Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

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I recently completed Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD (Switch), an HD remaster of a Wii era title.

Ready to go on adventure!

Gameplay:

• A marble maze/obstacle style platformer, most levels see you tilting the stage around with the right analogue stick in order to guide a monkey (within a ball) to the end goal, avoiding obstacles & collecting bananas while trying not to fall off, all under a strict time limit. While simply getting through a level is one thing (and even this can become a challenge starting in the second half), real masochists can try to beat their high scores by shaving seconds off their best times & trying to collect all the bananas in a level (bundles of them are often just off the beaten path on perilous detours), the latter of which I wouldn't even dream of doing outside of the first few worlds.
  
  An example of the kind of level you'll have to tightrope your way through in the post game.
• There are two other types of levels, bonus levels (of which one exists in all 10 worlds, about halfway through), and boss levels (one of which caps off each of the 8 main game worlds). Bonus levels aren't all that much different from regular types, and see you trying to collect all bananas within them before time runs out or you fall off (there's no end goal other than collecting all the bananas, and you move on to the next level no matter whether or not you succeed).
• Next up are the boss levels which see you fighting bosses most often in arena style showdowns. Your goal in these is to avoid their attacks as to not be knocked off the platform (make sure you don't fall off on your own as well!), until you get the chance to hit their telegraphed weak point. These can be really tough for a variety of reasons, such as the fact that they often eschew the "3 hit rule" most other 3D platformer bosses live or die by (instead usually taking 4-6 hits to beat, usually changing their tactics either halfway through or after each hit they take), combined with the fact one good hit is all it can take to knock you out (and make you start over), and the fact that the game isn't really designed around such fights at all. You don't have any control over the camera, and while this isn't much of an issue in the rest of the game where you're mostly moving forward all the time (the camera is set to turn towards whatever direction you're moving), it can be an issue with these arena style fights (though a couple regular levels in the first world have a similar setup, seemingly as a bit of a tutorial to help you get to grips with them). One exception is the 4th world boss, which takes on the form of the level itself (you just need to survive a gauntlet and reach it's weak point on it's head) and gameplay wise fits the rest of the game much better. Needless to say, these are very hit & miss in terms of their difficulty.
  
  
  A couple of cutscene images of the thematically appropriate 4th world boss (while they appear mostly barren here, there are obstacles on each of it's segments you must clear/avoid during gameplay itself to reach it's head).
• Outside of the main game there are 10 minigames to try out. The only ones I tried out are "Monkey Target", which sees you trying to glide as far as you can and land in the middle of a bull's eye, and one that was a scrolling shmup. They are decent enough, and although you may get more out of them if you have others to play with, you won't last more than 2 or 3 rounds by yourself.
• There are six different monkeys to play as (they each have different stats for speed, weight, etc.), as well as Sonic the Hedgehog, who is new for this release and is unlocked after clearing the 8 main worlds (bananas are replaced with rings when playing as him), though he can't be used in the minigames.
• The biggest change compared to the Wii release (other than the addition of Sonic & the HD resolution), is the fact that it now controls with an analogue stick rather than motion controls (I haven't played the original, but from what I've heard this makes this the better playing version, although much easier than other entries because levels were designed with the looser motion controls in mind, though I personally still found it to be one of the toughest platformers I've played on Switch, and gave up about halfway through the second post game world). Other than that the two post game worlds now simply unlock consecutively after clearing the world before them (in the Wii version they were unlocked after the seemingly impossible task of clearing all the main worlds without using a continue), and it lacks 40 extra minigames the Wii version had (probably were designed around Wii waggle and couldn't be translated well or meaningfully without them).

Audio/Visual:

• It has many different world themes, from jungles, ghost ships, outer space, and more, and it's mix of a bright & colorful pallet, and catchy arcade style tunes, means that you can't get too upset with it, even if your on your 40th or 50th attempt to clear a level.
  
  
  
  Various shots of levels, I even included a Sonic shot.
• The theme song (I think BANANA~NA Love) is upbeat & irresistibly catchy (more than once I lingered on the title screen to give it a listen).
• Being a remaster of a Wii game, it's not a surprise to say I noticed no performance issues whatsoever. It's a great port.

