Video Game Review: Maneater (2020)

So, they made a game where you play a shark. Cool!

Maneater is a small, short, single-player open-world RPG where you control a bull shark from cradle to grave. This isn't any old shark--its mama was caught and slain by a particularly brutish fisherman, whose antics are captured in cut-scenes that resemble a reality TV series. Left alone and disfigured, your shark has to eat everything it can until it grows and evolves into a vicious killer. Inevitably, you will have to face Scaly Pete again and take revenge.

The story is pretty sparse and does little to cover up the fact that you are indeed playing a shark that rampages all over beaches, boats, and docks to slaughter hundreds of innocent people. From a moral standpoint, the game is rather troubling (and can mere revenge really justify such an angsty, nihilistic power fantasy?).

But hey, if you overlook that aspect, the game is an absolute hoot. And it's easy to forgive the violence given how cartoony, colorful, and over-the-top this game becomes. Once you get past the opening phases and level up the shark, you'll reach a point where you can confront bigger predators of the sea. With enough chaos, you'll eventually attract hunters--if you overcome them, you unlock upgrades that can turn your shark into a more evolved monstrosity (including upgrades offering bone armor, electric teeth, or poisonous attacks--so much for biological realism). Boss fights become challenging, but the game rarely felt insurmountable. In a good ten, twelve, twenty hours, you can potentially max out your shark, beat every enemy, and finish every quest.

The things you do as a shark are rather limited--in each area, you're given tasks that must be fulfilled to satisfy certain requirements to unlock more of the story. Most of this amounts to simply eating a bunch of fish (or humans, *gasp!*). Exploration takes the edge off of the combat as you scour a lot of odd places, tunnels, and sewers for collectables. The open-world aspect of the game is what attracted me the most, and I found it modestly satisfying--but I can't deny that it has the potential to become repetitive and droll (but thankfully it's short and small compared to many other games).

Fighting as a shark is a hit-and-a-miss. It can be immensely fun (albeit frantic) to leap over boats, crush their hulls, and eat their gun-toting occupants. It's a lot less satisfying to fight other fish, gaters, and whales though. One particular Orca was an absolute pain even with full upgrades. The biggest issue is that your attacks are always one-dimensional--with your teeth. Maybe your bone fins and crushing weight can help, but it's easy to lose your prey if they swim out of the path of your jaws. You will need to keep swinging the camera around to track your surroundings and keep yourself from becoming hunted.

Few minor glitches introduced a few small headaches to the experience. Game crashes and frame rate drops can happen. If you're hunting for collectables, there is a chance the game won't count something (although trophy hunters should be aware that opening the gates between areas counts towards the trophy--it's not explicitly stated anywhere, I just found out first-hand when I opened a gate and the thing just popped). The biggest shortcoming to this game is, simply, it's shortness. Once it's done, there's little incentive to go back and revisit it (although this can be said about many open-world titles).

What I like the most is, simply, the flow of the game and how satisfying it was to skim the waters, eat some prey, and explore a cute little bayou. I overcame a few challenges, but they weren't all that terrible and the game takes very little time to master and complete. It all looks slick and the sound quality is decent. It's good fun for a few good days. If you like the open-world RPG type games, and have no qualms about playing a predatory animal, then this would be a fair recommendation. When it's on sale, that is.

7/10

Video Game Review: Doom Eternal (2020)

The legend of Doom was revitalized in 2016 with sharp quality and dedicated attention to crafting a fresh gameplay experience for the 21st century. Though the game can be played and enjoyed as a one-off, more was welcomed. Four years later, more was delivered. A lot more.

Doom Eternal plunges the you into a dire future where the forces of Hell have invaded Earth. In the powerful suit of the "Doom Slayer," you embark on a sprawling quest across ruined cities, burning hellscapes, other worlds that seem gothic and ethereal. Your goal is to slay the three Hell Priests that are controlling the invasion on Earth. To do so, you'll have rip and tear your way through myriads of hellish enemies--everything from lowly zombies to ginormous Tyrants. Each level grants you more power in the form of weaponry, abilities, and powerful artifacts. Eventually, you'll become powerful enough to confront more powerful entities responsible for all the chaos, and if you survive, you'll become a savoir for mankind.

The game resembles 1994's Doom II in many ways, most especially in regards to your weapons (the Super Shotgun is back!), the types of enemies you fight (many were seen in 2016's Doom, but the Pain Elementals and Archiviles are back), the plotline that brings Hell to Earth, and having the Icon of Sin as the final boss (and this time, he's not just a wall you shoot at--as originally intended, he's rendered as a colossal giant comparable to Godzilla). And yet, Doom Eternal offers a whole universe of new possibilities. As you progress through each level, you're thrust into a mythology that extends far beyond what was shown in previous games--there is a vast history now that details entire worlds that had waged epic war against demons. The lore extends to pushing a stronger identity on the Doomguy (now immortalized as the Slayer), whose backstory is bridged into the growing mythology.

Against such a detailed backdrop, the game is stuffed with more enemies (including, for the first time, Doom Hunters and Marauders), more power-ups (including a 1-up system, where you collect extra lives and use them upon death instead of restarting at a checkpoint), and more ways of fighting and killing (you now have a shoulder-mounted flamethrower and grenade launcher, and you eventually gain an energy sword that can instantly kill most enemies). Each level includes a small wealth of secrets that'll keep you exploring and revisiting areas for a short while--such secrets include collectables, batteries that unlock secrets in the Doomguy's fortress, extra lives, upgrades, and hidden combat arenas.

Despite all these weapons, secrets, upgrades, and power, the game is hardly a cakewalk. Even seasoned Doom fans have struggled with this one as the game relentlessly plunges you into insane fights with constantly escalating threats. It does require a lot more to stay alive--running and gunning will not be enough, and the game itself offers few hints for your survival. The trick, aside from staying in constant motion, is to manage your enemies in a careful, strategic way. When you run out of ammo (and you will constantly), you must whip out that chainsaw to farm some out of the lesser enemies. If you've blown them up already, then you're just out of luck. If you're always running low on health, maybe it's time to whip out that flamethrower to pick up some armor. When you desperately need health, glory kills are your best friend. These mechanics are essential to staying well-supplied in a fight, but it's easy to overlook, forget, or mess up your progress if you approach the fights wrong or just don't bother with them.

Each level is laid out as a kind of jungle gym--you now have the ability to leap off of monkey bars, dash into walls, and climb things. And you will have to platform this way often, even through hazards and obstacles. This is where the game feels even more tedious and punishing (and I've never been a fan of timed switches--there are at least several in this game). Falling to your death won't take away from your lives (unless you have no health left), but it's still a pain when you miss your mark, overshoot a jump, or make other slight mistakes on account of complex platforming.

If you can manage these few issues, then you will be rewarded with an impressively epic campaign full of satisfying rewards and combat. Given the way the levels are laid out, the mythology, and the sheer power you must use, it's taken on proportions that feels less like a classic shooter and more like a God of War game.

If it's multiplayer you yearn for the most, the game currently offers a simple two-on-one feature. You can either team up with another player and become demons, or you can play the Doom Slayer and fight for your life. Playing a demon takes some substantial getting used to, but the game offers abilities that try to escalate the challenges against the slayer and make it more balanced. Playing any mode will unlock a small wealth of customizable icons, models, and such. In the future, there's supposed to be a feature in which other players can invade your campaign and muck things up.

All of this is rendered in gorgeous video quality, with fluid frame rates and sharp resolution. Lighting effects are vivid, the textures are impressive and sharp, and the models look spectacular. I often had to stop in mid-game to gawk at the hellscapes and ruins--they are that well-rendered. Sound quality is sharp and punchy. Controls felt great to me and were never confusing (even with added platforming). All of it is accentuated with Mick Gordon's heavy metal score--the man assembled a team of metal vocalists especially for this game, and their chants are downright chilling.

