Petabik
2004
This review contains spoilers
I'm certainly biased here, but playing this game I was amazed by just how much it did feel like a proper sequel to the franchise, yet how much of it just made me want to replay DOOM 2016 for the fifth time. It was inspiring seeing how much that game did in fact take notes from this one: the plot, the UAC facilities, Hell's architecture, some demon designs; yup, it started here. Even the damn Soul Cube thing, when you're not saving it for the first Archville/Hell Knight you see, using it for healing might as well be a Glory Kill.
The ideas here are great, and I will forever respect wanting to aim for a bit slower paced game with a higher focus on atmosphere. I think it fits, these aspects were in no way absent in the first Doom, they're just focused on harder here. Perhaps too hard, and I'm not saying that because I often have to whip out the flashlight to see shit - that's how it's clearly meant to be, otherwise I'd be playing BFG Edition instead (hell naw). But when the game seems so fucking AFRAID to stop trying to spook you even though your growing arsenal is making the average life expectancy of every demon lower and lower, so it keeps throwing imps and those new demons that no one remembers by name, that's when the game just gets boring. When I have an imp leap at me for the fiftieth time, I am not spooked - I'm annoyed.
Annoyed is what this game does to me way too many times for its own good. It does manage to peak - around the last third or so. And even then, theres some stuff that will never go away. It's clear this game was designed for tighter places, so you will only rarely have encounters with more than three enemies on the screen at once, often less. As a result, something like the BFG or Rocket Launcher saw less use than I'd remotely wish them to. I often ended up using the shotgun, which - okay, no, it's far from the worst weapon I've handled in a videogame. The issue is that it's like a huge blueball. It can be powerful if you really kiss your enemies with it, and it is often a great, quick response to a lot of enemies, but just a few centimeters of distance, and the spread can easily feel atrocious. That's why it's annoying. And the enemies just ramp up way too slow, the game is so damn insistent on never giving up on using imps everywhere, even though by 2nd half of the game, you can dispose a horde of them in seconds, and there are several enemies that can create way more interesting scenarios. Pinkies are so damn scary in this game, they take a while to kill, they hit hard, they never stop coming at you, and they're yuge, and yet, I don't think they ever used them more than 20 times.
The plot is... there. I already said this is one of the things DOOM 2016 copies, but that game still wisely had its story beats that felt important. It was rather blunt, even if did the cardinal sin of interrupting you a few times. Here, everything felt like it happened in the background, and you're just unraveling it through bits and logs. Not a bad approach on paper, but nothing here (except perhaps the ancient race stuff) felt remotely compelling enough to justify this. I found it so funny how long the game tried to be a little "nudge nudge" about something being wrong with the UAC (there's a fucking hillarious audio log about section Delta getting so mentally ill that the rest of the UAC made a slur for them), and then I come back from Hell and it's suddenly: HERE'S MAMA'S RECIPE FOR THE IDEAL SUMMONING RITUAL. I mean... lol.
Speaking of Hell, it looks cool, sure. Probably best looking Hell in the franchise. Too bad it lasts like... less than an hour. It's such a great peak of the game; everything you did up to this point is suddenly twisted: your weapons are gone, the areas are all distorted, the loading screen has no comforting visual or information... it felt weird to come back to Mars so quickly after that. The buried temple came close to it, but it was too little, too late. Oh yeah, I really like how you get unlimited stamina in Hell, so they can then throw scenarios at you where you really need that. See, this game can be clever at times. But then at other times... it does something so dumb that I feel like the game decided to just start going on autopilot. Like the final boss... you give me so much to prepare for it, and then its just hitting it with the Soul Cube four times? Did they really think I need this much ammo to just kill those ads around the arena a few times to charge it? What a fucking letdown. And how exactly does that suddenly close the hell portal? What in hell even happened? Were they planning the DLC from the beginning?
The ideas here are great, and I will forever respect wanting to aim for a bit slower paced game with a higher focus on atmosphere. I think it fits, these aspects were in no way absent in the first Doom, they're just focused on harder here. Perhaps too hard, and I'm not saying that because I often have to whip out the flashlight to see shit - that's how it's clearly meant to be, otherwise I'd be playing BFG Edition instead (hell naw). But when the game seems so fucking AFRAID to stop trying to spook you even though your growing arsenal is making the average life expectancy of every demon lower and lower, so it keeps throwing imps and those new demons that no one remembers by name, that's when the game just gets boring. When I have an imp leap at me for the fiftieth time, I am not spooked - I'm annoyed.
