went into this completely blind; didn't even know it wasn't a quake sequel. also tried the original version first, which definitely made for rough initial impact

quake ii kicks off in a way that i can lightly describe as "complete dog shit". for some ungodly reason, Club Carmack decided it'd be a nice idea to start players off with the worst pistol and shotgun combo known to mankind (even complete without muzzle flash if the og release is your preference). the fun doesn't stop not starting there, though, because then you pick up the grenades and boy oh boy - my personal favorite aspect about them is how they take 35 years to throw, which makes them only remotely viable either around corners or as a tool to very slowly kill yourself with

it was during the entirety of this first level that i thought to myself, "why does this suck so much fucking dick? who enjoys this? can john carmack really be trusted to call steve jobs an idiot for designing a mouse with one button when he actually thinks quake ii is fun?" then i got the one-two punch: the super shotgun and the chaingun

suddenly - enemies died from being shot. i no longer needed to constantly pop from cover to reliably fight hitscan baddies spongier than those seen in 'chasm: the rift' (which, ironically, is a quake clone). things only went up from here - especially in level 3 where the 90 or so grenades i'd been eagerly not using were finally given purpose via a launcher that didn't have 600 frames of startup. i'd say this is when the game really begins

...and barring the last stage - which definitely gets to a point of feeling sluggish due to its over-eagerness in spamming the most aggravatingly tanky two-legged enemy in the game - it doesn't let up. every later earned weapon (that isn't the rocket launcher) continues to feel pretty fantastic. the BFG in particular took me by surprise with its insane splash and chain damaging. you can fire this thing at one enemy and it'll clear out an entire fucking room. it's awesome and thanks to it using the same ammo as the standard laser rifle, there's no shortage of opportunities to let it loose

i'm not much for movement tech in my fps, but the levels here were designed in ways where i was pretty eager to push myself even on that front. lotsa opportunity to master bunnyhopping and circle jumping. i even skipped some chunks of levels with a few well-placed rocket jumps. fun stuff and it made me just a little more interested in giving quake 3 another shot

sonically and atmospherically, everything's obviously downgraded from q1 due to the lack of trent reznor (note: "HUH" is still intact (phew)) but the sonic mayhem soundtrack isn't totally unwelcome. i'll certainly take a competent albeit standard metal ost over the mick gordon-branded djent slop that this genre is so overly saturated with now

i've yet to play any expansions, but i did try a smidge of the n64 stages and found them to be really charming. kinda surreal to see a take of this game with so much color in it. definitely gonna get back to that, but for now i think i'm just gonna go straight for quake 4

this game sucks compared to kart, bunch of overly complex changes made to the game making it extremely overwhelming, the tutorial it makes you go through doesn't helps with that feeling neither, and this is coming from someone that has been playing Kart v1 since version 1.2

also, to the dev that thought changing arle's voice to the puyo pop english voicelines was a good idea: go fuck yourself

oh, did i forget to mention that most basic stuff that wasn't locked in kart is now locked behind dumb challenges? THE ABILITY TO LOAD MODS AND PLAY ONLINE IS LOCKED BEHIND CHALLENGES, WHO THE FUCK DOES THAT??? anyways here's a save that has most of the stuff unlocked, grab it while it lasts
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/857867797874212865/1232898299904786462/ringdata.dat?ex=662b2184&is=6629d004&hm=84eb18fc0dbedeae71ae4cc0fd91506e8a705f28243eaf92bafe818c2e8ed22b&

Addendum (4/26/24): A 2.1 patch dropped and gave the game another honest try, while there's still some pretty big problems with the overtuned difficulty of the emerald challenges, the kart handling, and very misplaced GP courses (really that first GP is a mess compared to the rest), there is a MARKED improvement as a whole with the way the game plays now.

This still needs some hefty lifting and work on its backend and I'm still not over the moon with it, but its a step in the right direction. I'm at least happy the devs seemed to have gotten over this attitude from older comments I've seen and actually taking the criticism to heart to make it better.

ORIGINAL REVIEW: Between the hour long tutorial with constant info dumping mechanics, a mess of visual components making seeing the tracks difficult, and the mechanics of racing itself being overly complex with both a ring currency system for spending to keep your top speed up...

