Developer: Ben Pettengill Publisher: Ben Pettengill Year: 2001 Genre: Adventure Game
Well this one was weird. My playthrough of the Reality-On-The-Norm shared adventure game universe continues with the 7th game in the series. I skipped ahead a few because I couldn’t get some to work in DosBox, ScummVM, or my Windows 98 VM. Return of Die Vie Ess is about a scientist in Reality who has plans to take over the world. You play as Nameless Law Official and must stop his scheme. Other than the return of Davy Jones as a character you interact with, and walking around the town of Reality, there isn’t that much of a connection to the previous games. Most of the characters are new and the scientist does all of his scheming from a room that you never go in, so it feels very disconnected from your actions. I’m assuming that some of the new characters will pop up in later games.
The game itself is very straightforward and only took about 5 minutes to beat. It’s still pleasant enough, except for the ending making a very odd detour with a random joke from the scientist about a sex worker and Davy Jones having a comment about unprotected sex. They come out of nowhere and it’s unfortunate mark on an otherwise fine game. Other than that, the game is ok enough and I think it’s worth playing if you’re going to take the same odd journey as I have and try to play through this series.
Like I said in other reviews, it’s hard to be too critical because these were games by teenagers and folks in their early 20s in the early 2000s. I cannot even imagine what 14 year old me would have put in a game if I made one at this time, probably jokes that have aged much more poorly than anything in these games, so I can’t judge anyone for a joke in a freeware game from almost 25 years ago and really isn’t as bad as I’m making it out to be.
I’ve been posting about these games as I play them on Bluesky and Mastodon and even with me being completely positive about the games on there, because I am genuinely having a good time playing these including this game, I think it did trip out one or two devs who worked on these when they saw them on Bluesky, since they had worked on them decades ago. I took a screenshot of an All Your Base joke and a dev commented that it’s like I’m doing an excavation of their 19 year old brain. They liked the post so I don’t think they were mad about it. I wasn’t dunking on the game, but it’s still probably a trip to have someone commenting on what you were doing at 19, 24 years later. I don’t know how I would feel about it if I had made games at that age, which is why I’m not really broadcasting these reviews despite enjoying the series, other than the automatic posts my blog does to Mastodon.
Is this probably more thought than what should go into a 5 minute freeware game from 2001? Yeah probably, but I like logging everything I play through on here since other folks aren’t talking about these games. Not that I’m really expecting anyone to talk about something like this on social media, and demanding that people do would probably make me sound like Jim Gaffigan wanting to talk about the movie Heat, but I think someone should since it’s an interesting time for the genre that I don’t see discussed too much. It’s also why I went back and removed the “Review: ” title from all of my review posts. You can still check out the Review category that all of these posts have, but it’s almost more of a log at this point and having it categorized in the post title made it sound too dang formal. But who knows, maybe I’ll sell out and throw it back in when I desire that SEO boost.
Developer: Ben Pettengill Publisher: Ben Pettengill Year: 2001 Genre: Adventure Game
My playthrough of the Reality-on-the-Norm series continues. I tried to get the 2nd game working but wasn’t able to so I gave up and moved ahead to the third game. It doesn’t matter too much since they’re all standalone games that make references to previous games, but that’s it.
This one has you once again playing as teen magician Davy Jones. His magical ring has been stolen by Russian spies and it’s up to you to get it back. There’s not a whole lot to say about this one. It’s not as good as the first one in my opinion but is still alright enough. It’s more immature than the first game and there’s some humor in it that hasn’t aged great, although neither game has aged as poorly as I expected, given that it was made by people in their teens or early 20s in the early 2000’s, so that’s been a nice surprise. It’s hard for me to be that critical of them since it’s such a weird project and people are also figuring out how to use the engine. So far each game has had a different project setup too.