This comes close to being my favorite Doom game of the whole series. Fighting Marauders and platforming makes it quite a pain, and the campaign has the distinct disadvantage of starting you off weak to the point where it feels insurmountably hard. I found it a lot easier as it went on, but the game has ways of throwing wrenches in your progress and making you feel like a noob all over again. Regardless, I am awestruck by the experience.

9/10

Video Game Review: Quake (1996)

In 1993, id Software unleashed Doom on the world and thrust gamers into literal Hell. Despite the deep influence it offered with its mechanics and technical quality, there were limitations that wouldn't be surpassed for many years. In 1996, id shook up the FPS genre even further with Quake.

Taking inspiration from the works of HP Lovecraft, Quake immerses gamers into four separate worlds, all connected with Slipgates that connect the Earth with other dimensions. Each world offers slight variations on fully three-dimensional maps, where the search for keys, buttons, elevators, and secrets pushes you, the Ranger, through a grungy labyrinths of stone and metal. These places are filled with denizens you must blast through, including the undead, blood-stained knights, a chainsaw-wielding ogre that lobs grenades, fiends that leap at you with tapered stabby arms, and many stranger abominations. Once you collect four magical runes, you inevitably come face-to-face with the ultimate horror--the titular Quake--which threatens to destroy all mankind.

Even this synopsis is hard to extrapolate from the game itself, since it explains hardly anything about the Ranger character, the backstory of the Slipgates, and the threat of Quake. After going through a few halls designed to select your difficulty and episodes, you're immediately thrust into these worlds and have to simply fight your way through. It's similar to Doom in the way you simply glide through the levels, blast your enemies, solve simple puzzles, and continue into the next area--all with the story understated, to the point where it hardly even matters. The experience of slaying enemies is the point, and in Quake it's just as lucid and empowering as ever. Only, with a bigger slant towards cosmic and gothic horror, the game is given a slightly slower pace and a more unsettling atmosphere. Moody lighting effects, bleak textures, gory and provocative imagery, and an uncanny music score by Nine Inch Nails makes the dark setting palpable. Even the sound effects, as blunt and choppy as they seem, are distinctive and add a hard edge to the experience.

What's most admirable about the game is how far it advanced the technology. This is one of the first (if not THE first) game where literally everything is rendered three-dimensionally--not just the rooms and objects, but also the enemies, weapons, ammunition, power-ups, and projectiles. The 3D advancements also extend to the level designs, which make ample use of the technology to layer passages, bridges, elevators, platforms, and more on top of each other vertically. You can even plunge into water or acid and swim through certain areas. All of this may be taken for granted today, but in the 90s this was all cutting-edge stuff.

All that being said, the game always had a certain clunkiness I found a little garish. Not that the game was ever meant to look pretty, but the limitations it shows have not aged well. Most enemies are blocky, chunky things that become obscured in clouds of large red and gray particles. Textures, though detailed and appropriately grim, are a bit of an eyesore with how blocky they are. Even more disappointing are its limitations with how many enemies and guns you actually have. You spend 32 levels fighting the same 13 enemy types--of those, there are a few less commonly seen, leaving the zombies, knights, soldiers, ogres, scrags, and fiends as your primary focus for most of the game. I rather wish the four different worlds had four different kinds of models. Of the weapons you use, it's the shotgun (in two different forms), nail gun (in two different forms), and explosives (in two different forms) you use most of the time. The lightning gun is a really rad weapon, but it comes up rarely and it burns through ammo so fast. So when you spend level after level shooting the same baddies with the same old shotgun over and over again, it becomes rather mundane. There are two major boss fights in the game, but they're both easily dispatched with unorthodox techniques (Chthon is easily taken out by hitting some switches and lightning rods do the rest--I don't even know why that would affect a lava monster, but whatevs. Quake is taken out via telefrag).

I also wish more thought was put into the story, but the story we're given is just thin connective tissue to tie up four different areas developed by four different teams. Each area is given a slightly different flavor and approach, ranging from medieval architecture to more otherworldly designs. Many levels stand out in interesting ways, and there are some interesting mechanics put into the way elevators, teleporters, and platforms work to keep the player guessing. Secrets are always rewarding. Some challenges and puzzles are fascinating. This is a game where the experience of the levels come first, and combined with the ambience, it is a fair standout.

It is clear that id had limitations, causing them to slap the game together with less nuance in scripting a story, and more focus on technical qualities and the gameplay experience. I wish certain things had more variance, but the way it pushes 3D technology is an admirable milestone in gaming technology. The game is worth a playthrough or two for the quality of its worlds, although it was only a small taste of better things to spawn from its innovative engine. More serious gamers will probably find more to love through Quake's multiplayer options (which were rather new and impressive for its time) and its numerous mods.

I have to add, I love the Quake logo.

7/10

Video Game Review: Terminator Resistance (2020)

Across five of the six Terminator movies, the events of Judgment Day and the ensuring war are merely glimpsed at. We never really had a close, in-depth look at the future war, save for Salvation and Terminator: Future Shock, a clunky relic from 1995. However, when a small Polish company called Teyon acquired the video game rights for the first two movies, they took their time to deliver a game that would immerse the gamer in the future war, in a story that neatly slides into established lore and storylines.

In Terminator: Resistance, you play a resistance soldier named Jacob Rivers. When your entire division is wiped out by the advancing terminators, you join Tech-Com and take an active role in fighting SkyNet, and eventually leading the charge against its core. Along the way, you meet and bond with civilians and scavengers--depending on your actions, they could be your friends, family, or you could brush them all off. Inevitably, your story aligns with the events of the movies, building up to the moment when SkyNet and the resistance clash over the Time Displacement Equipment--the very same thing that sends the original terminators from the movies back in time.

The game is FPS first-and-foremost, but with just enough RPG mechanics to make you feel like you can grow a little. Missions and combat will earn you experience points that unlock skills (mostly simple things like weapon usage, more inventory slots, disarming bombs, hacking, lock picking, crafting). You do have the option to sneak around most maps, and you are given a detection meter to show if a machine can spot you (although I feel like sentient machines should be a lot more savvy than how they are in the game). For for every other mission, you are thrust into the fray of futuristic combat--once you have a plasma gun in your hands, many T-800s and other machines will fall at your feet. Even though the machines are often intimidating, they rarely feel like an insurmountable threat--I found it pretty breezy to blast through most levels with the plasma gun blazing the whole way (stealth be damned, lol). It's even easier when you can hack turrets and make them shoot for you. Resources and ammo seem plentiful, and the game offers a bit of breathing room to permit some relaxed exploration and looting. As it is with some of my favorites (Far Cry, Fallout), I am continuously addicted to the combination of open-ended exploration, RPG-style leveling, and blowing machines up.

However, the game is rather linear by nature. It tunnels you through several small maps--because you play through the story both in front of and behind the Annihilation Line, you often revisit the same maps, but one version will be more ruined than the other. That, and the limited variety of enemies and items, betrays the limitations of the developers--I suspect they didn't have the time or budget to mix things up more than they did. Boss fights are underwhelming--you get to fight an Infiltrator, but it's not that much different than shooting at a regular T-800. The T-1000 is mentioned, but never faced (missed opportunity, imo). You do have to take down a Goliath, but it's an easy task when you hide behind some walls and pop rockets at its backside. Combat struck me as being rather easy, to the point where the game offers little challenge. But it is often satisfying to watch SkyNet machines explode in your face--doubly so when you're charging with fellow soldiers while the Terminator theme plays in the background.

