Killing Time

Developer: Studio 3DO

Release Date: August 15, 1995

Time Played: Around 90 minutes

Troubleshooting: One surprisingly comprehensive fan patch. Who is the person weird enough to make this game not only playable, but surprisingly troubleshooting free on Windows 10? I do not know, but god bless them.

Dubiosity: 4 out of 5

CD-ROM Energy: Maximal

Would I play more? Would consider it for charity purposes. Otherwise? Nope. Noooo. Nope.

The dying gasp of the 3DO is something most people probably aren’t spending time thinking about, but I’m not most people. By 1995, Trip Hawkins’ experiment in a multi-format, multimedia, multi-hundred (six, to be exact) dollar CD console had failed to overtake the Genesis and SNES, not to mention the oncoming Saturn and PSX. Despite this, it had surprising amounts of support from Japanese developers (see: the best console versions of Super Street Fighter II Turbo and SamSho at the time, a bunch of “classics” like D and Doctor Hauzer, and perhaps unsurprisingly a bunch of weird eroges) and perhaps most relevantly to my sicko tastes, two very bad looking Dungeons and Dragons licensed RPGs. It’s not a platform without effort, I guess is what I’m trying to say, but a lot of that effort was in service to chasing the worst possible trends the industry was experiencing at the time and also it was $600 in 1993 money.

With that in mind, Killing Time came out a month before the PSX’s launch in North America and was ported to Windows the following year. It’s the last game from Studio 3DO, the company’s in-house FMV-focused development team, and was initially very promising for me and my particular darkness. Its intro is Peak FMV, with the idea of a bunch of 1920s flappers, bootleggers, and socialites trapped in some sort of occultish time bubble on a remote island off the coast of New England. Are you a bad enough dude to, um, wander the island’s grounds, discover the shards of an ancient artifact, and shoot a bunch of the most pre-rendered sprite enemies you can handle? Because I was fucking SOLD. Hot damn, this was gonna be the ideal replacement after Fire Warrior suffered the curse of “not working” and I was very, very excited to show it off to my audience.

To my great disappointment, Killing Time is simply not a very interesting First Person Shooter. The soundtrack is actually pretty good, the FMV snippets you find are suitably hammy as shit, but a lot of my time on stream was spent wandering around this island, slogging my way against hordes of easily-dispatched enemies, dealing with the game’s awful movement (your acceleration grinds to a halt the second you collide with any object, which makes running around more stuttery than it should) looking for a handful of key items to actually progress. There’s an interesting threat of non-linearity here, especially for a shooter from 1995, but without the competence (or guidance, for that matter) to actually pull it off it’s mostly just Bad Hexen (and if you know anything about how I feel about Hexen, this is not a compliment.) Oh, did I mention that finding walkthroughs for this game is a nightmare, because no one played this? Well, now you know. I do think this might be worth watching an LP for, I don’t think you need to experience the magic for yourself.

Witchaven

Developer: Capstone Software

Release Date: September 30, 1995

Time Played: A little under an hour and 20 minutes.

Troubleshooting: Build GDX support

Dubiosity: 5 out of 5

Duke Nukemosity: 0 out of 5

Would I play more? maybe

It’s probably fitting that we end this season with another high quality product using Ken Silverman’s Build Engine. The first game using that engine, released the same day as William Shatner’s Tekwar (also a Build Engine), by the same developer (Capstone Software), and somehow the better of the two. If you’ve watched any of Civvie 11’s videos (many of them being an inspiration for this wheel) you’ll know the particular brand of irony that comes from games made by a company whose tagline was “The Pinnacle of Entertainment Software.” I don’t hate myself enough to play Tekwar, despite its BuildGDX implementation, so the first person hack-n-slasher RPGish will have to suffice.

Witchaven has digitized claymation AND FMV spritework, so it’s already dubious in that sense, but being an early Build Engine game made by a team of noted incompetents makes it extra jank. So of course I had a pretty good time playing it. Random, frequent death traps, poorly-implemented level design, weapon durability, questionable hitboxes? Friend, this is a Capital D Dubious video game. Once again, I’ll trot out the Bad Hexen comparison, but while that was mostly a slight against Killing Time’s structure, for Witchaven I mostly mean in the sense that it’s a melee-focused FPS. You also level up, sometimes. It doesn’t seem to do much other than slightly increase your health and let you use different scrolls, but there was a point where I was considering throwing it onto The Wheel of Dubious RPGs instead.

The true secret to success in Witchaven is… you can kinda just run past everyone? Given how many hits from a dagger (which might randomly break) it takes to kill a slow-ass goblin, what if you just summoned your inner quake speedrun and zoomed past him? You need to find some sort of pentagram before you’re allowed to leave the level, which can be tedious, but also you can straight up bypass locked doors with the “open” spell instead of needing to find the key. Does that break one of the fundamentals of good FPS level design? Yes. Do I care? No. This game is busted enough without the advent of intentional sequence breaking, but it’s busted in a “fun” rather than a “fucked” way. It’s not good, you shouldn’t buy it, but as far as functional incompetence goes this is probably up there. At least, as far as what I saw. I would not put it past Capstone to fill the later levels with even more illusionary insta-death pit traps, but maybe Witchaven II is better? Who’s to say? Maybe a season 2? In any case, if you want a game with a similar aesthetic and energy which is actually worth your time, I’ll just remind you that Arthurian Legends exists.

But for now, that’s the end of The Wheel of Dubious FPSes. We learned a lot, and by “we” I mean me. I learned that Daikatana is somehow an acceptable barometer to judge if a game is “bad bad” or “good bad” or “interesting bad” just as I learned a lot of console shooters before the 360 era are rough to go back to. Except, surprisingly enough, the console version of PowerSlave, which is vastly superior to its PC counterpart. (no, seriously, PowerSlave Exhumed is very good and worth a look.) Maybe I’ll play Duke Nukem Forever for charity, because it’s terrible and I hate it! Heck, I spent time in my life that I’ll never get back to make Turok 3’s control scheme resemble a modern FPS, and it sort of worked! Turok 3 is weird! Night Dive remaster plz.

Moreso than the RPG wheel, I also think I learned a thing or two about “tech” and “engines'' and “getting shit to run properly.” Part of that is just reading Masters of Doom, to be fair, but the story of the First Person Shooter genre is as much about the tech as the games themselves. Unreal Engine 3’s entire beefchunk shiny lighting aesthetic is readily apparent no matter where you look, and it has aged more than you’d think! Unreal Engine 1 though? Still clean as hell, with the kind of stuff that will melt your Voodoo-Accelerated 3D Graphics Card. I learned that, despite loving several of their games, Monolith’s LithTech engine is a fucking nightmare to get running well on a modern 64 bit OS. Also, I dunno, Quake is fast and that’s very good.

As mentioned in my last blog, my next wheel is already in progress. The Wheel of Ukraineous Video Games is my attempt at celebrating the efforts of Ukrainian video game developers in the only way I know how: by putting them on a randomizer wheel and streaming 2-4 hours of them. Well, not this first game. I’m playing through all of Sherlock Holmes Crimes and Punishments on my internet twitch because it turns out that game actually rules? I’ll also be including a donation link to the Ukrainian Red Cross in all of my streams and write-ups because fuck man I dunno what else I can do without being a weird war voyeur (Waryeur?) Please give if you can. I’m not gonna do a fundraiser or anything (given that I’m already on the hook for a certain community endurance run next month) but it’s the least I can do.

Nosferatu: Wrath of Malachi

Developer: Idol FX

Release Date: October 21, 2003

Time Played: A little under two hours

Troubleshooting: Fan-made widescreen patch

Dubiosity: 5 out of 5

Questions I have for the people who made this: Several

Would I play more? ... maybe.

From the developers of noted Xbox disasterpiece Drake of the 99 Dragons (no, seriously) comes what might well be the most obscure game on this wheel? Nosferatu: Wrath of Malachi is, um. It’s… uh. It’s “interesting?” Vaguely based on the silent movie of the same name? Apparently made in something like six months? It’s definitely unique. In what can generously be termed a “run-based game,” Nosferatu tasks you with exploring a haunted castle, rescuing your extended family, and murdering the vampires therein all in exactly two hours of real time. Oh did I mention the castle layout is randomized? Is it a roguelite? No, because you can make hard saves. Then… does it really have enough stuff to warrant replays? I wouldn’t say so.

With that in mind, this game is a weird platypus that reflects the ways procedural generation is, on its own merits, not an inherent good. The various wings of Castle Malachi may have randomized layouts of rooms, items, and enemies, but it sure does all look the same. You can generally assume that some sort of ghoul or hell hound is going to ambush you before you even open a door, thanks in part to the game’s “special” sense of audio design, in which a very loud public domain horror stinger will play right before you’re ambushed by a creature of the night, giving one enough time to react, point their flintlock pistol (eventually you get good guns too) at it, and pull the trigger. Did I mention that, for some ungodly reason, all of the animations are like 15 FPS, which makes the whole thing feel more unstable than it is?

Anyway, some of the family members are guarded by bosses, some of them are just hanging out in random rooms, at some point they’ll eventually die so you’ve gotta hustle (or save scum) your way to victory and escort them back to the main courtyard. While you technically don’t *need* to do this, saving everyone is required for the true ending (which I sure didn’t reach) and you also get some powerful items for doing so. Like a machine gun. Or, um, a chalice you can fill up with holy water and sprinkle upon the denizens of Satan? The shooting is odd, made odder by the chance that you’ll find a ton of ammo for the more useful guns (the musket, the revolver) in some runs and will be dry in others. When in doubt, stakes out. That’s not a goof, the stake is a pretty good melee weapon.

That said, Wrath of Malachi has that all important je ne se quois that defines that of a truly quality dubious video game: there’s nothing else quite like it. It’s a memorably weird construct of the purest uncut jank, combining a real-time clock like it was a Majora’s Mask with escort missions, bad animations, and just the most dubious sound design. It’s a hall of fame candidate for sure, and for whatever it’s worth it’s still somehow not the worst thing I’ve played. A ringing endorsement!

Perfect Dark Zero

Developer: Rare

Release Date: November 18, 2005

Time Played: A little under two hours

Troubleshooting: I mean, I had trouble shooting, but that has more to do with how weird the aim sensitivity and assist is than anything else. It’s in Rare Replay. It didn’t require any troubleshooting.

Dubiosity: 3 out of 5

Chances my friend and I play through this entire game cooperatively on stream: High

Would I play more? See above.

Despite knowing its reputation, I don’t think I was prepared for how much of a mess Perfect Dark Zero is. I mean, I probably should’ve guessed, given the troubled development cycle that only comes from being shifted between three consoles (Gamecube -> Xbox -> 360), being shoved out as a launch title, and being a prequel to a N64 game I already don’t particularly care for. Unsurprisingly, it feels more like a bridge between the SD and HD era of console shooters than just about anything else I’ve played; somehow trying to split the difference between the original Perfect Dark and like… Halo 2, or something. It does not succeed.

It’s a weird misshapen mass of a single player first person shooter campaign, with limited loadout slots and regenerating health like a post-halo (although in a move I think more games should consider, guns take up a different amount of slots depending on how big they are) but a mission structure that is far closer to the objective-based stuff of the first game. There’s also perfunctory stealth (like the first game), but also a dodge roll and a cover system (not in the first game,) both of which pull the camera out to third person, inexplicably. In a better game that’d probably mash together better. Unfortunately, given that this is, in fact, a 360 launch game before the standardization of FPS controls on console, it’s not that.