As you can see in the above screenshot, there’s some weird perspective stuff going on in the MS Paint art, but I think that’s actually kind of the charm for me. I really enjoy that the art isn’t polished but also isn’t just trying to emulate The Secret of Monkey Island or King’s Quest. I have a lot of nostalgia for this era of adventure games, where the community decided to make their own games since Lucasarts and Sierra stopped making them, and had to figure out how to do that. Like I said with the first game, it’s hard to recommend specific 15 minute games, especially ones in the middle of a shared universe, but it is fun going through this series if you can get the games to work.
Developer: ID Software Publisher: GT Interactive Year: 1996 Genre: FPS
Much like with my attempt to review Doom, there’s nothing about this game that hasn’t been said a billion times! There’s multiple books about the making of the game so this review is more of a grab bag of thoughts about it that I had as I played through the game. My absolutely lukewarm take on the game is that it holds up. It’s still a lot of fun to play and the controls feel great.
The game occasionally gets some criticism for the weird mix of aesthetics it has, with it combining Lovecraft, medieval, and futuristic stuff all together and it not completely meshing. I get it, it’s a mess since the game went through development hell, but I dig it. There isn’t really another game doing this mix, even the ones strongly inspired by it, so it still stands out even if it’s a bit sloppy. Maybe it being messy is part of the charm too.
The plot is meaningless junk, even more so than Doom. This is what happens when you push Tom Hall out of your company! I think this is one of the reasons why they haven’t really revisited this specific Quake game with sequels or reboots. There’s just nothing to really grab onto.
I used to really dislike the boss in the first episode, I think everyone was pretty critical of it at the time, but I’m into it now. Doom’s bosses aren’t actually that interesting mechanically so I think it’s fun that this one is kind of a puzzle. I’m guessing the disappointment is that it’s this massive guy but you don’t even shoot at him, which is understandable, but if that was the case I think the boss battle would have just been circle strafing around the boss and shooting it, much like the cyberdemon.
The secret level in the first episode has the really fun novelty of it being low gravity. There’s no other level in the game like this so it’s a really fun gimmick for a one off and feels like a nice reward for finding the secret level. Which makes it odd that none of the other secret levels have any gimmicks. They’re fine, but they’re just more levels.
I think it’s odd that Episodes 2 and 3 do not have bosses. I really wish they did. The end of ep 3 is especially a big “huh, that’s the end? Well ok.” At least the end of Episode 2 introduces a new enemy type, the Vore.
Speaking of which, the enemy types introduced towards the mid point and end aren’t as fun! The projectiles for the Vore are too accurate so it feels like you have to slowly work your way through them, which hurts the pacing. The leaping blobs are the absolute worst. They’re no fun at all to fight and they may actually be the most difficult enemy in the game since they’re the hardest to hit. The first episode of Quake is the strongest partially because it doesn’t have either of these.
The other reason I prefer earlier Quake levels is because of the designers. Sandy Petersen’s levels in latter of the game are a mixed bag for me. They either work really well or they’re too big and ruin the pacing. All lean into the Lovecraft theme very well though, which I suppose makes sense because he was the Call of Cthulhu guy. I get why they relied on him to make the last episode of levels.
I know everyone hates the last boss. I used to as well but now I don’t mind it! To me the final boss is getting through all of those enemies and then actually killing the big boss is just doing the final blow to end the game. It works for me!
I played this through the Nightdive remaster from a few years ago, which includes the two official expansions from the 90s and the two newer episodes from MachineGames. It’s fantastic and IMO much, much better than the more recent Doom rerelease, which I thought was poor and can go into in a later post. The two official expansions from the 90s are a mixed bag for me but the newer episodes have some incredible level design. Whenever new levels are made for an old FPS, they often make the levels too big and have you hoarding ammo to make it more difficult, but all it does is kill the pacing of the game. Not a problem in these! I loved them and would recommend them to any Quake fan. The first MachineGames expansion is available for free so even if you don’t have this remaster, you can still play them.
