Really charming Indiana Jones-themed Doom total conversion, fighting through waves of Nazis and undead guardians in ruins around the world. Biggest surprise for me was the strength of the scenario design and pacing- fully expected to see everything the game had to offer by the end of the first episode, but there’s steady introduction of new enemies and weapons, alongside some nice breaks in the formula to keep things interesting. A definite highlight is the start of the Egypt episode, a dense shootout full of destructible props in a museum that’s far more open to exploration than the linear action of much of the rest of the game- and which also demonstrates how strong and varied the roster of hitscan enemies here are.

While I think Venturous is a little too conservative with it’s Doom II analogs, only rarely making you fight Revenant and Archvile equivalents- and usually at the end of episodes- having to prioritize heavy-machine gunners or grenadiers goes a long way in spicing up the action. The best trick it pulls that really capitalizes on this variety is ambushing you whenever you’ve just cleared out an area, foot soldiers pouring in right as you’ve gotten a handle on the undead hordes. It should get stale after a while, but the steady alternation and escalation of these threats more than carries the combat for the duration, bread-and-butter arena fights against monsters and more tactical shootouts against humans.

Ended up wrapping up a playthrough of the 1.3 release right as the newest update dropped, which includes an additional episode in Greece and generally fills out the game really nicely- with an extra visual pass and remixed level arrangements. One of my original criticisms was how weak the ending was, fighting a simplistic boss that you could circle-strafe around and lock down with machine gun fire, now traded out for one where you’re only armed with the magically-infused weapons, the boss now able to use attacks from the entirety of the enemy roster. I didn’t die on either encounter, and it still functionally boils down to circle-strafing it until you deplete its health bar, this newest version is unambiguously the fuller experience- and is a microcosm for the ways the game has been bolstered overall, visually sharper and more novel mechanically.

Even with all the positive changes, levels can still get kind of homogeneous by the end. You can only delve into lost tombs and ancient ruins so many times before it all starts to blur together- as unusual as it may sound from me, probably a sign that the game could’ve used some breaks from all the combat: a couple of gimmick levels, like some kind of teleporter puzzle or a proper labyrinth map could’ve gone a long way at selling the adventurer fantasy in a way combat tunnels just don’t provide (or really go for broke and make a besieged town built over some ruins as a hub area, similar to other shooters like Afterglow and Hedon).

Otherwise, amazing to see the jump in quality from the 1.3 to the 1.5 release- gave me the unusually good problem of having to throw out a bunch of my criticisms on the game, and the newly-included cliffhanger ending has me eager to see what this developer decides to tackle next.