Doom's satire is great on a conceptual level, but I really don't think what is actually in the game can be in the running for "best story." For every subversive instance of "Doomguy punches away that one audiolog" or "Doomguy just breaks those tower control things" there's a totally boring genre convention like "Doomguy brings Hayden the Macguffin exactly as he asked" and "Doomguy fuckin' walks around Hayden's office while he talks plot at you like you're playing Half-Life 2." There's even a straight Xen-ass platforming level in the middle of the game that seems to be there because that's just how FPS campaigns are built.
I think this would probably just be a dumb nitpick in any other game, but every time I hear people talk about how Doom's story is groundbreaking in how straight-to-the-point that character is I can't stop thinking about the ways they totally walk that stuff back, especially in the second half.
I'm super glad that the ruins section in Abzû at least got a shoutout during Best Moment - I thought it was impactful in some of the same ways the +1 puzzles in The Witness were impactful. Like, it took me getting halfway through that first open area and stumbling into an Elasmosaurus that was just swimming around to figure out what was going on with that part of the game, and that very natural, unscripted realization was fucking awesome.
Super great article! I especially appreciated the shoutout to complex feelings about Kentucky Route Zero. I finally got around to playing Act 4 of that game last weekend and oh boy - while I loved Cardboard Computer's imagery and storytelling, I kind of couldn't remember anything about the characters I was playing as or any of the choices they made... two and a half years ago, when Act 3 came out. I totally feel for that dev team and really, really like their work, but I don't know if I can handle the implicit obligation to play through that whole game again every time a new piece of it comes out to keep up.
@ronniebarzel: I wonder if it's viable to map a dial as the sum of inputs from two analog triggers, where each trigger represents a force either clockwise or counterclockwise? Since two equal presses would add up to "no movement" I think you could get a lot of precision out of modifying a strong LT press with a weaker RT press, for example - kiiiind of like a racer slowing down for turns by pumping the brakes with their left foot while their right foot is still on the gas. (but not really, because I'm having trouble thinking of a better real-life example of "gas" and "negative gas")
It might be hard to calibrate a system like that so it feels "right" and it'd definitely be more abstract than an analog stick, but if you could get used to it I wonder if it might be a better way to represent this stuff on modern controllers.
Uh oh. Jeff mentioned unlocking upgrades for the Horde fortifications as you play, and that has me worried. Does anyone know exactly how this system works in Gears 4?
In Gears of War 3, you'd level up a fortification by spending money on it - so the more barriers you bought the higher you could upgrade barriers. This was cool right up until most people who were actually playing the game maxed out their barrier level and then everyone just stopped buying barriers. This system made it so Horde games stopped being about trying to survive and instead were just about spending all of your money on the one thing you're trying to unlock until everyone wiped, and that sucked.
@heatdrive88: Oh wow, I was just thinking about how I liked the way Austin responded to this question and how I really wanted to revisit it, but I couldn't remember where he talked about it. Even if I could remember that it was during Extra Life there's no way I could ever dig through a 24-hour livestream for a 3-minute bit, so holy crap, thanks for posting this.
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