Story:

• These sorts of games usually don't have much story, and that's the same here. It starts out with a pirate gorilla stealing a bundle of golden bananas, and while you take one back with each boss you defeat (with the aforementioned ape being the final one), there isn't any sort of theming tying them together, with few of them being monkeys/apes (half, if a yeti counts), and even less being pirates. It's really not an issue, though, though strong theming always makes these things better.

Conclusion:

• This was a pretty fun, albeit tough experience. It may be easier compared to the rest of the series (as many claim, though I can't confirm), but taken on it's own it can still be a stiff challenge, and one of the toughest I've had on Switch. And even though it has it's rough edges (such as the bosses), a bucketload of charm keeps it from feeling too irritating.
  
  The end to an exciting journey.

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This morning I finally played through the demo disc that came with my PSVR (to be honest, I forgot I even had it until I ran across it the other day), so some brief impressions on the demos I played (I think I tried everything that didn't require a Move controller, or that I didn't already own).

Battle Zone - Futuristic tank battle game with you in the cockpit of a tank (from the developers of the Sniper Elite games). It was a fun enough experience, but with a quicker pace than I was expecting, battles taking place in open arenas, and promises of procedurally generated elements, it seems like something where you could get overwhelmed pretty quickly.

Eve: Valkyrie - Spaceship flying cockpit shooty game. It looked pretty decent from what I could tell, but the demo never loaded properly no matter how many times I tried. The camera would load up too far back, so I was looking at the back of my own headless body. At first I assumed I was in the back of some sort of 2 seater craft until I realized my head was "inside" the back of the cockpit, and the body in front of me leaned with my movements.

the Persistence - Sci-fi themed survival horror FPS. It didn't have the best first impression as the title screen was blurry AF, but once into the game it looked fine. In the demo you're in a space ship/station and have to make your way to some sort of control room, but space zombies stand in your way. I tried the demo a few times but it's brutal. It only takes 4 or 5 hits for you to die, and more often than not you're forced up close & personal if you need to dispatch a zombie because your main weapon is some sort of sci-fi taser that requires you to get close to be in range, and takes 2-3 hits to kill one. You can put up a brief shield that protects you from their attacks, but you have to be right on the money on the timing or it won't work (needless to say, you don't want to be up against more than one at a time). There is the occasional health pack or fabrication credits pack lying around (the latter of which lets you purchase more powerful, but limited use weapons if you have enough credits, at certain kiosks you run across), and there are also lockers/hidden panels you can access that might have extra health packs, fabrication points, or even a weapon, but they're a gamble because their unlock mechanism might malfunction & blow up in your face instead, chipping away at your health (heck, I was doing decently on my third run until I opened one that had a live grenade which killed me instantly). Furthermore, there do seem to be some alternate paths/dead ends throughout the level, which can make progression tricky since you don't have a map on you (instead there are map kiosks within the level that you can check to get your bearings when you find one). Finally, the aiming system is odd. Every other shooter I've played in VR tracks the position of the Dualshock or a Move controller for aiming (think aiming in a light gun or Wii shooter), but you don't aim at all here. Instead, you automatically shoot into the middle of your field of vision (theoretically this makes it easier to shoot since you just have to be looking at your target & shoot, but it's so different to anything else I've played that I fumbled around quite a bit, and that probably added to the difficulty I had). I did start to feel a tad queasy by the time I was done (and I usually don't), but that could simply be down to the fact that it was the last game I played, after playing a number of demos with different gameplay & motion quirks, and not down to this or any other game individually.

Rez Infinite - VR conversion of a PS2 rail shooter. It has a real "inside a computer" polygonal digital theme going on, and was a real trip. One of the cleanest looking VR games I've played. May consider it in the future.

Star Child - Made by the same studio responsible for the Lucky's Tale games (the first of which was a VR title itself) it made no attempt to hide that it's literally a "2D" Metroid in everything but name. You'd think a sidescroller wouldn't really be that impressive in VR, but it looked glorious (especially intimidating was the massive scorpion/xenomorph hybrid alien that stalked your little heroine from the shadowy cliffs in the background). Unfortunately, I believe they recently delayed the full game indefinitely, so we'll probably never get to see it complete.

Thumper - Some sort of trippy rhythm "auto runner" game. It features a metallic beetle racing along an infinite "Hot Wheels" style track amidst abstract environments, and you've got to hit the right button prompts along with the beat in order to clear levels. Normally not my kind of game, but I actually got pretty into it. Certainly the kind of experience that really shines in VR.

