Chernobylite

 

Chernobylite has been around for awhile, initially in Early Access for some time, which I didnt pay attention to, but eventually got a finished full release. Years later I picked it up on a big discount, because of course I'll give it a shot - it doesn't take long mulling over the Steam page to see that its a game which broadcasts its self to fans of the STALKER games, which I am. It looks to be more of a good thing, more of something in a specific niche that has a cult following.

You start off exploring some swampy forest, with a voiceover woman calling you to follow her. After a few events setting up the scene, apocalyptic Chernobyl wasteland, evil military presence all around, and mutants, you arrive at this warehouse base greeted by a wounded ally who gives by the name Olivier. Then the real game opens up. Here you get greeted by a bunch of different, and ambitious mechanics. First, the game has a base building aspect. Where you have this one main base where you can open this interface to craft various stations and workbenches. The menu for navigating this is awkward to control, theres no mouse support, and its annoying to operate. At first theres no real point to craft anything, but as things go on you find yourself having to do more and more things (More on this later.)

Then, I was confused how to actually start the main story. Theres a place where you use binoculars to overlook the city, and it lists a bunch of activities you can do. But for awhile I wasnt sure if this was the main quest or what? Because theres also a Heist board next to it, for a few hours I couldnt figure out what Heists even are. Well the Binoculars is indeed how you select quests, the main quests have a red icon next to them, and randomly generated trash activities are the white ones. For the most part these random activities are pointless, its stuff like Food quests, Medical supplies quests, Ammo quests. Just infinitely regenerating quests where you go and spawn in this area of the map and go to a box to get ammo, food, or supplies. I did a few of these by mistake while trying to find out how to do the main quest and it was pretty lame and an unimpressive introduction to the game.

Once I found out how to do the main quest the ball started getting rolling.
The general premise of the game is that you're in this post-apocalyptic radioactive 'Zone', and you're looking for your lover wife...love interest, person, and in the meantime you start off with just one Ally, but as the game goes on it makes a big point to find and collect all the other allies, 5 total. Once you obtain some allies, and they return to your base, this is where the base building and management kind of comes into play. These allies will complain to you stuff like theres nowhere to sleep, so you need to build more beds to make the Comfort meter go up. They'll complain the place is too boring and dull, so you'll need to build things in the comfort/entertainment categories and make those stats go up. They'll complain theres no food, so you have to make sure to get food. You can send companions out on their own side missions  each day, so usually I just made them get food , so its not much of an issue. They'll complain the air quality sucks so you have to build air purifiers, you'll need to manage your power so you have to build generators, and so on. So the game does enforce you to try to engage with the base management mechanics, and for awhile it was kind of fun and entertaining. Its almost like a little mini-version of The Sims, inside Stalker. But after awhile the whole thing became clear it was just a phony facade. Theres no real depth here, you dont have to really do anything or engage with it in any meaningful way at all. All you have to do is the bare minimum (which is virtually nothing) until a companion complains, then you build a single bed each time, or if they say they're bored you build a single TV or radio and if they complain the place is ugly I built a single flower and that satisfied them. I'm not sure what the point of going over and above these minimum conditions are, they dont appear to really benefit in any meaningful way from it. Theres even a mental health system in the game where you can manage your companions mental health, I tried to appease them, but again, I dont really know if it had a meaningful difference.

Though, I would be lying if every now and then I didn't look forward to going back to the base, chilling out with the companions and building some things for them. It was kinda comfy at times. Especially since the game forces you to do one mission at a time, and then go back to base and go to bed. Its a small touch that I guess could be a bit annoying, but it adds to the immersion and makes you feel like youre living there, going through this routine, really being a part of the base and integrating with your little community you are building.

The focus on the companions and surrounding systems is quite strong, as mentioned previously, each day you can choose where to send your companions. You can make them do those menial infinite side activities, and it gives a percentage % chance they will succeed. You can give your companions a gun, which I would guess makes them better at succeeding at these outings. After they come back, they can succeed or fail in bringing back supplies. Then, you have to ration out the food. This is a nice little touch, it makes you feel like you are indeed the commander of the base and having to figure out how to divide  your precious supplies. There are multiple tiers of rationing out food to each person, and each tier tells you the effects on the individual companion. Usually, I just do everyone 'Normal' rations, that seemed to keep them happy for the most part. While playing through the game, there are lots of choices you'll have to make which affect the story. Depending on what you choose, some companions will like or dislike it. Eventually your relationship with them can grow to bad or good. But frankly I never really noticed a difference in having good or bad companion relationships besides a foul dialogue box every once and again. The game has all these ambitious features, but they all feel half baked or not really used to their full potential, which is a shame.