Instead it’s mostly just clunky, weird and just absolutely wretched with eye-searing light bloom. In my two hours with the game, I did an escort mission, struggled against surprisingly bad visual readability (see: Light Bloom), and did some bad lockpicking and hacking minigames. The shooting feels… off? There’s a weird thing where the horizontal aim sensitivity is significantly more than the vertical, which gives the whole thing an almost Killzone-esque swimmy momentum. The weapons themselves are neat, I guess, with numerous alternate fires and alternate modes. I imagine you’ll see more of it soon enough…

And that’s it for me for today, though there’s still ONE MORE write-up I have to throw out before I’m entirely done with the Wheel of Dubious FPSes. On a more serious note, it’s been a bit rough the last few days with the whole “watching a country get invaded in real-time, over the internet” thing. So, in a slight against the powerlessness I currently feel and a reflection of my own personal brand, I’ve decided this next wheel is going to celebrate video games from Ukrainian developers. Did you know that most of the work for Darkened Skye, "The Skittles Game" was outsourced to a Ukrainian team? I do now! I’m also going to include a donation link to the Ukrainian Red Cross in every stream and blog for this reason, because at some point I’d like to say I did something, anything, to help.

Mars: War Logs

Developer: Spiders

Release Date: April 26, 2013

Time Played: A little over 6 hours

Troubleshooting: none

Dubiosity: 5 out of 5

Best Character Name: Innocence Smith

Would I play more? No. No. No. I beat it. You can’t put this on me.

Mars War Logs is a wretched thing. I say that without my usual dose of irony, sarcasm, or genuine affection for weird garbage; it’s one of the worst video games I’ve played to completion in my history of writing internet blogs. That’s impressive, given some of the other things I’ve looked at, but it’s a special combination of dull, mean spirited, and baffling that really brings it all together. What other game starts with attempted prison rape (no, really) before offering the cliff notes version of a prison escape sequence, rebellion, and extremely rushed third act. I know I’ve sometimes asked for shorter RPGs, but this is probably the most cursed monkey paw manifestation of that wish.

To be clear, there’s still plenty of goof-able material here, between the quality of the English voice acting, the quality of the writing, or the quality of my anger as my streams progressed. As extremely “cool dude” Roy Temperance (it’s a whole thing, basically Abundance colonists all have virtue names but because your protagonist is a “cool dude” he calls himself Roy) you navigate your way through a series of ugly-ass brown corridors, driven by something resembling a plot where things happen, engaging in fights with the same handful of enemy types using the same handful of abilities from hour 1 to hour 6. You pick up companions who have personalities, sort of, including a romantic subplot that is straight up gross (especially when you consider that the female character involved is portrayed as both very young and emotionally unstable.) The writing is equal parts teen angst edgy and workmanlike dullness, filtered through the additional lens of clearly not being natively written in English. And apparently I played the “fixed” version.

There’s no dancing around it; this was a $15 XBLA game when it came out; I bought it for less than a dollar when I played it in November. It shows. This is maybe the hardest example of “reach exceeding grasp” I’ve seen in a published Eurojank RPG, because it tries and fails to hit every single beat you’d expect to see in a game like this. There’s a bad crafting system, perfunctory stealth, three different ways to spec (none of which actually change how you fight or play the game in any way other than “lightning magic”) There’s a spirit of madness here that cannot be understated. Where other developers would’ve cut these features entirely, Mars War Logs has the temerity to half-assedly implement all of them. In that sense, in a "how did this get made, why were these the choices you chose?" perspective, it's a fascinating piece of garbage. Probably a little too functional to be in full Ride to Hell: Retribution territory, but not far off. Do not play this video game.

CW: Like I said above, there's some gross shit in this game

The Technomancer

Developer: Spiders

Release Date: June 28, 2016

Time Played: A little under 7 hours

Troubleshooting: none

Dubiosity: 2 out of 5

Budget: Significantly more than Mars War Logs, that’s for sure.

Would I play more? No. I’ve decided to treat myself better this year, and if I’m going to play garbage, it’s going to be more meaningful garbage. Mediocrity will not cut it.

Okay so here’s why I wanted to do this write-up, because I need to talk about Spiders. Not the animal, at least I don’t think. I speak of the French studio who’ve somehow eclipsed the likes of Cyanide, Piranha Bytes (heck, maybe even Dontnod) as the preeminent purveyors of busted-ass European-developed RPGs. The Technomancer is the follow-up to Mars: War Logs, set in the same world during roughly the same period of time. Yet, despite only being three years apart, it’s a massive improvement. There is budget! There is visual design! The worldbuilding is something resembling coherent! They could afford Matt Mercer for a few hours! It’s like, a full-length video game! Instead of being one of the worst games I’ve played (definitely one of the worst I’ve streamed) it’s just kinda mediocre! And I want to talk about this, because it breaks me inside.

I’m saying there’s a notable progression to Spiders’ work as a studio. You may recall my write-up on Bound By Flame (released one year after Mars: War Logs) from roughly a bajillion years ago, in which I called it an accidental comedy masterpiece (and also a terrible piece of garbage.) You may also recall my write up on Greedfall, in which, after about four or five hours I said “wow this is borderline competent.” Greedfall also seemed kind of boring, but like a horrific Boston Dynamics robot learning how to open a door, it’s abundantly clear Spiders is learning. Slowly but surely they’re crawling ever closer to making a mediocre approximation of a mid-2000s Bioware game. At this rate, Steel Rising will be on par with Jade Empire. Tremble in fear.

The funny thing though, is that for as much as I think they’ve gotten better (and also gotten significantly more budget) as time has gone on, I’m still not convinced they know how to design a good role-playing game. The Technomancer exemplifies this. Why does it have a “well rested” bonus like a MMO? Why does the introduction sequence (which sees your protagonist, one Zachariah Rogue Mancer, paired with two generic chumps who clearly don’t give off “long-term party member” material) take as long as the entirety of Mars: War Logs? Why are there so many pointless, incremental upgrade systems in all of Spiders’ games? Why would I ever want to spec into traps? Can you think of an RPG where you’ve ever wanted to spec into putting down traps? If you’re that person, please comment below and explain yourself. There are a lot of systems in all of their games (and in the Technomancer and Greedfall, they’re at least better implemented than they are in previous titles) but it’s one of those things where I’m not sure the developers could tell you *why* those systems are in there outside of other games having similar ideas.

Mostly though, I think The Technomancer’s biggest crime is that it’s just really, really boring. Removed from the Roger Corman-esque zero budget charm (audacity?) of War Logs and Bound by Flame it’s just another janky, poorly-written, lethargically paced Eurojank RPG without anything else to hang its hat on. The peak moment of my time with the game wasn’t anything involving the characters, or the plot, or the combat (which mostly involved me spamming lighting as much as possible.) It was the moment in a side quest when, with zero context, you give a rock to a woman who eats it and immediately dies. The *why* is explained later, but in the moment it was the funniest shit imaginable and reminded me far more of the high points present in Bound by Flame.

There’s an unabashed earnestness and clear ambition present in all of these games, which is why I can’t help but root for Spiders even though they never hit what they’re aiming for. I mean what I say when I compare their output to the worst of Bioware’s oeuvre, but in a world where Bioware isn’t pumping out hits like they used to it’s nice to know that someone, somewhere is trying to fill that gap. And who knows? In the last 10 years, Larian Studios went from making noted dubious game Divinity II: Ego Draconis to making motherfucking Baldur’s Gate III. CD Projekt went from making a weird eurojank RPG using a heavily modified Neverwinter Nights 1 engine, based on Polish fantasy novels no one had read in English, to turning The Witcher into a series popular enough to be a goddamn Netflix staple. Hell, maybe I’ll go back and play more Greedfall some day. Never count them before they’re out.

It sure is good that I've learned my lesson by... oh wait, no, I'm gonna play that 2018 Cyanide Call of Cthulhu RPG soon. Nevermind. Haven't learned my lesson at all.

Apologies for taking so long with this one, but between Game of the Year blogs and starting school again, it’s been a bit for me to sit down and pump out some blogs. As a recompense, I’ve just thrown all four games I’ve played since the last dubious write-up into one package. Truly I am generous.

Clive Barker’s Undying

Developer: Dreamworks Interactive

Release Date: February 19, 2001

Time Played: Around two hours

Troubleshooting: Very little, surprisingly, though there is a widescreen fix and subtitles mod that I probably should’ve installed before streaming.

Dubiosity: 2 out of 5

Would I play more? Yes

Clive Barker’s Undying is a game about Patrick Galloway, the world’s worst fake Irish accent, exploring a haunted mansion of similarly bad accents and uncovering the history of an accursed family. It’s also, quite possibly, a little too good to be among the likes of your Duke’s Nukems Foreverses and Turok 3s, but when has cult classic status ever been a deterrent for me? If anything, it’s the opposite. I’ve never read any stories written by Clive Barker, I’ve never seen Hellraiser, and heck if I’ll ever play the other FPS with his name attached to it. This is the one for me.

Between this and The Wheel of Time, I’m reminded that Unreal Engine 1 had a strong look to it that its id tech 2 and 3 rivals never quite managed to match. There’s still enough sharp art direction to make Undying stand out. It’s not actually scary, but it at least has both spooky vibez and storytelling pretensions between the parts where you shoot demons and pirates, collect keys, and read notes with impossible to read standard definition fonts. There’s also a fun eclectic mix of traditional 1920s firearms, weird magic shit, and a slow-ass rocket launcher that is just a chinese dragon. It’s one of those things where the enemies sometimes come off as a little too fast and/or aggressive for the size of the environments you’re dealing with (narrow, cramped hallways, a lot of the time) but you can do the “shoot magic and guns at the same time” thing from Bioshock 2 about eight years earlier.

It’s a neat little thing, although I apparently did not get far enough to see the part where time and money ran out in the wake of EA acquiring the studio mid-development and shoving the game out the door posthaste. That might be something to look into in the future, although I’m forcing myself to not start any new full playthroughs of games on stream until I “finish my plate” with some of the stuff I’ve left undone. At the very least, it’s doing stuff that was novel in 2001. We’ll have to see what 2022 brings as far as streaming titles.

Shogo: Mobile Armor Division

Developer: Monolith

Release Date: September 28, 1998

Time Played: Around 90 minutes

Troubleshooting: Fan Patches and Widescreen Fixes and goofing around with dgVoodoo

Dubiosity: 4 out of 5

Japanimation: Off the Charts

Would I play more? No

For as much as Sudeki and Septerra Core really leaned into the “Western game developers try to do anime” angle, they cannot hold a candle to Shogo, which is the most “I bought this bootleg fansub of a Gundam episode on VHS from a guy in New York for $200” energy imaginable. It’s anime through the lens of white dudes watching anime during the anime boom of the 90s, complete with borrowed sound effects, numerous references to other mecha shows, and voice acting that sounds like it was done by amateurs. It’s a cultural artifact of a very specific time, and probably should be taken in that context. In the Year of Our Lord 2022, there are few things I find more tiresome than when a western work evokes anime stuff by throwing in as many “wacky Japanisms” in as possible. Shogo: Mobile Armor Division is not the worst offender in that regard, more an earnest tribute than anything, but the faux-orientalism is still present in a way I found obnoxious.

