A shout out to my co-op buddy Kira who kicked serious ass during our campaign.

A Flawed Masterpiece

To sum it up, Anthem is not a perfect game. It's got its flaws for sure. But it remains one of the absolutely coolest games I've ever played. In some ways it feels like a spiritual successor to Mass Effect, with a similar focus on a mystical energy source, and the threat of the end of the world. And playing this game just makes you feel like the coolest badass that's ever existed. Your Javelin moves with such elegance and flair that you can't help but just grin when playing the game. It just has this indescribably coolness to it that you feel when playing it. And I simply haven't played any other game like this recently. What it lacks in polish, Anthem more than makes up for in charm and I am sad to see so many people just not seeing it.

Anthem does not deserve the hate it gets, nor does it deserve to be called a bad game. To anyone who doesn't like Anthem as much as I do, I completely understand your criticisms for the most part. But saying Anthem is one of the biggest disappointments of 2019 is being way too harsh.

The game does microtransactions perfectly, and since it's co-op there's no way to gain an unfair advantage. It has an amazing cast and story that still grabbed me and it's a game I've simple been unable to put down since it came out. And to me, that's the sign of a good game. So whatever you may think of Anthem, I absolutely love it and I think it deserves to at least be played. So if you find this game on a discount, don't hesitate to pick it up.

SCORE

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

FINAL SCORE: 8/10

PC Game Review: The Eternal Castle (Remastered)

 
GAME: The Eternal Castle (Remastered)
RELEASED: 01/05/2019
DEVELOPER: Leonard Menchiari, Daniele Vicinanzo, Giulio Perrone
PUBLISHER: Playsaurus
AVAILABLE ON: PC (Steam)

In the indie game scene, a lot of games take inspiration from the games of the past. Typically this comes in the form of tributes to oldschool consoles like the NES, SNES and Mega Drive. But it’s not often you see games that pay homage to the graphics of old IBM PC’s. The Eternal Castle, a supposed remake of a lost 1987 PC game, is such a game. And much in the vein of the game MURI, it acts as a tribute to old school PC games from the late 80’s and early 90’s. In this review we’ll be taking a look at this game and also discuss its legitimacy as a remaster. So strap in, it’s time to explore the CGA glory of The Eternal Castle.

A lot of levels present traps that need to be avoided. Often you’ll end up learning it the hard way.

In Eternal Castle you can play as either Adam or Eve as you explore their dream on a post-apocalyptic Earth, in which they fight their way towards a malevolent AI. After a brief intro where you crash land into the region of the AI, your ship is damaged and loses its Gliders. In other words, you’re on a big ol’ fetch quest to get the Gliders back and repair your ship into working condition so you can assault the game’s namesake, the Eternal Castle head on. The plot feels strangely reminiscent of id Software’s classic Commander Keen: Marooned On Mars, where you also crash landed on a planet and had to get parts for your ship back. Of course, the plot itself is not terribly original either, but feels suitably cyberpunk for a late 80’s game.

The gliders have ended up in 4 separate locations, all of which serve as levels to explore before the final showdown. Granted while the game only has five levels including the final one, the levels are generally quite large and require a lot of exploration, and not to mention trial and error, before you can get through them. The first location is the one you explore after your ship has crashed. It consists largely of industrial landscapes and serve as a tutorial level to get you familiar with the game’s controls and mechanics. After completing it you have 3 choices of where to go next. The main goal is to gather Gliders for your ship as well as fragments that have scattered across the region.

On your first playthrough, these tablets serve as checkpoints and also refill your health.

The Ancient Ruins is mostly a melee focused level where you’ll be fighting a tribe of hostiles. It’s probably the hardest level in terms of traps and combat but also gives you access to some decent melee weapons. The Forgotten City is more of a ranged combat area where you’ll assist a band of friendlies against hostiles using rifles and shotguns. The Unholy Lab is more of a stealth focused area and unlike what I did in my playthrough, it might be best to save this level for when you have the stealth upgrade that makes you invisible. Otherwise this level is truly a terrifying place and really gives the game some horror vibes, where you’ll be running for your life a lot.

