ok so my computer's power supply suddenly died on me so i thought i'd have this whole console player arc but GUESS WHAT i bought a new one instantly and visited my parents for easter so i also ended up getting some time on my brother's PC just to play fucking TNT of all things.
/
it took me a good while to muster up the will to get past the first 10 levels which always made me drop the whole thing. TNT thrives on huge maps with weird combat setups, but those early ones are just boring, cramped, and don't work towards building its identity.

as soon as you get into some more inventive ones, though, it gets interesting.... so many far away hitscanners and barely populated arenas! so many attempts at roughly non-abstract areas... so many massive secret setpieces! map12 (Crater) was a standout for me, its namesake comes from an odd secret that lets you explore a narrow view of a nukage waterfall in the crater. the way it tries to do this kind of cute trick without much fanfare is what gets me. they made a mapset that tries making DOOM a little more "real", and the way it almost works is charming.

even the guest maps from the Casali brothers (who made Plutonia, the other half of Final DOOM [which i love]) build on TNT's concept well, but with more exciting combat. it's just that about half the playtime on this big, big WAD is spent on almost regular DOOM II maps but with no bite or cool surprises. just a bunch more hitscanners mixed in.

i can definitely tell why this was so influential, though. it does a lot to intrigue the player about trusting a big concept more than only trying to do tight combat loops over and over. map20 (Central Processing) is a blessing!

bonus: take a look at this fanmade remix of Into Sandy's City made for map32 (Caribbean). it's so cute!

pretty fun but god that is one of the worst and most tactless narratives i've ever seen in a mainstream video game. the usual Yakuza conspiracy plot structure's presence here is absurd. since the game deals with bullying and the actions that victims' families take to get their own version of justice on the matter, Lost Judgment can't help but to relativize every instance of torture and murder commited against the bullies. it genuinely expects the player to have so little empathy for the bully that they don't see them as human. Yagami just hangs out with the serial killer here. has a toast with him. he's fully convinced that the guy's logic makes sense, but the only problem is getting other innocent people hurt while trying to hide his instances of moral torturemuder.

this only bothers me because this game is mostly a morality tale. it constantly stops to lecture you about bullying and the justice system in an attempt to make you try to think about the situation as if it was hard to decide who's right or wrong. like, man.... most people know bullying is a problem. it's very easy to empathize with someone who got bullied to the verge of suicide. i don't need to see that shit pushed to it's logical limit without any care at all.

also, Yagami kinda goes insane in this game. while he empathizes with many psychos in Lost Judgment, he also stalks and emotionally manipulates 3 different women (1 innocent, 2 guilty) in order to get answers for his investigation. i think his more social and brute way of doing detective work is pretty cool, it fits RGG studios' style. but here, he always goes to the most vulnerable women around him for answers, and pressures them while knowing they won't handle it and can't fight back. this is how he makes most of the more important discoveries. it kinda makes me sick.

ok so, i really like the combat, school stories and substories. for me these games are always more about their whole world than just the main plot, and Lost Judgment is one of my favorites in regards to side stuff! but the Judgment duology is also more focused on story and dialogue than other RGG games, and god this narrative is so long and expository that i can't help but to see as tainting a lot of the game.

i am sad but i will continue trying to have fun with these games. here's hoping i still enjoy the rest as much as i did the first half of the Yakuza series!

Memories is a very understated map. it doesn't pull ambushes as much as most Doom WADs i've played until now. even its biggest combat arena holds back. a swarm of hell knights, pinkies and some hitscanners try to put up a fight, but there's not a single baron of hell in sight. after dealing with those enemies, you can find two barons tucked away in a faraway corner on that wide open area; almost harmless.

the industrial tone this map takes is greatly appreciated, and it leaves a lot of space for abstract semiplaces where you can belong. the trash heap is almost as uniform as the grainy brown and gray walls textured so matter of factly that they feel vanilla. a nonzero number of walls is adorned with beveled bricks (which reminds me of the beginning of FFVII's Temple of the Ancients' dungeon) that makes the structures look monumental. the textures representing rusted machinery rest upon every possible nook. finally, the Resident Evil 1 save theme completes the atmosphere and grounds the area into a serene and dreamlike whole.

