DooM Retrospect

 This is kind of a review but more of a look back at what makes DooM and DooM II so great. So Thanksgiving... great sales ... needless to say I picked up DooM 3 BFG Edition from Steam for a great low price of $15. Keep in mind I already own the original release of 3 and have owned the first two for a very long time. So long and short. I picked it up primarily for the new campaign with 3 but besides that I figured I would play through all games in order from start to finish. So I fire up the game and then choose DooM from the menu, that is after doing a fun little play (1 hour) of DooM 3 to see if I could tell the rendering improvements they have made. As far as I can tell, the looks are still the same but the rendering itself has been improved as in optimized. Oh it can now be played in 1080 without modding the config files (most awesome). So DooM 3 plays and feels like a DooM game but now it comes time to load the first one and start my journey. 

Dead silence fills the dark halls, pistol in hand, semi lit rooms, ambient zombie moans. The first few levels of Episode 1 Knee Deep in the Dead are very simple to help you build up the courage to play through the rest of the game. The level design, enemy and item placement, top notch. The game is not super dark to scare you, the ambiance created through the sounds and gritty imagery keep you at edge. The enemies let off their painful moans or their hellish sounds, edge building cause you know they are there you just do not know where.

This is where I will make a small comparison between 3 and the first 2, 3 will, most of the time, spawn an enemy in from silence to give you that at the moment jump from pop out. 1 and 2 both let you know that the enemies are there but keeps them from you or has them hidden in a corner. This also allows you to sometimes sneak up onto an enemy. But 3 only seems to have the zombies placed and all hell based enemies usually spawn into the combat instead of being engaged upon. To be fair Doom 3 was meant to be faster paced and try a new scare tactic, which did work very well, but it is not DooM and DooM II style.

I love all 3 so I have no favorites. I just felt that little feeling of hopelessness and major accomplishment while playing through the first that I did not really get when playing the third. Maybe it's the sounds and dingy GFX that the game was made with, maybe it was the magic that ID had back then. But needless to say and regardless of why, DooM and Doom 2 have a feeling that overtakes you while you play. Doom 3 gives a very good thrilling experience.

So the summary of what you should take from this is that even if you came after the first 2 installments and have only played through the 3^rd, play the first two. Trust me, it is well worth the experience. And it will let you fully appreciate where first person shooters are now today.

Neuntoter

They Bleed Pixels Review

They Bleed Pixels, one word, … beat your face in .. (ok, maybe more than one). This is a pixelized platformer by Spooky Squid Games. Controls are pretty simple but take a little to perfect. And the graphics are pretty good for pixel art. Now about what the game is... a platformer with some crazy jumps and obstacles that require precise timing. Creatively killing enemies and finding hidden items and power ups. You get graded at the end of each dream sequence for the amount of blood you spilt and how creative your kill combos were. The check pint system is also very unique in that you collect blood from your kills and after you have collected so much you can then stand in place to cast your check point.

Gameplay : 9 – A jump and an attack button that uses some good directional combos to perform different moves. Simple but takes a little to get used to.

Graphics : 8 – A mix between pixel art and paper and ink styles. A very neat blend.

Sound : 6 – Nothing special to help make game darker but then again the specialness of this game is the unique gameplay and visuals.

Length : A lot of time. A single stage can take between 20 – 40 minutes. Has about 40 stages or so.

Price : $9.99

Recommendation : If you like good challenging platformers then this is for you. If you get nerd rage easy, this game is not recommended.

Home Review

As I promised here is a nice little batch of reviews.

Home, a story adventure game by Benjamin Rivers. Gameplay is very simple. Left and right arrows move you, up arrow holds your light source a little higher …. pretty straight forward. So what is the game? Let me answer that. The game starts off by your character waking up in a strange house and can not remember what happened previous. The rest is obvious .. explore your surroundings, make decisions about if you keep items or let them be. Play out the story and have a hauntingly good time.

Gameplay : 10 – Very simple controls.

Graphics : 7 – Very simple pixel art with a very cool filter to give it that creepy edge.

Sound : 8 – Keeps you engaged and kinda creeped out.

Length : 1:30 – 2 Hours

Price : $2.99

Recommendation : Definitely, if you enjoy a nice little story with out demanding controls or game play, this is for you...

Sorry for the Long Inactivity

Played a bunch of good stuff and have been very busy with Enguised Studios but this week I will put some much needed time aside to do a couple reviews and posts. Games that may be reviewed...

Home
Warhammer 40K Dawn of War
Warhammer 40K Dawn of War II
They Bleed Pixels
Age of Empires III
Dungeon Defenders
and possible others...........

