Look, I love the GB crew. But Patrick and Brad get on my nerves sometimes. Brad... he just needs to familiarize himself with games a WHOLE lot more before leading a Quick Look on them. Patrick; he's a fine journalist. A lot of the features he does for the site are eye opening and compelling. But he's a terrible REVIEWER. Whatever seems to be the general opinion of a game on the internet is his opinion, automatically. All the time. He does for Sonic games. And he did it for Painkiller. It's obviously not coming from personal experience - why must it be restated as fact?
What I'm talking about, specifically, is his claim that Painkiller and Serious Sam are basically modern day Doom.
I wish, desperately, that you guys would go back and actually play Doom. Or one of the mods for it (might I suggest Brutal Doom?).
I know it's the cliche, lazy internet thing to do, but comparing Painkiller and Serious Sam to Doom is just insulting Doom. They're completely mindless games; the Dynasty Warriors of shooters. I'm not saying they're not fun - I'm just saying, Doom did a lot more. And you guys should give credit to it instead of regurgitating the internet opinion that these new, dumb shooters are just like Doom.
I mean c'mon. Doom may have been "Go from point A to point B", but it didn't mindlessly throw enemies at you. It was as much about exploring Phobos as it was about battling the demons of Hell. Those levels were not linear, they weren't mere arenas to trap the player in. They had a really effective sense of place. They were loaded with secrets. You weren't just blazing through levels; you were looking for everything. And those environments were so effective, I bet you STILL know which wall hides the Chainsaw is in the first couple of levels.
Shooters today... their level designs are dogshit. Not just this "lock you in an arena until you kill x swarms of bad guys" stuff from Painkiller and Serious Sam, but also the "We're just a linear theme park attraction"-kind of crap from Call of Battlefield: Warfighter. Games from the 90's were FAR more ambitious; they really tried to establish these locales as places. There were way less invisible walls; there were tons of corridors and room and the way they were connected MADE SENSE. Make fun of color coded key cards all you want, but compare those levels to MOH: Warfighter and all of sudden, key cards look pretty awesome. It's astounding how backwards shooter design has gone.
Seriously, Patrick, Brad - I'm BEGGING you. Go back and play some older shooters. They're better than most modern shooters. They deserve more credit from you. Do another couple Quick Look throwbacks, like you did for Deus Ex.
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