The biggest joy I had with this game is in how well it meshes with the first two movies. Its post-Judgment-Day setting mirrors the scenes we see in the films, right down to the way spotlights shine through mist and illuminate the dreary ruins in gray and blue hues. Guns, bombs, enemies, and key characters all match up with the movies. They all make the right sounds. All the rules the movies laid down (such as having dogs identify Infiltrators) are still at play. The Tech-Com shelter looks exactly like the setting Kyle reminisces about in the first film (and I'm pretty sure the game's penultimate level is meant to be that exact moment when the place is wiped out, even though Kyle himself doesn't appear in the game).

As you go through each map, you play through a story where choices determine your relationship with other characters. As it is with Fallout, their fates are shown in the end-game cutscene (which, really, is nothing more than a slideshow of painted stills). Whether they live or die is rather arbitrary compared to the main character's arc, which does play into the time-travel angle in its own way. I found the reveals interesting and I admire that it's tied into the last level (and in turn, tied into events that enable the first two films). I wish this amount of care was put into Salvation and Genisys when they were made.

All that being said, the game could have used more polish with its writing and voice-acting. Dialogue is often weak and cheesy (although I have to admit that the voice actors show no lack of enthusiasm). The writing falls back on some common game tropes that involve more telling and less showing. I do appreciate the attention to detail concerning Terminator storylines and details--however, the game is so short that it feels like the events take a week, despite the first movie explicitly stating that the war waged for decades (and in spite of this, the appearance of the Infiltrators is rushed in the timeline--the game completely glosses over the fact that rubber-skinned models were used before the cybernetic ones were unleashed).

There are many things about the game that I wish could have been better. I was not fond of the leveling being capped, even before being able to unlock all the skills. I would have loved this game a lot more if it was a sprawling open-world map, where liberating outposts could directly impact the gameplay, but outposts in this game amount to little more than giving you bonus xp. If this game was given the Far Cry treatment, with more variance and detail, I would have loved to spend 50 or 70 hours fighting for the resistance. But this game was wrapped up in about 10 hours (with a plat nonetheless), and there's no incentive to play the game again (other than to do the same things over). Although, if this was made into a bigger game, it would have been a hoot to have a New Game+ in the form of having Rivers go back in time and literally replay history.

For Teyon, this short, straightforward shooter is probably the best they can manage, and it's quite admirable for its empowering gameplay and the attention they put into the details behind the story and environments. It's all rendered in pleasing visual and sound quality. I'm also quite smitten by the soundtrack, which meshes the classic synth themes with modern guitar riffs, and I find it exceptionally awesome. It is a fun little game--shame it's this little, but as a franchise fan I was reasonably satisfied with it. It may not say much when there's so few Terminator games out there that are really good, but this is by far the best I've seen.

7/10

Video Game Review: Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018)

In five years, we've seen two video games that pitted Lara Croft against the turbulence of nature, the terrors of mythic creatures and curses resurrected, and a sinister organization hellbent on unleashing the powers of ancient relics. To say nothing of a traumatic past full of loss and pain. The third game in the rebooted Tomb Raider series pits Lara against all these same things, but within a story that offers one last growth spurt for the character.

Set in Central America, Lara Croft unwittingly unleashes the Mayan apocalypse when she raids a tomb and steals a special dagger. Amidst terrible catastrophes, Trinity heads Lara off and combs through the jungles in search of other pieces that will empower them to reshape the world in their image. From the Peruvian jungles to the lost city of Paititi, you get the chance to guide Lara to her destiny as a world-saving adventurer.

The story's pretty nice, and I admire that this game progresses Lara' character further away from the grim, no-nonsense tone of the last two games by giving her a little more life. At certain moments, she learns to laugh, to joke, to be amiable, and eventually become the cheeky thrillseeker we all know and love from previous media. The transformation is bittersweet as we see Lara face her past even more and gradually reconcile with it. That's not to say the game is all cheery and goofy though--this is still an intense experience full of brutal disaster, gritty violence, and vengeance.

Like previous games, you are given semi-free reign over a number of maps, each populated with artifacts, caches, challenges, tombs, crypts, and other secrets waiting to be uncovered. It's quite inviting for exploration, except the game will find ways to curb you towards the main story path--going so far as turning the camera and character in the direction the game wants you to go. I lost count of the number of times I wanted to go one way but found Lara walking another because the game forces the action forward. As the game goes on, it becomes a little frustrating in how directional it becomes--at many key points, you will be stripped of your weapons, gear, and clothing, depowering you just when you need to be empowered. Even outside of the storyline, most areas limit the costumes and weapons you can use--it's almost pointless to customize yourself.

What I think hurts the game the most is how small-scale it actually is. While the 2013 game offered an island that felt really huge and seemed to touch every era of history, the maps in Shadow are quite few and not that big. The vast majority of collectables are shoved on the Hidden City map (yep, the one area where you can't change your clothes that much and can't use weapons). Once I completed the sweep, I couldn't help but to wonder "is this really it?" Thanks to glitches, collecting all the things didn't even unlock a trophy. Bloody hell.

There are other glitches that holds this back from being a perfectly enjoyable adventure. Run across some areas, and the game will pause with this "waiting for streaming" message. I don't even know what that means (I'm assuming the game had to catch up with the player). I lost count of the number of times I did a certain move correctly, but still had to watch Lara die gruesomely because her hand was off by a hair or something failed to connect. Also had one cut scene happen where Lara talked to herself (pretty sure another NPC was supposed to be there, but wasn't).

What is satisfying is the amount of climbing and puzzling you get to do. There are a reasonable number of tombs and crypts that offers clever challenges, but aren't too taxing. Story and side quests take you through some well-designed areas, all ordained with sharp and detailed graphics and textures (and on the PS4, HDR really brings the color out vividly). Some areas seemed really dark and hard-to-see, making some accidental deaths even more likely.

What isn't satisfying is the combat. It's very sparse for one thing--the last two games seemed relentless (but ultimately rewarding). In Shadow, you're given just a handful of moments to shoot or stalk enemies. Stealth seems to take the front seat this time, and it is quite empowering to watch a mud-smeared Lara hide in the walls, picking off soldiers one-by-one with a knife. If a gunfight does break out, Lara seems much more vulnerable than usual, and when she's swamped by melee fighters she seems quite weak against them. The last games were not nearly this difficult, even though there is far less fighting.

Despite my laundry list of gripes, the game is a smooth play thanks to its intuitive control scheme, cinematic style, and phenomenal level design. The game brings the jungles, the ruins, and the lost civilizations to life exquisitely. All the detail pumped into the legends and artifacts are admirable, and the story is a satisfying arc (which I assume concludes the new games' saga as a trilogy, but I certainly welcome more).

If you're a longtime franchise fan, or a fan of the last two games, then this one will be enjoyable for you all the same. Casual gamers may find this frustrating and glitchy. I'd argue it's too short, condensed, and limiting. As a casual franchise fan, I found the game admirable for its story, which shows the shadow lifting away from Lara and evolving her into the place she needs to be for future adventures.

4/5

Video Game Review: The 7th Guest

You had to have seen this in the 90s to really feel the innovation of this macabre puzzle game. In a time when Doom was still a fresh with its open 3D environments, The 7th Guest CD-ROM was a really slick product in which the 3D looked really refined and vivid. An apt environment to fill a creepy house with macabre cut-scenes, morbid puzzles, and a plot full of madness.

The tale of The 7th Guest is one full of promise. A villainous drifter named Henry Stauf becomes a toymaker whose dolls and puzzles please children all over town, but every child becomes ill and dies. Some time later, Stauf builds this massive house and invites six guests for a night of...well, puzzles apparently. Puzzles that you, the player, need to solve while the drama of the six (and a mysterious seventh) guest unfolds.

