DOOM 64 is a good reminder of why the boomer shooter genre continues to be a thing. There's something just so enthralling about speeding around primitive 3D levels (selling them short here, there's actually a lot of depth in how they're all arranged to provide the most visual and gameplay depth using a shoestring amount of resources) mowing down animated sprites. As someone who has only played the OG, 3, and 2016, this one presents as a solid in-between for the first two.

By and large, I think this game is an improvement over Zero Dawn... except for the part that I'd imagine matters most to a lot of players. It feels like Guerrilla focused on adding new ways to play instead of further refining the existing gameplay, and doesn't really do a great job of introducing the player to all these new ways of fighting. Just tosses you a bunch of weirdly-balanced toys and says "have at it!" Still, the story and characters are what I care about the most, and it delivered.

An admittedly clever twist does not (at least by itself) a fun JRPG make. There's also the issue that First Departure doesn't really do that much with the Star Trek influences and instead relegates the player to mostly just going through the motions of your usual save-the-world fantasy land JRPG narrative/gameplay.