DJSCheddar
A respectable enough effort for a solo indie guy's very first game. Everything could use a little polish. The quest design and how the world map works make everything kind of muddled and slow.
Unfortunately overcomplicates things a bit compared to the first one.
It's great that the new map is always onscreen, but the rotation and the resource-based zooming to search for secrets both suck, and it kind of broke the game for me. All the other new content is either frustrating (invisible enemies), tedious (another layer of objectives in each level), or lazy (weapon and enemy reskins, with new voice samples just being the old ones played backwards).
Even as the SPEAR OF DESTINY to the original's WOLFENSTEIN 3-D, this is a minor letdown.
It's great that the new map is always onscreen, but the rotation and the resource-based zooming to search for secrets both suck, and it kind of broke the game for me. All the other new content is either frustrating (invisible enemies), tedious (another layer of objectives in each level), or lazy (weapon and enemy reskins, with new voice samples just being the old ones played backwards).
Even as the SPEAR OF DESTINY to the original's WOLFENSTEIN 3-D, this is a minor letdown.
Everything like this got wiped off the face of the universe the second DOOM came out, obviously, but this is a meaningful improvement on WOLFENSTEIN 3-D and pretty damn good in its own right!
Good art, good (goofy) sound, interesting ideas like items in boxes, enemies lying in wait as items, teleporters, a goddamn MAP ... not everything works perfectly (like the enemy who can get stunned and then get back up) but it all hangs together and makes for a fun time.
I remember playing this as a kid post-DOOM and not really giving it the time of day. I imagine that's more or less representative of the entire gaming public, lol. And that's a shame! It's much better than I expected, revisiting it.
Good art, good (goofy) sound, interesting ideas like items in boxes, enemies lying in wait as items, teleporters, a goddamn MAP ... not everything works perfectly (like the enemy who can get stunned and then get back up) but it all hangs together and makes for a fun time.
I remember playing this as a kid post-DOOM and not really giving it the time of day. I imagine that's more or less representative of the entire gaming public, lol. And that's a shame! It's much better than I expected, revisiting it.
Way ahead of its time, obviously, and made with a lot of love and ambition behind it. The amount of unique art is really impressive, and although most of it is a bit generic, it's all very polished.
As a game, though, it's not the most thrilling. It's more interesting from an academic standpoint than it is to actually play.
As a game, though, it's not the most thrilling. It's more interesting from an academic standpoint than it is to actually play.
1996
An absolute masterclass of weapons, movement, and especially level design, even if the latter two episodes don't quite live up to the near-perfection of the first one. A huge leap forward in FPS thinking.
Also -- and it should almost go without saying -- one of the finest video game voice performances of all time.
Also -- and it should almost go without saying -- one of the finest video game voice performances of all time.
1997
I think you can file this one under 'noble failures'. They made an honest effort -- hand-drawn animation, an attempt at real storytelling, fun easter eggs, a logical and realistic progression of levels -- but they just couldn't pull it off. In the end, no matter what the vision for the game may have been, the result is ugly and not fun to play.
The shooting combat is tuned very poorly, making the game much harder than it needs to be. On the medium difficulty, your character can only take about three hits, and your enemies can peg you from all the way across the map if you don't see them first. Due to the Old West setting, they're all hitscanners that look roughly the same, so there's no good way to approach any combat situation besides crawling along at a snail's pace and hoping you catch them unawares.
Beyond the gameplay, the window dressing isn't any more impressive. The character graphics are mostly hideous scanned-in sketches and the story is somehow both perfunctory and overdone at the same time. It's all just a miss.
Hard to believe this is from the same company that made STAR WARS: DARK FORCES a couple years earlier. I don't know anything about the production but it seems to me like this had to be rushed or something. There's ideas but no polish or execution. Shame.
The shooting combat is tuned very poorly, making the game much harder than it needs to be. On the medium difficulty, your character can only take about three hits, and your enemies can peg you from all the way across the map if you don't see them first. Due to the Old West setting, they're all hitscanners that look roughly the same, so there's no good way to approach any combat situation besides crawling along at a snail's pace and hoping you catch them unawares.
Beyond the gameplay, the window dressing isn't any more impressive. The character graphics are mostly hideous scanned-in sketches and the story is somehow both perfunctory and overdone at the same time. It's all just a miss.
Hard to believe this is from the same company that made STAR WARS: DARK FORCES a couple years earlier. I don't know anything about the production but it seems to me like this had to be rushed or something. There's ideas but no polish or execution. Shame.
Boring and busted.
The first hour of this game involves you trying to turn the lights on in your new house, calling your agent for help, missing the electrician at the front gate, calling your agent for help again, checking the fuses, calling your agent for help again, and then looking for candles. Maybe it gets super duper scary right after that, but I will never know! Terrible controls, broken hotspots, and insanely slow and awkward pathing through the house made it tough to give it even that much time.