As you explore the levels you’ll not only come across fragments to collect, but also items that give you permanent upgrades. These include a stealth upgrade that allows you to become invisible when crouching, increased health, armor and so forth. While you don’t require all of these items to reach the final level, they do generally help make the adventure less painful. You can carry a maximum of two weapons at any given time. The game takes a bit of a modern approach to weapons though as once they run out of ammo you have to find a replacement, so you’ll be switching out your weapons constantly.

Enemies will always drop their weapon if they are carrying one, which helps give you options. Choosing which weapons to hold on to becomes a tactical choice since they can help you in the levels where they are sparse or non-existent, as each level offers very different gameplay experiences.

The game will offer very different experiences in each level, and also switch between different CGA palettes frequently.

The game plays very much like cinematic platformers of the early 90’s. If you’ve played games like Another World/Out of This World, BlackThorne or Flashback, it should feel pretty familiar. For people more used to Mario or Sonic style platformers, cinematic platformers tend to feel a bit sluggish and unresponsive due to the heavy amount of animation that has to play out for every action. But if you’re like me and grew up with the genre, you probably won’t have much of an issue with it. The trick is mainly to plan your movements in advance, and be aware of how your character moves in kind of blocky increments instead of exact locations. It’s a bit hard to explain but once you get the feel for it, it becomes second nature.

Now to move on to the game’s alleged roots as a 1987 game and it’s so called “remaster” label. It’s all pretty much fake. There is simply no way this game is originally from 1987, nor is there any way it is a remaster. Prince of Persia, the game often touted as the game to popularize this genre didn’t come out until 1989. And games like Another World and Flashback which this game feels extremely derivative of, didn’t come out until 1991 and 1992 respectively. And the game’s startup sequence not only copies lines of text from DOOM, which came out in 1993, it also includes lines of Linux text which would never belong on a DOS system.

Your character will often react to or interact with the environment, often quipping on things like arcade machines.

And of course then there’s the enormous fact the game is not running in a 4:3 ratio. You see, while some games did support video modes that technically were widescreen in the 80’s, most games opted for a 320×200 resolution, which normally would look really stretched on a widescreen 16:9 monitor. Except this game does not. While you could boil this down to the “remaster” bit, there is one massive question on my mind. Why CGA?

In 1987, several video modes were available in fact. 16 colour EGA was most common during this time for PC games, a standard which launched in 1984 already. Heck, VGA which supported 256 colours LAUNCHED IN 1987! And not to mention you had the Tandy standard which also supported 16 colours. Most games of the late 80’s supported multiple modes, and granted CGA was among them. But the way this game utilizes CGA is unlike any of the games from the 80’s. CGA was often utilized with composite monitors in mind where the colours would blend together and create more colours than the 4 colours the CGA cards were capable of. But The Eternal Castle uses CGA more to simulate shapes and lighting in a far more modernized way that simply no games of the era did. The only reason this game would use CGA is for artistic purposes.

And it does not always use its graphics well either. A lot of text is near impossible to read, almost like it’s been poorly scaled down, which I myself have had issues with being a game developer, but if the game was a legitimate product it would not have this issue. They could’ve gone with EGA or VGA and still gotten away with “it’s a 1987” game but for its gameplay style, even that would be a stretch and going for a lost 1991 game would be far more applicable.

The game uses CGA to create really intense contrast, often to great effect in scenes.

Marketing the game as a lost 1987 game feels like a missed opportunity as well. They could’ve gone all the way with this, actually done proper research into DOS games, maybe even developed the game as an actual CGA game on actual DOS hardware. Not saying I blame them for not doing that given the enormous amount of difficulty associated with such a task. But when it’s so easy to tell the game is a modern design, it really feels like they expect their player base to not know better. Instead of just making a game based on a very shallow understanding of PC gaming from the 80’s and 90’s, they could’ve gone the way of MURI, Ion Maiden or DUSK to create a game that could legitimately be a lost game.

The game’s use of bitcrushed sound effects makes it painfully obvious the game has no roots in the 80’s. And it features no option to listen to original PC speaker sound effects. The sound effects aren’t bad but they definitely don’t feel like actual PC sound effects from the era. At least the soundtrack is excellent, featuring everything from ambient noise to driving synthwave beats. While it does not at all feel like an actual product from the 80’s, it does feel like a tribute to them, much like the entire retrowave culture does.

