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Yakuza 0
Yakuza 0
Pizza Tower
Pizza Tower
Silent Hill 2
Silent Hill 2
Super Mario Odyssey
Super Mario Odyssey
Ultrakill
Ultrakill

386

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Metroid Dread
Metroid Dread

Mar 08

Doom
Doom

Feb 10

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Feb 04

Super Mario Odyssey
Super Mario Odyssey

Jan 01

Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back
Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back

Nov 19

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[since i changed my mind on this game and raised the score a lot, this review is now obsolete. i'll make it reflect my current thoughts at some point. until then, read it at your own discretion because i say a lot of stupid bullshit that i don't even agree with anymore]

DOOM II is, in every sense of the word, more DOOM. it's an expansion of the 1993 game, with more mobs, more levels, more mobs per level and one more weapon. in theory, you can't really go wrong with that; the original game had polished movement and gunplay, a very well balanced roster of monsters, and id had already set a standard for quality level design.

well, the theory doesn't matter. they managed to fumble this one anyway.

it's a pity because what was added to the gameplay loop is great. the super shotgun is ridiculous; it's brutally powerful and sounds beautiful. i like all of the new demons too, they all add new layers of strategy to encounters and give the level designers even more options to mix and match with.

the main problem with this game, though, is how inconsistent the level design is. three people worked on almost all of the levels: John Romero, American McGee and Sandy Petersen. their ideas didn't mesh well together, since they all had wildly different approaches to level design. without any form of segmentation between those ideas (like the first game had, with episodes), the game becomes an incoherent mess, feeling more like a compilation of maps rather than a proper campaign.

Petersen made the majority of those levels and i'm really not fond of his MO. his maps are usually cheap, frustrating and boring, with loads of encounters that seem poorly thought out and ham-fisted, and with an excessive reliance on gimmicks. there are three gimmicks in particular that the guy appeared to love:

1) the pick-up/trigger trap. you pick up a key, seven trillion monsters spawn behind you. this is done SO MANY times, you get desensitized to it. the traps are done in the most frustrating way too, with dozens of enemies spammed into the level seemingly at random: be them a row of 20 chaingunners or a row of every mob in the game, it always looks like Sandy just placed those enemies without any consideration for the quality of the encounter.

2) the invulnerability power-up. a lot of those shitty trap encounters are done in wide open spaces, with little useful cover. to remedy that, the game will usually give you an invulnerability power-up, so you can just massacre everyone in god mode. that's very fun at first, but, again, it's done ad nauseam. every time i see it happening again it becomes less satisfying. it's an obvious crutch: you don't need to put effort into designing a good fight if you can just throw a bunch of shit at the wall and patch it up with a god mode cheat.

3) the BFG. one of DOOM's most iconic weapons becomes grating in this game. many of Sandy Petersen's levels absolutely depend on the BFG9000. whenever demons get spammed in any way, usually through monster closets, the most effective way to dispose of them is using the BFG. it doesn't feel rewarding, clever or powerful; it's just mind-numbing because of the repetition. however, i can't even begin to fathom how i'd deal with so many situations without the BFG.

Sandy will sacrifice some of DOOM's key strengths, such as intense demon slaying in rooms designed for violence, in favor of tedious tricks. infamous maps like The Chasm, Tricks and Traps, and Barrels o' Fun are the culmination of his design philosophy, one that unfortunately permeates this game.

although those are the worst offenders, various other level design problems plague DOOM II. the city portion of the game has very unintuitive maps. their openness suggests that you can go wherever you want, whenever you want, but they are actually quite linear. that linearity makes little sense because the areas are mostly disconnected from each other, so the entire levels end up being utterly disjointed and having confusing progression.

openness in general rarely does DOOM combat many favors, either. to me, the game is at its absolute best in tighter rooms with reasonable amounts of cover (that also serve as obstacles!!) and in corridors. a prime example of that "openness" harming gameplay is the map Industrial Zone: its best moments happen when you enter certain structures and face the demons up close in neatly designed fights. however, you spend most of your time outside, trying to figure out how to get indoors while doing lame platforming and shooting chaingunners that stand on a flat field a mile away from you.

as i said earlier though, the level design is inconsistent, not straight-up awful. there are many highlights here, too. to name a few, Bloodhalls, The Abandoned Mines, Circle of Death, The Inmost Dens and Refueling Base are pretty good levels, even with their shortcomings (they did NOT know what to do with the pain elementals in this game), and i wish the game had more of that instead of what we got.

as a final note, i think it's worth saying that i don't fully know why Sandy Petersen ended up designing such a large number of levels for this game, but it's very likely that id was the one to blame. he may have been overworked, he may've had too little time to make and playtest them, maybe the game wouldn't even have been shipped if he didn't put out those 16 levels, i don't know. what i know is that his level design is not for me and DOOM II is essentially his game.

played on gzdoom, ultraviolence

completionism is not for me. i rarely entertain the thought of going for all achievements, perfect ranks or 100% completion in most games; it tends to become a chore and actually diminishes my appreciation of something that i might've loved at first. but shortly after beating Pizza Tower, i became extremely motivated to shoot for 101% and all that did was elevate my experience even further.

