Category: Games

DOOM: The Dark Ages [First Impressions]

If you had told 10-year-old me that I’d still be playing DOOM thirty-two years after the original… well, I would have believed you, but that’s only because kids are stupid. What’s amazing is the series is still relevant. Consider: the legend of Halo has wilted in the absence of Bungie; every new edition of Call of Duty looks suspiciously like the last; and the latest Far Cry earned mixed reviews at best.

DOOM 2016 was a huge hit in the era of dwindling nostalgia. This was unexpected because, in the months leading up to its release, it had more red flags than a Trump fanatic. For one, it was the first game in id’s flagship series to be made without co-founder John Carmack. Secondly, gamers were rightfully skeptical of the ironclad review embargo in place until the day of release. Rumors of poor quality ran rampant during the lead-up while many gamers (myself included) prepared for another rushed release in the vein of Duke Nukem Forever. What we got was one of the very best games of the twenty-first century.

DOOM Eternal was more of the same magic, focused on refining rather than innovating. It was a better game at any rate, with improved action and an asymmetrical multiplayer mode that’s sadly underrated. As gamers naturally wondered what a third entry would look like, id Software tempered expectations by suggesting that the new timeline was intended to be a duology rather than a trilogy, though later created a two-part DLC intended to provide closure.

Which is why it came as a surprise when the company announced The Dark Ages in 2024. In addition to surprise, that old skepticism resurfaced: developers assured players that the new game would feature “more grounded gameplay,” which reeked of the Call of Duty devs trying to pass off “boots on the ground” as a revolutionary idea. I also had trouble accepting the bio-mechanical look of the previous games would be substituted by… a medieval fantasy world? Meanwhile, pre-release videos of the gameplay seemed a little slow and clunky compared to the predecessors which had you zipping through the air during a rapid-fire chain of glory kills.

All these worries were unfounded. DOOM: The Dark Ages is probably the best single player campaign I’ve ever played. I suspect it looks slow in the promotional materials because the actual gameplay is so frenetic, it has to be slowed down for the potential consumer to read what’s happening—reviewing my own gameplay recordings is even hard to follow at times. It hadn’t helped expectations when id said this iteration of the Doom Slayer moves more like a tank; they should have elucidated that by saying “a tank manufactured by Lamborghini and weaponized by Lockheed Martin.”

It seems that most FPS game devs create powerful weapons, then nerf them in the earlier levels so that the player feels a sense of artificial progression as they’re drip-fed upgrades. The Dark Ages, on the other hand, stocks the player with the most powerful video game weapons ever devised from the get-go and still lets the player upgrade the power at a remarkably frequent place. This strategy necessitates the need for some seriously overpowered enemies, which quickly grow more powerful (and plentiful) as the game progresses. The end result in an ultra-satisfying flow of dopamine as you unlock one weapon after another with plenty of upgrades sprinkled throughout.

It literally never gets boring.

The physics have been overhauled, too. The Doom Slayer in The Dark Ages is so satisfyingly weighty, he will accidentally clip environmental objects that come crumbling down or splintering into pieces. (This, in combination with wind effects that appear around the edges of the screen at sprinting speeds, adds to the glorious sensation of being a brutish killing machine… as do the Robocop-like sound of ka-clunking footsteps.) Tossing the shield saw (yes, that’s a Captain America-style shield with a toothy chainsaw blade running around its circumference) will hurdle the discus through any number of destructible objects before it slices fodder demons in two and ultimately embeds itself in the head of a more powerful foe.

DOOM: The Dark Ages doesn’t just contain the DNA of the previous DOOM titles (and the connection seems strongest in the little details), but the 90s as a whole. There are enemies and formations which remind one of Serious Sam. The weapon designs and the heavy-metal-album visuals hearken back to Painkiller. The freedom of movement found in the wide open levels is reminiscent of the first three Halo games.

