(This is a review of the two extra campaigns in the expansion, played on Bringest Them Oneth difficulty)
Doom: Mario
Thy Flesh Consumed: Wario
Heretic: Luigi
Shadow of the Serpent Riders: Waluigi
The above analogy is my impression of this game in a nutshell. You can tell it's derived from Doom because it's wearing the same clothes, but at the same time it's far enough removed from Doom that it feels a little wtf.
The quasi-horror high-fantasy aesthetic is one of the strong points of the original and the same is true here, but it unfortunately also leans harder into the more tedious aspects of level design in the original; the action takes a backseat to "okay now where the heck do I go" moments a tad too often. One thing that strikes me as slightly lazy was how SotSR almost always creates difficulty through a mix of ambushes and throwing a large number of enemies at you, but doesn't have enough variations to that formula to sustain your interest long enough. This is especially apparent in the underwhelming boss fights at the end of each chapter: they're simply a large group of super-powered super-durable enemies in a space large enough for you to circlestrafe them to death safely. Contrast this with the boss fights in the base game - one of them fights you in an arena full of lava which forces you to be careful with your strafing, and another is able to summon powerful enemies to aid him which incentivizes an aggressive approach over safe play - and it feels like they ran out of ideas.
It's still a more than serviceable Doom clone with creative uses of the game engine, and the higher difficulty in this one makes the inventory management and special items feel like more than an afterthought, which is a good thing. But all in all it doesn't quite measure up to the original.
Doom: Mario
Thy Flesh Consumed: Wario
Heretic: Luigi
Shadow of the Serpent Riders: Waluigi
The above analogy is my impression of this game in a nutshell. You can tell it's derived from Doom because it's wearing the same clothes, but at the same time it's far enough removed from Doom that it feels a little wtf.
The quasi-horror high-fantasy aesthetic is one of the strong points of the original and the same is true here, but it unfortunately also leans harder into the more tedious aspects of level design in the original; the action takes a backseat to "okay now where the heck do I go" moments a tad too often. One thing that strikes me as slightly lazy was how SotSR almost always creates difficulty through a mix of ambushes and throwing a large number of enemies at you, but doesn't have enough variations to that formula to sustain your interest long enough. This is especially apparent in the underwhelming boss fights at the end of each chapter: they're simply a large group of super-powered super-durable enemies in a space large enough for you to circlestrafe them to death safely. Contrast this with the boss fights in the base game - one of them fights you in an arena full of lava which forces you to be careful with your strafing, and another is able to summon powerful enemies to aid him which incentivizes an aggressive approach over safe play - and it feels like they ran out of ideas.
It's still a more than serviceable Doom clone with creative uses of the game engine, and the higher difficulty in this one makes the inventory management and special items feel like more than an afterthought, which is a good thing. But all in all it doesn't quite measure up to the original.