Tiny Trax - A cartoony slot car game, where the VR perspective lends itself well to some pretty crazy track designs. It's easy to pick up & play, but hard to master. I tried it with a variety of the different cars on offer, but even after feeling like I had gotten the hang of the mechanics, I came in last every single time. Fun though.

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Okay, this isn’t going to be your typical review/impressions post, so bear with me. I’ve said before I still want to do a write-up on Life is Strange 2, but didn’t know how to put my experience with it into words or turn it into a proper review. I’ve realised that the only way for me to write about it is to also address how a lot of deeply personal aspects contributed to my experience of the game as a whole. If that’s not your thing, feel free to scroll away. I just need to get this out of my system, and hopefully maybe convince one or two of you to try out this incredible piece of storytelling.

For a little background of my history with the franchise so far, I only played two episodes of Life is Strange 1 and watched the rest on YouTube after I encountered a nasty bug in the middle of the second episode that softlocked my save file. I enjoyed that game throughout, particularly the time travel elements (which I admit I’m a total sucker for). I can’t say that it ever changed my life or affected me in the long term like it seemed to have done for some, but it was good enough that I had a positive perception of the franchise. When I then read @RogerRoger’s review of this second installment in this very same thread a couple months ago and realised it was about two brothers making their way across America, I knew I had to give it a try. I bought it not long after that, and ended up finishing it roughly a month ago.

Coming into Life is Strange 2, I am someone whose mental health is very far from the best it could be. I’ve been in an emotional rut for well over a year now, and depression seems to have mostly taken over my being. Not to throw a pity party here, but I believe it’s an essential factor of how my journey in Life is Strange 2 affected me, and thus — unfortunately — relevant. To add to that, I currently have a little brother of Daniel’s (the younger brother) age, and there’s a similarly large age gap between the two of us. Years larger than in the game, even. That definitely adds a layer of relatability to the relationship between them, and one that hit close to home way more than I would’ve liked to.

Games for me, and I’m sure for most people, are a way of escapism. Getting the opportunity to live a life wildly different from yours and sink yourself into a world unknown to you. Investing yourself in these characters, in these stories, and maybe even shedding a tear or two. At least, that’s how I would describe the general appeal of a narrative game such as this. I went into this with that exact same expectation. I’m going to get to live out a lovely brotherly relationship on a road trip where everything will end up being fine and where I will get the best and most perfect ending that I could ever possibly want. It may be what I expected, but it’s certainly not what I got. Emotional attachment to characters is one thing, but I can now say with full confidence that projecting yourself as well as another person you love onto two video game characters certainly creates for a way more intimate, and what turned out to be eventually heartbreaking, of a relationship.

Now, on first sight, my life looks absolutely nothing like that of Sean and Daniel. I’m not a minority who has had to deal with racism, or had to go on the run with my little brother after my dad bit a cop’s bullet. I’m not a 16-year old high school student who is now missing out on all these things he should be doing instead of dealing with this tragedy, nor am I a 9-year old on the run with his big brother with no understanding of what is happening or what will happen to him going forward.

What I am, is stuck. Stuck in a rut that I didn’t ask to be a part of, and with a view of the future that is so uncertain I might as well not have one at all. What I do have, is a little brother with whom I grow increasingly worried that he might not actually have the big brother he deserves or one that’s helping him grow up in all the right ways to become the fantastic human being I hope he will become. Where I am at in my head, is trying to come up with all these fantasies where my life would be what I want it to be, and what I need it to be. Fantasies of escapism, seemingly unrealistic tales of what’s to come and constant, unending uncertainty cloud my brain and judgment. Incredibly so, all these themes that I still am and have been dealing with for over a good year are touched upon in this experience. All my worst fears and best hopes translated out of my head into a narrative experience that only ups the stakes and dramatizes them to the point where I can’t help but feel something any time anything happens. Suddenly everything starts to feel a bit more familiar, to the point where it might even become slightly uncomfortable.

Choices and consequences. They’re certainly far more prevalent in real life than in video games. I can tell you that I have been avoiding making any choices or dealing with any consequences for a good while now, yet here I put myself in a position where I have to finally face up to my worst fears and start making decisions. Decisions that may resonate with me all too well, ones that I have been dreading to make. Decisions that suddenly become so much easier, yet have so much added weight to them as a consequence. Decisions that could validate the worst thoughts in my head, or decisions that could end up making me feel useless.