Annoyed is what this game does to me way too many times for its own good. It does manage to peak - around the last third or so. And even then, theres some stuff that will never go away. It's clear this game was designed for tighter places, so you will only rarely have encounters with more than three enemies on the screen at once, often less. As a result, something like the BFG or Rocket Launcher saw less use than I'd remotely wish them to. I often ended up using the shotgun, which - okay, no, it's far from the worst weapon I've handled in a videogame. The issue is that it's like a huge blueball. It can be powerful if you really kiss your enemies with it, and it is often a great, quick response to a lot of enemies, but just a few centimeters of distance, and the spread can easily feel atrocious. That's why it's annoying. And the enemies just ramp up way too slow, the game is so damn insistent on never giving up on using imps everywhere, even though by 2nd half of the game, you can dispose a horde of them in seconds, and there are several enemies that can create way more interesting scenarios. Pinkies are so damn scary in this game, they take a while to kill, they hit hard, they never stop coming at you, and they're yuge, and yet, I don't think they ever used them more than 20 times.
The plot is... there. I already said this is one of the things DOOM 2016 copies, but that game still wisely had its story beats that felt important. It was rather blunt, even if did the cardinal sin of interrupting you a few times. Here, everything felt like it happened in the background, and you're just unraveling it through bits and logs. Not a bad approach on paper, but nothing here (except perhaps the ancient race stuff) felt remotely compelling enough to justify this. I found it so funny how long the game tried to be a little "nudge nudge" about something being wrong with the UAC (there's a fucking hillarious audio log about section Delta getting so mentally ill that the rest of the UAC made a slur for them), and then I come back from Hell and it's suddenly: HERE'S MAMA'S RECIPE FOR THE IDEAL SUMMONING RITUAL. I mean... lol.
Speaking of Hell, it looks cool, sure. Probably best looking Hell in the franchise. Too bad it lasts like... less than an hour. It's such a great peak of the game; everything you did up to this point is suddenly twisted: your weapons are gone, the areas are all distorted, the loading screen has no comforting visual or information... it felt weird to come back to Mars so quickly after that. The buried temple came close to it, but it was too little, too late. Oh yeah, I really like how you get unlimited stamina in Hell, so they can then throw scenarios at you where you really need that. See, this game can be clever at times. But then at other times... it does something so dumb that I feel like the game decided to just start going on autopilot. Like the final boss... you give me so much to prepare for it, and then its just hitting it with the Soul Cube four times? Did they really think I need this much ammo to just kill those ads around the arena a few times to charge it? What a fucking letdown. And how exactly does that suddenly close the hell portal? What in hell even happened? Were they planning the DLC from the beginning?
2016
It is good on an objective level, obviously; I spent 55 hours on it, so it's doing something right. But I wanted a comfy game where I could relax, and instead I got a game that felt like it kept encouraging me to minmax the shit out of it while subtly pushing me into it with the frankly restrictive daytime limit, stamina and other mechanics. And don't tell me it doesn't mean to do that; no game that doesn't remotely want to support that mindset would go out of its way to have an official wiki.
I can get into the minmaxing and grinding mindset, in fact, I find it fun. But in that regard, Stardew Valley is not at all the type of game I would choose to satisfy that urge.
I can get into the minmaxing and grinding mindset, in fact, I find it fun. But in that regard, Stardew Valley is not at all the type of game I would choose to satisfy that urge.
2023
A deep psychological narrative about the struggling PTSD of an Italian war veteran
2021
A really fucking cool game with a nice, straightforward plot, at least if you ignore when it interrupts you with a 2013 creepypasta
Just closing the window one minute in, relaunching it and seeing its skeleton was pretty funny
This is where Isaac really started being fun.
2016
I think it says a lot how Eternal took a lot of the ideas for the gunplay in this and decided to hyperfixate on them to a point it was in its advertisements. I had sort of a feeling it wouldn't go well even back then, because frankly, it's already near perfect here. I think it's the freedom this game gives you that makes it work. While the idea behind "using the right tool for the right job" isn't as prevalent here, it still applies. Glory kills, open arenas, aggressive enemies, it all already is here, encouraging you to think fast and never stop moving forward, but as long as shit dies while you aren't, it's open season. Some guns and upgrades are definitely stronger than others, and there comes a point where the game starts to run out of stuff to throw at you and its repetitiveness shows a little, but by then you're already in endgame, so I don't really care. By that point in a video game I want to be either really challenged or just fully unleashed with all my toys (ideally both), this satisfies the latter. Perhaps the fact the level design is overall quite fun too is what helps.