If there’s one thing I want to impart about this latest entry, it’s this: this is the most fun you can have sitting at a computer playing with yourself… er, uh, by yourself. I will expand my review as I get closer to the end because there’s a lot to talk about this one and pretty much all of it is good.

Silent Hill 2 Redux

James Sunderland’s wife has been dead for three years, yet somehow he receives a letter from her, urging him to come to Silent Hill. The game drops you into James’s shoes as he’s parked at a rest stop overlooking the titular fog-shrouded town where he and his wife once spent a special vacation in happier times. All roads leading in (and more significantly: out) have been closed. Something strange has happened and the only way in is a remote trail winding through the woods and an unkempt cemetery.

Once you’re there, walking among the post-apocalyptic streets and crumbling storefronts, you realize the town has been abandoned, but you’re not entirely alone. You’ll meet Angela, an abused teenager who’s prone to horrifying visions, and Eddie, an overweight man who’s on the verge of snapping after a lifetime of bullying and insults. Then there’s eight-year-old Laura, an absolute little shit who spends most of the game running from you or making your life a living hell.

During this initial phase of discovery, you will see something slither out from underneath a car and retreat into the unrelenting fog. These vaguely humanoid, semi-intelligent bags of flesh and bone can be counted among the least disturbing creatures in a world with enemy names such as Abstract Daddy and Flesh Lip. There’s a reason so many of these character designs are popular among cosplay artists, from the indestructible Pyramid Head to the herky-jerky nurses you first encounter in Brookhaven Hospital.

Nothing about the way the enemies engage you feels cheap. You’re armed with a radio, tuned to static, which generally crackles whenever enemies are looming nearby. Sometimes they can get the drop on you, but usually they don’t and it’s often your own fault if they do. Jump scares are used so infrequently that they’re actually quite effective when they are. Watching the way the “mannequins” belatedly scurry off to find an ambush site after you’ve already spotted them is such a nice touch.

Soon you will explore the ever-changing town’s interior locations, often finding yourself in satisfying game loops involving locked doors, abstract puzzles, and Metroid-like backtracking. Armed with a dynamic map which James helpfully adds notes to, you’ll rarely get lost (in the frustrated gamer sense) as you explore the richly developed world. I was compelled to finish this game last night no matter how late I had to stay up to do it. Though the developers could have probably shaved a couple hours off the time it takes to finish (some of the late game puzzles feel like fillers), I never lost interest as I do in most modern games.

That’s the secret of the game’s appeal: Silent Hill 2 is not a modern video game. The voice actors, puzzles, and graphics have all been updated, but at its heart its still a game that was originally designed to trick the Playstation 2’s relatively low system specs into simulating a partially open world. Today, curious modders on PC have proven you can reduce the game’s oppressive fog and modern systems render the previously unachievable draw distances just fine. Yet by choosing to remain within the perimeters of the old game’s limitations, the developers have crafted something very much in the spirit of the original.

Having just played the notably fun Dead Rising Deluxe Remake before this one, I wonder how much of the appeal of old games is simply nostalgia. Considering I forget a game almost as soon as I put it down (as is the case with the original Silent Hill 2, which I haven’t touched in twenty-three years), I would argue that almost none of it is nostalgia in my case. I don’t prefer to replay old games, but between corporate oversight and developer burnout, making a modern game fun often loses priority during the mad rush to hit ship dates; most publishers would probably rather have psychologically addictive games than fun ones anyway. Bloober Team has managed to craft a great game in spite of the pressures they must have faced from the higher-ups at Konami.

I have my problems with the very idea of remakes, especially if a publisher uses it as an excuse to delist their original games, but one as good as Silent Hill 2 will likely contribute a net positive to the medium. Now Konami has proof that there’s still a strong interest in the franchise, which could potentially lead to brand new horror IPs. Unfortunately, I’m sure it will only lead to more remakes and remasters, which are just as likely to be bad as they are good.