So how about the real core of the gameplay? hows the 'gameplay loop?'
I'll just say for starters that the graphics, for the most part are great. The newest 'Complete Enhanced Edition' has DX12 and Ray Tracing. While its implementation is a bit lazy and rough around the edges (weird white flakes at times), it does result in some often stunning almost lifelike visuals of lush forests and nice reflecting puddles of water and enviornmental effects. As for the animations and stuff like that, its not amazing in that department, standard affair, its just the lighting effects and overall quality of the environmental design and aesthetic is well done, I'd say they just about nailed the post-apocalyptic STALKER nuclear wasteland vibe they were going for. It does use Unreal Engine 5, and this is a budget tier game, (AA?) its certainly rough around the edges and at times the development and playtesting feels amateur and sloppy (awful, awful optimization and stutters, bugs, glitches, random techincal problems) still, cant deny that at times the overall end result in the environmental art design can be great.


The game is pseudo open world? Kind of open world? Its like, you start at your base, and when you select missions or side missions you kinda just get randomly teleported somewhere inside the map. You never really know exactly where the hell you are, and I dont think you can even find your base in the real game, its just this sectioned off place that you warp back to with a Diablo style Town Portal device. So you keep teleporting in and out of this sorta open map where you run past the same familiar sights over and over but you cant really freely roam around, its a lot of teleporting cutting off the cohesion. The map is fine enough, as it said the environments do a good job selling the location, there are the infamous or even classic radioactive hazards, geigar counters buzzing sound letting you know somewhere is dangerous (although it never really ended up being that threatening or harmful, even in the worst of spots. I only had to use my gas mask ONCE, and it was by the games force)

With that said, I've got a lot of complaints with the game, sadly.
The fucking writing. The voice acting. Where do I even start?
The game is over the moon with this hopeless romantic, Romeo & Juliet lovey dovey cringe-tastic plotline. Every 10 seconds "My love, oh my love, My sweet" this and that. Its just really fucking corny and cliche. The only plot is youre basically a swooning simp that cant get anything off his mind but finding out what happened to his girlfriend 30 years ago and you'll go to the ends of the earth to find out. Wow how original and clever. Look, that wouldnt be so bad, if the fucking dialogue didnt drone ON and ON and ON....CONSTANTLY. Like there are times where you do nothing but your controls get locked staring at a wall, or a fucking toy doll, or a random photograph, or a teddy bear or some stupid shit, where you hear this ghostly woman voice muttering poetric eyeroll garbage in your ear and the main character replies back in a puppy-dog trite way for 10+ minutes at a time...This is a frequent happening. Its not just that the writing is so horribly eyeroll inducing, its the voice acting too. Oh fuck, the voice acting. I mean, at times its almost so bad its good. There are times where I just sat there with a grin on my face smiling at the thought of these people sitting in some studio booth somewhere recording this garbage with a straight face being paid $7 an hour. But no, since its SO frequent, I was sitting there almost groaning in pain from boredom just wanting to DO SOMETHING. Reminder, it locks your controls and forces you to stare at..nothing, for most of the time this happens. There are no cutscenes, theres no cool budget action scenes, its just a stupid portrait of this womans face and this highschool lovers drama crooning at you. What fucking 'game' am I playing? What is this?

For awhile I could look over the annoying writing and plot, because I figured hey, the game has all these ambitious mechanics, the basebuilding, the weird mission selection screen with the companions being sent out on their own little adventures, the crafting and building your own guns and ammo and armor, the cool inventory screen where you have to micromanage your resources and gear like Inventory Tetris (I like that shit), the promising combat and gunplay, and even the writing with the companions isn't at least embarrassingly stupid, like the writing and voice acting with the various companions you come across is almost endearing and entertaining, these characters are kinda memorable and fun to listen to and watch the relationships progress --- but it all comes to a grinding halt. You know why? The game has no gameplay.

The game has no gameplay.
I'm not kidding, theres barely anything to DO in this game.
And you know what I realized? This is developed by The Farm 51.
The Farm 51.
The guys that made Get Even, a game I gave 3/10
Why?
No gameplay.
The whole game is just walking around from point A to B then getting stopped and listening to 5 minutes of shit writing and embarrassing voice acting, rinse and repeat. Maybe once every 2 hours you'll engage in some combat or gameplay for more than 30 seconds, but then its right back to it.

Yeah, its not changed much. Sure, this game is better, much better, but I could tell something was up. I kept holding out, waiting for interesting missions, waiting for fun memorable levels and objectives, waiting for challenging combat and gameplay. It just never, ever came. Hell, for most of the game the few enemies you do come across, you can simply walk around them. Just walk around them. Dont wanna fight them? No big deal, they arent usually in the way of the box you have to loot, or the computer you have to interact with. Just sneak past them with the incredibly forgiving crouch sneak.
I mean really, theres hardly anything to get invested in here outside of the writing and plot.
It took me 14 hours to beat the game, I would wager 2 hours of that was actual uninterrupted gameplay, not just walking from point A to B, but actually being challenged and having to interact with the mechanics and combat and gunplay. 2 Hours.