Doomguy can be everywhere, but this place is especially appropriate for him. the spacious areas around the map makes me think this factoryplace houses only stray demons that happened upon it. most of the light sources come from intruding natural light that bounces throughout the transitional rooms that offer you a ceiling with short bursts of demons to kill.

the ending stood out to me. after the longest combat setpiece of the map, you climb a short flight of stairs to reach an open air alcove above the place where you fought not a minute ago. it's a big area that is mostly empty. near the stairs there's a set of moving pylons that spawn a lone group of archviles who don't even get a fresh group of demons to revive. they're guarding the very BFG that's gonna get rid of them.

after that short fight. you're basically done. there's a lone baron trapped behind a weapons cache you can only get to via a secret, and a short drop for the final key. i expected a fakeout ending with a final fight against some high tier monsters, but there was nothing. you open the last door to a narrow corridor overlooking trash mountains. the end sees you traversing through the map's skybox.

Memories is not afraid to hold itself back until it convinces you that you don't really need an entire demon army to fight. this is personal.

i was like 5 years old when i first heard Californication. it made me bug my parents for years to get guitar lessons just to learn how to play it. i kinda did! i recorded a scuffed version of the Can't Stop video with my brother (and a camcorder). the Californication video, at least nowadays, represents to me an idealization of video game aesthetics in a musical dreamscape. music videos of this era tend to be very surreal; the fake game the band was in was just an expression of that trend, but it still easily captured my mind.

the video does not represent a videogame that makes sense. at all. it breaks free from any mechanics and the sense of player input because it's CGI, and it was made with that in mind - not with the intent to create a simulacrum of a videogame. it made me, as a child, go insane about how this music video would work as a real game. even when i was a little kid, it didn't make any sense at all! but it was one of the main things that made me think about how i see games.

yunno, i thought about how those very contextually sensitive animations playing while Flea dodges and jumps around LA people wouldn't make sense in a game played with a controller. "not even GTA can do this!", i thought. that's what made it so dreamlike - the MV emulates videogame aesthetic and UI with graphics that didn't make sense in any console at the time and completely incoherent "gameplay". it's how it feels to dream that you're inside a game.

transforming this into even a slightly playable game, as neat as it is, can't evoke the same feelings that the MV does. the detailed minimap, slightly freeform sections, and the lack of the LA cityscape and iconography make this game too "real". it can't exist. it's based on something that is remarkable specifically because it doesn't exist.

but like, this is still good though. cool effort! just made me think a bit.

i cried like twice in the Special Story mode. it shows an unwavering confidence in its own narrative that's pretty rare to see in those licensed Naruto games. it's completely focused on the impossible romance between Boruto, who's a modern-day kid in a country without any active wars, and Nanashi, who lived as a "weapon" in one of the most cruel periods in the Naruto world. even without any bombastic battles or moments that were previously a selling point in the Storm series (which are prolly gone because of the focus on that depressing "History Mode" or maybe Bandai being a dick with deadlines/budget), i still think this is an incredible achievement because it commits almost-wholesale to telling Nanashi's story. like many kinda non-canon anime spinoffs, this can't interfere with the ongoing manga story, but in this case, this is used to the narrative's advantage by furthering the tragedy of the situation.

Boruto travels through his dad's past through a godlike connection inside an MMORPG and falls in love with someone who initially seems like just a goddamn NPC. the story frames them as just friends, but i also think that has to do with the sorta non-canon thing here. Boruto's way too innocent view of the world clashes with the horrors Nanashi lived through, and they both understand each other. they beautifully parallel Naruto and Sasuke's relationship in the original manga. this Special Story mode never stops to question its existence. it just fills itself with a lovely indulgence in its own characters. love it!! i wish Nanashi existed outside of this game lol

i think it's awesome that this game is confident enough with its short burst of eight simple arcade battles and really confined story to fully rely on it. one location, two characters (only one gets artwork), and simple little squiddy-waveform animal things that battle it out trying to pierce each other with their heads (this is what Shiika calls "an experiment").

the insane Professor Shiika really carries the mood and makes everything mesh well. for most of the battles, she observes the creatures carefully with a look that just makes her soooooooo cute and memorable... she's just trying to keep her lab even though it earns the school zero money!!! let her be!!!

it is not that often that i see a game that makes me feel dread.

