review

Doom 2 Thoughts

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Developer: Id Software
Publisher: Id Software
Year: 1994
Genre: First Person Shooter

Finished my replay of Doom 2 last night and yeah, it certainly is more Doom so I enjoyed it. This time it was done with the recentish Doom 1 +2 rerelease that Bethesda did, which I got for free since I already owned it on Steam. Like my Doom 1 review, every single opinion on Doom 2 has already been posted before but this is my blog so I’m doing a random collection of thoughts anyway dang it.

Before my replay I thought Doom was the better game but as I played through the game again I went through the arc of thinking Doom 2 was actually better, and then back to thinking Doom 1 is superior. Doom 2 isn’t without its improvements though. It’s been said a billion times before but the double barrel shotgun is great. I like the new enemies too. While the archvile can be frustrating, I think it’s mechanically interesting.

I think what makes Doom 1 the better game is the level design. Doom 2 starts off very strong with the level design but becomes a little bit of a slog in the second half when the levels attempt to be more realistic city designs. It was much more impressive at the time and makes sense in the context of the game, but don’t hold up as well as the more surreal levels found in other parts of the game. I also noticed that just like in Quake, I think Sandy’s maps are a very mixed bag. I just don’t enjoy his style of map design. They’re usually filled with poorly made puzzles where you stumble around until you figure out the right wall to push on, and occasionally decide that you must open a door by shooting it instead of pressing the open door. It just ruins the pacing of the level and the game has a heavy amount of these in the second half, which is probably why it feels like a slog to me.

I think the bosses in Doom 1 are also better. They come up in here as well but I think that while the Icon of Sin is a fun gimmick, I ended up finding it mostly just an annoying fight.

My (possibly hot) take is that ID Software actually started to decline after Tom Hall had left the company, not Romero. I still love Doom 2 and Quake, I may even like Quake more after my recent playthroughs of both, but the company starts to play it a bit safer and less playful. I think this theory still holds up! While I don’t care for Rise of the Triad as much as Quake and Doom 2, it’s goofy as hell and throwing in lots of new things and seeing what sticks. Doom 2 really only does this with the secret Wolfenstein 3D levels and those end on a sour, mean spirited note by having you shoot at Commander Keen. As a side note, there’s some weird censorship in the Doom 2 rereleases during the Wolfenstein 3D secret levels and I don’t know why.

Anyway, yeah, Doom 2. It’s still good but I like the first game more.

Doom 2 is available on Steam, GOG, and basically everywhere else.

Discolored

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Developer: Jason Godbey
Publisher: Jason Godbey
Year: 2019
Genre: Adventure Game

black and white shot of a diner in the desert at night

Discolored is a 2019 first person adventure game created by Jason Godbey that I recently picked up because I saw the recently released sequel pop up on a few sites and was in the mood for a Myst-like game. There isn’t much of a plot, you are told that a diner in the middle of the desert has lost all color and you are sent to investigate. This is essentially all the plot you come across in the game and just exists to get you to the puzzles as soon as possible. Fortunately the puzzling in this is very good. The game starts off with having no colors in the world, but through various poking and prodding, you add some to the world and they allow you to interact with more objects in the game. It’s a nice way to keep you from feeling overwhelmed when you are first introduced to the world but it also keeps the small environment interesting to look at as you keep seeing it in new ways as additional colors are added. The game also features some clever puzzles using perspective.

The game has two modes for controls, free-roam and point-and-click. Usually the point-and-click mode in first-person adventure games feels like an afterthought but I thought it felt very good to control and actually used it quite a bit since I have been having some wrist pain lately and needed this control scheme to play it.

shot of a bedroom that's mostly black and white except for green walls

It’s a short game. I completed it in two nights but each session was very short and the puzzles made me think but I was never stuck for very long or frustrated. The game even has a built-in hint system if you want help with a puzzle. I said at the beginning of the review that I was in the mood for a Myst-like but it really wasn’t a Myst-like game at all. This isn’t the developer’s fault as they never claimed it’s like Myst, but I will explain what makes a game a Myst-like anyway since this is my website. A Myst-inspired game to me actually has quite a lot of storytelling being done through the environment and this storytelling is tightly integrated with the puzzles in the world, where this game just felt like an excuse to have a bunch of good puzzles related to color and perspective. Nothing wrong with that at all and it’s just not what I expected going in due to my assumptions with first person adventure games.

I really enjoyed my time with this game and I’m looking forward to playing Jason’s other games. I already own The Search from a charity bundle on Itch.io and Discolored 2 looks to be much more ambitious and seems to have more of a story and adds more characters.