At least half of the missions in the game are literally
Spawn in map
Woman talking in your ear some hopeless romantic Edgy Sad Tragic trash
Follow compass to location
Arrive
Pickup a photo of woman in her Whimsical dress and Reminiscence about your beautiful relationship for 5 minutes
Controls get locked, stare at wall while this happens
Ok, controls unlocked, oh look a new objective.
Run to objective
Oh look a coin
Pickup coin
Controls locked again, stare at wall and listen to another 5 mins of reminiscing about your beautiful relationship and that one time you had a coin that you flipped and blah blah blah blah
Quest Complete!

Yes, those are the "quests" in this game. No monsters, no enemies, no challenging thoughtful encounters. Just listen to some melodrama.
I'm not joking when I mean atleast half of the missions in the game are like this.
What the fuck were they thinking? Who is this made for? It reminds me of those romance novels middle aged housewives would read. What the fuck? Wheres the Bloodsuckers, Underground labs, Survival horror, Pig dog mutants, Bandits, Anything? Where is it? --- Doesnt exist in this game, sorry!

There are a few missions where you actually do something interesting. One mission you go into this science base to collect data, only had to kill like 5 guards. Another mission you go into an apartment building and get attacked by a few mutants, probably a highlight of the game because it gave me some horror vibes, but the mutants are not that terrifying looking, they look kinda comical. Another moment you crawl around the Prypriat (I think) apartment complex while running away from the military and they storm in after you, probably the most engaging mission in the game, actually had to try and use my items and ammo. I cant really think of anything else off the top of my head, all the other missions you dont really do anything but collect an item or get to some point where you talk to a bunch of NPC's and have to make a decision that affects the story like "Blow up this thing or not?"   "Trust this guy or not?"  "Interfere with this or not?" but not much actual engaging gameplay moments.

STALKER this is not. As much as it wants to be.
I kept trying though, I was getting invested in collecting the companions, going back to the base and building it up for them. Seeing what kinds of crafts and upgrades I could get, theres a level up system too where you get XP for doing things and get points you can allocate, through the various companions they teach you things. Its very basic, the companions teach you different things, I just spent my points in the basic stuff like More health, more damage, carry more inventory slots, run faster, sneak better. By default, various actions you do will damage your psychological state. Sneak killing enemies is one of them, each time you do it you'll get your psyche damaged a bit (makes green vines go all over your screen) its not that big of a deal, you can just use items like Vodka to get rid of it, but theres a perk that makes it so you dont get this psyche penalty from stealth kills, so I got that one too. But other than that its just basic stuff. I'm just saying there were things I looked forward to seeing how they played out and developed, but at the end I realized just how shallow and under-implemented they were. It looks promising at first, but it takes a few hours to figure out its all a facade of depth.

The itemization isnt even that fleshed out either. You start off with a revolver, then you eventually craft some things in your base that lets you create other guns. You cant really pickup guns off enemies, they are all broken for whatever reason, but you can craft yourself..a few guns. You can craft: An AK, A Shotgun, A crossbow, A Makarov pistol, and I think thats it....besides some niche plasma energy weapons that I never bothered using because you only got access to them around the end of the game and why bother, because once you get the AK47 the game is over, you just fully upgrade it and everything else becomes irrelevant. Not very exciting or interesting weapons or itemization. Even the animations and presentation of the weapons isn't very satisfying.

The actual gunplay is fine, it actually does do some interesting things here, the AI uses voice comms a lot and will call out stuff about you, which is fun to listen to. They have this unique line of sight mechanic where it shows you where the AI is looking at and it turns a different color when hes about to shoot, encouraging you to try to duck and dodge around and time the bullets, which was fun and innovative. But really the game rarely throws more than 3 enemies at you at a time, and usually theres no point to even engage with them because its so easy to avoid them. There were a few memorable and fun firefights in the game, but its few and far between all the cringy stuff.

The games biggest strengths, and why I even looked forward to playing at times, were the almost so bad its good companion writing and voice acting, especially characters like Mikhail and Sashko. The odd inclusion of the Sims like basebuilding and companions management, that made me want to figure out what they were going for, and the fact that this is all wrapped into a STALKER silhouette, but sadly the game just doesnt deliver on meaningful FUN gameplay content, its so up its own ass with the plot and writing it just turns into an annoying slog. They paid the writers more than they did the gameplay testers or something, I don't know. They did the same thing with Get Even. I don't think they'll ever learn. MAKE INTERESTING MISSIONS WITH GAMEPLAY. Sure its possible to make a game where it has tons of writing and voice acting and its worth it, just wasnt executed in an interesting way here for me.

