Doom Eternal - Review

 

Any gamer, no matter their experience or skill level knows the name 'Doom'. Doom creator John Romero's impact on first-person gaming is huge and showed that the genre could be more than just a simple shooter.  I feel the same way about Half-Life creator Gabe Newell who mixed puzzles with great storytelling to create something more. In 2016 id Software released a next-generation version of Doom which was a lot of fun, I didn't play the sequel when it was released but recently saw it available on XBOX Game Pass and thought now is the time to play it.

To me buffalo wings with a beer are one of the most perfect snacks, that is until you accidentally order a family size amount of them and decide to eat forty wings in a sitting. I have no regrets, apart from the rapid and explosive bowel movements that followed the next day. Buffalo Wing sauce is amazing, and while normally I am not a blue cheese fan, as a dip it works perfectly. Playing Doom Eternal I found myself asking was ripping and tearing through those wings enough to keep me sated?

Story 

The original story of Doom was based on Mars where humans do what they do best and open a dimension to hell, oops. Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal has evolved the story significantly beyond that point, explaining not only what drives 'Doom Guy' but also so why he is so important. Doom Eternal focuses on the struggle between good and evil, but as always things are rarely black and white and with the fight now being on Earth the stakes are higher than ever before.

Ancient Gods Part 1 and 2

There are two DLC for the game, one of which was only released in the last couple of weeks called the Ancient Gods Part One and Two. The story follows on from the main storyline and answers many questions not only about the Doom Universe but about Doom Guy himself.  

Overall the main story, and that in the DLC is amazing and features a lot of lore which is available in the form of collectables spread throughout the game. I would love to get a book on it but sadly only seems available in the collector's editions which according to reviews online does not always feature it. Right, back on track, amazing story that made me really want to know more about the Doom Universe and find every collectable.

Visuals

Doom 2016's visuals were quite impressive and a serious upscale from Doom 3, Doom Eternal's visuals are on another level. Everything is improved from the backdrops and level designs to the enemies and weapons, all look more well rounded. A big part of the Doom combat are glory kills which are used not only to acquire health but also look badass. There are different types of glory kills that can be performed on each enemy and they all look awesome, some are extremely visceral, others are explosive and some are just fun like pulling out an enemies eyes and hearing them make a satisfying popping sound. There are the classic Doom enemies but there also some new additions, including more bio-mechanical enemies and high powered beings who look like highly advanced robots. The backdrops are really cool, the ones on Earth in particular as it looks and feels like what Earth would be if invaded by a demon army.

Ancient Gods Part 1 and 2

The visuals and backdrops in the DLC are quite different to the base game. The UAC Atlantica Facility brought you a little closer to the survivors of the world, up to this point they are always at arm's length and like a unicorn seems like they may not exist at all.  There are some really cool new enemies that drastically change the gameplay, you also get some great cut sequences and get to the deepest darkest parts of hell.

Overall the visuals are impressive and are so much sharper and greatly improved over the Doom 2016 release, the DLC step things up and certainly give you a bit more of a connection with humanity. I can't even imagine how good the next game will look. 

Music 

The Doom series has always featured a metal soundtrack that suits the gameplay and style of the game perfectly. It pumps you up and gets your adrenaline flowing and really focuses you. The music is created by Australian composer Mick Gordon, his works include the soundtracks for Prey, Wolfenstein: The New Colossus, SOMA, Mirrors Edge Catalyst, and Dead Space 3 to name but a few.

Ancient Ones Part 1 and 2

The Ancient One's Part One and Two was created by American Composer Andrew Hulshult rather than Mick Gordon due to fallout between himself and id Software. Hultshult has worked on and created the music for, Prodeus, 3D Realms Anthology: The Re-Rockestrated, Amid Evil, and Dusk (which on my list of games to play later this year).

The base game feature over four hours of music and the DLC features well over three hours created a fairly large soundtrack, especially for a first-person shooter. My favourite tracks between the two soundtracks include:

Cultist Base

BFG Divison 2020

Urdak 

The DOOM Hunter 

The Super Gore Nest 

The Only Thing They Fear Is You

Usuper Gore

Doom Eternal

End Of Level

UAC Atlantic Heavy

Blood Swamps Light

Overall the soundtrack is pretty good but is likely to stay with me, that being said when playing the game it is the music you need.

Gameplay

Let's get on with the ripping and the tearing! The gameplay is immense, intense and so much fun! The weapons feel more balanced than before, Doom Eternal has the addition of a new weapon that offers the same and perhaps even more damage than that of the BFG (a weapon that with just one shot can take out every enemy in a room), the Unmakyr. It offers single and chain shots which are great for some of the larger enemies. The Super Shotgun is great and now has a hook on it that can be used to pull you towards enemies. If that was not enough you know have a shoulder attachment that can be used to burn or freeze enemies and really is a game-changer, additionally, enemies that are burned or set frozen will drop armor for you. Similar to Doom 2016 most weapons can be modded and upgraded providing very different types of damage, once fully upgraded can devastate even the largest enemies. 