that's because Pizza Tower is a game that begs you to attain the P-ranks with every element of its design. initially, it is very accessible: you can't die and you can beat every level just doing the bare minimum. but as you get more familiarized with the mechanics, you start to aim higher, trying to hold longer combos, move faster and look cooler. the score, combo and rank systems all nudge you towards a higher level of gameplay - where the game is at its absolute best.

a very convincing reason to go for P is the fact that all the levels here are great, and even better when you push them to their limits. they are relatively compact, yet they always manage to introduce new, refreshing gameplay scenarios while still adhering to the general principle of chaotic, fast-paced gameplay. in order to master them, you'll have to use your entire arsenal of movement options to create and optimize ideal routes, staying conscious of your inputs so you can reach every secret and hold onto your combo while going as fast as possible. it's pure, intense joy to me.

to add more chaos to the mix, this game also has a great, energetic soundtrack and some of the most expressive animations i've ever seen. sticking to a 90's cartoon look, Pizza Tower reflects the intensity of its gameplay on Peppino's anxious demeanor, each movement of his looking comically desperate, to the point where you might even make a mistake and end up laughing it off due to how well these animations capture cartoon absurdism (moderate spoiler warning: refer to this clip of jerma fucking up, with somebody in chat calling him a "literal cartoon").

Pizza Tower does everything that i could ask for. it has an excellent gameplay loop and, thankfully, the dev(s) made the most out of it with ideal level design, granting it so much replayability. it's a game that is worth mastering, not because you get cosmetic rewards or extra gimmicks for doing so, but because it's absolutely fun to take on such a challenge. it has fantastic art direction, with so much charm, humor and personality all across the board. it is easily one of my favorite games of all time. i've put roughly 75 hours into this and i actually wanna beat it again. don't sleep on it


footnote: p-ranking the final boss was one of the hardest things ive done in a game, jesus christ man, took me over 5 hours

when i write a review, i usually don't like to compare the game that's being reviewed to others. but whenever i try to talk about Dead Space, Resident Evil 4 ends up being the elephant in the room. although RE4 is the mother of the modern third-person shooter, i can't think of any game that wears a RE4 influence on its sleeve as much as Dead Space does. having played both games, it's impossible to keep myself from drawing parallels between them and setting expectations based on what i had already experienced with capcom's genre-defining action horror title.

however, even though DS is built on the foundation laid out by RE, it still goes for very different things. yes, it is a horror shooter about managing ammo through precise aiming while controlling a heavy, slow guy, but its gameplay focuses so much more on claustrophobia, individual encounters, somewhat organic jumpscares and knee-jerk reactions. a lot of that comes through thanks to the sci-fi setting: a completely unfamiliar spaceship full of small rooms and narrow hallways. the atmosphere is claustrophobic by nature, but that sentiment is amplified when your path gets blocked by a necromorph.

the devs also exploited the setting pretty well while developing the mechanics. the plasma cutter, the stasis pack and the zero gravity jump all make sense in-universe and are clever and can be really fun to use. they are kind of a product of their time as well, since all of them experiment with physics to varying degrees, much like everyone else was doing back in the 7th gen.

but even with its innovative approach to this formula, what made Dead Space fall apart for me was how it overstayed its welcome, despite being a relatively short game. after putting 7 hours in, i kept noticing how it kept repeating itself. there is so much repetition. all your objectives feel the same, the simplistic encounters feel the same, the puzzles are extremely similar, the zero gravity sections are extremely similar, and i cannot tell most of the environments apart.

due to all of that, the game becomes a big, unmemorable mush and everything that was initially exciting and unique becomes utterly mundane; from using the plasma cutter (to shoot a zombie in the leg again) to flying around in zero gravity (to solve a braindead puzzle again).

considering the length of the game, it feels like there's a lot of untapped potential here and the ideas weren't fleshed out all that much. one of the prime examples is the kinesis module: this is a really cool mechanic but it's rarely ever useful for combat. it ends up being a little gimmick that you turn to when the game requires you to move some obstacles or carry a key item from one point to another. it is such a waste.

and to really, really add insult to injury, Dead Space is poorly paced with a bizarrely roundabout plot. once again, the plot itself is repetitive. you fix something, something else breaks, so on and so forth. it feels like you always take one step forward and two steps backwards, never making concrete progress. the story that is told here also happens to be very unengaging, full of nothing characters that only exist to advance the plot. coupled with my other qualms with this game, this made me question why i should even try to put up with all the repetition; after all, there was nothing i wanted to see anymore, not even narratively. so i just dropped the game.

when you compare Dead Space to RE4, it becomes evident that its gameplay loop is very simple. it doesn't have the ingenious level design and active micromanagement that its mom has. however, at a fundamental level, it is a solid game. the core gameplay can be exciting, oppressive, even a bit terrifying, to the point where i'd recommend this game to anyone that may be interested in it (despite the negativity of this review). they may end up loving the formula enough and have a blast for 15 hours or whatever. me, i just wish that a bit more was done with said formula.. or that the game was simply cut in half.