Oh yeah, the story is also a devolves into a complete convoluted clusterfuck ontop of all this, too. Time travel nonsense, rewrite history over and over, redo your past decsisions and mistakes, die and come back to life in an alternate dimension...its just all too stupid I stopped really caring about any of it towards the map. Finally when I figured out what the Heist is, its the final mission where you can only successfully do it once you have all the plotlines and companions quests completed, I just didnt care anymore. This Power Plant heist was supposed to be this epic big grand finale. But nothing happened. Nothing. Killed like 3 guards...again. The rest of it was listening to scripts and voice acting and making a few trite decisions on who gets to hack what or create a diversion where. At the end of the game I was opening Steam Overlay every 30 seconds to multi-task and occupy my mind somewhere else, everytime the long drawn out voice acting started again. Thats how bad it got. When the credits rolled I just let out a sigh like, ok finally. There was ONE boss fight, at the end of the game. And it was pretty much a joke. They even tried to do the STALKER big plot twist with the identity thing at the end too, I just rolled my eyes. Of course the game has all sorts of multiple endings and I think I got one of the bad ones, but by that point I just wanted it over with, and I care so little about going and doing any of the clusterfucked time travel stuff (If possible, I didnt check after the ending credits)

The game had so much potential, but I just have no confidence in this developer anymore. Is the game worth playing? Yeah, its a fucked up, weird novelty, with some ridiculous and hilarious writing and kinda charming side characters, with a cringe worthy main plot and main characters, and almost virtually devoid of interesting gameplay moments, but set in a interesting post-apoycalyptic environment. A real mixed bag of missed opportunities.

5/10

Mafia: Definitive Edition

 

I had finished the original Mafia game a few years back, and really enjoyed my time with it. It was made during an era when open world 3D games were basically non-existent, and infact Mafia was in development before GTA 3, so it really was one of if not the first to come up with the concept. The origignal Mafia released in 2002, and almost 20 years later in 2020 they released Mafia Definitive Edition. A complete remake of the original game. I didn't know any of the details about the game except for the fact that its a remake, I bought it when it was at a discounted prince and finally got around to playing through it.

The most obvious thing is the graphics. The main reason they remake old games like this is to bring it to "modern audiences" and that means it requires fancy polished new tech graphics. They are great, the lighting effects, the specular reflections, detailed textures, breathtaking fictional city resembling pieces of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Driving around the city is very immersive, makes you feel like you're there in the 1930's and what it would be like. The occasional radio playing news stories about current events, and later on in the game talking about World War 2 are nice touches. The character models are great. Everyone is well done. Paulie, Sam, Don Salieri are spot on. Infact, I might like these new designs better than the original game! While the graphics are stellar, the writing, story, character designs are just as good. You couldn't really ask for a better job in the story department. The remake lets the plot unravel slowly, but in a very cinematic way. It almost feels like a 'movie-game' at times, the cutscenes are fairly lengty, and a lot of them. I don't really remember the original game having hours upon hours of cutscenes, of course its a 2002 game, but the remake feels like 50% of the time you're watching cutscenes or listening to characters talk. That's not a bad thing, because its so well done.

The remake features all the exact same missions and plot structure as the original. You go through all the missions in the same order, mostly everything is the same as it plays out originally. There are a lot of moments where I was like "Oh yeah, I remember that part! Oh wow, it looks famillar yet so nice now" I really think they did a good job wih remaking the game with modern standards and technology in that regard. I did an extensive review of the original game, so I'm not going to sit here and go through every mission again like I did the first time, but its basically the same thing. So the only things really to talk about in terms of whats 'new' is if they nailed the story/characters and plot telling (I think they did) and how the mechanics, engine, gameplay, feels and plays.

Well there's something to be said about the charm of the technical limitations of the original game. Since there was no template or framework of how to make an open world game, they came up with it all themselves. As a result, the original game has a very distinct personality and feel to it. Even down to the goofy (by todays standards) looking graphics and plastered on photograph-faces, and the 'clunky' rough around the edges engine and gameplay controls, it gave the whole experience a unique identity and vibe. Sadly, a lot of it gets lost in remakes like this. Nowadays we have standarized control schemes and mechanics and expectations of how certain gameplay styles work, as a result many games end up feeling like being in this homogenized blob of vaugely the same game. Mafia Definitive Edition falls within that scope. It has typical Cover based shooting, where the original game did not, it has the same sort of Crouch and walk behind enemies to press B to go into a cutscene animation taking them down stealth system, it has the same police wanted system from Grand Theft Auto, and the same sort of GPS map system that even shows cops and enemies on it, making you just stare at the radar most of the time instead of being immersed in the game.  It may seem like nice convienent things to have in the game, more familliar modern standardized mechanics, but especially when remaking these old games that had their quirks and oddities about them, it makes them lose the identity they had and it becomes just another coat of paint on the same formula.
The original game had all sorts of quirks, like I think you had to sometimes refuel your car with Gas, if you drove too fast the cops could pull you over and give you a speeding ticket, (you still can use the speed limit but its kinda pointless now) this weird Mouse menu for doing actions, and so on. Funny enough, the original Mafia did not have quicksaves, but it had autosaves like modern games, but I swear in the original game the autosaves were further apart making the game much more tense.


