Finally, someone brave enough to give Pathologic 2 its due as the best game that ever was (and IPL just put up an update on new mechanics for the Bachelor route yesterday! It's still happening, somehow! I'm so fucking excited!)
Rogue Trip sounds like a fucking masterpiece to be honest. Gonna have to see about hunting down a copy through perfectly legitimate means, I assure you.
@csl316: Yeah I think the controls and engine in Eternal are something that I sometimes forget about because I am too busy killing demons and having a blast, but I took a step back the last time I booted it up (having all the bells and whistles, even ray tracing which is just a silly thing to have in the game) and it really knocked my socks off all over again. Just a visual feast and a real technical achievement that floors me every time (and it even runs decently on the fucking Steam Deck, of all things, which I honestly didn't think it could do - the Switch port is a small miracle but it also looks like ass and frankly probably shouldn't have happened, but I can't help but be impressed anyway).
I'm somehow always still a little bit shocked by the dislike for Doom Eternal. I bought that game, played it, had a fucking blast, thought it was the best combat loop in any FPS ever (and I still think that), and then I got online and it seemed like roughly half the people who played it were incredibly disappointed.
Yeah I had a similar surprise when it came to the response, because like you I think the combat is perfection, and I am a sicko who loves juggling multiple different things (should I chainsaw? should I grenade? I need armor, better flame belch, okay now grenade and get a bunch of armor). In fact I am an even bigger sicko who kinda loves the DLC forcing you to use attachments, because I basically never used the multi-shot functionality of the shotgun and really tended to avoid the tether for the plasma rifle too, and having to use them kind of got me into doing things differently, if that makes sense? I really like Ancient Gods, that's what I am saying, ultimately.
With all that said, I'm one of the few people who believes the original Unreal was better than the original Doom, because of the epic feel and scale of that game.
You know it's funny, I had a copy of Unreal and I remember being impressed by it but the only thing Unreal means to me is Unreal Tournament Gold - in the Quake III vs UT wars, I was on UT's side! Unreal though, I dunno, something about it never quite hit for me! It was fine, I liked it well enough, but it did not burrow into my brain like a tick.
I mean it's certainly bigger and you can do a lot more in it, but with DOOM I think there's a definite "you had to be there" because this shit simply did not exist before DOOM (yes, yes, there were multiple games released on the Wolf3D engine, yes, yes, most of them suck balls) so it was a real fucking revelation!
@shindig: I feel like I have to play through DOOM II a few more times before I think about trying Plutonia for real; it is a terrifying fucking experience and there are so many chaingunners. I don't think I've ever made it more than a few levels in before tapping out.
@mwhan: SIGIL is crazy good - and SIGIL on Ultraviolence is frankly unruly. Just a constant stream of "oh you gotta be fucking kidding me" and a lot of frantically having to dance around Barons of Hell with a shotgun. It is probably the most desperate I have ever felt playing DOOM!
@therealturk: Yeah maybe "combat puzzle" is the more appropriate term to use (particularly in terms of DOOM Eternal). You have the tools and you just have to apply them in the proper way to get the best result. For me, this absolutely whips ass, it tickles my brain in a good way and I love how over-the-top the glory kills get. That said, I also usually use the perk that speeds them up, because while I personally think they are just about at the right speed to not fuck with the flow too much, something about them sped up is... extremely hilarious to me. You just flit around from one poor bastard to the next twisting heads off or stomping skulls or whatever and it is deeply, deeply funny to me.
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