Then and now, the game is a head-scratcher. It's been over 20 years since I played this with my best friend in grade school, and we never could reach the finale. There are many I would have never solved were it not for guides (which can now be found easily within just a few keystrokes on Google). There are some I flat-out refuse to solve (come on, it's hard enough doing musical note puzzles on a console game, I did not have the patience to sit through the piano puzzle in this game). But for every puzzle that's darn near impossible, there's one that's easy. Some can be solved on pure intuition or experimentation. Some require some serious thinking and planning. If you want a game that makes you spend long hours trying to figure out how to move chess pieces across the floor, how to spell things in weird places, and figure out basic geometric patterns, then this game will keep you entranced.

Frustrating puzzles here and there makes this a pretty dodgy experience as it is, but what makes the game drag is having to walk room to room to find them and figure out which other room they unlock. Since it's just animated screens taking you from one place to another, you have no choice but to sit and watch the hallways slowly glide by until you make the next click. There are shortcuts, but you're more likely to click on them by accident and wind up in another part of the house you don't want to be in. It's rather droll if the macabre atmosphere doesn't keep you on your toes.

It did unsettle me as a kid in the 90s. The house is just plain creepy, with all its dark hallways and ghosts and moving paintings and such. It took me some time to realize you can't really die in the game, so all the macabre happenings are just flat images you passively watch. The game tries its best to scare the pants off you--there are frequent screams, lots of gimmicky 3D effects, skeletons playing pianos, occult imagery and symbolism, and a touch of the gothic. To be fair, the game does some of its scares right--the characters and environments become uncanny to the point where it can creep under the skin. But when the cut-scenes consist of hammy, over-the-top performances (with each actor dressed up in ridiculously campy outfits), the effect is lost entirely. It's about as terrifying as a Halloween spook house you might take your kids to.

I'd also argue that the plot tries to cover too much ground with its scares. I could dig this as a haunted house story, plain and simple. But the game shoves in aspects of the occult and supernatural that feel very disconnected (although the novelization of the game provides more clarity). It is pretty clever how the game offers six characters with individual goals, and each one gets what they want but with diabolical twists. The actual seventh guest is presented as an important stake, but it's hard to really feel much about it. All the characters are as flat and insubstantial as the pixels that illustrate them (save for Stauf, who might be one of the more nuanced video game villains I know of). Once I got to the actual ending, I don't even know what that was I saw.

The 7th Guest is an interesting relic from my own childhood. Back then, I spent hours with my best friend in school exploring the freaky house and solving as many puzzles as we could. It was fresh then. Though it's still playable now (on Steam), some things just don't hold up. Things about the story are fascinating, the music is decent, and the technical quality was really fantastic by 90s standards. It is a bit goofy, highly uneven, and might even be frustrating.

3.5/5

Video Game Review: Crysis 2

Around 2009, I first heard about Crysis. It was described to me as a game so detailed and complex that you can measure a computer's capabilities based on whether it could even run the game. So when the sequel came out in 2011, I had to see for myself just how gorgeous it actually is.

Crysis 2 offered its fair share of spectacle. It puts the player in the boots of a special kind of supersoldier. With the simple press of a button, your nanosuit could either become a hardened shell, or invisible. Those two options alone could empower you to either sneak across the battlefield, or take opponents head-on. With this kind of power, your goal is to play through the story--this time, guided through the streets of New York City while it is besieged by the Ceph. You get to be in the middle of it all when ships careen through the air, buildings come crashing down, and hoards of aliens raise mysterious structures in the rubble.

By 2011 standards, the game looks okay. Cut scenes look sharp and clean, while each level is ordained in heavy amounts of detail, gritty-looking textures, and very solid light and shadow effects. Particles are everywhere. However, in six years the game has long been surpassed in quality--today, it looks pixilated, to the point of becoming gaudy. What makes it worse is that movement, especially when aliens cut in front of you, tend to look blurred (and I suspect it's on purpose for some reason). It's far from smooth and clean, although on a good PC maybe it would be clearer. On the plus side, sound, music, and voices are all well-done, and controls are fine for what they are.

The game overall is fine for what it is: pretty typical shooter that only offers the added benefit of the nanosuit. It is a really cool thing to be able to survey a battlefield and plot your course before engaging, thanks to tactical vision. Supplies, guns, flanking positions, sneaking positions, and usable objects become highlighted for you. You have the freedom to progress through areas the way you want to: by sneaking or by fighting. However, the game itself is still very linear--it would be spectacular if the city was an open-world map (and as I understand it the first Crysis was all open). But as it is, the game forces you through episode after episode of straightforward levels and objectives. They aren't bad levels by any means--the first few are very effective in teaching you how the game works, and then there are some impressive battles to be fought. But like any shooter, it becomes exhausting and frustrating to get pinned down or swarmed by countless enemies.

The story for this game is okay. We've all seen alien invasions before, in and out of games. We've all seen the same ol' Call of Duty style combat. in and out of games. We've all seen these cliched characters before--you play the heroic soldier, of course, but there's also megalomaniac commanders, crazy scientists, and self-righteous civilians to guide you to the finale. While not a terrible campaign, I felt it was very typical and broke no new ground.

So, this is Crysis 2. If you play shooters, it'll be familiar territory for you. Only this time, you get a cool new suit and a strikingly vivid urban environment to play around in. But it's not an open environment, you're tunneled through a narrow, familiar, and cliched story. Worth a playthrough if you can handle it (and you probably can, this isn't as hard or frustrating as Call of Duty or anything). Nowadays though, we can probably do better.

3.5/5

Video Game Review: Doom (2016)

"Weaponizing demons for a better tomorrow."—UAC slogan.
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Video games have come a long ways in 23 years. In the 90s, Doom was one of the biggest game-changers of the industry. It was a smooth, rip-roaring demon-slaying experience, with its own unique texture and style. It paved the way for hundreds more FPS games to follow in its wake. Isn't it strange that after all this time, there's only been two official sequels? Since the release of Doom 3, shooting games fell into a pretty generic niche, thanks to a plethora of military-themed titles. We've seen more innovation out of Bioshock, Tomb Raider, The Last Of Us, Heavy Rain, and other odd places. Where has Doom been all this time?

As it turns out, Doom 4 was in development for a while, but had to be scrapped because it just wasn't cutting it. Developed from the ground-up, 2016's Doom is made as a return to form. It's not the harrowing horror/survival ordeal that game #3 was, this was designed to tap into the energy and spirit of the original saga. So the question now is, did id and Bethesda succeed?

I was honestly afraid to play this game, remembering how unsettling Doom 3 was. I wasn't sure I could handle the new Doom, especially after hearing that many levels would force you to clear out hoards of demons in large arena-style levels before being able to move on. It sounded punishing.

It's not. Like all great games, 2016's Doom is empowering—the game offers you immense firepower, speed, and abilities to turn you into a fast and vicious demon-slayer. It's challenging, but hardly impossible—the game is smooth and fast, and you have to stay fast to make it past each area. You get a pretty nice arsenal of guns (everything from a puny pistol to a chainsaw to the Super Shotgun to the BFG and everything). You get upgrades that can make you a faster and better marine. You get powerups at key spots. One really wicked feature that makes this game even more empowering is "glory kills," which allow you to rip demons apart with your bare hands. The game might seem imposing when you start, but once you unlock weapons and upgrades, it's a breeze (unless, if you're a real hardcore gamer who craves a challenge, you can always play the campaign on nightmare mode). Each level is immaculately detailed and well-designed, with secrets in many interesting corners, and a lot of awesome scenery to behold. Populated by so many recognizable creatures (everything from imps to the Spider Mastermind), the game is a massive throwback, but its experience is genuinely fresh and awesome.