There, those are my thoughts on a game that’s nearly 30 years old. The first time I played this game was on Thanksgiving at my cousin’s house, so much like how people have Christmas and Halloween games, this is a Thanksgiving game to me.
Quake is available on Steam, GOG, and a billion other platforms.
If there’s something we can all agree on, it’s that 2025 is The Year of the Blog. V Buckenham is saying it and Robert Yang is saying it, so here is another roundup of blog links. If you find anything you enjoy, be sure to subscribe to their sites with your RSS feed reader so you can catch further updates.
Video Games
Voting on the MAGS adventure game jams is now open. Even if you don’t have an interest in voting, Wraithkal’s link is a nice little roundup of point-and-click adventure games made in jams that you may have missed.
Jolt Country writes about the shareware classic Abuse.
There was a new Ink console announced that sounds like a disaster to me but smarter people like Andrew Plotkin and V Buckenham have already posted about it.
Atari Archive goes into the history of the Superman game from 1979.
Rob asks Who Gets To Sonic Meme?, a reference to the meme featuring Sonic saying they want shorter games with worse graphics made by people paid more to work less.
Developer: Ben Croshaw Publisher: Ben Croshaw Year: 2001 Genre: Adventure Game
In the early 00’s, adventure games were in a weird spot with Sierra imploding and Lucasarts pulling away from adventure games. There were still a few commercial adventure games being made but with the advent of tools like Adventure Game Studio, the adventure game community decided to make their own adventure games. One of the most interesting projects from this time was Reality-on-the-Norm, a community effort to create a shared universe. This universe ended up having dozens of games, with the most recent being released in 2019. Anyone can still make a RON game, you just need to follow the rules that have been established over the development of this universe, created so one game dev doesn’t step on the toes of another dev by doing anything drastic like killing an established character.
I had never actually played any of these before, so I thought that it would be a fun opportunity to check out the series through the Adventure Game Club (see link at top), starting with the first game. Lunchtime of the Damned is a point-and-click adventure released in 2001 and created by Ben Croshaw, who went on to be the YouTuber Yahtzee and makes a lot of videos that I don’t think are any good. This one has you accidentally creating a zombie and then stopping him before he can murder more people.
So, what did I think about it? It’s alright! It’s hard to be critical of it because it’s a game created by a community that was not only learning how to make adventure games, but also learning a new tool. It’s got obtuse moments with some puzzles being implemented in a clunky way and it’s doing the adventure game trope of an area not having anything interesting, but then leaving and coming back revealing something new to interact with. Some of the humor is dated and edgelordy but it’s still way better than I expected. There’s still something about it that’s charming to me though. I didn’t play any of the RON games at the time but I did play some of the other ones created by the AGS community, so the MS Paint art and lack of polish really works for me. I also think parts are genuinely funny and while there are some bits of puzzles that have issues, most of it is perfectly fine. It makes me wish I had played more AGS games at the time, because I think I would have really loved following along with these games and playing them as it came out. I also wish I didn’t spend more time figuring out how to get it to work, but that’s not the game’s fault. ScummVM does support AGS but I don’t believe it supports anything this old at the moment, so I ended up using a Windows 98 VM because DOSBox wasn’t working for me either.
It’s hard to have a Would I Recommend? thing for this because it’s only 15 minutes long and so much of it hinges on if you have been playing adventure games for a long time since it’s a little tricky to get this working. I can tell you I had fun playing it though. I would definitely recommend going back and just exploring the early AGS games if you’re a fan of the genre. Not just because I think it’s historically interesting and you can see where a lot of today’s adventure game designers came from, but also because there’s still a lot of good stuff in there.
Don’t have a whole lot to say in this intro paragraph. If you enjoy these, do a blog post with your own game and art recommendations. If you don’t have a blog, consider starting a free one on neocities or bear blog. I also have start putting more effort into my recommendation list on Itch.io if you want more recommendations. Consider starting one of those too. I’ve heard they’re way cooler and sexier than Steam Curator pages. I like these ones by Meagan and WildWeasel. And leave nice comments on things you like! Anyway, as Geoff Keighley always says, “Now more than ever, video games.”