Discolored is available on Steam.

Samorost 1

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Developer: Amanita Design
Publisher: Amanita Design
Year: 2003
Genre: Adventure Game

a guy with a hookah on a hill and a little gnome in white clothing in the background going skiing in the background

Recently played through this one with the kids and it still holds up! My kids are fans of Chuchel so I thought it would go back to their earlier stuff since this one is so short and simple. The game originally came out in 2003 but we played the remastered release from 2021, which updates the visuals and music but didn’t go too far with the updates. There’s not a whole lot to say about it. You help a little space gnome save his home by pointing and clicking on stuff and it only takes 15 minutes to play. I suppose there are technically puzzles, but most of the fun comes from clicking on things and seeing what happens. I suppose it’s sorta like the Gobliiins series in that way, but much, much easier. Anyway, my kids liked it and we’ll be playing 2 and 3 soonish.

This game was such a big deal when it came out! This was during the adventure game drought when Sierra and Lucasarts had recently stopped making adventure games so people were starved for high quality adventure games. One of my biggest memories of hanging out on the Adventure Gamers forums was people making a thread about this game every week saying “have you all seen this game Samorost? It’s great!” and not realizing that there had already been many threads on the game. It happened to the point of it becoming a meme on the forums. But I think it shows that even when the genre was “dead” there were still folks making memorable point-and-click adventure games.

The game was such a success that it led to the studio becoming a full time gig for the folks there. First by making tiny free browser games like this for companies (man, remember flash games being a profitable gig for devs?) and then making their own games. In fact, I think it took a while for me to get to playing Samorost 2 because it came out in 2005 and was a digital purchase, before indie games were being sold on Steam. I don’t think I even had any way of buying the game and I don’t think I even considered asking my parents because I knew they wouldn’t buy a game online. I think it had even received some criticism for being too short for a paid game.

The studio stuck with this format for a long time. It wasn’t until the last few years that they started to explore horror and branching out from their linear style of adventure game design more. The format works for me though and I can play a lot of their games with my kids, which is always a plus, since that’s when I usually have time to play video games. They’ve been taking their biggest swing with their current game in development, which is supposed to arrive next year. It will have been a five year gap between games, which is wild to think about. But as long as they keep making solid adventure games, I’ll keep picking them up.

Samorost is available for free on Steam, Itch.io, and many other places.

The Repossessor

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Developer: Dave Gilbert
Publisher: Dave Gilbert
Year: 2001
Genre: Adventure Game

the grim reaper standing in a bar with a bartender and chicken holding a gun.

Yeah that’s right, I’m still playing games in the Reality-on-the-Norm series, a collaborative universe created by the Adventure Game Studio community in 2001. The ninth game in the series is The Repossessor. You play the role of Death, who has come to Reality to reclaim the soul of Michael Gower, the zombie that your character reanimated in the first game and is now running for mayor of the town. The version I played was downloaded from the RON site and I didn’t realize until I had completed it that it was actually a remastered or remade version of the game, explaining why there was a huge graphical leap from the previous game and could now run in ScummVM, making it the easiest game to get running so far.

The most interesting thing about this entry is that it’s by Dave Gilbert, founder of Wadjet Eye Games. I had made a post about the game and he confirmed that it was his first game and built in a weekend. I have to say, it’s an incredibly impressive first game. I know some of that is coming from the game being a remastered version that looks nicer, but even from a design perspective I think it’s the best game so far. The remade version even some nice little touches like an instrumental version of Don’t Fear the Reaper playing in a room or two. Like previous RON games, it’s a little tricky to recommend specific games because they all build on previous ones, but I think you could manage to jump into this one since all you need to know is that there’s a zombie running for mayor in a town. Playing through this series has been a delight and continues to improve with each game as the community figures out how to make adventure games and use AGS.

The Repossessor is available for free on the Reality-On-the-Norm website.

Moving Out

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Developer: SMG Studio
Publisher: Team17
Year: 2020
Genre: Arcade

Finished playing Moving Out with two of my kids a few nights ago, not counting all the bonus levels and objectives, and had a great time. In Moving Out you are a team of movers who must get everything out of a house before the timer expires. A lot of the humor and fun from playing the game comes from the chaos caused by moving everything quickly and the physics knocking everything around the house, since you are not punished for destroyed the home owner’s property. Later levels add to the chaos by throwing you into wackier environments. I imagine it’s got a similar energy as Overcooked, but I never played that one so I can’t say for sure.

top down view of a moving

What I really appreciate about the game are all the difficulty options that made it possible to play this game with my kids. My kids are 7 and 5 years old and there is absolutely no way we could have played this without the options to add more time and making items easier to pick up. The game still remained a challenge but at a much more manageable level.