Neuntoter

Lair of the Evil Doer Review

Made from the same dev as DLC Quest. What to say about this game. FUN. Seriously though, it is a front angled top down styled shooter with some RPG elements. The GFX themselves are simple yet very elegant. He went for a cartoon style of animation this time around then the pixelated retro style he used for DLC Quest. The sounds are very fitting and are spot on with gameplay. Controls are your typical AWSD movement and the mouse aims.

Basically you are an experiment that went wrong and then became defiant against it's master. Throughout the game the scientist (Evil Doer) mocks you and puts you down as being the worst experiment and other similar cut downs which lead to the games humor. The action itself is tons of fun, enemies you kill drop different variations of weapons which adds to the RPG element along with the leveling system that allows you to put points into gun strength, accuracy, and other common attributes. The game is not long but it does provide a good length of gameplay considering the low cost of $1.99.

The replay value is also pretty good considering that the levels are randomly generated each time you play through. You can find the game here :: http://www.desura.com/games/lair-of-the-evildoer

Neuntoter

DLC Quest Review

This is a very simplistic game that is more a joke than a game. quick run down of what it is,

-Retro style GFX

-Retro style Sound FX

-Side Scroller style gameplay.

-Story is just a very simple princess needs rescued story for the sake of having a reason for the game.

-This games sole purpose is making fun of DLC (Downloadable Content).

Now the fun part of the game.

It is a coin collecting game that as you get the coins you can purchase DLC to bring in new features. For example, when you start the game there are no sounds and you can only jump and move right. After collecting enough coins you can then talk with an NPC to "buy" the Control Pack which gives you full control over your character. You can also purchase the Sound Pack and Double Jump Pack. of course there are more than just those but I list those to give an example of how this game is trying to make fun of DLC based games.

It plays for about 30 - 40 minutes and is a fun little gem worth playing through at least once and the Dev has released a few other good games so to show your support. One of his other games is Lair of the Evil Doer which is going to be my next review, but it is also a very good game. The game studio is Going Loud Studios and the game is $1.99. http://goingloudstudios.com/ if you want to find out more about the studio and their games

Evil Quest Review

Here we go, as I promised a while ago lets go over a few pretty fun games that I recently played and enjoyed. Evil Quest will be the first.

Story Line: Well needless to say you actually play a bad guy in this one bent on destroying the world. I will not actually give any of the story away but needless to say it is a very interesting twist than your average RPG. Although I will say that it is very entertaining and kept my interest.

Gameplay: This is set up like an action RPG. You move your character around dodging enemy attacks and timing your actual attacks to hit your enemies. You can master melee and or magical attacks. I chose to go as a battle mage per se. They are very responsive and I did not notice anything really wrong with them.

GFX: They are well done for retro SNES style. The over all look is actually close to the old school SNES RPGs like Chrono Trigger and the Final Fantasy series. Nothing super special but it all wraps up very nicely. The bosses look sweet and most of the enemies look cool also.

Sound FX: Standard sounds but nothing that will turn you away from the game itself. They all fit in with the way the whole package is presented.

Overall: The game was very fun and enjoyable, the boss fights were awesome. The story was entertaining and the controls made it easy to enjoy the creation. Go to http://chaosoftgames.com/ to learn more. It is $1.99 through Desura and is well worth the low cost and even more.

Chaosoft Games, well made game and props to the fun twist on the character. Keep up the excellent work.

DLC Quest will be the next review.

Neuntoter

Updates

I have actually been super busy with Tik Tok Tank and have not yet gotten to writing those reviews yet. I am off from work on both Wed and Thurs, so I will write short reviews for Evil Quest, Lair of the Evil Doer, DLC Quest and Serious Sam 3. Like I said they will be short and sweet and hoping to hit where they need to be.

Nonulok and I are making some fantastic progress with our game and all in all, it should be seeing the light of day really soon.

Well see you all wed.

Neuntoter

Just a Small off Topic Post

Well, still trying to write up a review on 3 awesome games, Evil Quest, DLC Quest, and Lair of the Evil Doer. All very good games I may add.

This may be more a steam blog. So do not mind me too much. Over all "friends" can sometimes really suck. For multiple reasons. Like they do not bother with you until they need something, or they only show you some interest when you mention about them in a positive manner. It's a shame really, cause these are after all people you would like to call your friends.

I am glad however that between my wife and my two biggest friends of all time I have enough support to carry me through with getting Enguised Studios off the ground. Just so happens one of those friends is a partner in this company with me.

Small rant sorry, and hope everyone has a very enjoyable week and please check out the games I mentioned above. they are fun little Indie Games worth their little charge. You can find them @ http://www.desura.com/ ....

Neuntoter

Serious Sam Double D

Well what is there to say.......