Video Games
I have been playing adventure games my whole life. If there’s a hater of slider tile puzzles, it’s me. That said, I think landflip (Itch.io) is different enough that it’s not one of those, or at least they cracked the code and made a good one. It’s probably the best looking one too.
mausimus released version 1.0 of ShaderGlass (itch.io) last night and it does a really need CRT monitor effect on whatever game you’re playing. I tried it with Doom 2 and it was really neat. I don’t buy into the thought all old games must be played on a CRT by some folks in the retro gaming world, but it’s still fun to look at.
I haven’t played twin stick shooter roguelike Star of Providence (Steam/Switch) but I guess it just got a release on the Nintendo Switch and I’ve seen so many people praise it. It also got an update on the PC.
Super 10 Pin (Itch.io) just got a demo and I haven’t seen a game nail the feel of the N64 era of games like this in long time. Even it being a bowling game makes it feel like more of a N64 game to me. Fortunately it’s a good one and does more than just “roll a ball down a lane.”
Open-and-Shut (Itch.io) is a free noir sci-fi point-and-click adventure game made for the Cyberpunk Jam on Itch.
I missed this one when it came out early this month but Slender Threads (Steam) is a paranormal point-and-click adventure that I’ve seen get a lot of praise by folks in the adventure game community.
Oplero (Itch.io) is just a really solid bullet hell shmup that you can play in your browser window.
FISH FEAR ME (Steam) by Heather Flowers is possible the world’s first fishing roguelike?
Adam Saltsman has been on a roll lately with all the PICO-8 games he’s been making. His newest game Weasel (Itch.io) is a Snake-like.
SNØ: Ultimate Freeriding (Steam) looks like an incredibly chill skiing game and has a demo too!
People are still making games for the Commodore 64. Pirates of the Black Seas (Itch.io) is a new text adventure available for Pay-What-You-Want created with the classic IF writing software Quest Writer by Loadstar.
Smol Gods (Itch.io) is the newest game by game dev collective PUNKCAKE Délicieux. It’s a card deck creating game where you try to have a powerful deck of monsters by drawing and swapping cards.
I love covering games by local devs and this week some students at Michigan State University have created a zero gravity horror game called BURN (Steam), which looks like if someone used the classic game Descent to make a horror walking sim (complimentary).
This bluesky post describes it better than I could, so please read that, but Fahmi Mohammad’s final game Afterlove EP (Steam) is here after being completed by his studio after his passing.
Rapture Island (Itch.io) is a low poly walking simulator where you explore an island in a relaxing environment. Available for Pay-What-You-Want.
This week’s Downpour game is Back of My Hand#HISS (Downpour site) by Florence Smith Nicholls.
Neyyah is a Myst-like game that’s been in development for quite a while and now it has a demo on Steam!
Peripeteia (Steam) is a first-and-third-person role-playing stealth game taking place in alt-history cyberpunk Poland. It has just entered Early Access and sounds wild. A lot of folks are excited for it but have recommended playing the demo first before buying it.
Star Fox-like Whisker Squadron: Survivor (Steam) has just left Early Access and is on sale as part of the full version launch.
The tabletop rpg Pale Dot is running a Kickstarter for a print run. It has already reached its funding and is just looking for additional funds to do more now. The digital version of the game has been out for a while now and I recommended it if you’re looking for an Outer Wilds inspired ttrpg.
I follow about a billion different blogs and sites right now through my RSS feed reader and I feel like once in a while, but not too often, I’ll see a post where a person has a comment in their post where they wonder who this is even for or assume no one is going to read it, and I just wanted to say that I think it’s the best. If anything, this site is too focused on video games and technology. It brings me a lot of joy when I see someone post on their site about what they’re up to, art they’ve been enjoying, and also incredibly specific things like their bookshelves or whatever.