This is all to say Silent Hill 2 is kind of a miracle. It’s probably the first game of the year I would consider a 10/10 if it weren’t for the awful PC optimization. My system is no slouch and has never struggled to run a new game until now; the problem isn’t the system, it’s the game. I spent a day and a half fiddling with the graphical settings until I finally discovered the only way to achieve a consistent frame rate was by typing “-dx11” in the Steam launch options, at which point I rarely dipped below 80fps. This is inexcusable (and, as far as I know, unpatched) for a $70 game. Imagine how angry I’d be if I had shelled out an extra $10 to play it early?

Though I said I don’t remember much about the game the first time around, I do remember playing it. It released mere weeks after 9/11, which was the year I had graduated high school and got my first job that wasn’t in the family business. It was a stressful time for Americans as we were uncertain about the future and our place in the world—we all intuited nothing would ever be the same again. I find it a curious coincidence that the remake would release shortly after the most disruptive pandemic in nearly a century, the long-term effects of which will not be known for some time, but the collective fear is familiar. Here’s a game that’s terrifying, honest, and hopeful in the most common of its eight endings and it couldn’t have released at a more appropriate time if it tried.

I got what players generally agree is the “good” ending. And let me tell you: even that was depressing. But boy was it cathartic. That’s twice now that Silent Hill 2 has been an unwittingly timely cure for society’s maladies. Good sense prevents me from assigning “game of the year” to a remake, but it’s easily the remake of the year, perhaps the decade.

Missing game features is not a feature

Shortly after Grand Theft Auto 3 came out, a recurring topic on GTA message boards was, “Do you think we will be able to swim in the next one?” There was an aggressive group of players who reached for reasons why the ability to swim in a GTA game was “stupid” and “pointless.” (Never mind the franchise was hugely popular in part because it was seen by many as an “everything simulator.”) One side of the debate casually thought that such a mechanic would be cool. The other side took up arms as if such a suggestion was holy blasphemy, presumably because some people are hyper-defensive of anything they like. (Swimming was indeed introduced in San Andreas, and when Grand Theft Auto 5 released, the very first freeroam activity I engaged in was riding a Sea-Doo straight into the ocean and swimming off of it for no other reason than it was fun. Go figure.)

Similarly, the first time I played Perfect Dark Zero and witnessed the NPC combatants jumping over my bullets in the combat simulator, I logged into internet forums to see if the player-character was also capable of the same gymnastics. Perhaps you’ll notice a pattern emerging in one of the responses: “What are you? A circus clown or something? Why the hell would you want to leap around like a [insert expletive here]?” When Halo 2 released, I asked a forum why the sound design of the guns didn’t pack a satisfying punch on my surround sound system. The sole response was “no.”

More recently, I took to the Steam forums to ask those who had played the Mortal Kombat 1 beta to confirm or deny if there were any functions that relied solely on a right thumbstick (such as using Konsumable or navigating the Krypt in previous titles) because I was frustrated by not being able to play a fighting game solely on a fightstick, which has no right thumbstick. It was clear neither of the responses had actually played the beta, much less read my question past its title, but they had opinions nonetheless. One went so far as to suggest the Mortal Kombat moveset was “never really intended for joysticks…” as if I wasn’t there in the 90s when the first batch of games hit the arcade with—you guessed it—two big ol’ American-style joysticks.

Have you ever been frustrated that the latest racing game doesn’t play nice with that expensive steering wheel you purchased? Well, according to the forum geniuses: that game (it doesn’t matter which game it is, there will be fanatics who blindly defend its oversights) is obviously more of an “arcade racer” and “arcade racers are exclusively designed for gamepads, not steering wheels.” Yet almost ever single racing game I’ve ever seen in the arcade has a steering wheel controller. So why does this community accept “arcade racers” that are uncontrollable by a steering wheel? Rather, why does the part of the community that doesn’t own steering wheels feel the need to voice an opinion on the matter at all?