Suddenly Life is Strange 2 is no longer a game. It has become an escapade in my head. One that is viewed and experienced as entirely all too real, one that plays into everything I’ve been struggling with for the longest time. One that touches me deeply, on a level no other game has managed to reach. Here is where I’ll get a bit more in-depth on the storyline of the game itself, and will start spoiler tagging certain sections for anyone who hasn’t yet played and is interested.

Sean and Daniel set out on this unwanted adventure to Mexico to try and create a new life for themselves. Away from all the sadness and the bad memories. A second chance at the good life. Unfortunately for them, it’s not an easy task. Throughout it all, Sean remains confident. He has to. It’s all in or nothing. There’s a very clear goal, and not reaching it will be a totally destructive endeavor for these two boys. It’s simple, but it’s not. Both afraid, unsure of what to do. They meet lovely strangers on the way, but there’s plenty of despicable human trash on the way as well. A world of chances so to speak, and the odds aren’t in their favour. Still, it’s of utmost importance that they reach this goal.

Quickly, Daniel starts to figure out the implications of what they’ve been doing. Their father has died and he’s now completely dependent on Sean to teach him the right things and guide him on the right path. An enormously big task for Sean to take on, and one he seemingly fails at one too many times. Daniel starts to lash out, making Sean believe he’s been doing a horrible job at being a faux-parent. Is he not doing the right things? Should he have done everything differently? One time, Daniel goes as far as to choke his new girlfriend, Cassidy. What for? Betrayal? Jealousy? Has he gotten too power-hungry and is Sean turning him into a supervillain rather than the superhero he knows Daniel is inside? Has he wronged him? Not long after, Sean loses him entirely. What now? How can he take care of him? He’s failed. The dream is over.

A fantasy has fallen apart. A dream quickly tossed to the wayside. A loss that’s unbearable. All this time spent dreaming, all this time spent in escapism; it all amounted to nothing. Maybe they’re even worse off than they already were. He rolled the dice, and he lost. What was the point? Will it ever go back to normal? To the happiness we felt before? To the love, the emotions that once consumed us? What if it all led to nothing? Everything is lost, not much is gained.

Those last three paragraphs may sound incredibly dramatic, but there’s a reason it was all in third person. Sean may not have necessarily voiced all of those concerns in-game, and yet they were there for me. They were there because it was real. They were there because I felt everything that happened as if it was a real life event. As if it was between me and my brother. As if it was me doubting my future. As if it was me believing everything to be ruined. This experience made me embody Sean in a way that no other game has managed to make me identify with a character before. And it hurt. It hurt a lot. Finishing this game, I wasn’t just sad that it was over. In fact, during my ending I did not shed a single tear. Why? I wasn’t sad. I was grieving. I was grieving the loss of my little enano as if he were my real one. I was grieving the loss of myself in the game, being able to make all the hard decisions despite the consequences. I was grieving the loss of my dream, of my real escape. Of my happiness.

Neither Sean nor Daniel will ever be the same after this adventure, but they’ll be happy again. They’ll build new lives. Hopefully, in the non-existent epilogue everything will turn out to be okay. These characters are going to live their lives without me, yet here I am still stuck in my reality. All my fears having been validated in this experience, and all my hopes having been crushed. There’s still room for hope after the ending I received, but it’s none that I will experience. Now, I can differentiate a game from my real life, most certainly. I’ll get over all the immediate emotional responses that I’ve felt. I won’t take them into my real life, at least not as drastically. Maybe eventually, I’ll even finish grieving the experience. What I won’t forget, is how it all felt in the moment. How different my life was in the hours I was making my way through this journey. What I won’t forget… is the experience, one that deeply touched me. Am I emotionally in a better, worse or same place for playing this game? I can’t tell. As uncertain as I am, there’s one thing I can tell you with full confidence and ease. I’ve never had such a deeply emotional experience playing a game before, and am unlikely to have one on a similar level again. For that, I am grateful. For that, it’s a fantastic game… but lord, it broke my heart.

Graphics are good, too.

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Well, it's done. My DOOM 64 review.

This can be kind of spoilery. I discuss pretty much every aspect of the experience. So if you want to go in fresh... don't... read it, I guess? I didn't include a screenshot of me blowing up the final boss, so there's that I guess.