Killing demons never gets old, but just in case it does you will sometimes get random harder enemies thrown in or even better an intense boss battle. These battles are tough but you quickly need to get used to them as afterwards, they will appear more often in standard battles.

Need a moment for yourself to escape the crazy? Head to your floating Fortress of Doom, a cross between a castle and a futuristic ship. Here there are unlockable items, including weapons mods, Praetorian tokens (used to upgrade your suit), albums, and toys which can be found on each level and look awesome.

The game is not just a shooter and will require you to figure out some minor puzzles to get to other areas of the game, especially the hidden ones, it takes you away from the combat for a short time but is often a welcome distraction.

Hurt Me Plenty is one of the difficulty types (basically normal), but if that is not enough you can play it on much harder modes including Ultra Nightmare. While I am not bad at first-person shooters there were certainly parts of the game that I found challenging. The game has a great way of pushing to use everything you have, to keep moving and never falter, which feels awesome and every victory feels damn good.

Multiplayer allows you to have three characters, Doom Guy versus two enemies, it is challenging for both parties as while Doom Guy is no push over some of the larger enemies have some great abilities and while AI is good the human element really makes things more intense. While I am not a huge multiplayer head it is hard to deny the greatness of Doom Eternal.

Ancient Ones Part 1 and 2

The gameplay in the DLC felt a lot more hardcore even with keeping the difficulty the same. Most of the time the challenge was enjoyable and the new additions of enemies that need to be killed in certain ways were fun. That being said it did feel a little unbalanced at times, I really felt this way with the final boss. The first three health bars, simple, the last two felt like even a minor mistake would really screw you. Not against a challenge, far from it, but occasional unbalanced gameplay was a little frustrating.

Overall the gameplay is awesome and fairly well balanced with the only exception being the DLC which seemed to be a lot tougher than the base game. That being said the challenge was a welcome one and stopped me from becoming compliant. 

Final Thoughts

So, after over forty hours of playing how did I feel? Pumped up and curious to try the hard difficulties. The story is amazing, and collectable lore in each level expands on everything to provide something really well rounded. The visuals are really interesting and have some really great backdrops and when it comes to the DLC id Software did not leave me feeling short-changed. The music is pretty good and certainly creates a great atmosphere in the game and intensifies the gameplay. The gameplay is amazing, it is brutal, fast and unrelenting, there is so no going slow or taking it easy, go hard or go home - in a body bag. Overall Doom Eternal gets a solid 4 out of 5 

Rage 2 - Review

Rage 2 is a game I have been quite excited to play.  I really enjoyed the first game and was curious what Avalanche Studios and ID Software could achieve together.  Avalanche Studios is known for their open world games; the Just Cause series and 2015's Mad Max.  Of course, ID Software is well known for its rich body of work on first-person shooters; and created both Quake and Doom.


Anyone that knows me would find it hard to describe me as refined.  When it comes to food it's not much different, although I am partial to cheese and crackers with a drop of red wine.   There are so many great cheeses and quite a variety of crackers, don't even get me started on red wine.  I have, unfortunately, had some mediocre experiences with cheese and crackers.  This is normally caused by the cheese drying out or the crackers getting soft.  Playing Rage 2 I found asking was this a tasty experience or a mediocre one leaving me with a bad taste in my mouth?

Story

Rage 2 is set in a dystopian world, where the world as we know it is gone.  There are few safeish places for people to hang out but it is very much a cruel cruel world with bandits and mutants ready to kill anything that moves.  There is an army of sorts fighting the good fight who have specialists called Rangers.  Life wasn't hard enough so General Cross, an old enemy long thought dead, appears to remind everyone it could always be worse.  After Cross wipes out almost every soldier including the Rangers he leaves smugly. You play as Walker, a young soldier who has stolen/borrowed some Ranger armor. If Doom Guys and Master Chiefs armor is full-fat Coke then the Ranger armor is Coke Zero.  Walker swears revenge against General Cross and goes in search of a way to stop him once and for all.

There are side missions/stories but with the exception of rewards it doesn't add anything the story and most people you return seemed to give you a shoulder shrug and 'meh' reaction.  I thought this was a shame as it would have been a great way to expand on the Rage universe.  The main story itself is okay but with so few missions it never really fully drew me in.

Visuals

The visuals in Rage 2 are...interesting?  Despite the world being pretty much a wasteland, there is actually a lot of bright colors.  I liked this for the most part and helped provide light in a very dark world.  The non-human enemies look really well and could certainly see how Doom influenced the game.  When it comes to the human faces and details the world sometimes looked a little simplistic, non-rendered or slight underdeveloped.  I found this to be a real shame and similar to the story it just seemed like it never reached its full potential.

