Doom

Here's a Doom tidbit I didn't put in the Doom 3 review: I disliked Doom 2 because it didn't have the little map screen the original game did. It's total window dressing, but for some reason to my young mind it put in this extra layer of immersion. I used to imagine the Space Marine hiking his way to these remote locations along the surface of the Martian moons, hoping each time they wouldn't be overrun with Demonic nonsense and then solemnly rip/tearing through them. (Actually that might have been in there, but I don't remember and it amuses me to this day)

Here's another tidbit: AMD named a processor the threadripper. Huge threads. Huge threads to rip and tear.

Also, worth noting, the original Doom never goes to Mars. Episode 1 is set on Phobos, which is a tiny as tiny gets moon orbiting Mars. Episode 2 involves teleporting to Deimos, which now orbits Hell itself, and then you just climb down to Hell in episode 3. Seriously, I swear the plot was you just threw a rope down and casually climbed down to Hell like it wasn't any sort of thing.

Anyway, so in this, Doom 4 which we'll just call Doom from now on actually lifts a lot of its genome from Doom 3. There's a lot of weird overlap that doesn't feel so much intentional as parallel evolution, although Doom 4 skips act 1 of Doom 3 and just kinda rushes forward from there, as well as having a completely weird story that has equal parts schlock and Jacob Hargreave going on in it.

It's also the first shooter in a long, long time to truly abandon the "realism" elements that drag down shooters and instead says F-it, you're the DOOMSLAYER.

A break in the role for action - Wolfenstein The New Order

Shooters are such a weird thing to me, nowadays.

First off, not that many people played Doom or Quake. Not among the gamers you see talking about "old school" shooter design. I've come to the conclusion "old school" is basically the most meaningless pair of words you can see applied to a shooter, and that people say they played old school in the same way people claim nintendo and apple are innovators.

Wolfenstein The New Order is old school, according to the usual chorus of voices on the internet that always say that. But that doesn't actually mean anything, and if you're like me and expecting a Doom/Quake early era design... Welp, forget it, that's not this game. That's not this game at all.

Second, texture pop in is so strange. I only ever see it in shooters, for obvious reasons, but it's just so wonky to me. It feels like something you shouldn't ever see, but you clearly do, and what's up with that?

Also was I the only one who seriously thought this game would pick up after the earlier Wolfenstein and just involve a time travel plot? I guess that's sort of a spoiler, but it doesn't involve any time travel, which totally disappointed me. I guess that's sort of the theme of this game and my interactions with it.

Wolfenstein TNO is a first person shooter about violently attacking fascist ideology with firearms, and then a lot of strangeness around that. If you played the last Wolfenstein shooter, though, you'll be confused to find this is more of a "weird science" than "occultism" centric shooter, which I believe goes more toward the game's roots but I could be remembering wrong.

It's also kind of generic among id games for that. Actually it kinda reminds me of Fallout mixed with Quake 2. It sort of does that more than anything, though.

Year in Review: 2012

This isn't a top ten list or even a top anything list, or even of games that came out this year. Rather, since there's steam sales going on, it's a round up of everything I can remember playing through this year, divided into categories that will probably piss off what few readers I will ever have. It also links to Steam, which may not be the best way to buy the game. Unfortunately I can't figure out what is ever on sale on Amazon, and GMG scares me. Oh and GamersGate cancelled the one thing I bought off them this season, but I don't blame them for deciding they shouldn't lose thousands of dollars on pricing errors.

So you know, do your research! Or don't, time is your own.

Shootember: Let's be negativestein

I can't take screenshots of Wolfenstein for reasons I am uncertain of. It does not allow steam overlay because bananas, and capture attempts do not seem to work. How nice! It's not really the best looking FPS. This is going to be pretty dry without pictures, ugh.