getting to the last few seconds of the video while Badlands unpredictably burps like crazy is so tense knowing you lose all your progress when you die. like, the way this game remixes both I Wanna Be the Guy and a YouTube video in mod format is pretty ingenious... diegetic burp interactivity + basically perfect giant boss fight + a mixture of a cutscene with skill-based play. where else do you see such a story-focused game (Badlands never stops speaking or chugging bottles of coke zero) be so seamlessly merged with high-stakes gameplay??

there's this hypnotic quality to this game. you memorize the whole video in the first hour of attempts and then you turn into a zombie trying to get good burp RNG and then you burst out laughing when Badlands does that wiggly burp. i lost so many runs to that...,

this game is super cool. it's a high-grade experiment that barely cares about the (already not that established) Mario tropes in exchange for nonsense tiny playgrounds that have more ideas than they have "levels" inside them. i think that's cool. it barely feels like you're playing a videogame sometimes. the floating pieces of land that you walk on are there almost entirely to take advantage of a piece of Mario's movement options, so they actually feel like those 2D Mario levels where every single thing is there in the name of the core game. but i unfortunately kinda hate that part.

i've never been a fan of nintendo's utilitarian approach to design. it just means that areas must be in some way useful more than they are actual places. in 64 this means that you're forced to care about Mario's (conceptually cool) moveset at every opportunity. i can't even enjoy my abstract nothinglands in peace without having to engage with some random setpiece to get a star.

it's the structure as well… yuno.. i'm not one to usually care about intricate challenges when a game cares about it more than anything. even considering how loose some star objectives are, they're still filled with specific little challenges that completely ruin any sense of hanging out i could've had. yeah, i also really dislike the way almost all stars kick you out of the levels. they sometimes linearly change the level to different versions of themselves that make other stars possible and some others impossible, but sometimes that just makes the levels way too bite-sized to make an impact. like, i have to get at least 70 stars in this thing, so i have no time to keep playing around because that shit takes time to do. i get a similar feeling when i'm done with 4 worlds in 2D Mario games and i know that i still gotta make my way through another 4 worlds. i'm already dreading to do the rest before i'm even there.

when you get used to a level's flow in Mario 64, it gets a little better - but then you gotta consciously go through that all over again and see some new tiny setpieces in another level. and it's gonna really suck when you realize that you can only get all the red coins (of which you already spent some time looking for) when the level changes to another star and a path to that last one opens up.

but it's such a magical game with magical lands… these understated little boxes of characters and structures made tangible only by Mario's presence are a thing to behold. the level Tall, Tall Mountain, for example, is just this huge chunk of a mountain that you gotta climb multiple times to get different stars in different situations. it feels monumental because it's one of the few levels that takes the game's trend toward up/downhill climbing to the foreground of the play. in this level specifically, stopping to smell the roses feels positively uncanny because, since everything is there for a mechanical purpose, it loses itself in the absence of interaction. that's kinda awesome but it makes my head hurt a little.

it irks me because i genuinely enjoy the landscapes in here. they're the extreme version of the visually agnostic Mario levels that feel completely alien because of how random and generic their assets are. by setting the levels up as these random paintings that you stumble onto and not holding on to even some basic staples like the turtle guys and pipes, they made something that feels really uncanny.

i don't really get how people frame some games like Majora's Mask as being "mysterious" when they feature some really charming and normal-ass writing, full-on cutscenes, and NPCs with schedules walking around the world. it feels way more deliberate than the surprising nothings that Mario 64 gives players. there's a vague sense that Bowser took over Peach's Castle but absolutely nothing that contextualizes the bonkers structure. for me that's what makes it interesting! it just really loses me when those cool aspects are stuck with nintendo's approach to games.

Mario 64 is stuck in an impossible equation in my head bc it's at once the coolest game by nintendo that i've touched because it's made by them and also a game that i dislike playing because it still tries to follow their design pillars so much. goddamnit now i wanna play more nintendo games to satisfy my curiosity. please help me

this is really great! you're a ship captain who frequently makes detours to rescue stranded people. the visuals (and the whole game in a way) is sparse, and it flips back and forth between sequences where you're in your ship and can talk to the crew, briefing dialogue, and the missions themselves. those are set up like a ultrawidescreened horizontal shoot-em up (not like Darius though) where you dodge some asteroids and later get to shoot 'em down. as you progress, the people you rescue help out on upgrading the ship and, depending on how you treat their personal requests, keep upgrading it while their story arcs build in different ways.