There’s also just something about reading it on someone’s personal site, instead of on social media, that makes it feel more personal or real and not focused on brand building, since it can’t really get shared through retweets. That isn’t to say that people are posting about the sandwich they liked on social media to build their brand, they’re clearly excited about that sandwich and posting to social media is the fastest and easiest way to mention it. But if they do that blog post about that sandwich then man, they must have really loved it if they’re putting that much effort into it.
Anyway, just wanted to say that I like reading the personal posts like that if you ever feel self conscious about that stuff or feel like you’re going off topic.
This week is almost going to be more of a blog roundup slush pile because I’m behind on my rss feed reader and wanted to get something out there so it doesn’t become a gigantic post when I finally get caught up. So enjoy some blog posts that maybe be older than a week. I think that’s fine.
All the cool kids are doing roundups of things they like these days! Here are some by Yaffle, tallywinkle, and Aura. Join them!
I said in the last blog roundup that I get really excited about game devs posting recipes, so here’s one by Julia Minamata for her mom’s thumbprint cookies. There’s also lots of updates about her great point-and-click adventure The Crimson Diamond.
Not a blog post but my kids loved this WebGL fluid simulation. It works great on mobile too!
It’s an older post from a year ago, but I really like this one about how web3 propaganda wants you to think the internet was only a place where people read websites those first 10 years.
Not a blog post but Kritiqal continues to have great interviews with indie game devs on their podcast. This time it’s two members of the indie game studio, Mortally Moonstruck Games, developers of Mushroom Musume.
Atari Archive goes into the 1979 Atari game Miniature Golf. I don’t think I’ve actually mentioned this site on here before but I’m a big fan of Atari Archive’s videos and Kevin’s book of the same name.
Harris Powell-Smith announces their next interactive fiction game The Earth Has Teeth.
Not Blog Posts
It’s a bit older but I really liked Alice Bell’s article Can a Steam profile be a real memorial for a lost life? Getting older means you have more digital artifacts in your life from people that are no longer with us and I have a lot of feelings about that.
I continue to post about indie games on here because it’s either that or spiraling about the state of the world and I don’t know if anyone needs that. That said, there’s a couple of cool bundles this week where you can get a lot of great games and help folks out, so that’s alright.
The first bundle is the Grève bundle GG25 (Itch.io). All money goes to the strike fund for the Video Game Workers Union (STJV) to help compensate for loss of income linked to the 2025’s video game general strike. For $10 or more you can get a ton of great games and some come with Steam keys. I’m a big fan of PUNKCAKE Délicieux, who has a few games in this bundle and it also contains PicoMix, which is a collection of games I just covered very recently.
The second bundle is the HRT Harm Reduction Toolkit Bundle (Itch.io). For just $25 or more you can get a ton of great tabletop rpgs and help trans folks. I want to get a special shoutout to the game Dinocar that’s in this bundle. It’s the first ttrpg that I played with my kids and we had a great time. People that make tabletop rpgs you can play with your kids are my heroes.
And finally, this bundle on Itch.io for Palestinian aid is looking for submissions.
Knotdoku (Itch.io) is a cool twist on the classic sudoku game. In addition to all the rules you must follow when solving your typical sudoku puzzle, all the numbers are tied together with string and must never cross each other when you place the numbers on the board. This free browser game was created by LCB Game Studio, the developer of horror visual novels like Mothmen 1966. This isn’t a horror game though, just a very chill puzzle game with some music that slaps.
Worldwide Wizard Racket Rumble (Itch.io) is a cute, free ping pong game between wizards, where players can cast spells to help win points. I was really impressed by the level of polish and I’m looking forward to playing this one with my kids.
Renkon has done a journal entry in Bitsy (dev site). I think that’s a fun use for Bitsy and you can find other journal entries here.
