I'll start off with Doom, having completed that one just last week. It's technically just Doom, and though it seems to be colloquially known as Doom 4, by my count it could be Doom 6 or 7. Anyway, Doom is one of my favorite franchises of all time. I've never played a Doom game that I haven't enjoyed the hell out of, so I was expecting just as much from this new one. The end result, I felt, was a little bit meh, but there was enough there that I still got plenty of enjoyment out of it. Let's talk about the positives first- I really liked the weapon/armor suit upgrade system, in which you'll need to do plenty of hunting through levels to find secrets and earn upgrade points. You can also complete certain challenges in each level to earn points for weapon upgrades; things like finding secrets, killing enemies in a certain manner, and using certain weapons in a level can all earn your points in different levels. This was a really fun aspect of playing, probably the thing that I enjoyed the most.
I also liked how you gain health and armor pieces from killing enemies. After lowering an enemy's health sufficiently, you can perform what the game calls a "glory kill" on it- that is, you'll instantly kill it in some savage, brutal, and crazily over-the-top way, very much in the good old Doom spirit of things. Performing glory kills causes an enemy to drop a plethora of health and armor, especially if you running low on either. You can also gain ammo by killing enemies with the chainsaw, which offers and insta-kill of any enemy, though you must have enough gasoline for it to do so.
I have to be honest, I wasn't that big of a fan of the enemy designs. Overall, I liked Doom 3's designs a lot better. That's not to say this games' designs were terrible, just that I felt like some were overdoing it. Imps and Revenants just look kind of ridiculous. Though, some choices were better; Cacodemons, Pinkies, and Mancubuses, for example, were closer to their original designs. Also, the inclusion of the Spider Mastermind as the final boss was pretty badass. And Doomguy is just the Master Chief now? Okay.
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but this is ridiculous.
The level design was interesting, though it starts to get old at a certain point. There's a lot of moments where you'll be momentarily trapped in an arena-like area that more so resembles a multiplayer map than a natural extension of the campaign level, and in these areas you'll need to square off with a horde of demons before you can progress. That's all fine and good and makes for some fun combat, but it happens a few too many times in each level for my liking. I'd rather progress through a level and spend more time fighting enemies over longer stretches of the level than to be constantly dropped into pits to have a gladiator battle to the death with demons for 5 minutes at a time. Again, this is something I thought Doom 3 did a lot better, as it feels like there's more of a natural progression through the level (and perhaps the only reason I'm saying that so much is because I'm currently playing Doom 3: BFG Edition and it's easy to make the comparison with it fresh on my mind, but who's counting).
A few times during each level you'll have to destroy these glowy orb things, which then drops in a bunch of demons whom you'll have to do battle with until they're all dead. Hilariously violent, sure, but a little tedious.
That all being said, the overall experience was a positive one, and if Doom 3 was a more serious take on the franchise, then Doom 4 definitely goes back to the absurdly violent and nearly comical nature of the original games. You know, the "shoot it until it dies" kind of attitude. But you know what, that's perfectly fine with me.
Next up, we have The Evil Within 2. The original game sparked my interest way back in the distant past of 2014 when I heard it was directed by Shinji Mikami, the very same director of the original Resident Evil. The first game was pretty fun, like a strange mix of Silent Hill and Resident Evil. It's got plenty of horror to go around while still offering enough action to be varied and enough weird shit going on to keep me entertained.
Anyway, the second game picks up where the first left off, with our protagonist detective Sebastian Castellanos still haunted by the events of the first game, as well as the disappearance of his wife and young daughter. He's pulled back into action when people from Mobius, the mysterious corporation performing all manners of unethical experiments, tell him where to find his daughter: inside S.T.E.M., the virtual reality machine that's basically The Matrix combined with Inception. You know, giant fake world constructed by a computer in the real world. Throw in the "tortured former cop with nothing to lose" angle and this game really does start to feel like a giant amalgamation of generic plots thrown into a blender. Like, you could basically stitch together this entire game from scenes from other movies and games.
In a world...where evil is the rule of the land...a hard-boiled cop with nothing to lose gets plugged in to the system to take down the people who took away his family...oh, sorry, you've heard this before? In every single movie trailer ever, you say?
Well the plot might be as hackneyed as they come, but what about the actual gameplay? That's basically what makes the game playable. While it definitely leans more action-oriented than the weird, dream-like horror of the first game, the basic schema remains intact. You run around following different objectives, collecting lots of little pieces to craft into useful items and ammo, and do battle with a host of ugly creatures which have taken over the world of S.T.E.M. and turned it into a hellhole.
There's a little more of an open-world feel this time around. You'll have to run around in a large overworld area, fighting off enemies and hopping between objectives on a map. It's a little easy to get lost, but the map system is very helpful in finding your way. You can set waypoints on areas you'd like to get to, which really helps in guiding you along. However, everything is pretty non-linear; there's tons of little side missions and other points of interest to explore on the way to your next main objective. You'll also pass in and out of the "Marrow," which is a sort of in-between area within S.T.E.M. that controls how everything is formed in the overworld. You'll use the marrow to travel between overworld areas, and sometimes you must enter it during side missions. The side missions usually reward you with new weapon or a cache of ammo or parts, so there's plenty of incentive to seek them out.
The map is actually really cool and useful. Big points to the game for that.
I also enjoyed the weapon upgrading system a lot. You'll find various bits and pieces of weapon parts strewn throughout the game, which you can use to upgrade your weapons as you go. The pieces don't come easily, especially the so-called "high-grade" weapon parts which unlock further upgrades for each gun. You can also upgrade health and stamina and other abilities in a similar manner. It really does feel like an earned accomplishment to max out a weapon or a stat, and that's part of what makes the game as fun as it is, for me at least.
Despite the overall gameplay being fun, the nonsensical plot and generic characters kind of detract from the overall experience. Sebastian's voice actor unconvincingly grumbles his way through every line (who, by the way, is a new actor from the first game. I understand it's not always easy to get all of the same people to do all of the same parts over and over, but it's always just a little disappointing to me whenever that happens), and the rest of the characters don't exactly lend themselves to the experience. The first game was a lot darker in terms of the plot and it led to some really crazy and disturbing scenarios. It's basically a journey through the mind of a psychopath, and the tone of the game really reflects that. It seems like the sequel was really missing that element and turns more towards cliché action tropes than twisted horror. By the end, it just becomes "yeah yeah, you save the kid, take down the corporation, rediscover yourself, blah blah blah." But, again, at least the general gameplay makes up for it.
Anyway, so that's that for these two games. Would I recommend? Definitely, if you like shooting demons and not paying attention to the story too much. So hopefully it won't be another 5 months until I give another update. I have a few half-cooked reviews and whatnot in limbo on my computer, so I'd like to get back to finishing them sometime soon. In the meantime, relax, enjoy the summer weather assuming you live in a summer weather area at the moment, and also be happy that THE RESIDENT EVIL 2 REMAKE HAS FINALLY BEEN OFFICIALLY ANNOUNCED AND WE'RE GETTING IT IN 6 MORE MONTHS! YEEEEAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