The games wastes little time in developing its story. From the opening onwards, you snap into action, finding yourself in the middle of a ruined Martian base overrun by demons. As you progress, you'll catch on to what happened. There are just a few characters to the game—there's not much development to them. I wish there could be more substance to the story, but for Doom, it's fine for what it is. Just like the original two games, story is not the main draw, its just a way to string levels together. In this case, the story's a little better than the original game, but not quite as complete as Doom 3.

On top of that, the game offers a few solid multiplayer options. The classic game modes—deathmatches and such—are available and are fine for what they are. It's pretty standard: you join a match, you shoot people, you level up and keep going. You can choose some loadouts, but it's far simpler (and less refined) than a Call of Duty game. A far more interesting feature is the Snapmap mode, which allows you to construct levels with modular tools. The array of rooms and objects available is limited, but logic tools let you design games with countless possibilities. It can be quite adventurous and intriguing to see what inventive levels users have published using these simple features.

The game itself looks pretty sharp and polished. It sports decent textures, lighting, rendering, and very smooth animation. Sounds and voices are good—music is smashing. This game is well-written, more in the sense that the game shows you its ideas through the gaming experience rather than dialogue.

Just when I thought Doom wasn't for me, this game comes along and reminds me of what it is that made the originals so appealing. Far less clunky and more polished than its predecessors, I'd say this is the best one of the lot. It successfully empowers and immerses you in the hellish fantasy of a demon-stomping marine. It can't get much more awesome than that.

4.5/5

Video Game Review: Dragon Age: Inquisition

After all the events of the last two Dragon Age games, the entire land of Thedas is thrown into peril.  A giant hole appears in the sky.  Rifts start forming all over the world, with demons sprawling out of them.  The Divine is dead, leaving the Chantry in shambles.  The war between mages and templars rages on, and Red Templars start their own invasion.  There are dragons to kill, Orlesian plots to foil, Venitori agents to hunt down, and Darkspawn to kill.  And in this third game, it's up to you to lead the Inquisition to resolve all these problems and become a new hero of the realm!

DA:  Inquisition takes all the best aspects of the last two games for a more refined gameplay.  As before, you can customize your character and build him/her up as you see fit, and you have a bunch of charming companions to control as well.  Controlling four people at a time, you travel through multiple open-world maps to slay hoards of enemies, find loads of secrets and treasures, and discover more of the story.  The amount of ground you get to cover is huge, and you can easily spend hours upon hours combing through each map and completing all their tasks.  Among the activities you can engage in, there are artifacts, landmarks, collectibles, puzzles, dragons, keeps, camps, rifts, secrets, and more to find.  As you progress, you'll eventually unlock huge potential in your skills, your crafting abilities, and your resources.  When you aren't going around killing things, you can send out dispatches across the land (much like the Assassin missions in the Assassins Creed games), which will net you even more rewards.  The game gives you a ton to do, and it empowers you with enough flexibility in shaping your characters and their gear to make them a force to be reckoned with.

What makes the game even more rewarding is the story and characters.  It is a basic premise, but it is also a grand and epic tale that incorporates many different subplots sprawled across the entire land.  Each character adds a bit of color and personality to the mix - there are a number of companion quests that help build them up even more.  The main character can be played either gracefully, aggressively, or with a sense of humor, and all personalities make him/her appealing in their own ways.  At this point, all of the myth and events of the last two games carry over and contribute to different parts of the story, tying up the entire franchise really well.  It also leaves enough open for a possible fourth game (which I'm sure is inevitable).  Choices made in the last games can be carried over or built up from scratch using the Dragon Age Keep website, although it only amounts to small, subtle changes.

On the PS4, this game looks gorgeous, especially in regards to the settings and locations, which look very detailed, clean, colorful, and fantastic.  Most movements are smooth, but some far-away creatures can get suttery for some reason.  Character animations are good and all the different people look good.  Each area is designed really well, with a phenomenal attention to detail.  Gameplay is easy and smooth throughout, with a lot of consideration put into the systems for skills and crafting to make it manageable and empowering.  Voice acting is decent, the writing is good, the sound design is good, and the music is great.  Unfortunately, the game is still not flawless; glitches are common, with plenty of instances where characters tend to float in the air or get stuck in places.  I've seen the camera do dumb things.  It also seems like some quest icons can be glitched on the map or they may not register properly.

The other issue with the game is that, eventually, you will run out of things to do.  Once you've spent 100 hours going through all the quests you can and exploring every inch of the maps, you might find yourself growing bored.  Regardless, most of the game is a smooth and high-quality RPG experience, with a great immersive world and a fun cast of characters.  It's a definite must-play for franchise fans.

4.5/5 (Experience:  Very Good | Story:  Very Good | Game:  Very Good)

Video Game Review: Silent Hill 3

This is the second Silent Hill game I've played, and it could be my last.  The reason being that both SH2 and 3 represent the scariest and most unnerving games I've played; they are fear incarnate.  Both games represent the most effective and sublime combination of atmosphere, sound design, music, tone, and storytelling.  They have a way of getting under the skin, driving you mad psychologically as you're forced to maneuver through darkness and deep into the most oppressive environments possible.  The threat of unnatural monsters and violent cultists is palpable off the screen.  I found it hard to progress through these, because I became afraid of having to venture into the darkness and face whatever creatures and challenges the game throws out.  It is a harrowing experience, and for a horror game, it is perfectly effective.  Maybe even too effective.

To be fair, if you do manage to take those first few steps into the darkness, the game can be engaging.  Monster fighting is never the big emphasis here; it may actually be better to avoid them whenever possible.  If you do have to face them, you can pick up a few useful weapons - a handgun, shotgun, machine gun, knife, pole, sword, stun gun - but combat mechanics are rather clunky and rough.  Some great weapons can be unlocked after beating the game (such as the unlimited machine gun or the beam saber, which could make the New Game + a little more bearable).  What matters the most though is the experience, so the emphasis is in traversing the environments, solving puzzles, and making your way to the town of Silent Hill for the finale.  The whole time, you pass through some incredibly oppressive environments, which really make you feel like you are there, experiencing the same terror that Heather experiences.  In the end, it's horror survival at its finest and most visceral.

This game directly follows the first game (and if you're like me and never played it, the dialogue towards the end recaps things pretty well so you can understand what's going on well enough).  The plot gets pretty twisty, especially considering that some of the characters (including your character, Heather) are not who they seem.  After some gut-wrenching turns, the plot inevitably reaches its conclusion with the threat of a "god" being reborn (followed by a major boss fight, which is not as hard as it sounds).  In the end, the game shows good attention to the characters, and the plot is pretty decent.  Combined with the horror elements and style, the game stands out above most other games as a decent storytelling experience.

The game sports okay graphics; it would have been pretty impressive for the PS2 age, but upscaled in HD the game shows its limitations (especially during cut scenes).  However, it does hold up pretty well; textures are really gritty, the resolution is sharp, and most character effects are alright.  Gameplay is simple, using just a few buttons and no display options.  Movements tend to be rather clunky and slow, but for a horror game, that's probably intentional.  Designs for all the settings, monsters, props, costumes, and everything else are great.  Sound design is incredibly creepy and effective.  Akira Yamaoka's music score is really fantastic.

If you're a fan of survival horror, this game (and probably the last couple as well) are must-plays.  Do be warned though:  it is a seriously nightmarish experience that will take a lot of constitution.