As a first-person shooter, however, Shogo is a game I would call “messy.” Listen, I know I just gave Blood my “old game of the year” award, but perhaps leaning a little too hard on the “hitscan assholes at all times” modality of Blood was a bad thing for Monolith, actually. The difference is that the shooting, environments, and encounter design of Blood is usually interesting enough that I enjoy it even with the compulsive quicksaving. With Shogo, it’s made worse with the addition of random “critical hits” for both you and enemies, which really doubles down on the “enter a room and lose all your health in two seconds” nature of it all. The parts where you plod around with a giant robot are probably the best parts, although they’re less Mechwarrior and more, um… Heck… Warrior? That’s what they call Doom, right? In any case, take the slow tanky robot because there’s no way to avoid taking damage in this game, which is nominally something I think a game like this should not have.

Oh right did I mention that you have to go into a hex editor to bind the fire button to the mouse instead of control? Wh-why? Why would you do this. Anyway, I didn’t get to the part of the game where you rescue a cat so as far as I’m concerned 0/10.

SiN

Developer: Ritual Entertainment

Release Date: October 31, 1998

Time Played: About 90 minutes

Troubleshooting: Fan Patch. No other complications.

Dubiosity: 4 out of 5

Number of Basic Instinct references: 1

Would I play more? I don’t understand why NightDive would remaster this game, because my answer is an emphatic no. That said these guys made Star Trek Elite Force 2, which I would like to check out at some point given how solid that first one was.

SiN is a game whose greatest accomplishment is being the game that Half Life beat during all of those fun internet message board wars of the late 90s, and then getting beaten again by Half Life 2 episode 1 eight years later. From the outside, I guess I can see how that would’ve played out with preview coverage and magazine articles, but with the benefit of 23 years’ hindsight it’s not even a competition. Forget that it launched with a ton of bugs and technical issues (the very first Penny Arcade strip being about the game’s infamously long loading times, which I weirdly didn’t experience with my SSD), SiN begins with a loud, dumb turret sequence, which by The Dubious Law of Turret Sequences*, means I’m legally required to say it’s bad. It’s also the most aggressively 90s first person shooter I’ve played for this feature, which I’d say is absolutely a net negative.

As extremely cool 90s action hero John R. Blade, it’s up to you to fight the forces of SiNtek in the far off future of 2037 with the help of your chatty radio co-pilot, J.C. Armack. He’s literally just John Carmack. But watch out dudes, because SiNtek’s leader, Elexis Sinclare is a totally smoking babe with some evil tricks up her sleeve and copious amounts of boob jiggle. Are you a bad enough dude to fight private security forces and mutants in order to save the city? How embarrassed were you by the previous sentences in this paragraph? Are you, perhaps, a teenager with access to the internet in the late 90s? Or a video game developer with access to the internet in the late 90s? It’s like, one step removed from Duke Nukem in terms of “oh god these people think this is actually cool” but I will continue to emphasize that Duke 3D is at least a pretty solid FPS.

Prior to making SiN, the only game Ritual Entertainment made was Quake Mission Pack 1: Scourge of Armagon, which I’ve played enough of recently to say is probably not the part of Quake you should spend your time on. With that in mind, you can see where the comparison to Half Life (and the active rivalry encouraged by the developers) came to be, because there’s certainly some level of “cinematic” ambition here, with things like “set pieces” and “jumping puzzles” and “dynamic mission objectives” and “oh no did you say jumping puzzles.” It’s bright, it’s colorful, it’s got that Quake II colored lighting drip, alongside fun stuff like “interactive computer terminals. The guns are profoundly standard by that metric.

In a shared trait for pretty much all of the games in this write up, it’s also weirdly hard in the way that a lot of games from this era were. Enemies have destructible armor on different parts of their body, which despite being a shared trait with both Akiba’s Trip and several Senran Kagura games, is mostly irritating in the sense that you can blow through a lot of ammunition against regular mooks if you aren't hitting them in the head, especially given their long, drawn-out death animations. It became a big enough problem that my first encounter with the giant mutant monster in a cramped, tiny area with not enough ammo broke me. Enough so, that I eventually just turned on god mode, ran around with the helicopter turret from the beginning of the game and got through the level that way. I’m not above it. Similarly, I’m not above saying that the perfunctory stealth level that follows, while impressive in the sense that first person shooters didn’t usually have stealth sequences in 1998, is a bad time. If I wanted that I’d play Thief: The Dark Project. I stopped there, and you should take my lead and never start. SiN. Not even once. Please look forward to SiN Episodes 1, coming to The Wheel of Dubious FPSes Season 2.

*In the spirit of Eric Wolpaw and Old Man Murray’s “Time to Crate” allow me to introduce “Time to Turret Sequence;” the official Dubious Wheel standard for when your video game has given up. Turret sequences are bad. They’ve always been bad. They’re a low-effort way to try and mix up gameplay, but aren’t interesting or creative enough to do that. Just Say No.

Blood II: The Chosen

Developer: Monolith

Release Date: November 20, 1998

Time Played: An hour during the GBCER last year and another 90 minutes now.

Troubleshooting: Somehow LithTech being the most troublesome engine to deal with has become a running trend for me, because even with fan fixes and dgVoodoo this ran POORLY.

Dubiosity: 5 out of 5

Would I play more? No. Nooooo. NOOOOOOOOO. I already did it for charity, you can’t make me do more.

As the sequel to 2021’s “Best Game that didn’t come out in 2021” it is my unfortunate duty to announce that Blood II is butt. The other LithTech release of 1998, rushed out the door to compete with Half Life, (wait, sensing a pattern here) it’s a broken, unpleasant mess of a game that both fundamentally misunderstands what makes that first Blood good and also manages to top Shogo in the “quick saving between every encounter” department. I haven’t played Soldier of Fortune, but like… maybe LithTech is a bad engine? Is Might and Magic IX the best LithTech game? Should I go back and try NOLF again?

Regardless, take everything I said about Shogo being hitscan city and just multiply that by the technical issues I was having on top of some of the limpest weapons I’ve dealt with in a first person shooter. See, while Blood II is nominally a sequel to Blood, complete with Stephen Weytes reprising his role as Caleb, it moves the game’s setting and tone from 1920s goofy pulp horror to something vaguely future-ish and dystopian. The story and level design is a bit of a mess, given the game’s blatantly unfinished nature, although some of the inspirations of the original shine through here and there. Oh, what’s that? Most of the guns are inaccurate and have very little feedback or punch, while the enemies will immediately start firing on you as soon as they see you? Wow that sounds terrible. At least Shogo had an okay shotgun and Big Toonami Energy. This just has the occasional quip from Caleb, which becomes less endearing when you hear it over and over again because you keep fucking dying over and over again. I, uh, resorted to the console for this one as well. No regrets.

I cannot emphasize enough, this one’s a real stinker, and probably killed the franchise for good. Given that, due to the nature of various acquisitions and mergers, the license is in the hands of Atari (yes, the hotel and speaker hat people) I think it’ll probably stay that way. That’s fine. There are still plenty of well-liked level packs for Blood 1 I haven’t tried, and plenty of better throwback FPSes I haven’t given full attention to. Better to leave this one behind, because I think I’d rather play Duke Nukem Forever again than touch this one, at least not without figuring out the technical problems. Part of that might be heartbreak, true, but at least DNF functions properly.

That said, please look forward to the last few entries of the wheel we have coming up, because it's nothing but "Bangers" from here on out. I just... I really need to show someone Killing Time. Thank god Fire Warrior broke so that I may show the world the 3DO's Finest FPS.

Hi my last blog took me too long so let’s get this done with. I’ve got like two dubious FPS blogs I need to write after this. Order is pretty loose for most of these.

Honorable Mentions: Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, Quake, Brigador, Battletech, Total War Three Kingdoms

These are some games I played this 2021 that I couldn’t fit on this list. I recommend them.

10. Grandia II

So hey, I’m going to be obnoxious about this, but I’m on a podcast now. Off the Deep End is a podcast featuring me, ZombiePie, and JeffRud in which we cover RPGs in-depth. What this has meant in practice over the last year is a trinity of quality JRPG playthroughs and some very, very bad (one might even say… dubious) nonsense. Lord of the Rings: The Third Age is very dull! Tecmo Secret of the Stars is a pillar of incompetence! Drakkhen is… a work of art? Yes. You should listen to us! I have three episodes worth of stuff to say about this video game! That’s all I’ll self-promote on this write-up. Please subscribe to my Twitch.

Anyway, Grandia II is a JRPG we played for said podcast with less-than-immaculate pacing and difficulty, but a really, really solid combat system and some fun enough characters and story. I’d say it’s a pillar of the “Big Dreamcast Energy” aesthetic, always trying to punch far, far above its weight. Did I mention that like, half the cast of Metal Gear Solid does the english dub for this thing? The combat system, which is all about timing attacks to stuff enemy actions, is genuinely fantastic… and also profoundly easy. If you’re interested in playing the recent HD remaster, I very much recommend you play this thing on hard, otherwise you’re going to spend almost every random encounter spamming the same handful of AOE spells.

9. Tales of Berseria

In my continued exploration of Namco-Bandai’s eternal comfort food JRPG franchise, I’ve discovered there are approximately three criteria for any given Tales of game: A. How good is the LIMB system? B. Are the characters good anime or bad anime? C. How are the RPG maintenance management mechanics? For better or worse, the games know what they are and the biggest difference between them usually comes down to increments, rather than radical gameplay shifts. Tales of Zestiria (at least based on my brief foray for The Wheel of Dubious RPGs) is a perfect example of how sedate pacing, dull characters, and ass-backwards itemization can sabotage a game that, on paper, isn’t much different from the games that came before and after it.

Tales of Berseria is about as aggressive a response to Zestiria as possible in an 18 month turnaround time. The core is mostly the same, but the end result is far different. I think what really sold it for me (aside from the combat, which is a good time) is the very intentional inversion of the usual Tales cast, replacing the happy-go-lucky idiots who populate the series’ ensembles with a band of far more morally questionable, emotionally volatile scallywags. Velvet is maybe a tad too Shadow the Hedgehog at times, but she’s at least justified in being fucking pissed at the Lawful Neutral assholes who act as the game’s antagonists. Having your kid brother murdered as part of a blood sacrifice ritual will do that to you.

Where it starts to lose me is just an issue of length and repetition. Cannot speak for Arise yet, but the way modern Tales games handle overworld map areas isn’t great. Berseria’s are certainly better than the visually abysmal slogs of Xillia, but you can tell where the budget on these games went and it wasn’t on environments. We’ll see if I pick up my save and try to finish this in 2022, but even 30+ hours in I’m willing to say “this is a good one of those.” Please look forward to my Graces F(s in the Chat) playthrough. If I say it out loud enough times it’ll happen. (maybe it’ll happen)

8. Silent Hill 2

Now that Giant Bomb has an official Silent Hill ambassador we can finally cast off the shackles that have been imposed upon survival horror fandoms for too long. Tank Controls are in, camera angles are mostly fixed, and ammo is to be conserved for when you need it. So sayeth I, the person who at one point got pretty okay at amatuer speedruns of old Resident Evil games. Begone, discordites and naysayers, you have no power here, for Jess “Voidburger” and Jan Ochoa are with us! RUN FOR THE HILLS (is a pretty fun video series.)

Etc etc. Anyway, after owning it for about a decade I finally got around to playing Silent Hill 2, and for once it was nice to see a beloved classic actually live up to its reputation. Silent Hill 2 is as much about James Sunderland, general garbage man and husband of the year material, as it is about a constant oppressive mood and overwhelming sense of discomfort. And it still works! The combat is anemic and the puzzles are mostly obnoxious, but all of that is secondary to vibez and psychosexual creepy monsters. That’s what people come to Silent Hill for, I’m pretty sure, and Silent Hill 2 delivers on what I was promised. Would recommend.

7. Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast

Of the various Raven games I played in 2021, I think the one to go for is absolutely Jedi Outcast. Coming out during the previous nadir of Star Wars media probably counted for a lot in 2002, but even 19 years removed I still had a good time. It starts slow and the default stormtrooper rifle is absurdly inaccurate trash, but by the time Kyle gets his jedi powers and lightsaber back it’s a fun time slicing stormtroopers apart in vicious fashion. While the actual story is an extremely blase video game there’s a lot of fun to be had with the way the power curve very quickly escalates into a one man army burning down the entire Imperial Remnant whilst jumping very, very, very high.

Where Jedi Outcast falters is whenever the level design gets confusing or I’m forced to deal with my nemesis and the true villain of the game: Darth Platformer. I’m saying there’s absolutely some Hexen DNA in the way JK2 requires you to run (and jump) around, finding switches and keys like it was going out of style. It fumbles with the pacing in a lot of ways, and I’d just like to thank Matt Rorie for the guide he wrote on GameFAQs 19 years ago for helping me get through it.

I also played Jedi Academy this year and… eh. It’s basically a stand-alone expansion with smaller, more concise levels and even less reason to use any of the guns. It’s a lesser game as a result.

6. Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain

Blood Omen is Kain, and specifically Simon Templeman’s performance as Kain; a combination of haughty soliloquy and smug narration. In a decaying world filled with insane wizards, plagues, and cowering townsfolk his commentary is the lens from which everything is viewed. It’s the right level of serious and hammy, made even more impressive given that something with this quality of VA and writing came out the same year as the original Resident Evil.

As a video game, it’s an earnest, if awkward attempt at trying to make a zelda-ish top-down action-adventure thing. It feels pieced together and clunky in spots, and by the end of my time with it I was very much done with the actual “playing” part. Thankfully the PC version with the fan patch solves the infamous loading times of the PSX original, but there’s still a lot of menu-ing and fumbling about. Hitboxes are wonky, certain abilities are overpowered, and progression is fairly linear. But that’s not what you’re here for. You’re here for Shakespearian vampires overwhelmed with hubris. Please look forward to me finally getting around to finishing Soul Reaver.

5. Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War - Dark Crusade

The thing that ruined my love of Real-Time Strategy (other than, of course, the death of the RTS genre in the 2010s) was the realization that I was *bad* at Real-Time Strategy. I wish I had played Dark Crusade when I was a lad, because this shit is a reminder of why I enjoyed the likes of Warcraft III and Red Alert 2 in the first place. Certainly, I’ve already expressed my appreciation for the second Dawn of War before, but the first game is a more traditional take on the RTS. Dark Crusade, the second expansion, is generally considered the best of them, and it’s the one I stuck with as a result. I also goofed around with the Ultimate Apocalypse mod for Soulstorm and that seems… impressive. Excessive? Impressive. You can build a lot of Imperial Guardsmen.

Where it works for me, as old man who doesn’t have time for this shit anymore, is the way it boils its factions down to a core handful of units and philosophies (which conveniently represent their tabletop counterparts.) Economy is gained by capturing points and building stuff on said points, or building power buildings. The AI is competent enough to require some amount of like, strategy and “build orders” but I don’t feel like I need to memorize a significant amount of counterplay for any given faction against any given faction. Chaos Space Marines tend to do pretty well against most things, actually, especially once you throw a couple plasma guns on them or give them stealth. Would I ever be interested in playing this against another human being? Probably not, unless they’re as incompetent as I am! But hey, kudos to Relic circa 2006 for making a single-player RTS that was actually satisfying to play.

4. God of War II

The second game in the hallowed “Angry Man Murders Greek Mythology and Sometimes Pushes Blocks” series is much like the first, but moreso. There’s something almost refreshing to go back to a game like this, given how unashamedly it is about being a fucking stupid, hyper-violent masculine power fantasy. Maybe that’s me and my broken sensibilities, but in a world where God of War has become the poster child for AAA Sad Dad games everywhere, going back to a time when Kratos just angrily smashes a man against a book until he reads it is very, very funny.

It’s still a combination of over-the-top, impressive spectacle (esp for a PS2 game) and hyperviolent murder times that made the first one a fun time. However, it’s probably a better game overall. The spectacle is more spectacular, the secondary weapons are more worthwhile, and the pacing is generally sharper. I still would hesitate to call it an exemplar of character action games compared to some of its Japanese counterparts, but what it lacks in overarching depth it makes up for in raw, bloody stupidity.

3. Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun

I have never played the original Commandos, nor any of the various Commandolikes that sprung up in the ensuing years (which is to mostly say… the sequels to Commandos, Desperados, and that one Robin Hood game.) It’s a weird subset of “stealth-focused tactics” that flared up for a handful of years, mostly from European devs, then vanished into the ether like so many other PC-focused vidyagaems. Until this?

Perhaps calling Shadow Tactics a “tactics” game is a misnomer. Your group of ragtag samurai, shinobi, and old men are a team of stealthy murder commandos, whose death is never far behind if discovered. Instead, stealth rules the day, the kind of hyper-mechanical, rules-focused stealth set in clockwork levels where a combination of aggressively encouraged quicksaves and “just sorta fucking around” rules the day. It’s the kind of game that rewards planning stuff out, but never *just* has one solution to the puzzle in front of you. Conversely, you can also very much muddle through and get away with far, far more than you think you’d be able to, assuming you’re fast enough or take advantage of the handful of “easy out” buttons the game gives you. Sometimes the solution to a samurai with a big, stupid vision cone is to shoot him and everyone else around him. It’s brilliantly designed, and what I’ve played of its followup, Desperados 3, inspires me with confidence that Mimimi is going to bring justice to the isometric stealth-em-up.

2. Xenosaga Episode 1: Der Wille zur Macht

Xenosaga is perhaps the single most audacious, self-indulgent, up-its-own-ass example of a genre that already trucks in excess. Should it be this high? Probably not. But as a piece of spectacle, something that represents the Japanese RPG at its absolute height of relevance and power, it’s trying to out-Final Fantasy Final Fantasy X. There are seven hours of cutscenes in this game, and most of them are absolute anime batshit insanity. It’s perhaps unsurprising that Monolith Soft have been making the same weird JRPGs about robots, god, and existentialism for the last 20-odd years, but even knowing this it’s still a step above even the insanity present in the Xenoblade games. Does it make sense? Will it pay off in any satisfying way in the next two Xenosaga games? PROBABLY NOT.

Admittedly the actual JRPG part is entirely passable but uninspiring. You’ve got a party of three, two different kinds of attack, and some of the characters can pilot robots. It’s not great, especially in contrast to some of the more inspired JRPG combat systems of the time (heck even FF X), but it’s firmly in the “inoffensive” category. The actual dealbreaker might be the part where the last third of this game is two very long, slog-y dungeon crawls which really soured me on it, but the last cutscene made up for it. You can fully expect me to pick Xenosaga Episode 2 up for the podcast in 2022, just as you can expect my co-hosts’ pain when I do so. Every time ZP complained about this game in discord it went up one spot.

1. Blood

I’ve been on record as saying that, quite honestly, the best modern throwbacks to classic shooters outstrip the games they’re trying to imitate. Even Doom and Doom II for all their influence, still have some bum levels where you spend an inordinate amount of time just looking for keys to open doors (Hi Sandy, hope you’re doing well.) Quake, for all its technical achievements, is both very brown and very straightforward; more remembered for heralding online FPS deathmatch than anything. If someone is gonna ask for recommendations on “shooters what go very fast” outside of Doom, I’m going to point in the general vague direction of DUSK, Amid Evil, and maybe Prodeus’ and Wrath: Aeon of Ruin’s early access campaigns before suggesting one spend their time playing… I dunno, Hexen. Don’t play Hexen. Treat yourself better than that.

Blood is the exception. As long as one goes in with the understanding that the default cultist enemies are hitscan assholes and therefore the most dangerous foe in the game, it’s a fun time! You know how the Build Engine’s greatest strength was the ability to create environments that actually looked like things? Blood uses that to great effect, with a lot of fun, thematic, and goofy levels which evoke the pulp horror tone the game is going for. It’s significantly less embarrassing with its dated pop culture artifacts than Duke Nukem 3D, significantly less racist than Shadow Warrior and significantly better than any other Build Engine shooter not mentioned. Somehow the game where there are just a bunch of corpses on meat hooks is the *least* problematic game built on that tech.

Now, outside of the environmental variety and atmosphere, it helps that Blood has a very good, very audacious selection of weapons. While the shotgun and tommy gun both feel powerful and effective, it’s everything else which really defines it. Getting good at chucking dynamite while running backwards is an acquired skill, as is shooting flares, running away, and waiting for the enemy to get set on fire. It’s the kind of loadout where everything is useful some of the time, and a lot of weapons are useful a lot of the time. Maybe half of this is the way Caleb, your weird cultist-cowboy protagonist cackles when things blow up, but I think this game is very good about things blowing up.

To put in perspective how hard I went in on Blood in 2021, I did the thing I only briefly toyed with when I was goofing around with Doom WADs and played through an entire fan-created campaign. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are many well-made, professional quality fan levels for Blood. Death Wish is the big one, but even just glancing around there’s plenty more I could delve into if I felt the desire. This… this is a good shooty shoot game. I like it a lot. Quicksave liberally.

Visual Novel of the Year: Muv Luv Alternative

At this point seemingly every visual novel recommendation of mine comes with the caveat that “you have to be down with anime bullshit” and “you have to be down for too much reading” but this is even more so when it comes to Muv Luv. One of the higher-profile, more influential VNs of the 2000s (right behind Fate Stay/Night), Muv Luv is directly or indirectly responsible for inspiring a lot of high profile stuff, limited to but not including Attack on Titan. That might be rough to see from the outset, given that the first part, Muv Luv Extra, is very much… not that. It starts out as a pretty standard dating sim, filled with a bunch of trope-y stuff that I find… tolerable and not much more. It’s only after slogging through 15ish hours of middling anime high school hijinks that the real picture reveals itself with Muv Luv Unlimited.

Without getting into it too much, by Muv Luv Alternative, the third part of the story, shit goes full bananas crazypants fucked up anime horseshit. Somehow it earns the wide-ass swings it makes with its character and story arcs, which is impressive when you consider how it starts out. Like last year’s winner, Umineko, it’s probably too long of an investment for its own good (and I haven’t even gotten into side stories and additional media because of course there’s that) but once it gets rolling… boy howdy. All you really need to know is that Meiya is Bae-ya and that Takeru gets better. Eventually.

Dubious Championship Game of the Year: King’s Quest VIII: Mask of Eternity

(Runners up: Daikatana, Omega Labyrinth Live)

I already wrote a whole write-up about King’s Quest VIII and how it represents the height of dubiosity for 2021. The dying gasp of the King’s Quest franchise (and the adventure game genre as a whole) is a fascinating one, and the journey to get that stupid piece of shit to fucking run is probably part of the reason why it sticks out to me as much as it does. It’s neither a fantastic adventure game nor RPG, but something stuck in the void between both, a technically impressive jank creature whose existence is easily on par with last year’s Ultima IX.

Daikatana is a similar deal to King’s Quest, in that its infamy belies a game more interesting (and therefore worthy of Dubious Championship Status) than one might initially think. Admittedly, playing through the entire thing in co-op with the fan patch let me see the ideas at play in John Romero’s magnum flopus without having to deal with its most heinous issues. It’s a temple to both Romero’s skill as a designer and his ineptitude as a manager, and it tries so, so, so much.