DOOM 64 HD remaster

Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC (reviewed)

Completion status: All Steam achievements completed over the course of three playthroughs, one of the original campaign on the second highest difficulty ("I own DOOM!"), another of the original campaign on the highest difficulty ("Watch Me Die!"), and then a third of the newly added post-game campaign that ostensibly connects this game to DOOM Eternal. All optional content was either completed or engaged with (I didn't bother to beat every single unlockable level, even if I tried them all), and all of the Demon Keys were collected across a second playthrough (more on that it a bit). This all took me roughly 28 hours, according to Steam's game time counter.

DOOM 64 has a curious history. This title was actually developed by Midway Games (although there was extensive oversight by and cooperation with some of the original developers of DOOM at id Software such as John Carmack and John Romero), and although it has maintained a dedicated cult following over the years, it largely has been lumped into the same basket of 'lesser' console conversions as the inferior Playstation 1 and (especially) Sega Saturn ports of the original DOOM, and was largely overshadowed by other popular shooters on the system, such as Perfect Dark and Goldeneye.

This couldn't be further from the truth, though, or more of a shame. DOOM 64 wasn't a port at all of either of the previous DOOM titles, and is still considered by some classic fans to be the "true" DOOM 3. In fact, DOOM 64 was a remarkable console-only DOOM game that featured significant improvements over the original, along with extensive changes to level design and aesthetics that made it feel like one of the more singular entries in the series. Thankfully, this classic was finally remastered for modern platforms, allowing the game to be experienced the way it always should have been: with a mouse and keyboard (I jest... kind of).

The first thing to know about DOOM 64 is that significant alterations were made to the DOOM engine, and all weapon and enemy sprites were completely overhauled. Indeed, while the basic flow of gameplay and subject matter are basically unchanged, the look of the game is pretty wildly different than previous iterations of the series.

The enemy sprites, for example, are much, much higher detail, and were created from 3D models, giving them much more of a sense of presence in the environments than they previously had. Guns, similarly, have so much more to them visually, and even the way they feel when using them can be somewhat different (I'm very, very partial to the physics, sound, and look of DOOM 64'd version of the chaingun; it's very satisfying to use. But the true hero of this title is the chainsaw, which blows any previous version of the weapon out of the water. I never used this weapon in previous DOOM games, whereas I opted for it whenever confronted with a horde of pinkies here, and even, in certain desperate, ammo-less moments, used it to take down Barons of Hell and Imps with little trouble).

The hardware accelerated DOOM 64 took advantage of the N64's (at the time) reasonably powerful technology to change up both the look of the game as well as how it plays. Room-over-room architecture, scripted events that would have been unthinkable in previous games (one cool level sees you activating a device that literally alters the configuration of the stage by pounding down a flat surface until it forms a stairway to a lower level of one of the UAC bases), scrolling skies, more naturalistic water scrolling, environmental effects, and a dramatically improved use of color make DOOM 64 feel like an almost generational leap over previous games in the series.

Unlike the samey labyrinths of DOOM I and the godawful city environments of DOOM II, DOOM 64's various environments actually FEEL distinct. They range from distinctly high-tech (primarily through the use of vibrant neon colors and strobe lighting that you'd expect to see in a space facility, as well as limited interaction with technology), to gothic (some of the mid-game Hell levels see you trudging through medieval feeling demonic keeps and castles, complete with black clouds billowing overhead, lightning flashing in the distance, and honest-to-goodness fog effects in dank, demon-infested corridors), to downright diabolical (late-game Hell levels make much heavier usage of Satanic imagery than previous DOOM games, which means you can expect to see human sacrifices impaled everywhere, pentagrams, inverted crosses, giant stretches of chain fences and cages like in a Silent Hill otherworld, and, in the last few stages, the brilliant billowing of gigantic plumes of hellfire on the horizon, rising far over the buildings surrounding you, reminding you just how deeply in the nest of evil you are really situated.

The soundscape of DOOM 64 has also changed pretty dramatically. As a supplement to the creepier visuals, the chirpy rock music of previous DOOM games has been replaced with moody, ambient tracks that sound much more like something you'd hear in a horror game, including one track that is primarily composed of demonic growls and moans.

It doesn't necessarily make compelling listening on its own, but combined with the revised visual design and strong gameplay it makes the experience that much more engaging and immersive. In many respects, DOOM 64 feels like a re-evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of previous games, and this extends to almost every aspect of the game design.