If you ever played Serious Sam before (1st Encounter, 2nd Encounter or Serious Sam 2) then you kinda know what Serious Sam is all about, kicking ass and taking names alot later. Well SS Double D is a side scroller from a smaller Indie company than CroTeam (the ones that do all the FPS games). Well what they do is bring you the crazy, tons of enemy attacks and humor found in SS but make it 2D instead. The GFX are hand drawn beauty, sound effects are awesome, controls are very responsive and gameplay very addictive.

So is there any short coming in this release??? Yes, small and not so game breaking but yes. They try to make the over whelming aspect of enemies on screen at once happen just like in the 3D FPS games. Well it works and doesn't all at the same time. The major thing is that they either are coming from the left or right, so in most cases you can mow them down fairly quickly before they become too much of a threat. Like I said, not really game breaking but just a short coming from how they can use it in the 3D FPS games.

There are however 2 amazing things about this game. Bosses, and the Gun Stacker.

The bosses are beyond sick and 2D always has awesome bosses when done right, and they do them better than right. All of the enemies and bosses are fun and creative.

The Gun Stacker allows you to stack multiple guns onto each other (6 I believe total) at a time so you are using them all at once. Shooting a missile while shooting a shotgun and Tommy gun is just a sic experience. You collect the guns and find the stackers and then you can stack them.

So over all I will rate this game as well worth the purchase cost and guaranteed to burn through some hours while you enjoy some mass carnage.

Serious Sam 3 review coming soon.....

Neuntoter

Blue-ray Goodness

OK, so for a while now I have had a blue-ray player for my PC. All good, right? yeah and no. I have had, software wise, Win DVD and Power DVD, both great programs for DVD, but appearently the way they test your system for Blue-ray compatibility they test for video drivers that they have tested. meaning as soon as your video card's drivers get updated and you update, your Blue-rays will not play correctly (stutter like hell) until either company decides to test their software against the new drivers. This gets very old, especially with gamers. Arcsoft has an excellent solution called TotalMedia Theatre. Right now they are on version 5 and it works awesome.I played a Blue-ray in PowerDVD (which stuttered like crazy) then played it in TotalMedia. To my surprise it played flawless. A win for me.

Next note. They still support (very little) HD DVD, which I have quite a few of those. Once again a win for me. I do not really try to be a spokes person for companies but I had so many issues and time spent in why my system would not play Blue-ray correctly and now that I have the answer I just want to help anyone else that maybe experiencing the same issue. As this happens with both Nvidia and ATI (AMD) cards this may be very helpful. And for those that still have HD DVD there is still hope of playing those beautiful high quality discs.

Some games that will be reviewed in the near future. Serious Sam 3 and Serious Sam Double D. and a few others.

Neuntoter

Terminator : Salvation

Got this one from Steam during a special. So in short, this is a 3rd person action game based on the cover system, which is done very well. The gameplay is about 3 – 5 hours. Enemy wise, I believe that there was roughly about 6 different types of enemies, but with a short play time, to me, this was not an issue. The enemies had weaknesses that make you use the cover system and to draw your enemy’s back to your teammates so they could exploit the weakness. I was always a fan of the movies and this game was just amazing. Controls were very solid, GFX were very well done, the characters dialog back and forth kept the game going and was at times, very entertaining.

If you like cover based games and you find this for less than $10, I would recommend this.

Watchmen – The End is Neigh : Pt1 & 2

The game was an in expensive purchase from Steam and I was looking at it for a little. Finally picked it up and gave it a try. First impression. GFX are impressive for a low costing game. Controls are very responsive and combos are also very easy. Story was a good and kept you playing to get to the next level. It was repetitive, but 1 thing I always say about Hack N’ Slash or Beat Em’ Up games is that you already know this going in and you are already into games that play like this. There are some puzzles to be solved to mix a little up. You can play as either Night Owl or as Rorschach. The game is co-op multi and when playing single player the other character is controlled by AI, which actually plays well.

I will say that the game reminded me of a more brutal (and shorter) version of the Batman Arkham Asylum game which by all means is actually a big compliment towards this game. So for what it’s worth, I enjoyed the game. Cheap price tag, Good short story (Both games combined are roughly 6-8 hours). And the controls were rock solid.

Quick Update

Well I hope every one's holiday season was fun and safe. I have a lot of new things to chat about. I beat a few new games and received a few that I am still working on. Either way I will be posting reviews on all these great games in the next few days. Terminator Salvation, Watchmen : The End is Neigh pt 1 & 2, Jurassic Park The Game, Dragon Age : Origins, Cryostasis, and last but not least Skyrim.

I will also be talking about a few other things but just thought I would post this as it has been a while since last post...

Neuntoter