A current hot topic seems to be: “Why does travel in Starfield rely so much on menus and fast traveling?” Those of us who expected space travel to operate more like No Man’s Sky or Elite Dangerous have been told exactly why we’re absolute morons for wanting that extra step of immersion that many find boring. I get it. Not everyone has dual flightsticks and a penchant for roleplaying deep space isolation. Not everyone lit up upon hearing Sean Murray’s pre-release promise that if you see a star in No Man’s Sky you can visit it. But I certainly did and so did millions of others. It’s now a genre standard that’s eight years old, set by indie game studios. And while there are definitely assholes on my side of this issue (any issue, really), it seems to me that those who are staunchly aligned against such a mechanic are doing the same thing the anti-swimming GTA players did: reaching for any reason why Starfield is absolute perfection.

(For the record, I have close to 50 hours logged in Starfield as of this writing so I don’t want to give the impression that I dislike it. My disappointment in the lack of tooling around a galaxy has more or less melted in lieu of what the game does right. On the other hand, it does plenty wrong, too, and I suspect the chorus of 9/ and 10/10 reviews are very much on a runaway hype train. Compare it to Baldur’s Gate 3 and you will see it is very much not a next generation title… it’s not even as good as Fallout 4, but I digress.)

We can have it both ways, you know. In fact, previous Bethesda games did just that: gave the player the option to fast travel or travel to a destination in “real time.” (Quotations because the term is relative to its science fictional setting.) Obviously players can’t spend the actual time required to travel to a destination that’s lightyears away, but Elite Dangerous and NMS both found clever ways around those limitations that didn’t require the use of an awkwardly placed loading screen. What I find most hilarious is that the people defending Bethesda’s omission are the ones who got their way and they’re still angry.

Starfield: 3 Hours In

Let’s get this out of the way quick: Starfield appears to be a great game and I suspect everyone who’s even a little interested in it should probably try it. So far, all of my complaints are nitpicks. Let this post serve as a spoiler-free indicator of what to expect. I’ll either temper your expectations or kick your hype train into overdrive.

I’d heard two reports that the game was more like “Red Dead Redemption 2 in space” rather than a traditional Bethesda title. My brief time in the game conflicts with that statement. The music of the title screen immediately gave me Skyrim vibes. These vibes strengthened as the game faded into a cutscene that had me expecting one of the characters to say, “Hey, you… you’re finally awake!” Soon after coming into contact with the game’s MacGuffin, your character develops temporary amnesia, at which point the character editor is unlocked as you “remember” who you are, Fallout style.

The character editor has one strength: characters look better than they’ve ever looked in a Bethesda game. Unfortunately, the editor has many weaknesses, too. Recent titles like Street Fighter 6 and Diablo IV offered enough options for me to create fairly accurate replications of Brandon Lee’s The Crow (I don’t know why that’s my go-to character lately). Starfield’s character editor isn’t even close to being robust enough for that kind of detail. It offers you around thirty presets, maybe thirty hairstyles, and lets you change the oddly similar (and oddly familiar) faces within some pretty rigid parameters. Instead of having control over ear height, eye separation, etc., you decide if the preset face is round, square, thin, etc… that’s it.

As someone who has countless hours in No Man’s Sky and Elite: Dangerous (not to mention over a hundred games in my Steam library with the “space” tag), I was disappointed the first time I climbed aboard the starter ship to fly to another planet. There’s a short but rousing cutscene as the ship takes off, but then the game clumsily enters a loading screen. The next thing you know, you’re suddenly in space. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have expected an immersive sim from what could very well be the year’s best seller, but as a staunch fan of seamless ground-to-space transitions, this is my biggest disappointment so far.

Speaking of boundaries, on the first planet I visited after leaving the starting planet, I completed a main objective and was told to go back to my ship to continue the story. I decided to ignore said message and started walking to see if I could find any invisible walls. I set my sights on a distant piece of scenery that was so far removed from my landing spot that I was certain I would reach some sort of invisible wall or at least a warning to turn around. Not only did I not find any such boundaries, I saw a point of interest blip on my radar much farther away than my initial destination. I will experiment on this more when I play again, but so far (and I admit my sample size is relatively small) it looks like the explorable areas of planets might be absolutely huge. Though, I must confess my walk was quite boring.