Adam Saltzman has been on a roll with all the PICO-8 games he’s been making lately and this is another solid one. In Skeleton Gelatin (Itch.io), you explore a cave as a blob and solve puzzles. I think Adam described it as something along the lines of a Metroidvania without the jump button. Instead the game has you stacking bubbles to climb up and bases the puzzles around that.
We also got a ZX Spectrum game this week called Plyuk (Itch.io) that uses a very similar stacking mechanic for solving puzzles. Maybe 2025 is the year of stacking. This one is available for Pay-What-You-Want.
oceans::ephemera (Itch.io) is a walking simulator (they use the tag! It’s ok!) by the collective INFINITE TEARS and the designer Farfama where you explore a surreal space for 7 minutes and 43 seconds. I have always loved games where you just explore a space for a while and this was a beautiful space to meditate in for the duration of the game. From looking at social media posts, it sounds like there is a hidden part of the game that no one has seen yet, and while I really wish I could know what it is, even what I experienced is fantastic. It’s available as Pay-What-You-Want and if you enjoyed this, I also highly recommend city::ephemera.
286 Miles (Itch.io) is a short browser game about everyone’s favorite Luigi. It uses music by John Maus, who I kinda think can go fuck himself, but good lord the animation in this is incredible. The dev’s itch also has a game I’ve previously played called Cathedrals that I think is worth checking out if you want to build sculptures with Tetris blocks.
Breaker Box (Itch.io) is a free browser shmup where you must also shake to charge your flashlight and see your enemies.
Juan made an arcade game with his 7 year old (dev site) and it’s good. It makes me want to do more game dev with my kids too, so maybe I’ll mod this one since it’s open source. My 7 year old beta tested my last game and found some stuff and it made her incredibly happy that she’s listed in the credits for the game. We’re also poking at some adventure game stuff and using clay. If you’re a game dev and have kids, you should make something with them too. It’s the best. Am I doing the thing all parents do and just bragging about how cool my kids are? Yeah maybe.
If you’re like me and have mixed feelings about the new Dragonsweeper redesign (although you can still download the old version), maybe you’ll be interested in this version by Brianna Townsend (dev’s site) that looks like a DOS game and has some really nice new features.
If you’re a developer that has a ton of projects, cécile (post explaining it on Bluesky) has created a project that turns your Itch page into more of a grid layout and making it easier to read. You can download it on Itch.io.
It’s not new but I don’t think I’ve ever given a shoutout to Fireflower Games before. If you’re looking for DRM-free adventure games, consider picking up a game from their store. Itch.io doesn’t get every indie game and this site has done a pretty good job building up a catalog of games from various adventure game folks. Plus a chunk of their proceeds gets donated to environmental groups (see their FAQ).
Whale Flesh (Steam) is a horror game where you dig through the flesh of a giant whale to find out what happened to your team. Yep, sound great, sign me up.
Fill the world with your rainbow 2 (Itch.io) is a free browser puzzle game and rerelease of a Puzzlescript game from 10 years ago. I never played that one so I was happy to see this rerelease and it has a message that I think a lot of people could use right now.
Stewpot (Itch.io/Print) is here! Stewpot is a tabletop rpg by one of my favorite designers, Takuma Okada, where you tell the story of a tavern run by former adventurers through a series of mini games. The games absolutely works as a standalone thing but would also work very well at the end of a ttrpg campaign, once your adventurers retire and you want a more cozy way to continue their adventures.
I am a big fan of games inspired by the frustrating parts of Sierra adventure games, like Stair Quest and KIDNAME:ICEBOY, so I was thrilled to see Drive Quest 3 (Itch.io). DQ3 is a browser game based on the incredibly frustrating driving parts of Police Quest 3.
Shadowgate 2 (Steam) comes out today. You’re probably thinking “oh wow, it took them this long to make a sequel to Shadowgate for the Mac and NES?” NOPE! Buckle up, here are all the Shadowgate games we’ve got so far, not counting ports:
Shadowgate (1987)
Beyond Shadowgate (1993) for the TurboGrafx CD
Shadowgate 64 (1999) for the N64. I believe this one has mixed reviews but I remember actually really liking it
Shadowgate (2014), a remake of the original game.