The final boss battle is probably the game’s high point and feels like a well earned climax.

All criticism aside though, this does not at all make The Eternal Castle a bad game, but it does make any claims of it being an actual 1987 PC game remastered complete bullshit. But for what it is, it’s still a really good game with hand crafted animations in a really striking and bold art style that stands out in a sea of Nintendo 8bit clone games.

The CGA style is more used as a filter, and in that regard gives the game a unique style where there is a lot of detail but it’s all hinted at and you’re never quite sure what you’re looking at. It gives the game an eerie alien atmosphere that very much fits its post-apocalyptic feel. At times it feels like you’re exploring an entirely different planet, where things feel familiar yet look completely different. It’s weird how the game completely captures the feeling of playing oldschool PC games without succeeding at itself feeling like one. And you’re not likely to have ever played anything quite like it.

Much like a lot of modern retro games, it’s simply a big tribute to our childhoods. To growing up with games that brought us into another world of archaic graphics and mastery through repetition. It’s definitely worth a grab if anything for capturing some of that essence.

SCORE

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

FINAL SCORE: 8/10

Alyxx' Top 10 Games Of 2018

2018 was a year where I sadly wasn't able to play all of the hot new titles. For one, I didn't build my new PC until like October and my old PC was too limited for me to greatly cover new titles. I also don't have the ability to play any console exclusives so games like Red Dead Redemption 2, Spider-Man or God of War won't be on my list I'm afraid. But here's what I did play in 2018 and what I thought about it. It'll be less of a "these are the best games I played in 2018" and more of a "games from 2018 I wanna talk about" kind of list.



10. FALLOUT 76



For the record while I did really enjoy Fallout 76, it definitely hits the bottom of my list for obvious reasons. Fallout 76 is not a $60 game, neither is it a particularly good game. But it does a lot of things right and credit where credit is due, if you're looking for a co-op Fallout 4 experience, this is pretty much spot on. And exploring West Virginia with its absolutely gorgeous hills and landscape is a real treat. I've been enjoying my time in Fallout 76 this year and definitely will continue to do so in 2019.



9. DESTINY 2



While it technically released in 2017, I started playing Destiny 2 this year when Blizzard decided to make it free in their Battle.net launcher, and I definitely enjoy what I've played so far. Having a still really active playerbase and being pretty much something I've wanted for a long time, being a massive multiplayer online FPS, it's not hard to get into Destiny 2. I had my reservations going into it from people who gave it fairly negative reviews, but so far I definitely think it's a great game and I look forward to continuing playing it. I also enjoy how the story bits makes it feel like a single player game at times, just one you can also play with friends.


It also might be one of the most gorgeous games I've played recently, having a gorgeous colour palette and industrial look at times that I really enjoy. Kind of like Mass Effect it does feel really Star Wars influenced with its humanoid looking aliens and space opera story, so that may explain why I enjoy it so much, being a huge Star Wars fan. I haven't played the expansions yet but definitely will do so eventually.




8. FORSAKEN REMASTERED



A bit of an unexpected but welcome release this year was Forsaken Remastered. I'm admittedly a huge fan of Forsaken and played it a lot in the early 2000's as a free copy of it was bundled with a PC gaming mag my mother subscribed to at the time (though I was the one who probably enjoyed it more). It's a 6DOF shooter ala Descent though with more of a dystopian cyberpunk tone to it.


The remastered edition is definitely worth grabbing as it makes the game more playable on modern PC's and adds a lot of new graphics options, making the game more gorgeous than it's ever been. I'll be covering this game in a review pretty soon but so far this is one hell of a remaster to grab if you're into 90's FPS's.



7. WOLFENSTEIN II: THE NEW COLOSSUS



B.J. Blazkowicz returns in this awesome direct sequel to 2014's "The New Order", the first time the franchise has ever had a direct sequel mind you, this time taking on a Nazi invasion of the USA. Much like The New Order offered a glimpse into an alternate future, Wolfenstein II takes this concept even further by showing a 60's USA that's become tinted through the occupation of Nazis.


It's a dark and at times really disturbing game that also gives a ton of backstory about BJ and why his hatred for Nazis is so strong. While I remain conflicted on whether this is my favourite game in the franchise so far or not, I definitely think it's an amazing game and I've had a blast with it so far. Looking forward to giving it a full (and awfully delayed) review coming 2019.