Having recently played the new System Shock, I feel like I’m in familiar territory: so far, Starfield feels less like a next-gen defining game and more like a highly polished next-gen remake of a previous gen-game. So much of The Elder Scrolls and Fallout’s DNA is in this, which is to be expected and even desired, but some of the Bethesda aspects that have started to show signs of their age are present, too.

At any rate, I am absolutely hyped to play again and spend more time in the combat and checking the dialogue out with NPCs.

I’ll post more thoughts as I progress.

Gone Gamin’

It’s been a while since I posted here, but I haven’t given up entirely. It’s just that most of my blogging time is now spent on the video game I’ve been working on, Blood Ship. You can follow development of it on Neurocrasher.com.

Here’s some very early game footage:

Be sure to like and subscribe and all that annoying stuff to keep updated on the development!

Arcade game woes

Last Friday I decided to pull the electronics, but a fever I’ve been having on and off for about a week knocked me on my ass. I’ve been alternatively freezing and sweating my ass off ever since. Hopefully I’ll be able to start the bodywork next weekend.
Whenever I haven’t been too exhausted to stand, I’ve been playing Gyruss on my MAME cabinet. It’s one of the few space shooters I might like more than Galaga. 

full disclosure: this guy is way better than me

Gyruss music is just flat-out fucking rad, isn’t it?

* * *

I’ve finished the first draft of Church Camp. It’s easily the best first draft of anything I’ve ever written. More details soon.

First impressions of Resident Evil 7 (2017) [PC]

This isn’t a review. More like notes I made during my first session. No spoilers. No VR headset, either. Current hardware: i5-4690k @ 3.50 GHz, GTX 970, 16gb RAM.

My first disappointment came immediately after launching the game: a text screen asked me to create save data and I couldn’t select the “YES” option until I plugged in a gamepad. Once I plugged the gamepad in, the mouse cursor appeared and I was able to continue with the keyboard and mouse.

I miss the spooky voice intoning “RESIDENT EEEEEVIL” when I start a game. Why abandon one of the game’s most memorable trademarks.

Motion blur is turned on by default and I’ve never been a fan of motion blur in a game. I can only imagine how nauseating it must be in a VR headset. Changing the FPS option from “VARIED” to “60” made the mouselook feel a lot more natural and responsive. Besides upping the FOV, I left the other settings on their default values and the game looks and feels great.

The controls are responsive, and the times you get stuck in a deliberately paced animation have been significantly reduced… no more waiting forever for a door to open up.

I can’t believe how fast this game loads from the desktop. Loading times in general are exceptional.

At times, the main character sounds awfully causal about a lot of the fucked-up going-ons.. he simply isn’t emoting enough fear (to give specific examples would spoil some of the surprises). I feel this is a voice directing issue rather than an acting one. Otherwise, the voice acting is good, sometimes great, but the dialogue and the character writing is frequently weak. The game indulges in various horror movie cliches, such as the dumb cop who gets himself killed before calling for backup (that’s not a spoiler for anyone who’s ever seen a horror movie… it’s immediately obvious that’s what’s going to happen).

I am really digging the Texas Chainsaw Massacre vibe.

I like that the game gives you more bullets than the first handful of installments did, but fewer than the action-oriented sequels. (Not that bullets do much good in most situations.) It seems to balance the frustration and suspense factor a lot better, too.

I grew tired of the hiding mechanic in Alien: Isolation. Haven’t grown tired of it here yet. You’re not hiding in lockers, but staying crouched and almost always moving.

Instead of saving at typewriters, you save at cassette players, which are found few and far between. You don’t have to worry about collecting limited ink ribbons, either. (Horror games which allow you to save freely can get fucked.) The punishment of having to replay certain sections upon death gives the experience legitimacy. Thankfully, this aspect is also balanced well… it’s frustrating, but not fun-breaking.

