Justin258

Scalding. I can't do anything less than hot, even post working outside in summer weather all day.

@igort:The BFG edition looks a little cleaner and runs a little better and gets rid of the flashlight in favor of a helmet light (which makes the Hell sections of that game much more enjoyable), but there's really not much reason to get it if you've already got the original version, unless you just want controller support and the lost levels expansion (there's no reason to play the lost levels expansion).

Classic Doom did have a map, though. I don't remember what button it was originally but on PC I always just push Tab and there it is. It's on the Xbox version as well.

Still, the maps are labyrinthine. Generally, they're laid out in such a way that they lead players through all of the bits they need to go through, but sometimes they're laid out in ways that make very little sense so you wind up getting lost. Ninety percent of the time, they're extremely well-done. That other ten percent of the time, it's infuriating and that's the ten percent people remember when they call Doom a keycard hunt.

Before I really get started, there's a PC conversion for Doom 64 out there. You should probably seek that one out if you want to play Doom 64 in 2019.

I first played a pirated copy of Doom way back in middle school. Somebody had it on a flash drive (this would have been an early 2000's flash drive, so it wasn't holding much) and I got a copy, put it on my parent's computer, and played away. I'm pretty sure it was Final Doom and I had no idea what I was doing and I was complete garbage at it, so I didn't play it much and I have no idea where those files eventually went. I never finished this version.

Fast forward to high school and the 360 era, I had 400 Xbox points or whatever they were called left over from purchasing some Halo DLC and Doom was on sale, so I bought it. And I played a lot more of it, but still didn't finish it for whatever reason. I think I got stuck on the boxy warehouse level where ammo is super scarce and just didn't keep playing it.

Some time in early college, I decided to give Doom another try for whatever reason and got way into the whole series. I finished Doom 1 multiple times, so much so that by the time I got around to Doom 2, I just went into it on Ultra Violence and finished it that way the first time. I played quite a bit of one of the Final Doom packs, but never finished it. The other Final Doom level pack kinda sucked so I never finished it, and I've only barely played Master Levels for Doom 2. I was running out of classic Doom steam by that point.

I also played a lot of Doom 3. First, I got a hold of an original Xbox some time prior. Since I didn't have a gaming PC capable of playing Doom 3 at the time, I just got a copy of the original Xbox version and played it there. That version was pretty good for the time, but really there are better ways to play Doom 3. Later, I got the BFG edition for PC, played through it, then got the original version and played through it. And that was when I ran out of Doom 3 steam.

This series has certainly had an impact on my tastes in games. I had even less interest in playing more super-linear, cutscene-heavy, slow-moving 360-era shooters after playing all of the Doom games. I was already losing interest in those, but it was utterly lost after really getting into something that was just proud to be a video game. I found myself interested in dungeon-crawlers, actually, and I think Doom feels more like a first person dungeon crawler with vastly different combat mechanics than the first person shooter genre that sprung off of it. I played a lot of Etrian Odyssey, some Legend of Grimrock, and some Might and Magic X afterwards. Weird place to go after playing Doom, but exploration and difficult combat with a minimal focus on story were what I was looking for.

These days, I've been away from the 360-era style shooters long enough that playing one occasionally is entertaining and fun. As an example, I played through Singularity not too long ago and I really enjoyed it. But nothing sticks with me quite like an old-style shooter. I played Dusk over Christmas last year and that game is fantastic in all the ways that old Doom was, aside from a few levels where I got a little too lost. Currently, I'm playing Ion Fury, which just came out and which is also a lot of fun. Apparently Amid Evil is also supposed to be pretty good, but I haven't got around to it yet. Otherwise, I play lots of R6 Siege with friends and sometimes Destiny when I just want some easy grinding. All on PC, worth mentioning. Ion Fury has controller support and I tried it and noped the fuck out of that.

I liked Doom 3 a whole lot a few years ago. I still do, but unlike 1 and 2 I don't really feel compelled to go back to it occasionally.

Like most id games from the year 2000 onward (all three of them!), Doom 3 simply feels really good to play. Something about the way mouse movement works and how smooth and responsive everything is makes it really, really easy to slip into this game's atmosphere and story, even if that atmosphere and story doesn't really hold up when compared to similar juggernauts of the action-horror genre.

@silversaint: All of the 3DS games have more than just battles to them, though it should still be stressed that they all have way more focus on battles than Three Houses. Also, Fates does let you run around your camp but it doesn't look great and it serves almost no purpose. Shadows Of Valentia has you running around dungeons and running into encounters, JRPG style.

Awakening is still the best of the 3DS lot in my opinion. Fates's story is terribly executed and most of its characters are boring as hell. Shadows of Valentia is pretty cool but, being a remake of a very old FE game, it doesn't have many support conversations and its battles are perhaps a little less complex (though not really less fun).

Honestly, you can't go wrong with any of them, but I'd rank them 1) Awakening, 2) Shadows of Valentia, and 3) Fates.

All three of the 3DS games are more difficult than the piss easy Three Houses, so don't worry about that - but I would recommend starting on Hard if you're really looking for challenge.

As a final note, Fates is actually split into three games - Birthright, Conquest, and a DLC final chapter. I only played Birthright, which is a a lot like Awakening in that you can travel around a world map and grind to your heart's content. Conquest is, from my understanding, more like older FE games where it's only story battles and if a character falls behind, they probably won't be catching up. Also its maps tend to be more cruel than most.

I thought this was a necro at first. Like, seriously, this is some original GB office nonsense.

Anyway, I have the luxury of tastes wide enough to enjoy the bright and sunshine-y joy of Mario as well as the dark and bloody horror of Resident Evil 2. Wouldn't want it any other way.

So... who was Michael Ian Black?

@boozak: If I remember correctly, FE Three Houses only has 2 difficulties at first, Normal and Hard. Normal-Casual shouldn't be too hard, though.

As far as I know, Dan is the only person with any interest in this series and the greatly increased focus on Persona-esque character management might be pushing him away.

Or they've got something in the pipeline and haven't finished it yet, I don't know, they might be holding off a bit because there are a lot of new systems here and getting your ducks in a row takes a little while.

It's not a must, but I do think that you should bump the difficulty up to Hard if you play on Casual. Part of what makes Classic so much more difficult is that if you lose a unit in battle, that unit is gone - with that aspect of the game gone, you suddenly have a "suicide unit" tactic available to you and you only have to worry about losing that character for the rest of the battle, not the rest of the game. I played Awakening on Casual the first time and managed to cheese large portions of that game with this tactic.