6. MASS EFFECT ANDROMEDA



A game I probably should have reviewed in 2017, Mass Effect Andromeda is a game I've decided to take my time with. Not because I think it's bad, far from it, I am enjoying it a lot to be honest. And I want to be able to give it a proper review from someone who has spent considerable time with it rather than the kneejerk reaction most reviewers tended to give the game when it came out.


The main reason for the delay though is that my previous PC simply struggled a lot with it. With my current PC being able to handle it at max graphics I am finally ready to tackle it all and a full review will be coming in 2019. I've been playing it on and off in 2018 and so far I am really enjoying it. Hopefully I'll be able to complete it pretty soon.



5. RAD RODGERS



Rad Rodgers is one of the latest games from 3D Realms and developer Slipgate Studios (Bombshell, Rise of the Triad), and received numerous updates this year including a port to Nintendo Switch. If you want my complete opinion on the game, make sure to check out my full review of it here. But summarized, it's one of the best platformers I've had the joy of playing recently, helped by its unique off color Rick & Mordy esque humor.



4. DUSK



This game. This game right here. So imagine if someone took Redneck Rampage, Blood, Quake, Half-Life and somehow mixed these things together and made some kind of game that plays and looks and sounds like it somehow was taken out of 1997 and then polished up slightly. That's basically what DUSK is. A pastiche of the best 90's FPS's and as much of a love letter to that era as it could potentially be a product of it. DUSK foregoes almost all modern gaming trends including randomly generated levels and health regen in favour of hand crafted levels with old school armor and health systems. Even its movement feels like it belongs in the Quake engine with its bunny hopping, rocket jumping and insanely fast gameplay. Expect a full review coming very soon. So far this game is a hell of a blast.



3. SHADOW WARRIOR 2



Man 2018 was just my big backlog year. Shadow Warrior 2 for some reason is one of those games that just ended up in my backlog after briefly playing it in 2016. So I jumped into it with a friend and we had a fucking blast with it. This might be one of the best co-op shooters I've played lately and it was surprisingly in-depth with the customization of weapons and abilities. It feels like it focuses more on the guns than the previous game where almost too much focus was put on melee combat. Melee combat gets a lot of focus here too don't get me wrong but it does feel like guns now serve a bigger purpose than in the first game. I'll hopefully get around to giving it a full review soon which is long overdue.



2. CLIVE BARKER'S UNDYING



So for Halloween this year I decided to revisit a game from my childhood. I'd played a short demo of Undying back in the early 2000's but never actually played the full game. So when I saw it was cheap on GOG.com I decided to get it and give it a go. And man is this game just an awesomely dark and disturbing horror shooter. Like with Hellraiser, Clive Barker's story here really delves into themes of a dysfunctional family ruined by a horrible curse. The backstory behind this family is probably the best part of the game and the thing that holds it all together. Like with alot of games on this list I do plan on writing a review of it eventually but for now I'm still playing through it and having a great time. This game at times feels like a first person Resident Evil and it's done wonderfully.


1. DELTARUNE


This game came out of absolutely nowhere this year. After a series of mysterious tweets on Toby Fox' Twitter (seemingly in character as W.D. Gaster from Undertale), he eventually linked to a site containing a "survey program". Later revealed to be the demo for a yet unfinished game named Deltarune (a clever anagram of Undertale), my experience playing through this was one of the most mixed experiences I've ever had. I had no idea what this was going into it since I was one of the earliest people to play it (before everyone knew what it was) and when I played it I wasn't sure what to think. Was it a sequel to Undertale? Was it a prequel? Well apparently, Deltarune is neither and that is what's fascinating about it.


Essentially, it is an alternate reality story, set in a universe of Undertale where the war between monsters and humans never occured, which is just incredibly fascinating to see. It's like looking into what Undertale could've been if it had been developed as a more linear game with less focus on player choice. Because in Deltarune, your choices don't matter. It turns a lot of the ideas from Undertale on their head entirely so whatever this game turns out to be when it gets completed, it will be a totally different experience from Undertale. Regardless, I am incredibly hyped for it and I truly hope it gets made. Because it's easily the most memorable gaming experience from 2018 for me.

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