here's the thing: this is all about fucking. everything. the first woman you save instantly installs a masturbation detector on the ship, and the first thing that the dude you save says to you is that he wants to spy on another woman on the ship, who conversely also wants to spy on him. they fuck and eventually try to invite you to a threesome. there's more of that throughout the game and, on the "bad" route, there is a sexual assault scene out of nowhere.

this is all in the name of parody, which kinda rubbed me the wrong way. it's pretty spitefully targeting those late-2000s games that have small scale choices that end up completely changing the narrative in stupid ways. but even though Starfeld is dumb, it also pararadoxically made me interested because of the choices it has, because you end up with impactful gameplay differences if you choose to help the crew. the ending still makes fun of you for doing that though.

still, the game has some cool stuff mixed in, like the funny dialogue (at least in the "good" route) and the charming setup of ship-to-briefing-to-mission. avoiding those asteroids is made pretty engaging because of the upgrades you may or may not have on each mission. increpare is so good at making games that even when one is a joke it still has a lot to offer aside from the comedy.

i'm glad this exists at the very least. i only ever played 1 and half of Project Phantasma, and i really enjoyed them! but VI is... well, a confused game stuck in between eras.

it wants to be longer than its predecessors to fit in with From's more recent output and today's longer AAA games. it wants to have more traditional action bits with the cinematic bosses to pace the story and serve as replayable challenges, but at the same time it wants to tap into the nerdy specificities core to the series. while i get why all of these at once were chosen as the crowd-pleaser approach, it ended up making it a mostly uninteresting experience for me.

- AC VI basically turned the locales and atmosphere into a pretty matte painting without considering a sense of place. the sightlines are all planned and constructed to look perfect at every angle, when in the PS1 titles i could just fit myself into weird corners that exuded zero aesthetical purpose, which in my view was a better fit for the setting.

- imo the major bosses, aside from feeling like an almost different game, were also not that flexible build-wise. they open up damage opportunities for everyone, but tanky ACs are just at such a huge advantage that it makes those bosses even less compelling.

- the writing was kinda neat at first and pretty funny, but it eventually divulges into either fascist roleplay or revolutionary roleplay depending on your route, which made it feel like every other sci-fi game with player agency.

- i genuinely think someone held Kota Hoshino's soundtrack back. even when working on the AC series, his compositions strayed away from the cinematic orchestra box. they were very hard to ignore. here the tracks are basically just Dark Souls compositions with some cool synthwork and futuristic touches. they sometimes shine in the boss fights but are mostly backing tracks to the action.

- most of the missions were fine though; you can express many different builds and approaches while still feeling the weight of the heavy machinery you're controlling.

it's cool that From took a break from making games in their new household genre to take a fresh stab at an old one, but it nonetheless felt like a safe first dip into what could've been a bolder attempt with fewer compromises.

review of the OG maps here

besides the quality of life features and the great port, the Ludicrous Edition of Rise of the Triad includes an all new 23 level campaign for the game, made by some people at NewBlood and even an OG dev (i think, not that sure); it's called The Hunt Continues.

in many ways, it mirrors the original Dark War campaign with the same bosses at the same points and similar themes in each episode, but the maps here are somehow even wackier than the original ones. some are pretty difficult, others are just a little gimmicky (like David Szymansky's wide open foggy level) but most end up touching on the things that made the original special for me. sometimes they are too combat-focused but not always. even many of the boss levels are mostly based on exploration or trap-filled obstacle courses.

since some of the mappers here worked on the 2013 ROTT reboot (such as Indefatigable's Leon Zawada), they touch upon an odd homage to both the original game and the reboot's more linear progression. i usually get fatigued while playing those old school FPS expansions, but since ROTT's formula is so unique and followed upon creatively here, it wasn't a problem at all! the port's new features, like the ability to place different regular textures on the same wall, are used to create a denser atmosphere that makes the levels feel more alive. the halls you traverse, while still claustrophobic, now provide a wider sense of space. this campaign is almost a reimagining of the original because of these constant nods and rethreads, but since it's shorter, it can work like a different but still familiar revisit for old fans.