Omega Labyrinth Life is, uh, a game I bought on steam as a joke and now my friends make fun of me for playing it.

Replay of the Year: Vanquish

(runners up: Dead Space 2, SWAT 4)

When I first played Vanquish in like, 2017ish, I had an *okay* time, but never quite felt like I “got” it. After playing Vanquish again and realizing that you just need to play that shit like Bayonetta but shooter (i.e. dodge cancel, slide everywhere, engage in maximal violence) I had a much, much, much better time. Holy shit y’all, Vanquish is so good. I mean, I knew that Dead Space 2 was good (still good, turns out) and SWAT 4 was good (I might go as far as to recommend the Elite Force mode even for a first playthrough) but this is one of the harder turns I’ve done on a game in a hot sec.

Worst Game I Played in 2021: Mars War Logs

(Runners Up: Devil May Cry 2, F3AR)

I will write a whole dubious RPG blog about this in the future, but let me just say this is a miserable game. Thanks Spiders. Fear 3 is also very bad, and unlike Devil May Cry 2 I did not raise money for charity whilst playing it.

Hello once again it’s time for ArbitraryWater presents: “Video games I have played this year that came out this year.” Much like its predecessor, 2021 has been a bit of a mess for me personally but at the very least my continuing physical, mental, and social isolation meant I played far too many video games, including some vaguely relevant to our shared online conversation. This is what we’re here for, yes? The zeitgeist? This is the one time of year I’m legally allowed to talk about video games you’ve thought about in the last 10 years so let’s get to it.

11 (honorable mention). Solasta: Crown of the Magister

Superlatives: CRPG Participation Trophy, Best reminder that 5e has more combat options than hitting a dude or casting a spell, Baby’s First Homebrew Campaign

One of the undersung things about this current CRPG renaissance is the abundance of solid independent outings, most of which I’ve unfortunately missed. One day I’ll get around to, uh, at least more than the first five hours of Underrail or Tower of Time, just you wait. Thankfully, the one indie game I did get to was a pretty solid one, in Solasta: Crown of the Magister. Made by a small Paris-based team (some of whom previously worked on the Endless series) it is, in a lot of ways, an ideal toybox for D&D 5th edition mechanics, most of which have yet to be really translated into a digital form. Swen willing, Baldur’s Gate 3 will come out for real in the year of our lord 2022, but until then this is the closest you’re going to get.

Solasta reminds me a lot of Temple of Elemental Evil, actually, with its fully customizable party, emphasis on combat, and character building options. Given that they’re using 5e SRD (as opposed to the full D&D license), some of the omissions are unfortunate even if there are often homebrew additions to fill in the gaps. If one needed a reminder that you can, in fact, make interesting combat encounters with the ruleset, there’s plenty of evidence here. I’ll admit I personally found it on the easier side, but I’m also a monster and know a thing or two about grids of a square or hexagonal nature. Of course, the strict adherence to “rules as written” means a delightful abundance of shit I forgot was even in the PHB. Who doesn’t love trying to remember the difference between light and low-light? Or like, keeping track of rations? Just… don’t make a human in your party. Otherwise you’re going to have to deal with light management CONSTANTLY. Treat yourself better than that. They don’t even get the free feat.

Now, the problem with Solasta, and the reason why it didn’t actually scratch the top 10, is because there’s not a whole lot beyond it being a 5e character building and combat sandbox. The game’s story and writing is endearingly amateurish, helped by the bizarre and questionable decision of having your party of PCs automatically talk based on whatever background traits you gave them. The entire thing, from the secret lizard people invader storyline (no, really) to the dungeon design, to the weird half-baked faction and crafting mechanics all speaks to a level of enthusiasm I can get behind… but as an RPG? It’s probably a little closer to Neverwinter Nights 1, where the toolset is the draw and the included campaign… is not. Looking forward to seeing what comes out of the studio and the fanbase with enough time, but for now this is the honorablest mention I could give.

10. Necromunda: Hired Gun

Superlatives: Divine Cybermancy 40K, In the Dark Future of the 41st Millennium There Is Only Wall Running

Warhammer 40K is a license whose cache in video games has been notably cheapened over the last few years, after Games Workshop seemingly made it available to anyone with $5. There have been definite standouts, like 2018’s decidedly un-XCOM turn-based tactical tomb raider, Mechanicus (which I like a lot) and the solid-if-dry 4X (but not actually a 4X) Gladius. Necromunda: Hired Gun is another notable game, made by the same team of French weirdos responsible for E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy and Space Hulk: Deathwing. In other words, it’s the product of Eurojank royalty, and deserves proper deference.

Finally, finally FPSes are taking influence from Doom 2016 outside the strange dark corner that is the old-school shooter renaissance. Necromunda is here to take influence from that, Titanfall 2 and basically a half-dozen other random things. As a cyber gunman/woman deep under the hive cities of the Imperium, you engage in… I think there’s a plot? Maybe? There are grindable side missions? Why is the weapon customization both in-depth and impossible to parse? You get a grappling hook and a double jump and an air dash and cyber powers and an attack dog and an execution that restores health and just a lot of different weapons. As a result the combat alternates between fast paced murder and absolute clusterfuck, but either way it’s certainly enjoyable. Most of the time.

Honestly I think my favorite thing about Necromunda is just how good the art direction is. It’s one of the few games (alongside Space Marine) to really capture the absurd stupidity of 40K’s scale, and does so on a ground level. No Space Marines in the underhive, just a bunch of cockney-ass criminal types surrounding colossal mega-technology with a bunch of rusted imperial machinery and worn propaganda. That alone is probably worth the price of admission if you’re into the setting, and I think it’s been proven I’m into the setting. So it’s on the list.

9. Chivalry II

Superlatives: Dedicated yelling button, the knight game whose community isn’t swarming with nazis

Dedicated Yelling Button. Throw your dang sword at them. Sometimes the servers don’t work. Hey. Hi. It takes a lot for me to get into competitive multiplayer stuff anymore, but Chiv II is a good time. It’s the perfect middle point between sweaty pro-gamer execution-focused video game and a complete big-team clusterfuck, somehow doing that latter bit far better than this year’s Battlefield installment. Don’t have a whole lot else to say other than “it’s very satisfying to cut dudes” and “you should play this with me, maybe” If you’re the kind of person who reads every entry on this blog please drop a “bloggers” in the chat.

8. Arthurian Legends

Superlatives: They Made A Video Game Specifically For Me, This Year’s Troubleshooter Equivalent, Probably not on your list

In the arena of Game of the Year lists, my tastes can seem depressingly mainstream at times, despite my reputation as an obscurist weirdo. I’m never going to be one of those Giant Bomb guest lists that have 18 different games and non-games from itch.io that you played during a game jam with your game dev friends (also you had no time to play real video games because you were too busy making games during game jams with your game dev friends or getting into weird twitter fights.) So, the best I can muster is drawing upon the power of obscurity to talk to you about this first person shooter-brawler with only 200ish steam reviews, filled with digitized actors who are clearly the developer and his friends running around in chainmail. Arthurian Legends is very stupid, but it’s the exact level of stupid that I want. As someone who has spent this year delving into FPSes, both dubious and otherwise, it’s also a genuinely fun time.

“Finally, someone decided to make Witchaven but good” is a sentence no one but I and maybe Civvie-11 would say. Through three episodes you spend a lot of time fighting historically accurate monsters like Saxons, Gargoyles, Giant Spiders, Skellingtons, and Wizards, finding hidden secrets, doing a lot of violent decapitations, etc. The focus on melee works primarily because it’s simple, straightforward, and gives you a lot of tools (like running around throwing caltrops and kiting fools) but there’s also stupid nonsense like grenades, poison throwing knives, bear traps, and the occasional magic wizard staff. It’s a good time! You should play it

7. Cruelty Squad

Superlatives: DIVINE LIGHT SEVERED. You are a flesh automaton animated by neurotransmitters.

Cruelty Squad is fucked. Just an immensely unpleasant hell nightmare of a video game, intentionally made to be as upsetting as possible. Aggressively weird, vaguely immersive sim-ish, filled with an exceptional burning hatred of our current late-capitalist hellscape and the way it commodifies human existence. Did I mention this game is weird and fucked and somehow in spite of that also a totally good first person tactical shooter filled with a bunch of hidden stuff? Anyway please harvest the organs of your foes or get way into fishing, as to in any way game the stock market. It’ll make sense eventually. Or not.

6. Monster Hunter Rise

Superlatives: The one switch game I played this year aside from Ring Fit, the self-control award for not ruining my life

Monster Hunter Rise has the special distinction of being a Monster Hunter game that didn’t absolutely demolish my free time, personal well-being, or grades. By this metric, it might be the best Monster Hunter game. By another metric, the best thing about Rise might just be the way it takes Monster Hunter, a series notable for being leisurely, and makes it go fast. All of the quality of life streamlining from World is still intact, but with the added mobility and a far more generous grind it might just surpass it. The gunlance is good again, finally. The regular lance is still good. It looks and runs astoundingly well for something on the Nintendo Switch. Will I get the master rank expansion and sink another 60+ hours? Probably. Will I go all the way down the bad choices path and re-purchase it on PC? Maybe? Hopefully not? Get your release shit together capcom.

5. Halo Infinite

Superlatives: John Halo Fucks Shit Up Award For Being A Good Halo, Titanfall 2 Award for Good Grapple, Game I cannot play with my brother-in-law because I get matched against absolute savages and he cares slightly too much.

The most relevant Halo has been in years is also the most relevant I’ve been about Halo. Campaign-wise, 90% of that is the grapple hook. As someone who cannot stand the Ubification of big open worlds, the open worldish segments of Halo Infinite aren’t especially thrilling on their own, but being able to swing around like a 7-foot-tall space brick Spider-Man whilst committing acts of relentless violence against the Not-Covenant II is some of the most fun I’ve had with a shooter in quite some time. I think the actual linear levels are kind of a bummer. A large portion of that is just how many of them take place in the same neon-lit forerunner corridors that this series has relied upon for far, far too long (and sometimes red-lit banished corridors.) Similarly, the relegation of the “outside” bits to open world shenanigans means that there’s less room for “the tank level” and so I was forced to have my own fun with the tank in the open world, which.. Let me tell you. That open world is not built for tanks.

Story-wise, it’s kind of a mess. The idea of “normal man and manic pixie AI deal with The Master Chief” is a solid enough premise, but the whole narrative throughline and resolution to the stuff from Halo 4 and 5 makes me glad I very much do not care about the deep lore. I care about headshots with pistols, exactly how squirrely the warthog is, and the screams of my foes as I grapple to them and then punch them. The campaign in general feels like a very strong foundation for much *better* Halo-ing, and I’m interested to see what comes of it. Also I’m probably gonna play Halo 5 for the first time in 2022, so look forward to that trainwreck.

More importantly, the multiplayer is actually great. For once, having the geriatric reflexes of someone pushing 30 is actually a benefit, and my latent Halo 3 experience circa 2007-2010 is finally paying off. It’s faster whilst not ever really betraying what makes Halo novel and good. as the last mainstream arena shooter. It’s still about controlling power weapons and vehicles, with a decent split between sweaty pro gamer stuff and big team chaos. Now if they’d make the next battle pass better and fix matchmaking for BTB that’d be alright. Just don’t read the subreddit.

