Retro-FPS and point n’click adventures are my favourite video-game genres. Doom and The Secret of Monkey Island are, respectively, my favourite games from each genre. And someone decided to put them together in a doom conversion. It will be hard to play this game and make a serious review about it, because i’m completely biased even before playing it. Man just playing the first map got me super hyped for the whole thing.
Pirate Doom serves as a good example of how important art design is in a fps. I have this hot take: the doom engine is the best game engine of all time. Yet, honestly, it gets a little tiring to play Doom wads with vanilla textures. Like, sometimes you want something more besides classic archaic doom. And then when wads like Pirate Doom appear, they feel like a whole different game, even if you know the gameplay is exactly the same: you’re fighting the exact same monsters with almost the same exact weapons. But the change in mood, textures, sprites, music, sound, in concrete, the whole artistic side of it, has leveled up the experience and made it unique. Yes, you can’t go wrong with the idtech 1 or GZDoom engine, but you better get to work in the art department. This is how you know that FPS are not just simply about shooting things. Funny how a game whose whole mood is that of a comedy made me think about the essence of a whole genre.
Anyway, this game is not just a great use of sprites, textures and music: This has a fantastic gameplay. Level design is just perfect, the balance is so great, it even has a very progressive and well thought difficulty curve throughout the levels. No map here is bad. As for the weapons, you have a big arsenal that is inpired by the classic Doom arsenal, with sprite borrowed from Outlaw, but with a whole new different feeling. They’re just spectacular.
Oh, and i love the fact that this wad is only 18 maps long. I think the regular 32 map longrun ends up being a bit too much, most of the times, even in Doom II. 18 seems like a perfect number to me.
I recommend this game energically.
Fav maps: Map 5 Barnacle Bar / Map 7 Booty Bay / Map 10 Lost City / Map 14 Port Royale
Worst maps: Map 4 Sunken Ghost Ship (It’s not a bad map really, and it’s also pretty short, i’m just not fond of the underwater physics)
Pirate Doom serves as a good example of how important art design is in a fps. I have this hot take: the doom engine is the best game engine of all time. Yet, honestly, it gets a little tiring to play Doom wads with vanilla textures. Like, sometimes you want something more besides classic archaic doom. And then when wads like Pirate Doom appear, they feel like a whole different game, even if you know the gameplay is exactly the same: you’re fighting the exact same monsters with almost the same exact weapons. But the change in mood, textures, sprites, music, sound, in concrete, the whole artistic side of it, has leveled up the experience and made it unique. Yes, you can’t go wrong with the idtech 1 or GZDoom engine, but you better get to work in the art department. This is how you know that FPS are not just simply about shooting things. Funny how a game whose whole mood is that of a comedy made me think about the essence of a whole genre.
Anyway, this game is not just a great use of sprites, textures and music: This has a fantastic gameplay. Level design is just perfect, the balance is so great, it even has a very progressive and well thought difficulty curve throughout the levels. No map here is bad. As for the weapons, you have a big arsenal that is inpired by the classic Doom arsenal, with sprite borrowed from Outlaw, but with a whole new different feeling. They’re just spectacular.
Oh, and i love the fact that this wad is only 18 maps long. I think the regular 32 map longrun ends up being a bit too much, most of the times, even in Doom II. 18 seems like a perfect number to me.
I recommend this game energically.
Fav maps: Map 5 Barnacle Bar / Map 7 Booty Bay / Map 10 Lost City / Map 14 Port Royale
Worst maps: Map 4 Sunken Ghost Ship (It’s not a bad map really, and it’s also pretty short, i’m just not fond of the underwater physics)