Btw, it amazes me how some people keep complaining about the brief HL2-esque sections where the game makes you stop for a bit and pay attention to the narrative bit, when that's like... 1% of the entire damn game, while perfectly ignoring all the parts where the game puts any narrative bits into the environment, which is PERFECT for this (as opposed to the glorified fan wiki lore dump approach Eternal takes). The gritty visuals, the atmospheric bits of the soundtrack, the secrets and collectibles that encourage you to pay attention and explore, all of this creates buildup and downtime that actually helps the game from being more than just arena > corridor > arena.
Really, it's an accomplishment how much this game embodies so many of the fun parts of 90s shooters while feeling like an actual mature development of them. You can argue some of it is a bit too "modernized" in comparison, but honestly... indie devs are shitting out retro shooters left and right now, if you want that, play those. I already started feeling burnt-out just from all the ones that actually did come out in the 90s. Turns out, I do like having things polished up sometimes.
Btw, it amazes me how some people keep complaining about the brief HL2-esque sections where the game makes you stop for a bit and pay attention to the narrative bit, when that's like... 1% of the entire damn game, while perfectly ignoring all the parts where the game puts any narrative bits into the environment, which is PERFECT for this (as opposed to the glorified fan wiki lore dump approach Eternal takes). The gritty visuals, the atmospheric bits of the soundtrack, the secrets and collectibles that encourage you to pay attention and explore, all of this creates buildup and downtime that actually helps the game from being more than just arena > corridor > arena.
Really, it's an accomplishment how much this game embodies so many of the fun parts of 90s shooters while feeling like an actual mature development of them. You can argue some of it is a bit too "modernized" in comparison, but honestly... indie devs are shitting out retro shooters left and right now, if you want that, play those. I already started feeling burnt-out just from all the ones that actually did come out in the 90s. Turns out, I do like having things polished up sometimes.
Remove enemies with random movement patterns and you'll fix like half the reasons this isn't a 100% improvement over the original
2017
I'm very likely biased because I have yet to actually play pretty much any of the games that this one is clearly taking notes from. But I don't fucking care man, I sunk 100 hours into it, it's getting a big thumbs up from me
1996
NIИ
2016
It's basic as hell and for the most part with zero subtlety, but this is a game where it's immediately established that it's made by literally the Devil himself, who also turns out to be pretty shit at programming. A fun and creative ride from start to finish, even if with little reason to ever revisit it.
This review contains spoilers
Welcome to the Lost Coast. In this tour, we're going to be talking about a new graphics technology we've been developing, called High Dynamic Range Lighting, or HDR. We'll also be giving you some insight into the design and production challenges we faced during the construction of the Lost Coast. First, a quick explanation of the commentary system. To listen to a commentary node, put your crosshair over the floating commentary symbol and press the +USE key. To stop the commentary, put your crosshair over the rotating node and press your +USE key again. Some commentary nodes may take control of the game for the purpose of showing something to you. In these cases, simply pressing your +USE key will stop the commentary.
Warcraft 3 was a massive part of my childhood, hell, my life in general, and I am proud of that. Be it the memorable story campaigns, all the fucking around in melee, or at least a thousand hours spent in the editor, it's a game that has stuck with me ever since dad first showed it to me when I was barely even five. It's the whole damn reason I begged for my first PC. As a kid, it took me a while to actually find out about the World Editor, and once I did, it was fucking mind-blowing. A few years later, I found out about all the different maps, models, spells, campaigns by other people online, and I was even more awestruck. I made my own maps too, most of them sucked and were never finished, but I didn't care. I even remember once making a bot match with all the opponents named after my school bullies to vent my frustrations.
Yeah, I'm reminiscing about myself here, but I think a great game should provide either a strong and captivating world/narrative, a deep gameplay loop with hours upon hours worth of fun, or a solid amount of ways for player expression in ways the developers may not even predict. Warcraft 3 managed to excellently achieve all of the above, and has an active community even two decades after it's release. If that doesn't earn it its place as one of the greatest videogames of all time, I don't know what else can.
And with all that said, Reforged is sadly the biggest middlefinger such a game could ever receive. Almost any credit I can give to it is solely due to the fact it's on top of a fantastic game, but that too is gimped, because Reforged actually removed features that were there for ages. Extremely slow patching has somewhat fixed this, but that's no excuse.
