Doom 3

I’ve been playing through the Doom games recently in a sort of slow preparation for when Doom Eternal comes out, a game for which I am quite looking forward to.  The first couple of games are about what you’d would expect from titles that old, dated and kind of clunky but solidly made and still a ton of fun to play.  I got around some of that old DOS game clunkiness by using something called ZDoom which is a sort of mod that makes it look pretty and controls in a way that makes sense (mouse to move forward are you MAD?!) and Doom 2 on Ultraviolence in particular feels like a first person Bullet Hell game at times.  
But then there’s Doom 3, the weird black sheep of the family
Talking to people about Doom 3 it seems like it’s remembered rather fondly.  Hell, if I’m being really honest I myself has fond memories playing it up until the point I finished it last week.  But having replayed it I can’t help but feel that it’s just a bit shit.  It’s not because of its fancy graphics getting in the way for my DOS brand nostalgia goggles or anything like that, it just doesn’t feel like “Doom”, you know?
Sure it’s got “Doom” on the cover and it’s about a man on mars fighting soldiers, imps and other iconic monsters as well as a few new additions but it feels wrong.  Doom levels are maze like and sprawling while Doom 3s levels are claustrophobic and linear.  The “puzzles” in Doom 1 and 2 are about finding keys and navigating the various mazes while Doom 3 has you clearing poison barrels with a UFO Catcher and repairing bridges and doors.  Doom 3 isn’t Doom, it’s Half Life with a Doom lick of paint and the spookiness turned ALL the way up. 
What I’m not saying is that Doom 3 is a bad game.  It’s a fun little spookfest with competently made, satisfying gun play, great atmosphere and great enemy variety, it’s a great game that I would probably be talking about a lot more positively if it wasn’t for the title. 
Hindsight is a wonderful thing too because clearly when they came back to make New Doom they went BACK to big open areas full of monsters to rip and tear on.  Arguably they went a little TOO much the other way but I’d rather have it wide, fast and violent than slow, spooky and.....Half Lifey?
Anyway if you’ve not played Doom 3 I would still recommend checking it out, like I said it’s not a bad game by any stretch.  Do be warned though that if you’ve come off the back of new Doom or the re releases of the old ones, you are in for an extremely different experience. 
Here’s hoping that Doom Eternal is going to be an absolute banger!

Quake

A while ago I decided to replay Quake so I'll take a moment to blog about it.  It's a short and simple game so this will be a short and simple post.

I don't really feel like I need to introduce Quake in any sort of way.  If you're interested in games and you've not at least heard of Quake then you must have been living under a rock this entire time because this is one of the big bad granddaddies of FPS games.  It's basically Doom but with proper 3D which isn't really surprising since they are both made by the same people.

As fun as Quake is, and it still is a ton of fun to play even today, this game is really, REALLY ugly.  The level design itself is up to the usual id standard for these kind of games at the time but the graphics are all just brown, ugly castles full of swamp water.  Doom, by contrast, while still sort full of dingy corridors on space stations at least had some variation to its color palate.  The levels in Doom manage to maintain some kind of visual interest while Quake just looks like you're staring into a pool of sewer water the whole time.

Complaints about the old, brown graphics aside, the core gameplay is still really fun and the game itself is a classic.  You can actually get the collection of Quake games on Steam for about 5 pounds and with that there's all sorts of mods you can apply to make it look nicer/play a little better than it used to.  So if for some reason you've NOT played Quake in 2019, go ahead, pick it up and give it a spin.  They don't make 'em like this anymore

You Thought DOOM Would Be Good?

I'm so glad this happened because I knew it would.  A new Doom game being developed in the modern day and you didn't expected it to be anything more than another shitty generic FPS where you go around shooting demons instead of people from the Middle East? Please

The story is that the upcoming DOOM game released an open beta on Steam and so far user reviews of the beta have been pretty negative.  People are claiming it's basically not Doom and plays something more like Halo but with a vaguely Doomish coat of paint.  The kind of people who enjoy shooters like Doom, Quake and Unreal Tournament are of course upset that one of their most treasured franchises is being turned into another generic, console-esque arena shooter with experience points and character customization because that's never what this shit was about.

But hold on, you might say, it's just a beta and it's only the multiplayer component.  Even if that sucks surely the single player will be good right?!  If that's actually how you feel then I feel nothing but pity for you.  The only people who might think that new Doom might turn out decent now are either idiots or people who haven't been gaming long enough to have everything they love ruined.

I can promise you that the single player mode will be no different.  It will be linear, story driven and might even have some really stupid bullshit like levelling up or something.  The open beta of the Doom multiplayer is revealing exactly what the current development team think Doom is and clearly they are wrong.  The fact that there's already a season pass available for this title proves as well that they don't give a shit about Doom or it's legacy, they are beating an old horse to make a quick buck based on false hype and nostalgia. 

Let's face it, what we are really looking at here is the next Duke Nukem Forever but more serious and with less time and probably less effort going into the development.  Do NOT buy this game when it gets released and show these fucking idiots that preying on our nostalgia and abusing the legacy of one gaming's most classic titles will not fucking fly.

Absolutely disgusting