Speaking of tense, the original game was a pretty damn hard game at times, however this remake is fairly easy. Especially the gunfights. This remake has like I said, the cover based shooting, and its trivial to exploit or outsmart the AI. Most of the shooting feels like wack-a-mole, you just sit behind cover and wait for the enemy to pop his head out and peek out of cover and shoot him. Sometimes, they will yell "Throwing a molotov!" and throw at your last location, wow its nice of them to let you know exactly when they're going to do it - makes the interaction kind of trivial because you know exactly when to move out of the way. Still, the enemy molotov's is a neat addition, I cant remember if they did it in the original game, but it was fun to shoot them as theyre throwing a molotov only to burn themselves and start yelling.

So most of the gunfights are trivially easy, but still enjoyable if not just for the superb graphics, animations, hit reactions, sound effects. All of the gloss and polish that a modern engine offers really helps out here. I played on Medium difficulty, by the way. There was a 'Classic' difficulty, so I am curious what that does, but I figured Medium is the one the dev's present as the go-to choice that they expect most people to pick, so thats what I went with.

There's a melee system that you have to use a few times, but its barely worth mentioning. Its so easy and trivial its laughable. All you do is spam the B button and sooner or later a prompt pops up for you to do a quicktime cutscene and instantly win...Wow.

The driving mechanics are probably the highlight of the game, thankfully. Much of the game is spent driving around, and frequently having to drive fast and race past certain enemies or arrive at certain locations on time. The cars feel weighty, almost slippery, but polished and fun to control. The physics have a real glide and drift to them especially when breaking, that can take some time to learn but satisfying once you get good at driving. The infamous Racing level is of course back, and it was brutally hard in the original game. You have to come in first place on this race course, and I remember failing so much back in the day. Well I'm happy to say its still challenging here in the remake, though maybe a bit more forgiving as I beat it on my third attempt or so. Still, great fun and excitement. Other memorable levels are back, of course, they all are. But most notably: The boat assination, the whorehouse hotel, the bank heist, and the airport shootout.

The controls , atleast on controller, are a mixed bag. Most actions you do require you to hold the button, instead of a simple press. Getting into cars, you have to hold X, picking up guns? Hold X for a second or two, and so on. This really fucked me over many times, especially since I'm use to Y being enter cars like in GTA games. I think the controls could of been done a bit better, but the shooting and driving feel slick enough. Just interacting with the world can be fucked at times.

Speaking of the airport mission, it was pretty disappointing. I dont know what it is with this remake, but some missions you can just trivialize by running past enemies and getting them over in 20 seconds instead of actually engaging with them. I dont remember that being possible originally. For instance, the airport level, its supposed to be this huge impressive fun shootout with 100 cops, but I somehow accidentally ran past them all and triggered the level ending cutscene in like 10 seconds. That was disappointing. Other memorable levels is that mansion hedgemaze, where in the original game you sort of have to 'stealth' around and kill enemies with a baseball bat, I remember it being really frustrating but challenging and kinda fun, but here in the remake it was super trivially easy as the radar tells you where the enemies are, and it has this stupid modern stealth system where you can crouch around at full speed and they wont hear you, so you just sneak behind them all and press B for the kill cutscene. A few more times they force this stealth on you where in the original game I dont think they did. One of the last missions, has you sneaking through a warehouse full of boxes to find diamonds, and its a forced stealth mission where you boringly have to crouch behind guards and do quicktime kills on them. Well In the original game its not a stealth mission at all, but something else entirely. Maybe it wasnt a great section in the original game either, but still forced stealth mission are one of the last things I look forward to in games, especially remakes. And yeah this part sucked. I kept failing and getting caught because I didnt want to crouch behind a wall and wait 2 minutes for some AI to go on his pathfinding route.

Overall I think the remake is a great playthrough for someone thats beaten the original game, but I don't think its a replacement for it, or a "Definitive Edition". Its a curiosity, a novetly, an interesting re-telling and respin of the concepts in the first game. But the original has its own personality, its own mechanics and playstyle, this remake strips much of it away for 'safe' standarized generic mechanics, which is fine, I enjoyed my time, but it left me feeling a bit like a big part of the original experience was lost in translation. At least it does a great job retelling the classic story, the cutscenes, characters, writing, are all gripping and sucks you into the world, really does feel like a top class high budget movie a lot of the time. Is it better than the original game? Maybe, maybe not. It does some things worse, some things much better, the original game did have a lot of things that frustrated me, I would say if you beat the original game, this is then also a must play.