4. Inscryption

Superlatives: Gino “ThatPinguino” Grieco Personal Card Hell Trophy, Vibezzz Award, Game Everyone Else Has On Their List

Like all of Daniel Mullins’ other games, Inscryption is more than it initially appears, and like all of his games it’s more about a weird voyage through a bunch of different game styles and goofs than a reflection of one particular genre. Well, that’s not entirely fair, it’s a game about card games, just as it’s a game about the batshit insane ARG tie-in and a game about weird haunted video games. I’m not one for spoiler culture and generally don’t give a shit about ruining everything for myself, but a lot of the magic of Inscryption is just the constant sense of surprise. If you like card games and weird shit and escape room puzzles… maybe give it a go? Yeah. It’s a good time. I enjoyed it a lot.

3. Resident Evil Village

Superlatives: Somehow Works In Spite of Everything, “Your Right Hand Comes Off?”

REVILL dares to ask “What if Resident Evil was stupid again?” Don’t get me wrong, Resident Evil has always been dumb, given the last numbered game in the series involved an evil hillbilly dad whom you had a chainsaw duel with. But Village is somehow even dumber; picking up from 7, deliberately invoking 4, and then charging brazenly and recklessly into full cornball B-movie nonsense territory. Ethan Winters is truly the ideal Resident Evil protagonist. He’s an idiot faceless goober who constantly has the worst shit happen to him and shrugs it all off with a quip and a disproportionate lack of concern. His reactions are key in a game which jumps from giant vampire mommy castle to an escape room where you chase an evil puppet to a flooded section where you fight a fish man to a factory where you fight cyborg zombies. Somehow it manages to do all of this without any of that feeling discordant, which is WILD.

For once, the increased emphasis on action over survival horror is something that I’m okay with. Some parts feel like a practice run for the absolutely inevitable, worst-kept-secret remake of RE4, but no sequence lasts long enough to overstay its welcome. It’s a brisk experience whether or not you’re going for a speedrun, which works to its favor, even if I do wish there was a bit more of that old-style puzzling and navigation. Really, the one point of outright contention I have with RE8 is just that the Mercenaries mode sucks. Otherwise it’s definitely a continuation of the hot streak Capcom has going with the series.

2. Hitman 3

Superlatives: The Best Package in Video Games, Vicarious Vinny Caravella Viewership Award

Yo, Berlin is very good level. Okay cool thanks bye. No seriously, you know what hitman is. This game works both as a self-contained conclusion to IO's new trilogy and also as a complete package. Cannot say enough nice things about it.

1. Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous

Superlatives: Russian Excess Award, The Most CRPG, Shouldn’t have played as much as I did in the time period I did.

CRPGs ARE BACK BAYBEEE. Okay, they never left. But hey, I get one every year, and this year’s outing is probably the most impressed I’ve been with “one of these” since Pillars 2 in 2018. I think Owlcat’s initial outing, Pathfinder Kingmaker, was a bit of an uneven one. It launched incredibly hot out of the oven and was more-or-less unplayable for the first few months of release. Once it was stabilized, it was an alright time, although still a little closer to a curiosity than a full-on banger. More importantly, I think Kingmaker was probably the wrong choice to adapt into a CRPG. It’s a module that benefits greatly from the improvisational nature of tabletop RPGs, and turning it into a computer game strips down the act of exploration and kingdom building into a series of dull choices and maintenance. Who doesn’t love having to deal with *checks notes* exhaustion rules?

Wrath of the Righteous is a universal step up over its predecessor in almost every way. It’s better-written, looks significantly better, adds a bunch of meaningful classes from tabletop, and comes with turn-based already implemented. Pathfinder was always a ruleset based around exponential escalation, so a module where the main characters receive demigod-level powers in their fight against hordes of demons makes perfect sense. It helps that the game makes some genuinely interesting variations depending on which mythic path you pick. Not all of them are going to be especially world-shattering differences, but there’s enough variety that a playthrough as a Trickster (the one I picked) will have a pretty clear difference from one as a Lich. It’s a sense of scale and power that starts high and becomes absurd by the end. To put it simply, it goes for it in terms of scope and it pays off very well.

There’s a lot to this game, and anyone who finds it intimidating is probably normal. The spirit of Russian game design excess shines through here, but the biggest difference is that Pathfinder has a budget. There are 25 core classes, most of which have at least 4 separate archetypes (to not even get into mythic levels, prestige classes, multiclass combinations, and doing all of this for your entire party.) They sure did manage to reach all of their stretch goals, though at what cost? Well, as of this writing I’m to understand that mounted combat is still broken, certain class abilities don’t work as advertised, and the army battles are still fucking terrible. Oh right, did I mention that there’s an entirely separate army-scale tactical battle system heavily inspired by Heroes of Might and Magic? Yes it’s ridiculous, but consider that Owlcat has a lot of veterans from Nival, who made the last good Heroes of Might and Magic game before Ubisoft drove that series into the fucking ground. Is it fun? Is it balanced? Is it remotely interesting? No, but by gosh darn it they implemented it and that deserves respect. Maybe install the mod that just auto-wins all those battles.

It’s an unwieldy video game, but as a triumph of raw Computer Role-Playing Game it’s the best game I played in 2021. It also came out right as I was starting grad school and absolutely threw me off on the wrong foot from the beginning, so that’s cool. Like Kingmaker, I bet it’ll be a *better* game in 6-12 months but it’s already a pretty fantastic one.

Most Disappointing: Deathloop

Deathloop is truly a faustian pact of a video game. I’ve been one of the people agitating for Arkane to get their mainstream due for ages, and the fact that this is the game to get it… upsets me. I acknowledge I’m part of the problem, I’m why Prey and Dishonored 2 sold poorly, but there’s no way for me to say it other than “They sanded off the edges and I don’t like it as much.” In every single promotional interview for the game, the developers constantly reference things about prior Arkane ImmSims which players found confusing, intimidating, or overwhelming. So… they just took it all out. All of it.

To use a fun game designer term, Deathloop lacks “friction.” On paper, all the tools are still there and the ability to approach situations with a wide variety of options still holds true. In practice, you become overpowered *very quickly* and can bulldoze through pretty much every avenue with the blunt hammer provided by a small handful of weapons and abilities. What, are you *not* going to use their blink equivalent? Because you only get two slots for powers, and one of them is always going to be Blink. Stealth is perfunctory when you have so many tools to trivialize it, and I found going loud to be the correct option most of the time anyway. Perhaps a ham-fisted morality system isn’t the way to incentivize the player, but without something like that it’s very easy to put everything through the square hole. The one wild card is the invasion mechanic, which is neat, but hamstrung by a PVP meta that developed even by the time I was done with it (nor do I imagine it’s especially active these days.)

I guess the point of contrast here is Prey Mooncrash, which clearly influenced a lot of Deathloop’s structural ideals, but Mooncrash worked because it was a small-scale experimental DLC. Extrapolating that out to a full game while also trying to make it “approachable” doesn’t work nearly as well. It’s got a pseudo run-based sort of thing going on, but since environments are fixed and the progression of the story is fixed it’s not nearly as open as it initially claims to be. Instead of intuiting anything, it’s all spelled out for you with exactly ONE “correct” route. It’s… it’s a bummer man. There’s absolutely some cool style going on, some fun writing and quality performances, but that stuff alone isn’t quite as deep or meaningful to sustain a full video game. When the implications of the game’s setting and ending are more interesting than anything that actually happened on hedonism island… maybe that’s a bad sign.

Bleh. Now I’m depressed. It’s fine. It’s well-made. It’s not bad. It’s not even remotely close to the worst game I played in the year of our lord 2021. But it’s one that sticks out because of how sour it made me.

Games of 2021 I will play more in 2022 please stop yelling at me: Metroid Dread, Tales of Arise, King’s Bounty II, The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, Ys IX, probably some others I forgot.

Hey like all years, 2021 features games I purchased for money and then did not quite get around to giving a fair shake. These are some of them! One of my new year resolutions for 2022 is to not buy a new video game for the first six months. I already have Elden Ring and Total Warhammer 3 pre-ordered, and other than that… I probably have enough on my plate to last me a while. Will 2022 be the year I finally start poking at the Trails franchise? What about the Tales franchise? Need I remind you, I still own like six Tales games other than Arise which I haven’t played. Tales of Graces Fs in the chat? How will dubious RPGs be impacted? Please look forward to it. I’m hopeful things will be better from here on out. And if not? Well, Total War Warhammer III comes out in like six weeks. Have a good one. Stay safe out there.

...and yes, I will probably also write *my other list*

Realms of the Haunting

Developer: Gremlin Interactive

Release Date: Early 1997

Time Played: A little less than 90 mins

Troubleshooting: There’s some tomfoolery you can do to revert the version that’s on Steam and GOG to the US version of the game, which lets you remap keys and change difficulty, but is it honestly worth it? No. I know this because I did this.

Dubiosity: 4 out of 5

Puzzle Difficulty: less difficult than a game of Nine Men's Morris

Would I play more? Nah, there are videos on Youtube I can watch and get a better experience from

Realms of the Haunting is a pretty straightforward amalgamation of pretty much every mid-90s PC game trend, which is to say it’s a weird hybrid between FPS and Adventure game that also features several CDs worth of Full Motion Video. Like, I’m genuinely surprised Vinny Caravella hasn’t checked it out at any point, because this is premium FMVinny content. As Adam Randall (played by a guy who cannot act and whose only IMDB credit is this video game) you investigate your father’s mysterious death via exploring spooky mansion, solving puzzle, reading notes, and generally engaging in weird, clumsy first person shootemupping.

Honestly outside of the magic that is Full Motion Video of actors against a green screen, I think the greatest problem with Realms of the Haunting is that it’s neither a particularly good shooter (even of the era) nor am I enthused with its putting items into places in order to progress. I think I might’ve also fucked up my ability to progress by trying to mess with fan patches, so, uh, maybe just accept the way it works out of the box. Outside of Fire Warrior, whose run time was truncated because it literally wouldn’t work, this is the one I’ve spent the least amount of time on, and it’s probably going to stay that way. Not a whole lot to say about this one, to be quite honest. There are only so many ways I can say “I did not find the act of clicking a mouse to fire a gun especially satisfying” Next please.

PowerSlave (DOS)

Developer: Lobotomy Software

Release date: June 30, 1996

Time Played: A little more than 90 minutes on stream, about an hour off-stream

Troubleshooting: Used Build GDX, which it turns out is very easy to set up.

Dubiosity: 2 out of 5

Not to be confused with: PowerSlave (Saturn/PSX)

Would I play more? Ehhhhhh. There are better retro and retro-inspired shooters out there worth more of my time

While Ken Silverman’s Build Engine is, in fact, host to many fine specimens of the First Person Shooter genre, it’s hard to avoid the general feeling of *jank* coming from many of the titles that used it. For this feature I’ve very intentionally avoided the most egregious examples, if only because I would have to think long and hard about my life choices were I to ever spend actual time and/or money on Redneck Rampage or William Shatner’s Tekwar. Don’t worry though, because PowerSlave (also known as Exhumed) is just very middle-of-the-road and not especially exciting. It’s also not the worst Build Engine game on this wheel, so please look forward to my eventual stream of Witchaven.