4.5/5 (Experience:  Extreme | Story:  Good | Game:  Good)

Video Game Review: Borderlands 2

Borderlands was so great, they made a second one! This time, you return to Pandora and explore new corners of the crazy planet, battling a new onslaught of outlaws.  You also get to confront robots, soldiers, more alien monsters, and many new varieties of insane bandits! There are more bad guys to kill, more guns to find, more places to explore, more challenges, more story, more characters, more more MORE!!!!

Playing Borderlands 2 is pretty much more of the same, but that's not a bad thing at all.  The gameplay is pretty much the same, just with a slightly different control layout, a slightly different HUD, different character selection with different skills, and more of everything else.  There are a number of small, but helpful changes, such as being able to pick up loot by simply walking over it.  Completing challenges gets you reward tokens instead of experience; these tokens give you small stat boost in numerous areas, and can build up over time.  Equipping relics is more intuitive.  You get shields that have special bonuses that help a lot.  Weapon manufacturers have more interesting quirks (including one brand in which the weapon explodes as a grenade every time you reload it).  In the end, it all adds up to a more nuanced gaming experience.

And it is appreciated, because the combat tends to be more extreme than in the first game.  You can't go far without monsters flying into your face, or bandits crawling out of the woodwork.  Among the plethora of new bad guys, goliaths are thrown in, which can level up and become insanely powerful if their helmets are blown off.  Some bandits fly around in hovering vehicles now.  There are stalkers, threshers, bugs, crystal monsters of some kind, loaders, and so many more things to kill, and they all offer their own challenges.  Even though the combat can be intense, the game is still a blast, as it evenly balances out the fighting with exploration.  And as before, the game's overall tone is light and silly, in contrast to its ridiculously brutal and pulpy settings.  It's still a blast to play, even when you're constantly getting shot or mauled or melted or falling off a cliff...

What's really refreshing is that there's an actual story involved this time, with actual characters! Building on the events of the first game, the old character appear as NPCs who guide you on your quest to stop the Hyperion Corporation from unearthing the Vault and summoning an alien warrior beast thing.  While the first game never really had an antagonist, this one gives us a great villain we love to hate:  Handsome Jack, who's actually pretty ugly, especially in his narcissism and the way he always mocks you.  On top of that, the game dishes out a plethora of side characters, some familiar (such as Dr. Zed, Scooter, and Marcus) and some refreshingly new (including the rather well-endowed bartender Moxxie, Scooter's sister Ellie, and Tiny Tina, who's easily one of the most hilarious characters of the lot, and a new favorite of mine).  As for your characters, you get a choice between a siren with cool powers, a dude who can hack and slash things like a ninja, the gunzerker who can dual-wield guns, and the commando.  The game draws some pretty strong connections between most of the characters, laying out a drama that is actually compelling and gives the whole game some emotional heft.

As before, the gameplay is smooth and breezy.  The controls are great.  The game runs smoothly with good-looking renderings and framerates.  It actually renders a grade better than the first game, which had a tendency to draw the environments a bit slowly.  This game still uses the cell-animated look, which is neat, but still has enough texture and detail to make everything look great.  The world is designed really well, and includes a lot of great new locations.  The only issue I have is that getting around seems harder, since some areas don't have vehicle points, forcing you to run everywhere.  Voices and sounds are great.  Music is good too.

Borderlands 2 is what you get when you take a good game and make it better.  Highly recommended!

4.5/5 (Entertainment:  Very Good | Story:  Good | Game:  Very Good)

Video Game Review: Borderlands

The minute you set foot in Borderlands, you'll generally see what you're in for.  There's nothing clean or slick about this game; it's a raw, dirty world of psycho bandits, bloodthirsty outlaws, gnarly animals, greedy corporations, ridiculous levels of gun violence, crazy robots, and so much more.

The game is a pretty breezy shooter game with a lot of wide-open locations and a lot to do.  It's not quite as open and expansive as Fallout 3, but it's a similar form of gameplay, combining FPS and RPG elements.  As you explore new towns and territories, you have the option to follow the story or play though oodles of sidequests.  There are always bad guys to kill, loot to find, and challenges to complete.  As you level up, you not only get stronger, but you also get to use a special action skill, depending on which character you play.  The game's biggest rewards, however, come in the form of guns! There are a gajillion different types of guns you can find throughout the game to match your playing style:  big ones, little ones, pretty ones, ugly ones, common ones, rare ones, ones that deal elemental damage, ones that fire explosive bullets...you can't go two feet in this game without tripping over a new gun, it's crazy.  With whatever arsenal you acquire, the game moves as a smooth, even pace that's not too slow and not too erratic, and it offers just enough of a challenge to keep it from becoming monotonous.  The game even boasts some decent co-op support, allowing players to work together on quests (that is, when they aren't dueling each other or trying to murder each other in an arena).

The story is as simple as it can be; you're basically a treasure hunter on an alien planet.  The four characters you get to choose from show plenty of color, but rarely say much, and aren't really explored in detail.  With the encouragement of a mysterious character named Angel, you're led from one area to another toward the inevitable boss fight, and that's pretty much it.  It's not really much of a story or narrative involved, outside of figuring out how to open the Vault.  What matters the most is the overall game design; the world of planet Pandora is a brutal place that perfectly blends aspects of science fiction with classic westerns, and the plot is what you'd get if The Good The Bad and the Ugly took place in space, more or less.  It's best remembered for its quirky world of vicious skags, hilarious claptraps, and perpetually insane bandits.

Much like XIII, the game is rendered in a kind of cartoony cel-animated style.  Textures and details are purposefully simple and quite colorful.  The environments can be a bit of a pain to run through at times, but they are well-designed, with a plethora of great settings, characters, props, costumes, weapons, and more.  Sound, voices, and music are all pretty decent.  Controls work great.

It's a nutty game that offers hours of smooth and addictive gameplay.  While there's nothing much to the story, exploring the world of Pandora was still a blast.  Recommended.

4/5 (Entertainment:  Perfect | Story:  Average | Game:  Very Good)

Video Game Review: God of War

There have always been  fantasy-themed fighting games - Golden Axe, Gauntlet, Prince of Persia - but before and after the release of God of War, few games have matched the simple eloquence of the gameplay, the depth of mythology, the raw brutality of the combat, or the immersive storytelling of this classic game.

Playing God of War is the closest you can get to stepping into the shoes of a classic Greek hero, to wield the fantastic powers of ancient myth and challenge the gods of Olympus.  Instead of a hero like Perseus, however, you play through the tragic epic of Kratos:  a hulking beast of a man with blades chained to his wrists.  With the mere press of a few buttons, you can send Kratos on a mad rampage, sending his blades through men and monsters, with a varied mix of light, heavy, or grapple attacks.  As you go along, you come to wield the power of Medusa, to turn your enemies to stone.  You eventually acquire the trident of Poseidon, to swim underwater indefinitely.  You get to fire bolts of Zeus' lightning, and blast a ring of electricity with the Rage of the Gods power.  All of these abilities empower you to fight against soldiers, skeletons, sirens, sea monsters, harpies, minotaurs, and ultimately the gods themselves.  The game moves fast and smoothly; there are a few times where the levels are timed in such a way where your progress can be stalled, and balancing on ledges and beams can be frustrating, but most of the game flies by pretty evenly.  The controls are simple, but allow you to fight and move sublimely, and even to this day it holds up perfectly.

Despite the speed of the story, it is an epic-scale adventure the likes of which mirrors the Clash of the Titans movies.  The game's settings, creatures, and depiction of the gods and titans are highly imaginative, and make for a really fantastic experience.  At the core, however, is the character Kratos.  He's not a particularly likable character, for he is a spiteful, scowling, nihilistic brute with no regard for anybody other than himself.  As the game goes on, however, his backstory is slowly unveiled, and it is a compelling tale of betrayal that will go on to define the character and his motivation.  It embodies a lot of the same elements of a classic Greek tragedy, including the manipulation of the gods, and it makes Kratos one of the most well-defined antiheroes of modern pop culture.

