doom 64 is the best doom.

id's 1993 powerhouse legend had and will continue to grow each and every day since its release, eternally. once the tools were out there, it was only a matter of time until others would begin to match and outclass the work of id with respect to the foundation they laid. doom 64 strays a significant bit from the level design philosophy of id's original 2 games, and benefits from it. each map is dense, consice, and consistent throughout, which unfortunately cannot be said for doom 2. it's a bit more methodical and labyrinthine than what id ever had to offer. it's still doom, but a different, slower, denser take on it. it benefits greatly from that, and the fact that it has fuck all to do with john romero easily makes it the best commercially released iteration of doom. switch and linedef puzzles for days.

night dive's port is easily the best thing they've done. a continuation of over decade of work done on doom 64 TC, a doom 2 total conversion, and doom 64 ex, an engine that required a dump of the data stored on the nintendo 64 cartridge to function. the latter seems to be a very early version of that port's codebase, and has mostly been the way i've played doom 64 in the past. the 2020 port is on point, close to perfect, unless you've lost your mind and are utterly convinced that the virtual pigment used to denote healing materials strays from the initial intended experience to the point of censorship.

fuck hectic. fuck That One Yellow Key

this is Ultima Underworld, but after a lobotomy. it plays as if a shareholder handed a programmer a 10th generation monochrome photocopy of a screenshot of ultima underworld, and the entire design was based on that 10th generation monochrome photocopy of an ultima underworld screenshot alone. it set the stage for all the elder scrolls games (and the radiation poisoned elder scrolls, as adapted from interplay) that would follow, vapid, sprawling expanses with maybe a story or something there. but unlike the (as of writing, and as of playing) most recent two instances of melatonin replacement therapy, you can't attempt to salvage this one with 3rd party enhancments, or 3rd party additions. those that may exist, honestly will not save you here.

so you have this exercise in vapidity, a sprawling procedurally constructed world (not generated, all who play tes: arena experience this same world, unfortunately) lightly (not to be misconstrued as sparesly) filled with like maybe 5 (a generous estimate) town variations. a world so big, with so little to explore, it's no wonder that fast travel is mandatory (recurring). too expansive for its own sake. the percieved expanse to the player, and purported expanse by the publisher ironically results in an experience that itself is lightly packed with content not worth any player's time, despite how it may initially seem, despite how it wishes to present itself. they, time and time again, claim to have been inspired by ultima underworld. at the absolute surface level, i suppose that statement makes sense. if i were handed deep-fried photocopies of something with the pinoint focus of underworld, without getting the chance to ever play it, and had to make an approximation of the experience i imagine that screenshot provides, The Elder Scrolls: Arena would be it.


the problems with the elder scrolls run deep, and they are ALL present here, from the jump, in arena. play daggerfall instead, and you can experience every single one of those problems, and possibly have fun doing so!

after a lobotomy, one might be able to adapt. but recovery? no one recovers from a lobotomy.

(specific to kexquake) got gaslit by people worked on this port into believing that measurable differences in quake's framerate-dependent physics are placebo and told that i'm "only used to quakeworld's physics" and "a speedrunner doing speedrunner tricks" (both incredibly false) because i like to do some circle jumps and slope jumps here and there.

the sounds are also inconsistently crispy, with some sfx having extra frequency content, and other sfx sounding like theyve been run through some shitty lowpass. some things, like the chain-pulley door sfx has new sounds layered on top of it for probably dubious reasons, while the ogre's greeting call sounds like a 96kbs mp3 run through a mackie 1202 with the highs rolled off. at least the crusty 8bit pcm samples included on the original compact disc read only media are consistently and beautifully crunchy.

thank Good you can run mg1 in ironwail lol