Recent reviews by reptileviking

This is a fun, bite sized shooter that is different enough from the usual Boomer Shooter fare to stand out. I appreciate the story even if it is a little confusingly told.

A wonderful dark fantasy shooter. Fun weapons and transformations, a solid enemy roster and interesting and expansive levels to explore. What more do you need from a classic Doom-like?

A pretty darn good retro shooter.

Pros
Fun! - It's just fun to shoot stuff and explore. Yay!
Excellent art direction - I think this is literally the ideal of retro style graphics, everything has just enough polygonal detail and just crusty enough textures.
Monsters - Every critter you fight looks cool, is easily recognisable in the heat of battle and has a nicely defined role so they can be combined for varied encounters.
Cool setting - As a lover of the OG Quake I have a massive softspot for mystical and eldritch but slightly anachronistic settings. Tying back into the art direction, every level looked fantastic! I'm also impressed with the variety as no two levels have the exact same theme even if they share similarities by hub.

Mixed
Arsenal - Overall it's a nicely varied bunch of "guns" but a few of them feel a little weak. The fangspitter in particular feels like it needs too many shots to put down anything and it was the only weapon I felt ammo economy was a problem.
Inventory - The items never felt necessary enough to force me to use them. I probably just have a hoarding problem though. Also, I hated the invulnerability powerup knocking you down to 1 health. I used it twice ever.
Level design - While most levels are very navigatable I found a few of the later levels too large and winding, with unclear direction. In the 3rd hub levels I got annoyingly lost in almost every level, and in one level in the second it was so bad that I wandered for a good 30 minutes before finding a sequence break I could use to progress. This lead to the latter 3rd of the game dragging a bit.

Cons
Hit feedback - This game is relatively bloodless and I think that actually makes it hard to tell if I'm hitting things sometimes. I'm not saying it should be Prodeus (which overdid it, IMO) but some blood or spark particles I could see outside of point blank range would have been nice. The combat still feels good but I think it is being held back by this.
The cacodemon enemy - I grew to hate them. They're too strong for your early arsenal and they constantly get stuck on geometry. They become more tolerable once you get the Lance but the damage was already done!

This game won me over by the end but I'd still say it comes with major caveats.

It is extremely "Doom at home". At times it feels more like playing a particularly ambitious mod than something with its own identity. A good example of this is the enemy roster that is almost entirely 1-1 Doom enemies but with blander designs.

The arsenal is a little more creative but does have a lot of redundancy and half way through the game I unbound all but one gun from each ammo type. I got sick of cycling through them in combat, especially since by default the upgraded weapons are nested behind their weaker counterparts for some reason. They are all individually satisfying to use though. Well, maybe not the SMGs. I didn't care for them.

Levels are overall well designed, very fun to run around and explore but they are let down by the first half of the game's scenery being almost entirely in lava and slime factories. The parts of the game were you get to visit the other universes with far more interesting art design really should have been expanded on.

My biggest problem with the game is the shop and the ore economy. I really don't like it when games force secret hunting if you want to get all your characters abilities. Not even early, just ever. I found close to 2/3rds of the available secrets in my first playthrough and ended the game without two guns and the bandoleer upgrade.

It's also a shame how long it takes to save up for both the double jump and dash because the game feels a lot better with them. Instead of having to buy them I really think the player should pick up an exo-suit upgrade 5 or 6 levels in that provides both.

So yeah, it's a pretty mild recommend.

This is a very well produced Doom total conversion. Good weapons, cool enemies, interesting story terminals and exceptional art direction definitely make this worth the asking price. Just don't go in expecting any totally novel gameplay systems.

Fantastic game. It has a super addictive combat loop that just keeps pulling me back, again and again.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, what a good ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game. 10/10, no notes or nits to pick.

A perfectly cromulent addition to the retro FPS canon.

I think this is overall a very fun game with a few major sins that might keep people away. The major one being a slow start, with some of the worst levels in the entire game being in the first episode. The other being necessary feeling upgrades being hidden in extremely difficult to find areas. Unless you're going for 100% your arsenal is going to feel half assembled and under powered.

Overall I'd recommend it, just play with a guide so you can get all the gold runes without spending hours scouring the levels. Unless you're into that sort of thing, in which case consider this a glowing endorsement!

Great fun!

The levels are well paced and easy to navigate with satisfying secret hunting. Environment variety is so-so. It's all pretty industrial but it does have enough new things to see that it isn't all identical. The boss level is maybe a bit too much of a difficulty spike but maybe I'm just bad at dodging lightning. Skill issue!

The arsenal is very fun. My favourites are the flamethrower, lightning saw, and plasma rifle. The plasma rifle in particular has a really cool alt-fire I don't think I've ever seen before. A do have a few complaints. The grenade launcher feels entirely redundant, especially since I found the missile launcher well before it. The sniper rifle is a fine and useful weapon but it has a pathetic firing noise. I think the wrist blades the player uses alongside the Magnum and I kinda wish there was a button to just swipe at any time.

Perhaps most importantly there is a good variety of cool monsters to fight. I like their designs a lot. I'd love an in-game model viewer so I could take a closer look!

For a long, long time I've considered Quake 2 a disappointing follow up to my favourite FPS of all time. I didn't think it was bad necessarily. Just inessential.

The Quake 2 remaster definitely changed my opinion for the better.

While I had technically beaten Quake 2 before, it was through judicious use of no-clip and level warping when I got lost and frustrated. I've tried to get through honestly since but generally got bored mid ammo-dump. With the remaster's improved combat and waypoint compass, I happily blasted through the whole of the original campaign and it's expansions. The N64 levels were a nice surprise, as I had never had the opportunity to play them.

The new campaign by MachineGames is where the actual magic is. If you don't already own Quake 2, it is absolutely worth the price of admission. It has a nice smattering of expansion content mixed in, beautiful new level themes that don't all blend together and top tier encounter design. I absolutely loved it.

A+ work overall. Thanks so much to Nightdive and MachineGames!

PS I still think Quake 1 is better, just not by as much!