One way in which DOOM 64 attempted to further its unique fusion of horror and action is with its use of in-game brightness. Simply put. this is a rather infamously dark game. Not DOOM 3 'need to use a flashlight' dark, but it's rather telling that even with this re-release, which seems to have been significantly brightened compared to even the highest brightness setting in the original game, a lot of my screenshots that I'd planned on using were just... too dark to make out much of anything with small screenshots. Granted, in a dark room, on a wide-screen monitor, the various dark tones look quite brilliant and moody, but I can see why being able to see properly would have been something of an issue for players of the original. For this reason, I've opted for brighter screenshots from the game.

One benefit from this, also related to mood, is the really striking use of shadows in this game. There are many sections of this game where you'll see a dark corridor with a weak bit of torchlight illuminating a section ahead of you, or where the room is almost bisected by shadows. Along with the more subtle and nuanced use of color, this also helps the locations in DOOM 64 to feel more evocative and present.

DOOM 64's enemy variety is stronger than it was in the somewhat barebones original game, but it has lost a few of the more strategically interesting demons from DOOM II. Specifically, the Revenant, Arch-Vile, and Chaingunner enemies are nowhere to be found here. While you'll see a ton of Arachnotrons, the larger Spiderdemon is also absent (although given how frustrating that enemy is, I don't see this as a huge loss). In their place, there is a new monster type standing in as the final boss, and, on the regular enemy front, a faster and more powerful variety of the Imp enemy, called the Nightmare Imp, is introduced. It feels like the developers wanted to preserve the move away from almost entirely humanoid enemies while being able to keep more of the flow of movement in combat from the original (as @RogerRoger mentioned when we talked about DOOM II, two of the three removed regular enemies pretty dramatically alter the flow of combat and force you to attend to them before anything else).

This attempt might not have been entirely successful, though. While most of the enemies don't feel substantially different in this version of DOOM, the Lost Soul has seen a crazy bump in aggression and damage scaling. Simply put, even one Lost Soul will often be more damaging to the player than more traditionally threatening enemy types such as the Baron of Hell due to how quickly it'll attack the player consecutively. Combine this with the much higher damage scaling involved with playing on the highest difficulty settings, and suddenly two or more Lost Souls become an existential threat to the player. As such, the Pain Elemental, a mere nuisance in DOOM II, has become arguably the most dangerous enemy you'll encounter due to its tendency to spit out Lost Souls at an alarming rate.

I should also mention the final boss, which is also new for this game. It's... well, frustrating, but probably the best final boss in the series to date. While it's clear the developers are still struggling to create a fight that feels climactic as well as fun, considering the Mother Demon final boss is just sort of unceremoniously dropped in the middle of the room after clearing out an epic swarm of enemies beforehand, but she feels significantly less gimmicky than the Icon of Sin from DOOM II, and, unlike with OG DOOM's Spiderdemon, you can't just hide behind walls and take pot shots at it to avoid death, as she has Revenant-style homing projectiles that will rip you apart. In fact, she's probably way too hard (unless you have a certain difficulty-to-obtain weapon, which I'll discuss next, that sends her down hard within seconds). I didn't obtain this weapon until my second playthrough, so the best opportunity I found to survive the fight was to get up in her face ASAP and rhythmically move to avoid powerful projectiles she kept shooting at me whilst stun-locking her with continuous super shotgun blasts to the face.

Weapons-wise, aside from altered sprites that have some recoil/a somewhat different feel to them, not a lot has changed with the classic weapons aside from the chainsaw. The chaingun feels great, of course, but its functionality is identical to previous games. The super shotgun returns from DOOM II, and its as versatile and powerful as ever. The only real addition to your arsenal this time is the Unmaker (dubbed in-game only as "What the !@#%* is this!" by Doomguy), a fleshy, demonic beam weapon that's unremarkable unless you upgrade it (that's right: the very first upgradable weapon in the series). Upgrading it involves obtaining three "Demon Keys," which can only be accessed by finding them in secret levels accessed via alternate level exits during the main campaign. Unless you're following a guide, then, it's likely your first time playing the game (like mine) will see you rocking and largely ignoring a base-model Unmaker. Assuming you do go to the trouble of upgrading it fully, though, you end up with a hilariously overpowered weapon (far more useful than the slow-as-molasses BFG in this regard, really) that basically melts down the strongest enemies within seconds (even the final boss!), making the only (considerable) restraint on its full-scale adoption late in the game the limited amount of beam ammo that is shared between it, the BFG, and the plasma gun. Really, it's best to leave this for Cyberdemons before the final level.