The game is well-designed.  The levels are laid out in a somewhat circular pattern, so you often return to old areas after exploring new ones.  I've been personally fond of the Temple of Pandora levels, which presents a layered onslaught of puzzles, mazes, and arenas.  The game looks a little rough around the edges, given its age, but even the HD remaster for the PS3 looks really smooth and clean, leaving only the cut scenes to suffer (which are smoothly-rendered, despite their low resolution).  Game controls are very sublime; they work great and are easy to master.  Designs for the settings, characters, props, and costumes are great.  Sound and voices are great.  Music is fantastic as well.

Despite its extreme violence, God of War is a highly addictive game with a compelling story on a larger-than-life scale.  It is one of the most definitive fighting games of all time, and it is an essential title for any gamer.

5/5 (Entertainment:  Perfect | Story:  Perfect | Game:  Perfect)

Video Game Review: Bulletstorm

"What happy horse-s**t is this?!" - Steve Blum

Bulletstorm just looks and sounds like more of the same:  you play some dude with a gun, and you run around and shoot things.  It does have plenty of other things that pushes it above and beyond the regular FPS fare though.  If nothing else, the game is a phenomenal blast, largely because the game really tries its best to mix things up and make you do more than just shoot bad guys.  To really succeed in the game, you need to "kill with skill," by sliding, kicking, and whipping your opponents and hurling them all across the map.  You gain some decent bonus points for environmental kills, or for really inventive kills.  The game itself is hardly repetitive:  it takes you through a pretty well-rendered environment that contains huge ruined cities, weird mutated ecologies, and battered spaceships.  You will be pitted against a few annoying bosses, but one of the coolest highlights is taking control of a mechanical Godzilla-like creature and stomping on a hoard of enemies! The game overall is crazy, over-the-top, and rather juvenile; it all makes for a satisfyingly fast and furious piece of pulp sci-fi shoot-em-up action!

The story is pretty straightforward, but it does have merits.  You play a space pirate seeking revenge against a military general (who, in turn, is one of the most stereotypical and ridiculous generals you'll ever see).  The game explores enough of the character's past to explain what happened and how things came to where they are now; it is pretty interesting to see how the guy's own problems (especially alcoholism) brought on his own misfortune.  The game digs up even more drama when the guy's best friend becomes a cyborg, and is constantly struggling to maintain his humanity.  Other than that, however, the game's actual plot is pretty standard, taking you though one level after another with the usual boss battles and some contrived twists.  All of the dramatic impact is further beaten down by a certain faux gung-ho attitude, the constant swearing, and all of the characters' bickering.  Characters can actually be pretty annoying this way, although I thought a lot of their dialogue was very silly and laughable.

This game uses good, not great, graphics.  The visuals are cool in parts, but textures and renderings are average at best.  The levels are very linear, and their designs are generally okay.  This game has plenty of neat and imaginative-looking sets, props, costumes, and locales.  Controls are generally good; it may take a little getting used to, especially with using secondary firing modes.  Voice-work is appropriately over-the-top, but the writing is quite silly and simplistic.  Music is okay.

Bulletstorm is short, pretty stupidly-written, very juvenile, and very over-the-top, but it is still pretty darn fun.  It's worth a rental for anybody who likes sci-fi shooter games.

4/5 (Entertainment:  Perfect | Story:  Pretty Good | Game:  Average)

Video Game Review: Singularity

Nowadays, it seems like shoot-em-up games come a dime-a-dozen, but most of them try to stand apart with some clever trick or gimmick.  In Singularity, the gimmick is that you have an experimental device that manipulates time and allows you to use it as a weapon.  Imagine being able to aim at a broken ladder, and reversing time on it, so that it bends and folds back into a usable shape.  Or, aim it at a box to age it instantly, causing it to collapse into a rusted old heap.  Better yet, aim it at a hapless Soviet bad guy, and watch him age into a skeleton, just like that guy from the ending of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  Isn't that cool, or what?

The game is pretty darn fun.  It is pretty much more of the same by shooting game standards: you crawl through a handful of levels, confronting some waves of bad guys and creepy monsters.  You do get a unique assortment of weapons, including some fancy variants on rail guns, rocket launchers, and sniper rifles, all of which allow you to guide your projectiles to their targets.  The most unique thing is the fancy device that controls time, allowing you to send things and bad guys forward or backward in time.  The game is short (perhaps too short), it runs fast, and it's not too frustrating overall.

The story is pretty neat; you basically play a special forces dude who explores a lost island with the ruins of an old Soviet research station.  The story takes some pretty interesting twists and turns, as you constantly flip back and forth between the past and present to alter the future.  Time paradoxes occur constantly, but the game never really addresses the issue.  The story overall presents a pretty sobering theme that the more you mess with the timeline, the more hopeless things become.  You do get to chose between three different endings at the end, all of which presents a fascinating alternate-history scenario.  Still, the game doesn't offer much character development or that much of a thoughtful plot.

It is a neat-looking game with solid graphics quality.  Textures and renderings are a little rough around the edges, but still have some great-looking parts.  Level designs are pretty decent.  It can take a little bit of a learning curve to master the time-controlling mechanism and all its firing modes, especially when using it in tandem with your standard weapons (some of which are a little unwieldy as well), but once you get the hang of it, the controls are okay.  This game uses pretty stereotypical and over-the-top voice-work and writing.  Most settings, props, characters, creatures, and weapons look great.  Music is alright too.

There's nothing ground-breaking about this game, and it is pretty short, but it is a blast and it does have a few cool ideas.  For anybody who likes shooter games with a twist, this should be worth renting.

4/5 (Entertainment:  Very Good | Story:  Pretty Good | Game:  Pretty Good)

Video Game Review: Doom 3

About nine years after Doom II came out, Doom 3 finally hit the streets, and it is amazing how much nine years can change a game.  In all that time, id software had pretty much fine-tuned things with the Quake series paving the path to produce the third Doom game with top-notch technical design.  The game offers great and smooth-looking graphics, with incredible lighting and rendering effects.  Of course, it's not just the engine that makes a game good...

As it is, I think the experience of Doom 3 has been the best yet.  Once the gates of hell are opened and all the familiar demons come pouring out, it is a harrowing and unnerving thrill ride.  Each new level has you walking through dark and oppressive corridors, often times lined with blood.  You never know what will happen next when you round the next corner; there could be a zombie jumping out from a dark corner, or an imp will materialize behind you.  You seriously can't go far without having to look over your shoulder.  Throughout the game, there's always an ominous and tense atmosphere.  Overall, it is highly successful at keeping you on your toes, and much unlike the previous games, it really does feel like doom is coming.  The only things that really ruin the experience will be the infamous flashlight issue (which, in the BFG edition, as available on the PS3, is not a problem at all, but the original game had it so that you always had to switch from your gun to your flashlight, and I'm sure that would have been irritating), and the fact that you're always running and gunning so much that it kills the atmosphere.

The best thing about Doom 3 is that the story is fully fleshed-out.  Previous games had a very faint narrative to determine what level comes after what; this time, you are really put into the middle of things, and you're made to see first-hand how things got so bad (not too different from the beginning of Half-Life).  There are actual characters to interact with, and the plot (as simple and short as it is) has you naturally progress through the Martian base to reach the final levels.  In the final levels, the game pulls out a pretty neat plot device (and a neat gameplay mechanic) involving the Soulcube, which becomes necessary for the final boss.