Overall there were some great visuals, but they were let down by some the lesser ones used in the game.

Music 

I enjoyed the music used in the game, a few styles of electronic music blended together to make a great soundtrack for the world of Rage 2.  Unfortunately, it's not very easy to find the actual music just a Spotify 'Official Soundtrack' none of the songs the best of my recollection were used in the game.   The score was composed by Swedish composers, Andreas Kinger, Johan Nilsson and Eirik Røland.  Between them, they worked on the music for, Gauntlet, Elite Dangerous, and Renegade Ops.

There is a one-hour main theme you can listen to on YouTube which seems to contain some of the music used in the game.  Elias Adaptive Software was used to produce the soundtrack, it basically helps create a dynamic soundtrack rather than a static to help produce a more immersive experience.

Overall a pretty solid soundtrack that was well suited for the wasteland of Rage 2.

Gameplay

The game is a first-person shooter and playing it did remind a little of playing Doom (not really a bad thing).  There are a limited number of weapons in the game, all of which can be upgraded.  There also secondary items like grenades, drones and the return of the wing stick (kind of like a mix of the Glaive from the movie Skrull and a boomerang).  Then there is your Ranger armor, it offers some interesting abilities like ground smash, das, and vortex.  While they were good I found most of the time I relied on my weapons as they were faster, especially the assault rifle and combat shotgun.

Each ability you learn can be upgraded and additional perks can be purchased too. There are also projects which can be used to make minor and major changes to the gameplay.   Some of my favorites being able to carry more ammunition, health, being able to find items more easily.  A pretty solid system and a bit different from the normal skill tree leveling systems found in many games.

There are cars available in the game, which you will need as the world is quite vast.  There are many upgrades to purchase and some of them can help you own the roads, such as rockets, improved chassis, and auto-cannons.

There are tons of side objectives which all help in making you stronger.  Initially, I was thinking 'yeah I'm going to get everything' and then after twelve hours I thought 'no I'm good'.  Quickly they became very rinse and repeat and decided to focus on the main story.  Unfortunately, the story itself is extremely short and definitely could have used, well, more.

Overall I had fun playing Rage 2 I was always felt wanting something a little more that never quite materialized. 

Final Thoughts

So after sixteen hours how did I feel?  A little underwhelmed.  The story was okay, the visuals were okay, the music was good and so was the gameplay.  The issue I had overall was that the game had potential but never quite managed to achieve it, the game was okay but nothing beyond that.  This one gets 3 out of 5

Prey - Review

Happy New Year!  Can you believe it's 2018 already?  Last year was a good year, personally, professionally and gamelly (yeah, I know that's not a real word).  I ended last year having played forty-two games, thirty-nine of them completed.  Project X Zone 2 on 3DS I am still playing and really enjoying, and have no doubt I will finish later this year.  There were two games I walked away from last year, The End Is Nigh and Resonance of Fate.  The former started out really fun and challenging, but after getting to the point where it seemed the game was going to end the developers piled on a load more levels.   This would normally be a good thing, but the difficulty level spiked too much and stopped being fun.  The latter, well it was intriguing, with some really original concepts, but near the end of the game after I had put in sixty hours it became apparent that to complete it I would need to put in at minimal another twenty hours.  I bowed out, it had become about finishing the game rather than enjoying playing it.


Anyway enough about 2017, let's talk about Prey, wait when was that released?  When it was announced I was a little skeptically about playing it, why you ask?  Back in 2006 Prey was released, I really enjoyed it and was looking forward to playing the sequel.  Unfortunately, the plug was pulled and there never was a Prey 2.    When I read about the new Prey I found it did not resemble the original Prey at all and I promptly lost interest.  Luckily enough my main man DG told me a lot about the game and he encouraged me to play it.


I find calzone's to be highly underrated, which is a shame as they can be really nice.  One could argue that they are simply a folded pizza, and it would be hard to disagree with that assessment, but to me they are more than just that.  On the outside, they look simple, unassuming, but when you take a bite you can't believe what you have been missing out on.  The cheese seems more cheesy and the tomato seems more, well you get the point.  Playing Prey I found myself asking, was there something tasty inside or was it just a poor imitation of a pizza?

Story

The game's protagonist is Morgan Yu, you wake up in your apartment and your brother Alex calls letting you know how happy he is that you will be working with him.  Get up, go to work, rinse, repeat, everything's normal, or is it?  Very quickly things become dark and confusing, not knowing what to do or who trust.  Being honest saying any more than that will spoil the main story.


The game offers multiple side quests some of which directly affect the main story, for the most part, you won't know which ones these are, so try not to skip too many of them.   Some of the side quests were really interesting as they offered insight into the world you were in, especially the social aspects.