The first hour of this game involves you trying to turn the lights on in your new house, calling your agent for help, missing the electrician at the front gate, calling your agent for help again, checking the fuses, calling your agent for help again, and then looking for candles. Maybe it gets super duper scary right after that, but I will never know! Terrible controls, broken hotspots, and insanely slow and awkward pathing through the house made it tough to give it even that much time.
For being essentially "Star Wars DOOM", this game is WAY better than you might guess. It handily captures the original trilogy vibe with a great MIDI version of the soundtrack and very well done, on-model art.
Beyond that stuff, the genre fundamentals are tight as well. Good weapons, good movement, fast, light pace. More plot and mission objectives here than in the average 1995 FPS but that doesn't bog things down. And most of the level design is believable and non-maze-y (with a couple ill-advised exceptions including a memorably annoying sewer level).
Again, given the mission of "make DOOM, but Star Wars", they did a pretty impressive job and it's hard to say how it could have gone much better. Holds up!
Beyond that stuff, the genre fundamentals are tight as well. Good weapons, good movement, fast, light pace. More plot and mission objectives here than in the average 1995 FPS but that doesn't bog things down. And most of the level design is believable and non-maze-y (with a couple ill-advised exceptions including a memorably annoying sewer level).
Again, given the mission of "make DOOM, but Star Wars", they did a pretty impressive job and it's hard to say how it could have gone much better. Holds up!
1997
Setting aside that it's as ugly as sin (partly, but not totally on purpose), this game fumbles just about every single FPS fundamental, making it borderline unplayable. Weak guns, way too many enemies (all of them spongey), huge labyrinthine levels with no flow whatsoever, and too many useless powerups. It also squanders the capabilities of the Build Engine with drab, flat levels and essentially no interactivity with the environment. It's like a Bizarro Universe DUKE NUKEM 3D -- going for more or less the exact same thing but botching it on every level. Real amateur hour stuff here.
1992
It's all here, right from the start - just in its pupal stage. Still perfectly playable but good lord do these maze-ass levels need some kind of mini-map.
1997
Absolutely no idea what they're going for here. Not so much a shooter as a series of challenge rooms where you have to figure out what the developers were thinking and then sit through some extremely '90s humor while shooting some things to proceed to the next one. It's a bit of a shame because the movement and the shooting are quite good. They should have made a real game out that stuff!
A goofy, ugly mess. No actual game design to speak of, just a hundred or so half-thought-through ideas barfed out and mishmashed together on top of some sub-WOLFENSTEIN 3D levels. There are a couple fun concepts somewhere in there, but they are buried under a mountain of self-indulgence. I've always felt bad that the Johns fired Tom Hall off of DOOM but, man, oh man, does this game vindicate that decision.
A Ten-Year Old Saying 'Wouldn't It Be Cool If': The Video Game
A Ten-Year Old Saying 'Wouldn't It Be Cool If': The Video Game
So committed to its identity as the premier "DOOM clone" that it pulled an ULTIMATE DOOM and did a retail version with a totally extraneous and badly done expansion that brings down the whole package! Except here you get two lame extra episodes instead of one.
1994
A "DOOM clone" in the truest sense, but a very, very good one. The all-new art and assets are quite polished and the feel is fresh enough despite being on its progenitor's engine. It's more than just a reskin, too -- they got pretty ambitious with an inventory system full of items that transform the gameplay. The implementation is shaky and the items themselves are hit-and-miss, but a couple of them (like the one that powers up all of your weapons into totally different forms for a limited time) are quite fun and useful.
Most impressive of all, to me, was the level design, which does a great job of suggesting larger structures and organic areas with DOOM's limited tools, but also deftly avoids falling into that series' trap of abstract mazes and annoying switch puzzles. The flow of each area is very well designed and signposted in a way to guide the player organically without being too obvious about it. Top-tier work for this period.
I was very surprised by how good this is. I can see myself coming back to it.
Most impressive of all, to me, was the level design, which does a great job of suggesting larger structures and organic areas with DOOM's limited tools, but also deftly avoids falling into that series' trap of abstract mazes and annoying switch puzzles. The flow of each area is very well designed and signposted in a way to guide the player organically without being too obvious about it. Top-tier work for this period.
I was very surprised by how good this is. I can see myself coming back to it.
A million weapons and none of them are good. A million enemies and all of them are spongey. Longggggg, dull, nearly aesthetically identical levels that take ages to sprint across. You're expected to explore but enemies constantly respawn, making you rush.
But it's perfectly playable. You run really fast and there are cool secrets. Some of it is goofy in a fun way.
Inessential, but inoffensive. It's certainly got nothing on GOLDENEYE.
But it's perfectly playable. You run really fast and there are cool secrets. Some of it is goofy in a fun way.
Inessential, but inoffensive. It's certainly got nothing on GOLDENEYE.