One of the major changes made in DOOM 64 is in the puzzle/secret design and how you progress. Simply put, there's a significantly larger focus placed on environmental puzzles in this game. With some of them being real stumpers. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised how many of this game's secret areas and items were essentially hidden in plain sight, with the understanding that the player would read between the lines, so to speak, and figure out how to overcome a challenge. Granted, much of the game still is obtaining colored skulls to successively unlock different doors, but the game will also have you fire your gun at switches from certain vantage points (sometimes multiple in a row from different angles for particularly large secrets), use strobing lights and/or computer displays to communicate information about your environment wordlessly, make the player interact with switches in order to physically alter the terrain, remember and input simple codes from elsewhere in a level, and, in general, build entire levels around progression concepts that the player will need to grasp in order to progress.

It's not all honey butter with this game, of course. As is practically mandatory for a classic DOOM game, the general strength of the level design needs to be off-set by something aggravating and stupid. In this case, there are a few levels where the game likes to drop the player into pits from which there is no escape. There's often not even any warning before it happen. In one sequence during level... six, I believe, if you hesitate before rushing ahead in a room, the floor will crumble in front of you and sent you falling into a black pit filled with demons eager to consume you. But even if you barrel forward, you'll likely plunge to your doom (heh) thanks to certain large enemies suddenly appearing and blocking your path forward. There's also a rather infamous part later in the game where you'll be sent plummeting into inescapable lava if you're standing on the wrong part of the floor when it starts crumbling underneath you. And, in general, there are just far too many spots where you can casually fall into a place from which the only return is death. The game also occasionally likes to force the player to run through elaborate arrow trap sequences in order to obtain colored skulls, and even if these don't kill you, you'll often lose a lot of carefully preserved health in the process. These sorts of cheap traps aren't terribly common, but they're so unfair and poorly designed that they contrast harshly with the generalized excellence of how this game handles challenges.

While it's difficult to mention this as a negative, considering it's pretty universal among classic DOOM games, the narrative approach hasn't really changed, either. You'll get a few screens (with sensible color combinations this time that make them easy to read, thankfully!) with some delightfully overwrought prose, and a traditional descent into the heart of hell level design-wise, but otherwise, there's really nothing to the story presentation. The new campaign (which I'll discuss briefly soon) ostensibly connects this game to DOOM Eternal, but, really, what's to connect? It's just another set of levels, same as with any other DOOM game. Of course, nobody plays DOOM for the gripping narration, so it doesn't really matter. This apparently is a sequel to DOOM/DOOM II as well, but I wouldn't know that without researching the game a bit.

In addition to the forementioned secret demon key levels, DOOM 64 also has a handful of other secret levels to access. The first order of business is finding the secret exit to the game's very first level. To do this, you need to destroy all of the explosive barrels in the level, which makes a secret elevator appear. Despite how utterly obscure this easter egg is, though, it gets worse: after you finish destroying all of the barrels, you have, maybe 3 seconds to high-tail it to that elevator near the start of the level, which means you actually need to destroy the very first barrel in the game last, and then hope you don't get stuck on a wall or something as you rush to access the secret level.

This level, called "Hectic," is... well, I can't think of a family-friendly word to use when describing it, so, instead, I'll use a roundabout method of describing what playing this level is like. Anyone who has ever played the game Super Mario Maker, Nintendo's charming and innovative creativity suite on Wii U, will remember how, despite the number of supremely creative and well-thought-out levels they encountered online, there were also a huge number of levels that seemed designed to do little more than make life hell for the player. Perhaps this was due to a creativity deficit on the part of the players, who couldn't seem to find a way to create entertaining levels, or maybe it was born from some sick, sadistic impulse to inflict suffering on others that these people might not have known lurked inside of them, but, whatever the case may be, you'd find levels that existed purely to inspire frustration, and were frustrating also because of how poorly designed they often seemed. That's what Hectic is like.