7/10

Master Levels for Doom II

 


Doom 2 Master Levels is an official addon just a year after Doom 2. It is a map pack endorsed and signed off on by ID, although no one at ID actually created any of the maps. It is merely a collection of various fan made levels, and they do not even run consecutively as a campaign, but you get a exclusive DOS menu program to select through the levels in alphabetical order.

As the name suggests, these are maps that are intended to challenge you and for people who have beaten all the previous doom content. The maps selected here vary by a few various different authors, names like Christen Klie, Jim Flynn, Dr Sleep, and more famous people such as a few maps by Tim Willits, among others.

The maps are ordered alphabetically in the menu, so thats the way I played through them.
The maps on offer here vary from standard fare military bases that you'd find in the original games, maps like Attack.wad and Nessus.wad, & Catwalk.wad, many of these levels are just average romps through familiar looking bases and outdoors sections, and a fair bit of them aren't even all that challenging or interesting, especially a good hanful of the maps just come across as amateur with the texture work and lighting. But they are okay to play through.

Really, Master Levels falls short as an addon, simply because many of the levels are either just average, amateur but playable, medicore, or down-right awful. Take a level such as Mephisto.wad, its just an absolute onslaught of clusterfuck enemies spawning all around you in an outdoors section, while its kind of fun to dodge the Revenant rockets, the level expects you to do all sorts of gimmicks to progress. Once you get past the initial outside area, youre inside this arena where enemies keep spawning all around you and you have to survive the assault and then walls open up where you can get keys to go back outside and try to climb up the tower to shoot rockets in the Head on the wall like the ending of Doom 2. But the whole thing is thrown together in a frustrating and clunky way that its just no fun at all, with bullshit spawns all around you, and its makes no intuitive sense how youre supposed to progress it.

Take another map like Manor.wad, while it looks cool, its this fortress and outdoors area, the layout is so unintuitive with mandatory keys being hidden behind walls, 'platforming' sections, hidden switches, hidden triggers, it makes it no fun to play after a certain point. Many of the maps are like this.

You have the more gimmicky novelty maps such as the infamous TEETH.wad. (The express elevator to hell). This is a giant elevator that bounches you up and down, that has 8 different floors you can jump off at. Each floor needs to be unlocked by exploring the previous one. But this level is just a nightmare to get through, in a bad way. For one thing its nauseating constantly riding up and down this elevator, and another there are enemy spawns constantly, even spawning behind you randomly, it really is just a trial and error bullshit map where you have to memorize enemy placements, theres no way you'll do it first attempt. Theres so many stupid sections, like one part where you have to ride a pillar up, only to be surrounded by demons at the top and you get shot WHILE youre moving upwards, theres basically nothing you can do to avoid damage. I did like the jump scare at the end of the level, you go to hit the exit and an archvile appears and its a fake exit and you frantically run around hitting switches to open the real exit -- sure the map has  bloodpumping sections and does provide a real challenge, but it doesn't make up for the multiple annoying design choices.

Theres only really a few maps I thought were great. Black Castle.wad is this gigantic castle where you climb up and up, with stunning medieval architecture and texture work, with a great variety in monster encounters and unique sections, and multiple epic arena battles with exciting use of enemy placements like the room with the arch-vile spawns, but you can go through a teleporter and get a God mode to deal with them. And then later on theres a space stary sky section that is like another survival arena that slowly spawns waves of like every monster in the game, including Spider Mastermind and eventually the Cyberdemon, then you get a key and go all the way back down to the beginning of the castle, with new enemies spawning as you go down, to reach the final exit. The only weird part with this map is that at the final exit you jump into a pool of lava and you need a Red key that is easily missed to unlock the red exit door...but if you happen to die in the pit, it makes you succeed the level anyway. Odd choice.

Other levels I thought were great are Paradox.wad, This is a more typical indoors/outdoors base but just done very well and very fair and intense challenge and usage of monsters, with no bullshit key placements, everything makes sense. The only thing is the texture work is a bit dull.

Another map I thought was great is Minos.wad, this is like a demonic spooky castle with great lighting and lots of dark areas with good texture work and interesting architecture. A good challenge for sure, but its fair and ammo and pickups are sparse but well placed.

But sadly all the rest of the maps are mostly a mixture of trash , due to awful key placements like behind fucking invisible platforms (I'm looking at you, Vesperas.wad, that was stupid), or due to stupid gimmicky levels with mandatory hidden walls to progress or having to randomly shoot certain walls to open a passage, or just being really amateur looking and not too exciting. It's also weird how its just a map pack of random maps slammed together with no coherence or consistency in pacing or a ramping difficulty campaign. Id much rather a solid pieced together campaign than just random maps ID happened to approve of. Seems more like a cashgrab kinda affair than a real solid product.