This game's a complete mess. I really enjoyed Sonic Robo blast 2 Kart for the fact it was heavily skill based but still goofy enough that it was in line with how Mario Kart plays. This is just overkill in the audio/visual department without much of a second thought given to the actual core gameplay of the game. So much focus went into shoving so many mechanics like fast drops, ring spending, tricks off springs, etc. that it feels less like I'm racing and praying to god I do finger gymnastics to even stay on the road.

I hope they strip back some of this game or better balance it because in its current state, it's a frustrating mess that isn't very fun to play and its tutorial is a FUCKING HOUR LONG that I spent that I genuinely didn't enjoy.

The neat thing about Doom's classic mod scene is how easily you can observe the evolution of game design over time, as well as a community's priorities and preferences; it becomes clear what ideas had lasting power, and which didn't. As Doomsday of UAC approaches its 30th anniversary this summer, this early fan level retains its iconic status despite how unkind time has been to it. The minute I exit a cleverly sculpted wreck of an 18-wheeler, greeted by an industrial park teeming with demons and "realistic" features, that's how I know I'm playing something special.

Doom modding in its nascent days amounted to either (a) poking around in hex editors, trying to create a cogent WAD file through trial and error, or (b) wrangling the initial batch of pre-Windows map editors which loved to crash and/or corrupt your hard work! It's a miracle that something as fun, well-paced, and innovative as this map from Leo Martin Lim came together at all. (The other miracle is that levels this old are still preserved in their original archived form, and we have Ty Halderman and his successors in charge of the /idgames FTP archive to thank for that.) All college kids who played some version of id Software's original Doom in its launch days had many ideas for mods, but so little experience and precedent to build from. Lim wasn't even the first to release anything beyond a series of sketchy boxes with monsters and weapons—Invasion…: Level 1 - Contamination beat it to the punch by about a month, replete with special effects and new assets like music and textures. But Doomsday of UAC proved that you could make a similarly cinematic experience using just the base game and a host of magic tricks exploiting Carmack's engine. It helps that this map has solid combat and exploration in its bones, too.

After crawling from the wreckage, you're pressured from all sides by a trickle of imps, pinkies, and shotgunners ready to pounce before you can assemble an arsenal. This prompts a mad dash through a midnight maze of boxes, trailers, and enemy groups one might want to use against each other. We're far from the clean, abstract but believably efficient spaces that Romero designed for Doom's Episode 1…nor is this anything like the trap-driven dungeon crawling one finds in Sandy Petersen's levels. Doomsday of UAC marked the beginnings of what FPS modding circles call "Doom-cute": heavily kit-bashed replicas of architecture and objects like cars, toilets, etc. using only the original game's resources. The tipped-over truck with a spinning wheel looks impressive already, nothing like what id's crew displayed in the shareware and payware episodes. It gets even more exciting when you realize it took a lot of sector geometry manipulation and a well-placed texture animation effect on certain lines for this to function at all! There's just enough breathing room to admire the scenery while gunning down monsters and collecting the necessary ammo and key cards to proceed.

I shan't spoil the rest of Lim's one and only wonder-mod since it relies on a clever twist or two, but just know there's some trickery afoot, creeping up on players as they head further into this corrupted corporate complex. Hidden usable doors guard access to visible yet seemingly unobtainable power-ups. A conference of powerful baddies lies deeper within the offices, guarded by hapless imitations of the salarypeople who once roamed here. Even the bathrooms and parking garage aren't safe! Considering that Lim and other authors also had to build around the Doom engine's strict limits in this pre-source port era, the level of detail and scope in Doomsday of UAC matches and sometimes outdoes OG Doom maps like Mt. Erebus. I don't know that it exceeds the best parts of id's game, particularly Computer Station or Containment Area, but the ingenuity on display here always brings a smile to my face. Best of all, there's never too much going in the player's favor, nor too little. Weapon and encounter balance feels spot on, the secrets are rewarding to find (nor essential to a fault), and the sequencing of incidental combat into traps and back rarely feels awkward.