Overall the main story was pretty good, if not slightly drawn out near the end.  The side quests give depth to the characters in the world and really makes you care about them, well some of them anyway.

Visuals

The game looks really sharp, so much so that when Morgan initially wakes up I thought it was a cut sequence.  The world reminded me of a nice hotel or a cruise ship, well except for the darkness and death that is.  There are parts later in the game where you have the opportunity to float around in space which is not only fun to do but looks really cool as well.  The enemies are interesting and terrifying, at least initially until you get used to seeing them.  One of my favourite things visually was watching the Recycler at work, changing weapons, food, scrap into more workable building blocks.


While the game does look sharp I found it difficult to pull out areas that really stood out.  It is inaccurate to say it looked boring but considering the backdrop I thought it would have been more exciting.



Music

The music and sounds of Prey can be best described as intense, even when you think you are safe it reminds you otherwise.  In many games when enemies appear music plays and then when you kill them it stops, not in Prey.  This is done really well and has you constantly at the edge of your seat, along with making you ask the question, 'are there more enemies?'  There were a number of people who helped create this terrifying score:


Mick Gordon, an Australian composer who has worked on a number of diverse game titles including; Wolfenstein: The New Order, Doom (2016) ShootMania Storm, Killer Instinct and Need for Speed: The Run.

Ben Crossbones, an American composer who works include;  Organ Trail, Skate or Die, Tony Hawks Pro Skater HD and Kick-Ass.

Raphael Colantonio, French game designer and founder of Arkane Studios who brought us the Dishonored series.  Outside of this he also performed the track 'Brigmore Lullaby' in Dishonored 2.

Matt Piersall, an America composer and audio director for GL33k, some of his works include;  Epic Mickey, Full Metal Alchemist and The Broken Angel, Splosion Man, Halo 4, Metroid Prime 3 and Recore.


The score lasts little over thirty minutes, it's filled with dread, darkness and really only exists for one reason, to let you know you are never safe.  The atmosphere it helps create really made the gameplay itself that much more enjoyable.  My favourite pieces were; 'The Phantoms', 'Neuromods', 'No Gravity' and 'December and January'.

Gameplay


Onto the meat!  The first thing that gave me pause when I was about to embark on my journey were the difficulty options and their descriptions.  Easy, 'You will survive. Probably' and Nightmare, 'Nothing Can Save You'.  I really liked that touch, games like Doom and Duke Nukem have a tendency to do the same thing.


Nobody likes tutorials but they are necessary to get you up and running.  Some games try to make them interesting, others do not.  Prey is definitely the latter, it felt like a tutorial from the nineties and it's only saving grace was the personality questionnaire at the end.


The game is a first person shooter style and as such that means there are a number of weapons of your disposal.  My favourite weapon for the first few hours of playing was the turret, if I found one I carried everywhere as my protector.  The Gloo gun was a stand out weapon that was not only used to remove hazards but could be also used to reach inaccessible areas and stop enemies in there tracks. The Golden Silenced Pistol and the shotgun were my go to weapons and upgrading them certainly helped.  Need more materials?  Don't worry you can you use Recycler grenades, through them into an area with lots of stuff in it and boom instant conversion - very handy to remove obstacles too.

Nothing is safe to pick up.  When is a health kit not a health kit?  When it's a mimic.  These enemies throughout the game made me jump many times even when I knew they were there.  They will jump right at your face and if you are not careful it will mean your demise.  There is a creature you encounter later called the Nightmare, it's exactly what it sounds like.  You have the choice to hide until it passes by or kill it, at least early on I would recommend the hide and pray option.


There are no shops to sell things but there is a genius invention called the Recycler.  It take anything you dont' want and converts it into one of four materials; mineral, exotic, organic, synthetic.  These materials can then be used in a Fabricator to create anything you might need, and trust me you will call on the both many, many times through out the game.


The skill tree is pretty standard until later in the game where you have access to many unusual abilities.  There is no levelling up system so you will need to collect or fabricate neuromods which are used to purchase them.  While there were many good abilities I found myself sticking to the same reliable few.  Initially I thought this was due to laziness on my part, but then I realised there were many that just were not that worthwhile.  One of the most frustrating abilities was hacking, not the ability itself but the annoying mini game you had to do each time you wanted to do it.  Anything outside a level one hack was painful, lucky enough in most cases there was a way round this.


Overall some pretty good gameplay with few complaints apart from hacking and a some so so abilities.




Final Thoughts

So after just over thirty hours how did I feel?  Pretty good.  The story was interesting and only near the end did I find it to be a little drawn.  The game looked sharp visually even if it wasn't very standout.  Musically the game was right on the money and really helped intensify the gameplay.  The gameplay itself was fairly solid with a few minor exceptions.  Overall I would have to say this calzone was pretty tasty and give it 4 out of 5