What’s left is the kind of video game one might generously call a “doom clone” back when such a phrase meant anything. Sure, there are spooky Egyptian monsters, maybe an anubis or two to shoot. For the most part, however, it’s just a very standard game of its era that is neither egregiously bad or egregiously good. It has a fun CD-ROM soundtrack and some decent weapons, but even writing this I’m struggling to come up with any superlatives other than “competent.” It's decent! It's not a bad time at all, and given that I played more of it off-stream, voluntarily, I think one would not have a bad time with it if they so chose to play it. It's just... there? But my friend, Blood is also right there. Duke Nukem 3D is right there. Heck, original racist-ass Shadow Warrior, which is a horrific hell nightmare of a video game, has more going on than PowerSlave. Truly this game is the diet soda of this dubious FPS wheel.

Of course, the biggest problem with PowerSlave is this is not the version people care about. The console version, which is way more of a non-linear Metroidvania sort of deal, is the one people actually have nostalgia for. Night Dive is working on a remaster of that, apparently combining the best aspects of the Saturn and PSX ports. That’ll probably come out at some point next year, and I'm looking forward to seeing it in action. Here's hoping it's a more interesting game than this one, because there are a *lot* of throwback FPSes I'd rather spend time with. Maybe Wrath: Aeon of Ruin and Prodeus will come out to 1.0 in 2022? We're spoiled if you would like old-style shooter shoot games; a veritable cornucopia of bunny jumping, low poly environments, and extreme speed.

Oh, uh, by the way. There's a special "bonus" game in the VOD around the 90 minute mark. It's a little spicy and a tad NSFW, but also you get to hear the luxury of me getting roasted by my podcast cohort because I played a titty game. Anime was a mistake. Video games were a mistake.

Now, with both of my Game of the Year blogs needing to go into production, this'll probably be the last Dubious FPS stream for 2021. It's been a good time, and I hope you'll continue to join me on my Dubiousventures. I'm not planning on stopping anytime soon, and you can expect some more high quality ("high quality??") titles and wheels in the future. Consider following and/or subscribing to my twitch channel if you'd like to watch it live (I tend to stream in the evenings US time, and I will try and have a more regular schedule come 2022) or following my youtube if you'd like to keep up on the VODs.

Singularity

Developer: Raven Software

Release Date: June 29, 2010

Time Played: A little under two hours

Troubleshooting: some foolery if you want the FOV reasonable (I recommend Flawless Widescreen)

Dubiosity: 2 out of 5

Would rather play than: Call of Duty Warzone

Would I play more? I already did play another hour or so and may get around to finishing it.

Having played a triumvirate of Raven Software games this year, on stream (Jedi Outcast, Jedi Academy, and Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force) I feel pretty confident in declaring them one of the preeminent FPS devs of the 90s and 00s (they also made Marvel Ultimate Alliance, which is baller.) Their last game before being absorbed into the Call of Duty Machine that currently comprises Activision-Blizzard was Singularity, and it’s an… interesting one? Apparently the product of an extremely messy development, the final product that reached store shelves was cobbled together in about ten months of raw crunch after almost being canceled. Despite this, it seems totally solid. Almost as if it was made by a team of devs who deserved better than the unenviable task of making multiplayer maps for the last decade.

While I could definitely see parts of that truncated dev cycle in my time with Singularity, the most dubious thing about it might be its resemblance to Bioshock. Replace the Art Deco and underwater objectivism with Soviet Realism and time shenanigans and it’s definitely in the realm of “non-infringing but still heavily influenced.” Thankfully, instead of philosophy 101 lectures on Ayn Rand it’s mostly about how your silent protagonist accidentally fucked with time and now the Soviets rule the world. You’ve got a time gauntlet that’s basically your plasmid button, which gives you a handful of abilities you use to manipulate objects and solve environmental puzzles. There are physics interactions, boxes will be moved with telekinesis, and sometimes you will press “Q” to age or de-age things in the environment to like… open a grate or something. It’s never not abundantly clear where to go, if the NPCs constantly telling you where to go wasn’t clear enough. That’s fine. It’s a shooter from 2010 after all, so a scripted roller coaster is something to be expected. It’s a perfectly fine “one of those” even if it never quite goes as hard on spectacle as I imagine the devs would’ve liked.

Also on the “wow they were kinda just trying to make a Bioshock” list, the entire game is just rotten with *environmental storytelling.* Which is my nice way of saying it has a lot of notes and audio logs and film reels you have to stand in place to watch or listen. Why? For some ungodly reason there are no subtitles in this video game from the year of our lord 2010, which is one of those oversights I find inexcusable. Credit where credit is due, the art design team clearly had a blast making fake soviet propaganda posters and there’s a lot of creative art direction in the periphery. It’s unfortunate most of the game takes place in extremely dingy ruined grey environments, but once again t’was the style at the time. I’d comment more on the story and characters, but honestly the storytelling is one of those places where the rushed nature of the game is abundantly obvious. It’s a touch incoherent and feels patched together, which I guess you can get away with when you have “because time travel” as a built-in excuse. Mostly I just want to comment on the number of recognizable voice acting veterans putting on their best/worst hollywood Russian accents, because that’s the one thing that actually stood out to me.

The actual moment-to-moment shooty shoot bits are, to put it nicely, extremely Xbox 360. The FOV is locked to 65 without outside hackery, the graphics are rich with Unreal 3 sheen, and it’s abundantly clear the game was not made with the added precision of a mouse and keyboard in mind. I’m saying aiming down sights sure does just snap you right to whatever Spetsnaz or time mutant happens to be directly in front of you. It’s not a bad time, and there’s enough fun eclectic nonsense between the weapons and time powers that it’s occasionally worthwhile to do something other than shoot a guy with the default Assault Rifle. Raven Software’s expertise with basic-ass shooter fundamentals still shines through. When you hit things with ridiculous time magic or weird explody gun, there is good visual and auditory feedback (and the death animations were gruesome enough to get banned in Germany, apparently.)

I guess what I’m trying to say is that Singularity is pretty good, but it’s not great. It’s a solid approximation of much better first person shooters, one that I had to revisit while I was writing this so I could make sure I wasn’t getting specific things wrong. It’s Raven Software’s last non-Calladuty game, and if nothing else it has me considering some more Hexen 2 or something.

Duke Nukem Forever

Developer: 3D Realms (with help getting it over the finish line from Gearbox, Piranha, and Triptych)

Release Date: June 14, 2011

Time Played: Around 90 minutes

Troubleshooting: none

Dubiosity: 5 out of 5 (if not this game than what else?)

Dukiosity: too much

Would I play more? For one my throat was already hurting after 90 minutes of doing my terrible Duke impression. For another, I think I hate this game. So yes, I will probably play more one day.

Okay so if you were on the internet at any point between the years 1997 and 2011 there’s a fairly decent chance you are aware of Duke Nukem Forever. For those too young, however, I have great news: you’re fine. What can I say about this game that hasn’t been said a thousand times? Is it the part where Duke’s entire attitude and aesthetic is embarrassing and sad? Or like, the part where it feels like a discordant, scattershot “greatest hits” compilation of every FPS design trope and set piece that existed between the years 1997 and 2011? Or the part where it’s an ugly-as-sin Unreal Engine 3 Early 360 Stank work of visual design? Maybe it’s all of those things!

I’m not going to stand here and tell you Duke Nukem 3D is a game without issue, because it’s a game that is composed of “issue.” You don’t need me to tell you that from a modern perspective DN3D’s tone is equal parts sad and sleazy, a relic of 90s parodies of 80s action movies with a nice helping of weird creepy misogyny. However, as exemplification of what video games were in 1996, of what the First Person Shooter was aspiring towards, it’s an important *thing* in the history of video games. It has an attitude! It has interactivity! In a year where Quake sacrificed almost everything for speed and real-time fidelity, Duke 3D’s excess and vanity stands in stark contrast. It’s also a totally solid “one of those” even if I’m increasingly resolute in saying Blood is the actual best game using the Build Engine. Blood is so good you guys. Blood 2 seems like dogshit, but that’s another upcoming episode for another time.

DNF is just… hey it’s the game I was expecting it to be. It’s a wretched, yet varied, pastiche of different ideas awkwardly cobbled together with bad shooting and the sense that the people who made this game think the protagonist is cool. Duke Nukem Forever’s only true relevance to the medium of video games is the infamous length of its development (which isn’t even the longest something was vaporware before coming out.) For that you can blame 3D Realms’ ambitions wildly exceeding the size of their team, compounded by George Broussard’s obsession with being on the cutting edge of tech. I mostly just feel pity for them. Well, that and I wish I had never played this game, but hey knowing me it’ll be streamed for charity at some point. Fuck all video games forever. Next time will be better.

Command and Conquer: Renegade

Developer: Westwood

Release Date: February 26, 2002

Time Played: A little over two hours

Troubleshooting: Fun fact, all of the fan patch improvements are straight up just INCLUDED in the version of Renegade available on Origin.

Dubiosity: 1 out of 5

Would I play more? Potentially?

I am not going to sit here, typing on my Corsair Cherry MX Brown Mechanical Keyboard With Stupid Glowy Gamer Lights Far Too Late At Night, and tell you that Command and Conquer Renegade is an amazing FPS. I am, however, going to tell you that Command and Conquer Renegade is accomplishing exactly what it sets out to do, which is to have someone go “what if you were like, a little commando dude on a RTS map” and execute upon that premise with precision. It’s absolutely a weird curiosity, a fuckin’ platypus of a game that has mostly been relegated to the spinoff pile. I think it might be rad? It’s not dubious, at the very least.

The campaign for Renegade puts you in the shoes of one of the original game’s eponymous commando units, voiced by series composer Frank Klepaki. While it’s a pretty linear, point a to b sort of thing, the thing that distinguishes it, and the thing that I’m very into, is the sense of scale. There is a concerted effort to make each mission (which are all 20-40ish minutes long) very much go off like you were on the ground floor of a Command and Conquer match. Have you ever wondered what the inside of a Hand of Nod looks like? Renegade has you covered! Outside of vehicle hijinks, it’s probably *the thing* this game has going for it. The shooting is serviceable, the movement is serviceable, and the general speed is snappy *enough*. Sure, The AI is, uh, quite dumb and the story is, uh, quite dumb. However, I cannot say I had anything less than a perfectly pleasant time. I was expecting far less from Command and Conquer renegade, but to my surprise it’s probably Too Good for This Wheel, despite the lack of nostalgic reverence.

It seems like a lot of the nostalgic fondness that *does* exist for Renegade has to do with its multiplayer. It’s not dissimilar from Battlefield 1942 (which came out six months later) in its attempts to recreate large scale battles with bespoke, class-based multiplayer and a heavy emphasis on vehicles. The right one of those two games probably won out in the end, and I wasn’t about to pop into a 19-year-old game’s multiplayer servers, but hey it certainly sounds intriguing and novel.

I think “Intriguing and novel” is probably the thing I’d say about this one. Renegade is probably “a hidden gem,” which is my roundabout and slightly condescending way to say that it’s weird in a way I’m into and far too functional to be a truly dubious FPS. More importantly, it’s somehow the one game in that Command and Conquer collection I bought on Origin that works as advertised out of the box without any finaglery whatsoever. Meanwhile Red Alert 2 is borderline impossible to run on modern systems without significant troubleshooting. How.

XIII

Developer: Ubisoft Paris Studio

Release Date: November 25, 2003

Time Played: Slightly more than two hours

Troubleshooting: One Fan Patch

Dubiosity: 3 out of 5

Mediocrity: 5.5 out of 10

Would I play more? Please no

Between Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Beyond Good and Evil, Ubisoft’s holiday lineup for 2003 had some certified bangers. The former is a deeply influential, oft-celebrated revival of Jordan Mechner’s Apple II original. The latter is a cult classic, a genre mashup, and indirectly responsible for one of the funnier video game vaporware boondoggles to continue to (not) exist. However, their biggest tentpole for that year was a first person shooter based on a beloved Belgian comic book. Hollywood voice talent! A cel-shaded art style right off the heels of Wind Waker! Like, this was very much their big cornerstone game. It’s uh. It’s not very good. It’s pretty mediocre, actually. They remade it last year. Remember that? What?