Doomsday of UAC is still a 1994 FPS mod, though, warts and all. It's very easy to get through for a modern Doom fan, even those who have only played the official games. Texturing and level of detail is mostly sparse aside from the aforementioned set-pieces. The famous "crystal sector" room can just end up feeling gimmicky or frustrating if you haven't kept a backup save ready. Nor is the original Doom's bestiary and set of player options as ideal for these large open spaces as Doom II's equivalents. I've warmed up to the original's emphasis on cacodemons, rockets, and copious cannon fodder thanks to later WADs like Beginning of the End and Doom the Way id Did, but the general experience for early Doom mods can feel underwhelming if you've played anything much newer. The best moment arguably comes right before the end as you deal with an elaborate cyberdemon trap to nab the red skull key, which involves tangoing with barons of hell and lost souls in the process. This would have been an intimidating puzzle for players of that period, and I get a kick out of it now. But in the back of my mind, all I can think is how much crazier I'd redesign this into, using modern tools like Ultimate Doom Builder and such. At least the transition from "invaded office space" to hellscape remains evocative today.

Overall, I'd say Doomsday of UAC more than deserves its lauded spot in the history of DIY world-crafting and FPS fandom. It features prominently on Doomworld, both in its 10 Years of Doom feature, with its close rival Invasion…: Episode 1 unfortunately absent. [1] Lim's mod was further recognized fifteen years later via the site's Top 100 Most Memorable Maps retrospective, the only map predating Doom II's release to rank in the top 10! [2] And if that's the consensus from community veterans, so often locked in debate over what classic mods and maps truly influenced what, then who am I to downplay the quality and significance of this one? Running through the infested UAC corporate park has become a rite of passage for many players seeking entry into the depths of Doom modding madness. I won't deny it seems quaint and clouded by nostalgia nowadays, yet even Romero himself has highlighted this as an example of the game's impact on future developers, if not id Software themselves. [3] The early success of mods like this and Slaughter Until Death paved the way for id (and competing developers) to hire these amateur designers, or simply license community projects like TNT: Evilution for commercial release as shown with Final Doom. My heart goes out to the unsung pioneers like STONES.WAD; it's simply hard to compete with a milestone like this.

[1] Tropiano, Matthew, and Not Jabba. “Top 100 Memorable Maps 10-1.” Doomworld, December 9, 2018. https://www.doomworld.com/25years/top-100-memorable-maps/page10/.
[2] Watson, Mike, and Andrew Stine. “The Top 100 WADs Of All Time: 1994.” Doomworld, December 10, 2003. https://www.doomworld.com/10years/bestwads/1994.php.
[3] John Romero (20 January 2015). "Devs Play Doom." YouTube. Retrieved 21 January 2015.

the greatest Doom wad of all-time - more than a Doom wad, really. one of the great games of the 2010's in general. a confoundingly multi-faceted piece of art, with some questionable bits that only enhance the mystery. a poetic statement about the nature of memory and death presented in the context of a Doom fan wad. more fun than you think it's going to be from what i just said in the previous sentence. weirdly coherent for a set with so many different authors. has more creativity in a lone fingernail than many commercial games have in their entire body. i know games don't have bodies, i'm just speaking metaphorically here.

i wrote TWO articles about this wad, so you know i have a healthy relationship with it. see my article in Vice from several years ago about it: https://www.vice.com/en/article/paq5bz/alt-doom-mod-stalker
and my older post on Unwinnable about it: https://unwinnable.com/2013/10/24/lost-worlds-a-l-t/