I even wrote down individual ratings for every map, and if you average them out with a calculator, it turns out to be 6/10 overall. Not good.

attack 6/10
black castle 9/10
blood sea 7/10
canyon 6/10
catwalk 5/10
the combine 5/10
fistula 5/10
garrison 4/10
geryon 8/10
manor 4/10
mephisto 3/10
minos 8/10
nessus 7/10
paradox 8/10
substance 6/10
subterra 4/10
teeth 5/10
bad dream 4/10
ttrap 6/10
vesperas  5/10
virgil 7/10

So I'll take that 6/10, and then coupled with additional gripes and annoyances I'm just gonna say its a pretty medicore map pack with a few gems but mostly shit maps or meh maps.

5/10

Doom 2

 

Doom 2 needs no introduction, it released just around a year after the first game and the basic idea was to just give more of the same, more levels, more weapons, more monsters, same great gameplay and engine.

This time around the game no longer deals with episodic content, but one straight slew of 32 back to back levels. Frankly I prefer the first games episodic style, its nice to have distinct broken up parts that give you distinct premises to each part of the game, but this is fine too. Its interesting because in the first game, you couldn't carry your weapons to the next episode so you had periodic total weapon resets, whereas in Doom 2 once you get all the weapons, its basically impossible to lose them as you'll be quicksaving so much so very shortly into the game you have every weapon and you never get rid of them which is an interesting gameplay change.

Doom 2 introduces a new weapon: the Super Shotgun. This is one of, if not the most iconic weapon in all of video games. Its a double barrel shotgun with a loud clacking reload sound effect, and an extremely satisfying "BOOM!" sound effect when you shoot. The original shotgun shoots something like 8 pellets per shot, but the Super Shotgun shoots 20 something pellets. This means with just one pull of the trigger you can clear out almost an entire room of lower tier enemies, which is both extremely fun but also effective. The other new additions are the monsters.

Doom 2 introduces the most engaging, iconic, and action packed monsters that in hindsight are kind of sorely missed in the first game. These monsters are, the Arch-vile which is a very threatening humanoid monster that both resurrects other dead enemies, but also targets in a flame wall at you and if you dont break line of sight within a few seconds, deals massive damage. This monster when clever placed by map makers can completely change a dynamic of a room/map and adds for lots of jumpscares and challenging moments.

Another new enemy, the chaingunner is a bane of many players existence. It is this hitscanning shot (meaning it doesn't shoot slow moving projectiles, but once it fires the bullet will automatically guaranteed hit you after a successful RNG check) spray of automatic gunshots that if you stand out in the open will absolutely shred the player in a few moments if theres more than one of them on screen. They can shoot you across the map, too. Personally, I really like the chaingunners, they add so much new interesting dynamic encounters to maps, it allows for map makers to make open areas intimidating and it adds even more things the player has to watch out for to not take chunks of damage off his health.

The Hell Knight is another 'new' monster. It is basically just a reskin of the red Baron of Hell, just with half health, in order for this monster to be commonly placed around maps without being a giant bullet sponge like the Barons are. This is a smart addition, it allows for fun projectile based fights to happen more often without relying on the overly tanky barons.

Then you have Revenants. This is a monster equipped with rocket launchers on his back that shoots rockets at you that even follow you around the map! These rockets are homing missles that do not let up, unless you cleverly guide it into a wall or another monster. These encounters are really fun and engaging, it especially makes open areas even better because now you can do this sort of dance back and forth with the rockets really utilizing the speed and intensity of Doom's movement controls. Couple the Revenants rockets with Chaingunners or even an Archvile and you have yourself a really challenging, exciting, and fast paced combat encounter thats only possible in Doom 2.

A few other new monsters are Mancubus, which is this big blob monstrosity that also shoots multiple rockets at you, but aren't homing. Then you have Pain Elemental, which i call "Spawners" - these guys periodically spit out Lost Souls that can add up quickly, so they can be a real challenge if you dont deal with them as soon as possible. Another really fun addition and much welcome challenge added to the maps.

And last bot not least you have the Arachnotrons, basically just mini baby spider versions of the last boss of Doom 1. A very smart addition, it allows for fast firing projectile shots to be introduced to the map to force you to use mobility and cover even more than before.

The new monsters are brilliant, it adds so much challenge and gameplay opportunities to the levels that were not before possible. Its not just a few new gimmicks thrown in because they had to, it feels really well crafted and thought out and each monster serves a distinct purpose and adds very fun dynamics to each area.

Doom 2 mostly has a brand new Soundtrack, as well. And most of these songs are timeless classics, although a few of them lean more on the goofy/silly side reminiscent of Commander Keen stuff. Some silly sounding trumpet/flute solos or weird phrases of the midi instrumentation which sounds kind of lame and stupid. At times makes you think of clown carnival music more than intense scary threatening soundscapes. I mean I wouldn't really change a thing about it, it is what it is, it certainly adds character and charm to the game, but it must be noted nonetheless.