Is this a French cultural institution thing? Like am I going to find copies of the original XIII comic book right next to Asterix and Obelix, baguettes, militant secularism, labor strikes, and a sense of grievance whenever English is spoken? There’s apparently a French-Canadian TV film (starring Val Kilmer and Steven Dorff!) and miniseries from the late 00s and early 2010s, so clearly there’s something my Anglo-Saxon self just isn’t getting. Regardless, XIII is based on a comic book series that originally started in 1984, very heavily influenced by Robert Ludlum’s Bourne trilogy of novels. It starts with amnesiac man waking up on beach with only a tattoo and a bank safety deposit box to his name, and goes from there to Spy Intrigue. Your main character (XIII) has been accused of the assassination of not-Kennedy, hunted by his own government, with a secret sinister organization pulling the strings. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.

How that translates into video game is a very stylized comic-style of storytelling, undermined almost immediately and pervasively by the fact that XIII man is voiced by David Duchovny. I will fully admit, I’m not a huge X-Files guy and consider a lot of that show lost on me. For whatever reason, Duchovny was considered a bankable star during the early 00s. Alongside a handful of games based on the X-Files (including a bad Resident Evil clone that I may just have to check out one day) he was the lead on both this game and Midway’s ill-fated Area-51 reboot. In all cases he gives what I’d generously call a “phoned in, monotone, hilariously bad” performance, which does not help when the entire tone of the game is based around campy spy intrigue. For heaven’s sake, the other big celebrity talent of note in this game is Adam West, who never found a role he couldn’t turn into 100% certified ham. All that’s left is a weird, discordant story that apparently ends on a cliffhanger, not that I played through the entire thing to find out.

See, XIII is very much from the era where shooters were “trying things” and in this case “trying things” means that it’s a game with a very rigid, very scripted mission structure. There was an obligatory stealth sequence, no less than TWO turret sequences, and multiple cases of me failing because I didn’t play exactly how the game wanted me to play. As a shooter, it’s very stiff and limited, and in general it kinda felt like a worse version of NOLF? Anyway it’s not a particularly great time on that front, be it the excitement of questionable checkpointing or being asked to not kill anyone when you have very few nonlethal options. And somehow, this version is still better than the remake from last year, which is apparently a flaming mess.

Rise of the Triad 2013

Developer: Slipgate Ironworks

Release Date: July 31, 2013

Time Played: 94 minutes too long am I right.

Troubleshooting: None

Dubiosity: 4 out of 5

Would I play more? No. No. Nope.

While it’s not entirely fair to say that Doom 2016 is responsible for the current spate of throwback FPSes (I refuse to use the term “Boomer Shooter” in anything other than the most sneering, eye-rolling context) it definitely made that kind of fast, exploration-focused ordeal acceptable again in a mainstream setting. Fast forward to 2021 and apparently New Blood and 3D Realms are just pumping the things out left and right (or at least early access demos of “shooters what where you go fast and can find secrets and probably can’t aim down sights.”) I myself have said a thing or two about a thing or two, namely that DUSK is very, very good and Amid Evil looks very nice with that ray tracing turned on. They’re not all winners, admittedly. The recently released Into the Pit seems very boring! There’s your shred of relevance for the day. That game came out last week!

Speaking of relevance, the 2013 revival of Rise of the Triad is 100% one of those games that came out a few years too early to be relevant. Unlike today, where I will continue to emphasize you kinda just trip over a retro-inspired shooter on your way to the mailbox, in 2013 this Rise of the Triad thing was a weird novelty, trying desperately to differentiate itself in a mass market of Call of Duty, Call of Duty imitators, and the worst Halo game. It’s also, to be perfectly frank, kinda dogshit. I don’t say that lightly in the world of, uh, wonderment that The Dubious Wheel™ Universe of Blogs and Streams represents, but Rise of the Triad 2013 feels like a laser-targeted representation of everything I *don’t* like about classic shooters. Is it the abundance of 90s ‘tude taunting you every time you die? Is it the constant quippiness from the cast of characters? Hitscan enemies with surprisingly fast reaction times? Or… is it the game’s baffling obsession with jump pads and janky, trap-filled level design? It’s all of them. It’s all of them, but especially the last one. And the first one.

I should probably back up and say I don’t hold the original Rise of the Triad in any sort of reverence, but I can see why it made sense at the time. This modern (well it’s like eight years old now, but “modern”) reimagining seems to think that the thing people missed about fast paced 90s shooters was a score attack mode? And jump pads. So many jump pads. Shooting fake nazis with MP44s and far, far too many dumb explosive weapons* sounds good on paper, but it never feels good. First off, hitboxes. No, seriously, the hitboxes are junk. For whatever reason, the one thing they did decide to bring in from modern shooters was the ability to aim down sights, and I felt like I had to do that constantly to avoid shooting my rockets into like, waist high fences that somehow blocked splash damage. That extends to the hitboxes on the abundance of death traps, by the way, which is made extra good when you see how many the devs decided made for good shooter levels. All of this culminated in a boss fight that had ALL of these things and at that point my patience wore out. No, jumping over (janky hitbox) fire traps while shooting rockets at a boss is not my idea of a good time, why do you ask?

Like, I cannot emphasize enough how many times I said “fuck off” to this game (well I guess you can watch the stream archive to hear *exactly* how many times I said it) when at most I was expecting a mediocre throwback that missed the mark. It is that, probably, but when you’re making jokes about people playing shooters with a controller or naming a miniboss “Dirty Sanchez” my ability to tolerate everything else drops precipitously. I can extend something similar to 2019’s Ion Fury (a game whose tone and attitude I outright loathe, to not even get into the way the devs decided to die on the “free speech” hill) but the difference is that I think Ion Fury is too well-made to be featured here. ROTT 2013 doesn’t have that base to fall back on, and as a result I was left with one of the angrier streams I’ve ever done. get fucked.

*Hi I’m ArbitraryWater and I’m here to tell you my maxim of “Rocket Launchers should be a power or anti-vehicle weapon, not the most frequent, disposable thing in your arsenal” as part of my campaign to recapture explosive weapons from the hands of people who never moved past Quake deathmatch or the soldier class in TF2. I get it, you like aiming at people’s feet because you’re a foot pervert.

Warhammer 40K: Fire Warrior

Developer: Kuju Entertainment

Release Date: September 17, 2003

Time Played: About 20 minutes. Wait, what?

Troubleshooting: Oh hey so the game started crashing at a specific point in the second level every single time and I couldn’t figure out how to bypass it

Dubiosity: 5 out of 5

Would I play more? I would’ve, if only to see how continually bad it was, but nope. Not going to. Moving on. I did this for you.

So hey we’ve reached our first example of a game’s technical issues finally being too much for me, the person who spent multiple hours getting King’s Quest VIII to run. Fire Warrior is mostly relevant as yet another “Halo Killer” back when Playstation 2 owners were desperate to try and one up their friends who owned an Xbox, featuring the (then new) Warhammer 40K faction, The Tau (or T’au if you’re a Games Workshop brand manager.) Now I’ll be honest, I think I’m still more of a Warhammer Fantasy guy than a 40K guy, but the idea of a video game where, for once, The Imperium of Man are the bad guys, has it’s appeal. Sure, apparently by the end of the game you’ve teamed up with them to fight chaos, but still. What if the technofascist, xenophobic, religious zealots in power armor were the antagonists to your plucky band of (definitely not mind controlled, nope) mech communists? That’s novel, right? So how’s the video game?

Unfortunately, the first mission of Fire Warrior is once again a reminder that the console shooters of the early 2000s *were not* Halo. They were not going to kill Halo, and no amount of two weapons and recharging health could change that fact. Fire Warrior controls poorly on PC, the guns feel like they have zero impact against the Imperial Guardsmen you should frankly be ripping apart, and did I mention that the game kept crashing in the second mission at the exact same point every time? It’s done. It’s over. We’re moving on. I’ve put Killing Time on the Wheel as a replacement game, and I’m deeply, deeply excited for you all to witness that piece of work.

Oh, speaking of wheels

The Wheel of Time

Developer: Legend Entertainment

Release Date: October 31, 1999

Time Played: a little under 2 ½ hours

Troubleshooting: so apparently Unreal Engine 1 games need to have their frame rates capped otherwise they will break and run too fast on modern PCs. Good to know, I guess.

Dubiosity: 2 out of 5

Number of times anyone said the phrase “Wool-Headed Sheepherder:” 0

Would I play more? Probably! Sucks it probably won’t get a proper re-release any time soon.

From the makers of that point-and-click Shannara adventure game that ZombiePie should 120% play, the Star Control game nobody likes, (no, not that one) and Unreal II: The Awakening comes a first person shooter that dares to ask “What if we adapted a series of books whose main traits are being very long and less horny than Game of Thrones?” That’s right, just in time for Amazon’s Wheel of Time show (which is definitely not going to be canceled as soon as Amazon’s Lord of the Rings show overshadows it, nope) it’s time for me to bring up the First Person Shooter based on Robert Jordan’s legendary(?) book series. I have a lot of nostalgic fondness for The Wheel of Time, but I’m not going to pretend it isn't also the apex of bloated, self-indulgent epic fantasy. For 14-year-old me those books were eye opening, and I’m very much looking forward to using the hazy-but-ingrained memories I have of them to lord over the bandwagoners this Amazon series is sure(?) to create.

Why Legend Entertainment was tasked with turning *this* particular license into a game where you can very much bunny hop around corners and shoot Trollocs in the face with a fireball, I do not know (but would love to find out.) Thankfully, it sidesteps the plot of the books by taking place hundreds of years earlier, with its own self-contained story where you play as a Brown Ajah Aes Sedai Keeper tasked with uncovering a plot by servants of The Dark One to undermine the White Tower. So instead of guns you have Ter’angreal, which you of course use to weave the One Power. Mhmmm. It’s surprisingly faithful to the lore of the world, is what I’m saying. Since you’re using magic, you sometimes get abilities to help you solve puzzles or traverse the environment, like a water shield that lets you breathe underwater and swim against the current. Listen man, in 1999 that was considered innovative, and for the most part I think The Wheel of Time is surprisingly neat. It’s definitely closer to the “set-piece” end of the spectrum than the “arena shooter” but it’s also UE1 so it moves well and looks very pretty for something out of the late 90s. It also has a nice soundtrack!

As a first person shooty shoot it’s fine, if a touch janky with enemy behavior and movement. Once again, decently fast, you can bunny hop, and I’ve seen enough speedruns to know that you can do some really silly sequence breaks with practice. It’s not half-bad! One of your spells is essentially a slow homing blob of death! Another one is a weird tornado! I could see that being a lot of fun in a deathmatch context (and like Daikatana, there's somehow a "small-but-dedicated" scene of folks still playing this because of course there are.) Really, the context of this game and its mere existence is probably its most dubious aspect, far more of the “weird and obscure” than “questionable” end of the spectrum. It’s also one of the games on this feature that is most likely to be lost to time, given that it’s not on any digital storefronts. I’d love to be proven wrong, if only so that I can be *that asshole* spouting off half-remembered book factoids to a wider audience. That’s all I want.