Old Battle.net? Gone. All your ranks and levels from there? Promised to be ported over, has yet to actually happen.
Custom Campaigns? Gone, not brought back until three years later. These tend to be massive projects that can easily require up to hundreds of hours to make, and here Reforged makes them unplayable for three whole years.
Tournaments? Ranks? Ladder? Absolutely absent at launch, patched in years later.
Certain voice lines? Gone. That dryad line was too offensive, I guess. Or even better, because "Grom" is apparently a copyrighted word, how about some absolutely terrible splicing of original lines? (Thrall is voiced by fucking Chris Metzen, could they really not ask him for a few lines?)
Reign of Chaos balance? Gone. Everything is bound by TFT rules only, including the campaign.
If the biggest appeal of a remake is a visual upgrade, then this is a travesty in its own right. The lighting leaves much to be desired, the terrain is ugly, various effects look like a fart gas, and the original artstyle is almost completely replaced by this semi-realistic, mobile game looking mix that is generally lame and unpleasant to look at. The individual models may have some nice standouts, but this means litte in gameplay. This is an RTS, you're gonna spend most of it from a top-down perspective, and once combat starts, visual clarity and consistency is more important than ever. Reforged absolutely fails at this, it's extremely easy to get confused and lost while playing, everything easily ends up as a big blur, and not even a pretty one. Or a smooth one, because the performance is subpar too.
The original graphics are thankfully available, but there are plenty of things that have been irreversibly changed, like the menu. A menu that fucking lags all the time, because for some goddamn reason it runs on Chromium. It also often disconnects me from Battle.net even when I'm playing single-player, and I bet the seeming instability of the game is at least partly responsible.
All of this, however, isn't the biggest issue. If a shitty remake drops, people just keep with the original. Well, you (legally) cannot now. Reforged has been introduced as a patch, and due to this, all existing copies of the original are now forced to update to the Reforged edition, even if they don't actually own Reforged, so not only your original CD copy is now too downgraded by Reforged, but you are forced to download 25+ GB of graphics you cannot even use (then again, why would you...). This is the real reason Reforged deserves to be forever remembered as likely the worst remake of a video game in history. It's an insult to both preservation and fans of the original in the worst possible way.
And I'm not even mentioning all the new things Reforged promised to add, and then never did.
Reforged should be only remembered as a perfect embodiment of what is possibly the worst era in video game history so far. Not only is it an insult to the whole medium, but it's a disgusting embodiment of the treatment companies give to this industry. The fact the project was basically cut in half because some rich cunt didn't find it profitable, the fact it shits on the legacy of one of the most important games in video game history, the fact that it has lied to, mistreated and scammed not only it's current customers, but also the ones that had stuck with it for over twenty years. And somehow, even this utter pile of shit on a silver platter did little as a wake-up call to anyone. Pre-orders that lie to your face, disgusting mistreatment of developers, zero respect for video games as an art form, all is still at large with no real change in sight. And as long as the shareholders profit from it, they have no reason to stop, until even your favorite childhood game has been wrecked and milked dry of money.
Fuck you, Bobby Kotnick, the current state of Blizzard may not be entirely your fault, but you nevertheless are one of the people most responsible for it. I sincerely hope the ghost of that employee who killed herself will haunt you until the end of your miserable life.
Yeah, I'm reminiscing about myself here, but I think a great game should provide either a strong and captivating world/narrative, a deep gameplay loop with hours upon hours worth of fun, or a solid amount of ways for player expression in ways the developers may not even predict. Warcraft 3 managed to excellently achieve all of the above, and has an active community even two decades after it's release. If that doesn't earn it its place as one of the greatest videogames of all time, I don't know what else can.
And with all that said, Reforged is sadly the biggest middlefinger such a game could ever receive. Almost any credit I can give to it is solely due to the fact it's on top of a fantastic game, but that too is gimped, because Reforged actually removed features that were there for ages. Extremely slow patching has somewhat fixed this, but that's no excuse.
Old Battle.net? Gone. All your ranks and levels from there? Promised to be ported over, has yet to actually happen.
Custom Campaigns? Gone, not brought back until three years later. These tend to be massive projects that can easily require up to hundreds of hours to make, and here Reforged makes them unplayable for three whole years.
Tournaments? Ranks? Ladder? Absolutely absent at launch, patched in years later.
Certain voice lines? Gone. That dryad line was too offensive, I guess. Or even better, because "Grom" is apparently a copyrighted word, how about some absolutely terrible splicing of original lines? (Thrall is voiced by fucking Chris Metzen, could they really not ask him for a few lines?)