The Hunt Continues was a great time. it even made me pumped enough to want to make some of my own levels for the revamped level editor. i'm always impressed that the old school FPS community has reached a point where only a few games are left inaccessible and even some less remembered titles get this 5-star treatment. even the titles that don't get official remasters or ports still get great fan-made ones. besides that, we still get some all new games with fresh ideas and interpretations! i could gush about the state of the genre all day.... i hope that's eventually the case for some other genres.

i really appreciate how Rise of the Triad disregards anything that an FPS "needs" if it deems it unimportant for its own premise. like Amid Evil, ROTT has an especially fitting structure for the episodic format. each of the five (counting the shareware one) feel completely different and self sufficient, and they all share the same team of designers! oh, and the lack of detailed geometry doesn't take away from the playful dungeon-like levels that jump from huge canyons full of soldiers to robot-filled dark and clausthrophobic halls. it has variety.

instead of complex 3D layouts, ROTT has jump pads, moving traps of many kinds, shiny metal platforms of differing heights, floating emblems that can be destroyed by being shot, an abundance of locked push walls (yes, locked secret walls!) that ask you to step on invisible pressure plates to open them, the works. those are only some of the more common environmental tools present here. they're very weird for this kind of FPS but also intuitive!

you dance around levels while carefully peeking corners as to not get shot by the many hitscanners and solve the puzzles required to progress. it's so divorced from trying to balance action and exploration like how ID did with DOOM that there are even levels almost entirely made out of wacky puzzles. it can get really fun if you don't mind the visuals being just as unusual as the gameplay loop. at many points during my playthrough, i laughed out loud at the absurdity of the pranks pulled on the player and the disregard for traditional level structure. i get how it can get repetitive for many people if you focus on the shooting, but i see the enemies and guns here more like another set of traps that the designers play with. as soon as you figure an encounter out, it'll likely not give you that much trouble when retrying it, which can also be said about the obstacle courses and puzzles.

i really liked ROTT! it has a magnectic feeling that i usually get only while playing FPS games that don't mostly depend on the strength of their combat.

//i played ROTT through the Ludicrous Edition port but logged the OG version because this review is about the original maps. when i get through the new campaign present on the remaster i'll likely give my thoughts on it on its page. ^-^

above everything, Forspoken hit me with what it does between the main narrative. while exploring the world of Athia as Frey, you can connect to her journey more directly than what the outsorced main narrative affords. she was stuck in a practically inescapable homelessness situation in New York where she was shunned by almost everyone around her. in there, she could only use her athleticism to run away.

Frey had no connections other than her pet cat to sustain her will.

she then goes through her standard fare isekai initiation and ends up in Athia, learning powers that allow her to both fight back and extend her already impressive physical abilities to extraordinary lengths. by this point the parallels between the two worlds become really clear. is it basically the purest definition of escapism? maybe, but i'd say that much is lost by putting Forspoken inside a box.

Frey's journey in Athia is akin to one of struggling witch learning to accept herself. she's still socially shunned by the higher classes, but she doesn't have to depend on them like she did in New York (there isn't even a fixed currency system!). she gets her own pointy witch houses where she can craft potions, enchant robes and necklaces and take care of her (up to) 13 supernatural cats, each spiritually connected to Athia's mythology. Frey is frequently called a heretic for it.

ultimately, she needs to kill the four demigoddesses that used to rule Athia before losing their minds. she's initially disgusted even by their legacy, but nonetheless has to absorb their powers when she kills each of them. each time the player helps her do this, her abilities grow larger and more varied. they all help Frey explore and thus understand the world better, consequently growing fonder of the four women and spiritually becoming her own amalgam of ancestry and experiences. she isn't defined by them, but she learns to accept them. i don't really wanna spoil anything, so i'll keep from talking about the later stuff that expands upon this aspect.

you can choose to spend as much time jumping around the now almost-natural landscapes of Athia as you want. each open world chapter only asks Frey to go toward the dominion of a specific demigoddess and kill them. this objective is always located pretty far away, and there are these completely optional, game-length areas in here that you can explore while travelling. to appropriately explore Athia, you have to connect with the different demigoddesses by using their abilities; mainly Frey's mysterious first set of magic.

Forspoken is a journey defined by the moments you spend together with its vast land. the game allows you to do this without the need to directly cross over with the main narrative, which i didn't touch because i don't find it that interesting to discuss.

Athia is a rich, nature-heavy (due to the quasi-apocalypse it suffered) land with as many heigths as mundane locations that make it feel tangible, especially when you take a moment to absorb the space it shares with you. it only asks you to accept the connection.

\\

this review is a little wild, but it reflects my pretty weird experience with the game so i'll let it be.