Sadly its not all great new additions, though. While the first 10 or so levels are brilliant masterpieces, there are quite a few blunders and far too much experimentation with gimmicks in Doom 2. A lot of the times with these new maps, it feels like they were thinking "Just how far can we push the engine here with these map designs?" moreso than carefully wanting to craft interesting gameplay areas. For instance, the first questionable map, map09, The Pit, is a series of gigantic vertical elevators and series of switches that open remote walls elsewhere in the map that require constant back and forth, up and down backtracking, that can just get a bit frustrating and boring to navigate. Its like they just wanted to test how vertical they could make things. It only gets worse from here, mostly too. Then you have maps like #13 Downtime, which is an infamous Sandy Peterson map. This is Doom's attempt to make a city level, of all things. You have this big outdoors area with a dozen or so giant builing complexes you can enter, but the whole thing is laid out in such a mindfuck way none of it really makes sense and is a total pain in the ass to navigate. Its so bad that even the developer had to put a giant arrow on the ground trying to point the player where to go. Its just not a very fun map, and even after multiple playthroughs still takes me 30+ minutes to get through it, mostly running in circles not even fighting monsters but looking for the next cryptic passage I have to go through to progress.

There are multiple experimental outdoor levels too, map #15 is much of the same idea as Downtown, this time made by John Romero, but its equally full of cryptic bullshit. Like moments where you have to press a mandatory secret wall which reveals the blue keycard. Just why? It looks like a random ordinary wall, but is required to progress. Its just stupid and wastes your time. You even have to somehow know to jump into the pit of green damaging lava, to run across the map into a teleporter in the corner to progress. Its just nonsensical bullshit like this that wastes your time that makes the maps even more annoying than they should have been. Oh, and the maps are ugly as sin too. Since they are experimenting with the limits of the engine and opt for scope over fidelity and impressive well crafted environments, a lot of the maps end up looking like giant boxy ugly set pieces in order to accomplish these wild experiments.  Other maps like #19 Citadel is yet another attempt at this outdoors/indoors concept. This time its a giant castle, this map looks pretty cool and is conceptually a good idea just the execution sucks. Its more of this "Where the fuck do I go?" kind of thing where youll be spending more time running in circles doing nothing rather than fighting enemies. Mandatory progress routes hidden behind bullshit secret walls, random ass teleports, nonsensical 'platforming' sections...and so on. Some of the decisions with these maps are just mindboggling and just not fun to play through sometimes.  
 Map #24 Citadel is infamously shit, too. Another Sandy Peterson map (well, half the game is him). This map is a giant vertical tightrope over a pit of death. You spend the whole map slowly inching around these pencil thin tightropes all the while being attacked by Lost souls and hitscanners, having to jump into death pits for mandatory progress to find random teleports, more nonsensical progress routes and keycard locations, its just bad and obnoxiously annoying to get through every single time.

And then other maps like #28 Spirit world are full of more heinous bullshit. Like theres a wall in here that looks like every other wall, but you somehow have to know to SHOOT it (not press it) for it to open up the mandatory progress path. What the fuck? Why would anyone ever put that in the game. First time I played this map I ran around for literally an hour desperately trying to find out what to do. Eventually had to look it up, and when I found thats what you had to do I just facepalmed and stared in disbelief. Thats not the only shit part of the map either, the rest of the map is full of nonsensical stuff. Like the throne room part you also have to do some obscure cryptic shit to open a mandatory wall that I also forget. Maybe the map is called "Spirit world" because the basic laws of physics and logic dont apply, sure, but it doesn't exactly make for a fun gameplay experience. At least you have these epic battles with Cyber demons and all sorts of hordes of enemies coming at you and you can grab God mode to deal with them, its not all bad, just some of the progress routes are abysmally stupid.

The other maps are more or less average to okay. The first 10 maps are amazing, like I said before. If only the rest of the game was like that. It just feels like after those maps they lean hard into the experimentation side of design, and a lot of the experiments fall flat and suck to play. Still, Doom 2 is a classic game, if even for the new monster additions and the Super Shotgun, added great content for the modding scene and custom mapping scenes, it has to be praised for that alone. But the actual maps in the campaign are often times disappointing and downright annoying. The last 'boss' is iconic, though. The Icon of Sin is this arena stage where enemies keep spawning all around you by a giant cube flying out of a goat face on the wall, you hear a creepy demon voice (That when reversed is John Romero saying; "To beat the game you must kill me, John Romero" which is amazing). You have to grab the rocket launcher and go up on the elevator platform and shoot the rocket at just the right time to shoot the goat paintings head, beating the game. Maybe the first time playing this map it is another instance of cryptic bullshit thus makes for a stupid map, but its such an iconic and amazing concept and map design that I cant even fault it for it. Also the fact that John Romeros head is hidden inside the wall is just priceless, too.

7/10