The map design is brilliant. It feels like a first-person Metroidvania style game in the way you progress and backtrack… the environment is always changing, which opens up new paths to old checkpoints and points of interest. Other games in the series have done this, too, of course, but it’s just so much more refined now.

Occasionally you pick up a VHS tape and play it in a VCR to get additional chunks of the backstory. The ensuing cutscenes require player input, which kind of breaks the immersion for me. I would rather watch the cutscenes through the main character’s eyes than play as secondary characters. Imagine trying to watch a tape for important clues while constantly checking over your shoulder for ax-wielding maniacs.

In one of the aforementioned cutscenes, it seems more like the demo, in which the game favors trial and error to skill. (At one point I didn’t really know what I was supposed to do until a hint on the death screen told me.) In the game’s defense, I haven’t played it long enough to see how important this gimmick will become later on, if it all.

Puzzles. I’m getting bored of puzzles in video games, but they haven’t annoyed me in this installment… yet. I love that, during one of the complicated puzzles, the main character wonders aloud: “Who the hell makes this shit?”

I have a feeling this game’s going to be short or repeat itself by the end. The richness of it seems too great to sustain for several hours.

That’s it for now. I can’t wait to get back into it tomorrow.

Dead By Daylight: First Impressions

Dead By Daylight gives you the choice of playing a victim or a movie slasher. In order for the killer to win he must prevent the victims from escaping, which requires catching, disabling, and hanging them on meat hooks. Survivors only have to escape, but there’s a catch: the killer’s compound is entirely fenced in. The only way to open one of the gates is by repairing the generators, which are scattered about the map. It takes a long time to repair each one, adding to the suspense. The killer generally knows where the generators are at all times, but the victims have to actively search for them without the aid of a radar.

There’s also a point system. The more points you have, the more items and power-ups you can buy in between matches. The point system encourages the victims to help one another, as opposed to fending for themselves (which happens, too), while inspiring the lone killer to get creative with his traps and tactics. I’m actually surprised by how much teamwork is to be found in a title which doesn’t feature in-game chat.

What’s even more surprising is the simple concept’s longevity. There’s only the one game mode and all the maps look more or less the same beyond their drab color schemes. You’re either going to be one of three available killers (which requires hosting a game and sometimes waiting damn near forever for four other players to join) or one of the four survivors, meaning there’s not a whole lot to see beyond your first few matches. With so few combinations, I expected this one to get stale quick, but I find myself loading it up frequently. It’s very easy to jump in and out of it.

Matches last only a handful of minutes and, generally, don’t take long getting into. The overall boot time is fairly low, too, which is probably why I play CS:GO so often. Like that game, Dead By Daylight provides a surprising amount of replayability not in spite of its simplicity, but because of it. Meanwhile the graphics are more than acceptable and the sounds of blades and meat hooks puncturing flesh are crisp and satisfying.

Theme goes a long way and that’s the biggest thing Dead By Daylight has going for it. Unfortunately (for me) it doesn’t completely bring that 80s horror vibe which the upcoming Friday the 13th game promises. It just looks a little too much like a late 90s horror movie for my liking, while the victim roster is curiously lacking a teen heroine, a dimwitted jock, and a clueless police officer. Still, playing as the killer and stalking real-life players with a intimidating walk is even more fun than you may think.

If you’re not a fan of slasher movies, you should probably skip this one. Otherwise, I certainly don’t feel like I threw my money away as the twenty dollar price tag seems just about right. Besides, the thrill of finding a victim hiding in a closet is something I can’t convey with words. I find the game’s strengths more than makes up for the bugs, most of which aren’t game-breaking.

At the time of this writing, the game doesn’t have a serviceable party system. Players are constantly entering and immediately leaving lobbies in search of their friends, which sometimes makes soloing take longer than it should. The devs have tweeted they will address this issue soon, but a party system could potentially break a game that purposely omitted in-game chat because those players will no doubt be using VOIP software to coordinate against the killer.