Beyond Shadowgate (2024), a completely different game than the previously named Shadowgate. Why does it have the same name as the first sequel? Don’t know!
There was also a VR game and a board game too. Anyway, we now have a Shadowgate 2, which I guess is based on some concepts from a canceled N64 game called Shadowgate Rising. “Michael, aren’t you generally just optimistic about video games in this?” Yeah usually. The game is probably fine! I heard that Beyond Shadowgate game from last year was good and I think that remake from 2014 is solid too. So I’m actually generally a fan of this series, just a weirdo grump about how they name things.
Terry’s Other Games (Steam/Itch.io) is a collection of various small games by Terry Cavanagh, of VVVVVV and Super Hexagon fame. Notably, it features the first commercial release of a game made in Downpour, the game dev tool that you can use on smartphones (and I highly recommend). The developer of that wrote about it on their blog.
Zine month is happening right now in the ttrpg world and while I haven’t followed it too closely because I simply cannot afford to back everything I’ll get excited about, I did back Underneath (Kickstarter) by Seb Pines. I’m a fan of Seb’s games and solo ttrpgs in general and this one has you exploring unknown cave systems.
I haven’t played Reality Break (Steam) yet but it looks like a fun action rpg set in space and already has a few hundred reviews even though it just came out a few days ago. I heard about this from Aura’s blog, who seems to love the game.
The Creation of Wonder (Itch.io) is a tabletop rpg that can either be played as a solo game or for groups of 2-4 people and uses a tarot deck. It’s described as a narrative worldbuilding game about the labour that goes into the creation of art, and about the art that lives on when its makers are forgotten. It’s available for Pay-What-You-Want.
Steam Next Fest is coming up (or is already happening? I don’t know.) so a bunch of demos are being uploaded. Old Skies has a demo and I’ve mentioned before that I’ve beta tested it and think it’s probably their best game, so go play that one or just take my word for it and wishlist it. Axyz also looks like a fun vaporwave puzzle game.
Finally, it’s not a game but a musician I’m a fan of, Alpha Chrome Yayo, has released an album called Dream Chaser (Bandcamp) that is packed with tunes inspired by PSX-era racing games. It also comes with a Stepmania chart.
As much fun as these posts are, it came take a while to write them so if you enjoy these, add the site to your RSS feed reader, tell a friend, and do your own roundup! Social media and search engines suck and we need to build up a better web that doesn’t rely on the same 3 websites.
Developer: Id Software Publisher: Id Software Year: 1993 Genre: First Person Shooter
I’ve done another playthrough of the classic Doom as my comfort game for dealing with everything going on lately and what can I say, the game still slaps. There’s nothing really unique I can say about this game that hasn’t been said before. It’s all been said before a billion times because it’s the most heavily discussed FPS on the planet and people are still making levels and mods for it.
I played the Ultimate version through Bethesda’s rerelease so I guess my only real criticisms are as follows:
That 4th episode that was added in Ultimate Doom? Meh, it’s an episode I guess. I don’t find it particularly interesting and my preference in Doom levels has always been shorter ones, which this starts to pull away from. It doesn’t add anything new so it’s just there. More Doom levels are fine, it’s just not that interesting beyond that.
The more time I spend with the recent Bethesda rerelease, the less I like it. I keep running into bugs where it crashes and that mod browser has so many issues since anyone can upload a mod, screw up the crediting, and it may not even work! Who knows how much moderation is even happening. It just feels like a way for Bethesda/Microsoft to try to build walls around a community when Doom just should be free since it’s 30+ years old anyway and no one who worked on the game is still at ID Software.
There, those are my Doom hot takes. Still a great game though and holds up very well.
Doom is available on Steam, GOG, and basically everywhere else.