My kids were also a fan of the character customization options. As you can see in the above screenshot, you have all sorts of wacky looks to choose from and it was also nice to see that your character could be in a wheelchair. It doesn’t have any effect on gameplay and is just nice from a representation perspective.

The character design choices also add to the 80’s Saturday Morning Cartoon look that the game is sorta going for through its art and music. Generally I’m incredibly bored with games and pop culture leaning into 80s aesthetics, which isn’t something this game is really doing, but the light touch of 80s Saturday Morning cartoon influence in this actually works very well.

characters moving through a field in space while a giant robot is looking at them. The field is littered with trash.

If you’re looking for a game to play with your kids, I would highly recommend Moving Out. It has a wide variety of options to make the game playable by folks of any skill level and the humor worked for my kids too. I think I actually got this game through a Humble Bundle, so you may already own it too!

Moving Out is available on Windows, Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One

Blastoff!

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Developer: Edmundo Ruiz Ghanem
Publisher: Edmundo Ruiz Ghanem
Year: 2001
Genre: Adventure Game

a woman standing in a purple convenience store
Reality-On-The-Norm has discovered gradients

My playthrough of Reality-On-The-Norm continues with the 8th game in the series. It was nice to play two entries in a row without having to fuss too much with getting them to work. This one has you playing as Elandra, who has appeared in some of the previous games, and you must help an amateur rocket builder. On average the series has been improving in the quality of the art and gameplay design. This one even features a really nice location select screen.

a screen containing a notepad listing "places to go" like a town square, launch site, and airplane graveyard
The game’s location select screen

I think the writing is the best in the series so far too! It’s genuinely fun going back to these and seeing topical nerd humor like an unironic All Your Base Are Belong to Us reference. Part of the fun of playing this series is that it’s a time capsule of a specific point in the adventure game community.

a woman talking to a man outside of a building and one of the dialog choices is "All your base are belong to us"
Folks, we’ve got an All Your Base reference

Another way this thing is a time capsule of the community is how many Yahtzee references it has. I posted the following screenshot without any context, because I forgot, and someone thought that there was maybe some in-community fighting happening but no, he had helped with the art in this game and someone in the team threw this reference in there as a fun joke. Maybe there was drama at some later point but it certainly wasn’t happening with this game.

view of the outside of a military base and the words Yathzee Sucks! is spray painted on the wall

I mentioned in a previous review that a dev saw my RON posting on Bluesky and this was that game. It was entirely positive, since I did have a good time playing this game, but I still imagine that it’s probably weird to see someone playing a game you made almost 25 years ago. They even mentioned that it was like doing an excavation on their 19 year old brain when I mentioned that reference. So generally I’ve kept any and all criticism off social media, as light as it may be, because who wants someone throwing rocks at something you made that long ago when you were a kid. The only real criticism I even have with this is just that it had some frustrating pixel hunting but that’s kinda it. I may have played an updated version too? It makes references to picking up items later and a walkthrough I found references picking up an item and going to rooms that I never came across.

A fun thing about it being a shared universe is that we’re starting to get more callbacks and it’s almost a sequel to the first game. I thought the epilogue and animated cutscene in an early AGS game was fun to watch. Even though I just complained about this game having some goofy design stuff, so far I think it’s the best one I’ve played and it’s fun watching a community learn how to make adventure games and referencing stuff that happened in this universe 8 games ago. Overall I had a lot of fun with this short game and would recommend it to others. Just be sure to play previous entries like the first game before doing this one.

Blastoff! is available for free on the Reality-On-the-Norm website.

Return of Die Vie Ess

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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.

a young man standing in the middle of a town square

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.

Return of Die Vie Ess is available for free on the Reality-On-the-Norm website.

The Soviet Union Strikes Again!

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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.

a view of a person in an office next to a basketball court, but the court looks really far away due to some choices made while drawing it

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.

The Soviet Union Strikes Again! is available for free on the Reality-On-the-Norm website.

Quake

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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.

first person view of a goofy green fish with two buck teeth and the text "The dopefish lives!"

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!

first person view of a big church like building that's on a very narrow bridge

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.

Lunchtime of the Damned

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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.

a man standing in the center of town, with a dead body on the ground

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.

Lunchtime of the Damned is available for free on the Reality-On-the-Norm website.