nah yall cant fuck with ribbiks tho. map02 is a nice iteration on mixing the purple (stargate) with the blue (oceanic moodiness) but map 03 is on some other other shitt entirely. a flooded amusement park thats actually your prison + doom's most devious sniper cyberdemon + a 40 minute long math problem disguised as "ammo scarcity" are just the base elements, what happens after that are some fucked up fucked up encounters with the demon kind--its "slaughter+plutonia" sort of still yea but this time instead of just straight up negating safety ribbiks is on his manipulator bullshit and will triangulate in third parties to make you understand that safety was nothing more than a delusion. any given 2x2 area of "safe space" in a room is just bait setup so that you get munched by the sniper cyberdemon, or get sent packing by a homing reveant missile from 100 yards away, or get tag teamed by the archville you ran out of ammo to kill 2 rooms back and the one behind the 20 revenants in front of you. or lose 50 health damn near instantly because its a chaingunner right above you. fuck you. and the infamous cyberdemon room in here is just like...damn. you get put into a room with about 40 hell knights and revenants while you're locked in a new york studio apartment-sized box, then 4 cyberdemons teleport into this same box and you're asked to not die instantly within the next 30 seconds. while the difficulty of that isn't as alarming in the 2022 era the immediate flex-or-die demand is still as arresting as it was damn near ten years ago. and when you step onto the final platform and hit the intermission screen you can't help but feel like the #1 stunna despite the sprite of doomguy's no dobut near-death visage on the bottom of your screen just seconds prior...but fuck it we swag n we surf.

(list&writeup of slaughter stuff impending by the way twizzys 🤞there's about 20-25 major entries i needa hit & 50+ entries i need to add in igdb still but im seeing the sunset. gives me grief that i won't have that discovery high anymore but equal excitement that i'll be able to contextualize and narrative this shit cuz literally all of it was fucking crazy lmao. like look @ some of this shit dawg this shit doesn't even look like it was meant to be played by humans anymore lmao its so techno-mystical & esoteric)

such a bizarre main narrative this time around. opens with nary a hint of subtlety as per usual but, on the contrary, suggests its writers have direct experience with the subject matter in a way that hasn't exactly been the case for any RGG title prior to this. despite proudly displaying this burgeoning inkling of something rather unique, it shows every card in its deck by the time the second half rolls around and we're made to watch the narrative spin its wheels fruitlessly time and time again. pair that with a modicum more self-awareness than usual and you've got a somewhat frustrating and cumbersome package - the hyperreality of these games is often ill-suited to meaningfully address any issues plaguing modern society because you know the way you'll end up mechanically addressing this is by putting some middle aged guy who represents an extreme solution to the core problem in an armbar. which is still fine, don't get me wrong, but opening the final boss by spelling out 'well, maybe he's got a point here...' feels very much like they don't trust me to reach my own conclusions. obviously it's all endowed with the usual charisma and strength of direction but it's an amateurish legal drama and very likely a weak detective narrative depending on your perspective.

thankfully, lost judgments buoyed by the strongest combat in the dragon engine yet and by its compelling extension to the originals approach to side content. much of the original judgment's side content revolved around currying favour with your community and in building up your reputation bit by bit as you work to dispatch the keihin gang, arms-dealing nuisances who functioned as massive thorns in your side. lost judgment sets much of its side content within the walls of seiryo high school, wherein yagami serves as an advisor to the mystery research club and is made to infiltrate various other clubs and societies at the school in order to investigate a school-wide conspiracy. this facet of lost judgment is often really good! extrapolating a lot from the tenets of substories in previous games is greatly enriched by this adolescent context, which seems to serve as an excellent opportunity for the series' characteristic optimism and humanism to surface while still retaining a lot of the same devil-on-your-shoulder humor. the high school setting obviously never strays too far from the JRPG subconscious, but it's nice to participate in these activities as an adult where the goal is not to lead a kind of fulfilling life but instead to help these kids grow and to tell them to take it easy sometimes cause life ain't easy. a lot of it ends up being touching in ways i didn't expect, and chronicling the journeys of all these respective students and clubs culminates in yet another effective substory finale, something i wish these games would do more rather than throw amon at me and call it a day. some infelicities with some of these minigames - it's both extremely funny and entirely predictable that you're expected to remember more about stray cats than you are about any of the hostesses from girl's bite - but for the most part lost judgment shines in this department.

reminded me a lot of Y5. that's a good thing! appreciated that RGG studio seems to slowly be going back to the Y1/Y2 model of being rewarded for exploration with the judgment subseries; there's still work to be done in this respect but anything beats the borderline mobile game side content structure of, say, Y:LAD. that said im told they hid a fourth battle style behind dlc and that's unforgivable. loved skating through ijincho and kamurocho, weaving through crowds to keep up momentum. similarly enjoyed putting the fear of god into high schoolers.