All that being said, it is the same story as before, filled with all the same demons and monsters.  Yep, the final boss is still the Cyberdemon.  You still got to blast away an entire army of imps, cacodemons, lost souls, and other familiar beasts to get to it.  However, everything receives a refreshing update; all the creatures feature new and genuinely scary designs, and there are a few new critters added to the mix.  All your weapons are the same, but they look, feel, and shoot differently than before.  Overall, it's like the ultimate remake of the original Doom, and I think it is a much-needed update, because Doom 3 accomplishes the storytelling and atmosphere the best.

Even after all this time, Doom 3 looks fantastic, with sharp and clean-looking graphics, and extremely lucid gameplay.  Some have even said that the upgraded graphics in the BFG edition look better than most other modern-generations games (and I largely agree).  The game is most notable for its lighting effects, which are highly effective and wicked.  Designs for all the game's levels, settings, props, costumes, weapons, and creatures are phenomenal.  Controls are intuitive and good (although, it's probably easier to cycle through the weapons on the PC than on the console).  Sound effects are extremely creepy and wicked, and the music is brilliant too.

Doom 3 may just present more of the same, but it's all revamped and presented with a highly effective execution.  For its effectiveness and presentation, I think it's the best of the series to date, and I'd encourage all serious gamers to give it a chance (with or without the screwy flashlight).

4/5 (Experience:  Very Good | Story:  Pretty Good | Game:  Very Good)

I played this game as part of the BFG edition for the PS3.  This version of the game includes enhanced graphics, more sound effects, and support for stereoscopic 3D (which is quite phenomenal).  This edition also includes the Resurrection of Evil expansion pack, the Lost Mission expansion pack (which I believe is brand-new), and copies of Doom and Doom II.

Video Game Review: Doom II

"There's nothing like a shooting gallery full of hellspawn to get the blood pumping..." - in-game story text.

Where there was one big hit game, there had to be another.  Doom II came out in pretty short time after the first game hit the market and made huge waves.  The game pretty much offers more of the same; once again, you take direct control of a soldier, literally walking in his footsteps across hellish landscapes to wipe out massive hoards of demons.  As sublime as the first game is, more is certainly welcome:  while Doom II doesn't add much to its predecessor technologically, it does offer bigger and more complex levels, and a ton more demons to fight.  If you found the first game to be too easy, the second one does provide a decent challenge.  The gameplay is still fast and smooth, and still has that undercurrent of occult horror to freak you out just slightly.

As a follow-up to the first game, the story takes off in a brave new direction, with demons pouring onto Earth and wreaking havoc.  It sounds promising, but like before, the story is not really the main point; it merely offers the layout of the levels and what order they appear in.  As before, your character is nameless, you run around and blast your way into Hell, and confront a major boss to win the game (this time in the form of shooting rockets into the wall; it would almost be like a carnival game, if the wall didn't spit bad guys at you).

The game is pretty much the exact same as before:  the gameplay and engine is the exact same.  Graphics and sound are the same.  It still runs really smoothly and without glitching, so everything that made the original great carries over.

Doom II is pretty much like an expansion on the first game, offering nothing really new in terms of gameplay or innovation.  It does contribute a lot more to the demon-slaying business, and business is booming!

4/5 (Experience:  Very Good | Content:  Average | Game:  Good)

I played this game as part of the Doom 3 BFG edition.  It includes the main campaign, plus an expansion called No Rest for the Living, which features a crap-ton of bad guys in each level.  I have no clue if free versions of this game are available to play.

Video Game Review: Doom

Twenty years ago, I remember seeing Doom for the first time, as being demonstrated by another gamer.  In 1993, it was an incredible technological achievement to behold, for the first time, actual 3-dimensional rooms, and to be able to control the character in his point-of-view, even going so far as showing the gun in his hands.  Granted that a few games used the same technology beforehand (such as Wolfenstein 3D), but Doom was the first one to really push the technology ahead and introduce the style of first-person shooters into the mainstream (with highly controversial results that resonate to this day, thanks to its level of violence).

All that being said, I never had a chance to play Doom firsthand until recently; in 1993, I was still too young to play it, and the brief clips I saw scared me silly.  That's because Doom, like many other FPS games, is purposefully designed to be unsettling.  You can't really go far in the game without having to confront a whole room full of bad guys, or to have bad guys popping out from hidden walls or from behind crates, or to have them appear behind you or at your flank.  More than that though, the game is probably one of the first to draw upon the occult, pitting the player against entire hoards of literal demons from Hell, and then actually putting the player into Hell.  Hell and its monsters would be pretty common cannon fodder for future FPS games (such as id's own Quake series), or else would be imitated using aliens or other funky creatures (future Wolfenstein games, Half-Life, Resistance:  The Fall of Man, Dead Space, Singularity, and countless more).  Games like this usually freak me out, but become easier to handle as they go on, and my experience playing Doom is no different:  there's nothing more heart-pumping than to tread across the portals of Hell, always wondering where those demons are, always fearing that you may not make it to the next level.  However, with a huge arsenal of powerful weapons and oodles of secrets to find, Doom does give the player plenty of firepower to blast through the levels and make it to the final boss, and that makes it a pretty smooth and empowering experience.  Thus, for years, playing Doom has been the mark of being a totally badass gamer; no matter what the skill level or experience, players of all generations can feel satisfied as they pump bullets and rockets into vast hoards of possessed soldiers, ugly demons, and wicked flesh-and-machine hybrids.

All that being said, the game's story is not the main draw.  There is a narrative at work:  you basically play a nameless soldier who has to rush through an overrun Martian base.  The game has some neat ideas, with the use of teleportation technology causing one of Mars' moons to disappear and open a gateway to Hell; there is definitely potential in such a concept (and I think Doom 3 did its best to maximize that potential).  Beyond that, however, you basically just run from one level to the next, shooting everything that moves, and then hitting the button at the end.  The game is almost arcade-like, because it's not about telling a story necessarily; the story just provides the basic layout of the levels, and dictates what they'll look like.  What matters the most is trying to up your kill-count, find all the secrets, find all the items, and achieve the fastest time.  On the level of an arcade-style game, it works sublimely, but the game never strives for anything beyond that.

In its time, Doom was one of the best-looking games on the market.  After twenty years, obviously, graphics and sound has improved insanely; comparing Doom with Doom 3 will reveal just how far games have come in terms of textures, resolution, lighting, rendering, animation, design, physics, and controls.  Naturally, the first Doom game suffers from appearing heavily pixilated and low-tech, filled with limited and stilted 2D sprites, and using a very limited range of sounds.  The actual gameplay has its limitations too; you can't jump, duck, aim down the sights, look up or down, or really do anything beyond moving horizontally and shooting.  However, the simplicity of the game is what makes it timeless; the game runs smoothly and fast, and remains glitch-free, allowing you to run through the levels and blast away enemies in a more careless and worry-free manner.

Even after all this time, Doom remains a perfectly playable classic.  It has paved the way for an entire genre and style of gameplay that has now touched upon all corners of the industry.  It even went so far as touching modern society in a particularly sensitive spot, for it has been one of the leading examples of extreme video game violence, leading many to believe that it is responsible for draining the morality and empathy out of the players.  Whether you believe that or not, it has undoubtedly left its mark in gaming history; for all mature and responsible gamers, it is a must-play.

4/5 (Experience:  Very Good | Content:  Pretty Good | Game:  Very Good)

I played this game on the PS3 as part of the Doom 3 BFG Edition package.  However, I believe there are free, open-source versions of this game available on the Internet (I don't recall where), along with countless possible mods and upscaled presentations.