Reign of Chaos balance? Gone. Everything is bound by TFT rules only, including the campaign.
If the biggest appeal of a remake is a visual upgrade, then this is a travesty in its own right. The lighting leaves much to be desired, the terrain is ugly, various effects look like a fart gas, and the original artstyle is almost completely replaced by this semi-realistic, mobile game looking mix that is generally lame and unpleasant to look at. The individual models may have some nice standouts, but this means litte in gameplay. This is an RTS, you're gonna spend most of it from a top-down perspective, and once combat starts, visual clarity and consistency is more important than ever. Reforged absolutely fails at this, it's extremely easy to get confused and lost while playing, everything easily ends up as a big blur, and not even a pretty one. Or a smooth one, because the performance is subpar too.
The original graphics are thankfully available, but there are plenty of things that have been irreversibly changed, like the menu. A menu that fucking lags all the time, because for some goddamn reason it runs on Chromium. It also often disconnects me from Battle.net even when I'm playing single-player, and I bet the seeming instability of the game is at least partly responsible.
All of this, however, isn't the biggest issue. If a shitty remake drops, people just keep with the original. Well, you (legally) cannot now. Reforged has been introduced as a patch, and due to this, all existing copies of the original are now forced to update to the Reforged edition, even if they don't actually own Reforged, so not only your original CD copy is now too downgraded by Reforged, but you are forced to download 25+ GB of graphics you cannot even use (then again, why would you...). This is the real reason Reforged deserves to be forever remembered as likely the worst remake of a video game in history. It's an insult to both preservation and fans of the original in the worst possible way.
And I'm not even mentioning all the new things Reforged promised to add, and then never did.
Reforged should be only remembered as a perfect embodiment of what is possibly the worst era in video game history so far. Not only is it an insult to the whole medium, but it's a disgusting embodiment of the treatment companies give to this industry. The fact the project was basically cut in half because some rich cunt didn't find it profitable, the fact it shits on the legacy of one of the most important games in video game history, the fact that it has lied to, mistreated and scammed not only it's current customers, but also the ones that had stuck with it for over twenty years. And somehow, even this utter pile of shit on a silver platter did little as a wake-up call to anyone. Pre-orders that lie to your face, disgusting mistreatment of developers, zero respect for video games as an art form, all is still at large with no real change in sight. And as long as the shareholders profit from it, they have no reason to stop, until even your favorite childhood game has been wrecked and milked dry of money.
Fuck you, Bobby Kotnick, the current state of Blizzard may not be entirely your fault, but you nevertheless are one of the people most responsible for it. I sincerely hope the ghost of that employee who killed herself will haunt you until the end of your miserable life.
This review contains spoilers
I will say, out of all the "spooky PS1 looking nostalgia indie horror" that's so popular these days, this one utilizes it quite well. It's far beyond just aesthetics, things are abstract and pixelated and the atmosphere is full of spooky sounds, it very much is trying to fuck with you and it works.
Sadly, this is in many ways ruined by the fact that not only the sequences are very heavily scripted, making them incredibly predictable on replay, but there's only very few cases where you're in any real danger. What's more, the few chases you do get on the island are done from the monsters' perspective. It's fucking weird, you will definitely die to it the first time, thinking it's just a cutscene. I get that they didn't want to show how it looks until later on, but it didn't feel scary and killed all tension from the atmosphere when I knew that I would immediately find out if I'm in danger. Not to mention that if you die, it just instantly resets the chase, and if you fail enough times, the game offers you to skip it. Which is a shame, because the sections under the lighthouse are way better.
I think it's worth a playthrough, there's good stuff to be found here, but not much to sink your teeth in.
Sadly, this is in many ways ruined by the fact that not only the sequences are very heavily scripted, making them incredibly predictable on replay, but there's only very few cases where you're in any real danger. What's more, the few chases you do get on the island are done from the monsters' perspective. It's fucking weird, you will definitely die to it the first time, thinking it's just a cutscene. I get that they didn't want to show how it looks until later on, but it didn't feel scary and killed all tension from the atmosphere when I knew that I would immediately find out if I'm in danger. Not to mention that if you die, it just instantly resets the chase, and if you fail enough times, the game offers you to skip it. Which is a shame, because the sections under the lighthouse are way better.
I think it's worth a playthrough, there's good stuff to be found here, but not much to sink your teeth in.