The level is incredibly simple. You have one hub room that connects to three different challenge rooms, each with a colored skull key required to escape the level. This starting room entices the player by showing them nice stuff like armor upgrades and a Megasphere (a colored orb that doubles your health points by 100%). You quickly learn, however, that these are simply intended to troll the player: trying to grab the armor upgrade traps the player under a press that quickly crushes them to death. Similarly, if you grab the Megasphere, you become trapped in a tight space and watch as the ceiling above you slowly descends to crush you.

That really sets the tone of things, doesn't it? The yellow key challenge room is the easiest to to conquer, as it merely requires a few trial and error deaths. It involves crossing a small room filled with alternating platforms and traps that continuously spit out damaging arrows. It's irritating, but by my third or fourth death I'd found an optimal path that minimized the amount of damage I took. The next challenge room, however, quickly grew on my nerves, and took forever to beat. It traps you in a small room filled with three Arachnotrons (whose lasers can easily tear you apart in a couple of seconds) and gives you nothing but a rocket launcher to defend yourself. Now, rocket launchers are great against Arachnotrons... at a distance. Try to target anything close to you, however, and you'll endure inordinately large amounts of splash damage from the resulting explosion. So, cue a frustrating twenty minutes or so of me going into this room and trying to kill the Arachnotrons, usually to only end up killing myself with splash damage in the process. Somehow, I managed to get through this, and steeled myself for the last challenge. This one was less poorly designed, but seemed unfair and designed to frustrate as well. The floor space was limited to a few pillars erupting from the floor. Falling off these pillars meant certain death, as there was no way to climb up. Once you head into this level and collect the skull key, Hell Knights, four in total, appear on either side of the player and begin assaulting them with fireballs. So the player has to try to balance on these pillars, moving back and forth to avoid fireballs and kill all of the Hell Knights with rockets.

This is the section where I learned to regret that firing rockets actually knocks you back a few inches or so, as does taking damage from fireballs.

So, forty falls into the bed of lava below, and I was done with Hectic! In fairness to the developers, the reward is actually pretty cool. You unlock a "Features" menu that both allows you activate certain cheats, like invincibility (although doing this will disallow you from being able to collect trophies), and gives you access to the helpful "Level Select" option. Not only can you use this to replay certain levels again (although, going into a late-game level with just a pistol is its own form of Hell), but you can also access the remaining hidden levels in this game, called "Fun" Levels.

So, playing these, which are four in total, you discover that what the developer considers to be "fun" is apparently throwing you in a small arena or in a set of hallways and then relentlessly puking high-powered enemies and rockets everywhere, which quickly turns into a mess. It's that Mario Maker-style of level design again. I won't go into any depth on them. I did complete one (after, many, many tries) for a Steam achievement, but it wasn't easy, and probably wasn't worth the effort.

A significant addition to the re-release worth mentioning is the inclusion of a second campaign! As mentioned before, this campaign apparently connects it to the newest game in the series, DOOM Eternal, but, really, all you have here is a truncated campaign, maybe 1/3 as long as the original, that has to hit most of the same beats in less time. An interesting result of this is that these extra levels feel HARD. The developers seem to have designed it knowing that players will have beaten the game previously, giving these intricately design new levels the feel of challenge stages. This mini-campaign also has its own boss, which is pretty much identical to the original (it's the final boss' sister or something... no joke). Thankfully, the final boss fight here is actually quite a bit more fun, as it's set in a level where you can feel free to run, hide, and generally fight the absurdly powerful demon without having to resort to cheap exploits like stun-locking it.

But, yeah, once you finish the main campaign, selecting "New Game" will give you the option to play this mini-campaign instead, and I HIGHLY recommend everyone who enjoyed the base game do so. It's mostly more of the same, but considering the game, that's not a bad thing at all.

CONCLUSION

There are some drawbacks to DOOM 64. Some frustrating oversights in the level design. Less enemy variety than in DOOM II. A final boss that is either overwhelming or pathetic, depending on how many of the secret demon keys you can access to by the time the final level rolls around. Yet this is, without a shadow of a doubt, the best game in the series I've played to date. It's so good as a whole product, honestly, that it puts previous entries to shame. I never replay games right away, and rarely go back to look for secrets, and yet I continued to return to DOOM 64 to uncover all of its secrets and unlock all of the achievements. I can't recommend this strongly enough to anyone who has any love in their heart for old-school shooters or horror shooters. You won't be disappointed. A solid 9/10 from me.