See I would have looked at it the other way around - something like Pokémon A vs B is fundamentally a cosmetic/minor change, the core world/story/experience is the same whichever one you play. So for me I would count them as the same thing.
Something like a Doom WAD is fundamentally offering a whole new games worth of playable content which to me feels much more of a valid candidate for inclusion. If something like Final Doom would count as a separate game from Doom II then I don't see why equivalent fan released WADs wouldn't!
To be clear, it's no skin off my nose either way - I don't expect to come top of the leader board or anything
Haven't done any mini reviews for a while so I'll do a quick one now.
Cricket Through the Ages Saw this advertised as it only got released on PC a few weeks ago. It's a one-button physics game for 1-2 players, which is very loosely based around the premise that cricket is the foundational element of human civilisation. Your goal ranges from killing the opposing player to scoring runs/bowling them out, or advancing towards an end zone against limitless waves of enemies. Most of the gameplay is based around timing your button presses to time your swing or throw correctly; doing so results in some pretty madcap ragdoll physics. The game culminates in The Games of Olympus - a series of CTTA takes on different Olympic sports. In the absence of any official Paris 2024 game, this is in my opinion the de facto official Olympics video game (don't like it IOC? MAKE ONE THEN!).
The game is not deep - you only have one button so this is probably obvious - but the variations in themes, weapons, objectives and environments do enough to make the game feel varied and multitonal for a game of this price point and scope. What it definitely is is stupid fun! I chuckled to myself multiple times as I whizzed through the story mode, and when I played it again with my son he screamed with glee as he unleashed utter carnage on the screen. The fact that the game is not the most hardcore experience under the sun actually works as a great leveller, and the random nature of each bout will keep less experienced gamers engaged.
If you like Stick Cricket and QWOP then you'll like this.
I clearly had this confused in my head as coming out between that 2007 Doom where you could only have the gun or the torch and Doom Eternal, because I was not expecting the 2005-era textures I saw. I also couldn't get the graphics mod to work so I've had a less than gorgeous 10.1 hours of this! It's weird, because as the other Retro Shooter Threaders will attest to I play a lot of old games that can look quite janky, but whilst they can actually look surprisingly good (maybe this is Cheeky Devlin's patch/mod magic) this was strikingly of its time visually. I think it might be the muddiness/compression of the textures mixed with the face animations.
I also had the misconception in my head that this was not a well received game at the time, and that this was why Quake 5 hasn't happened. Maybe it was and maybe it wasn't, but I have to say I loved Quake 4. Again, the level design and in-game storytelling is very basic compared to modern standards. I initially felt myself wincing a bit like I was looking at my old records or clothes - did I really let NPCs send me on non-stop solo corridor quests over the radio and call that a narrative? But once I got my retro party hat on and started enjoying it for what it was I found a series of great shootouts with an iconic set of weapons well paced throughout the story. The vehicle sections were fun enough as well, which was a pleasant surprise. I feel they maybe could've done a bit more with the weapon upgrades, they were all a bit underwhelming, and I would've liked things to be a tiny bit less dark. I found it quite irritating when a low level grunt knocked a load of shielding off with a Hyperblaster because you'd missed them in a gloomy corner.
In terms of the story, it ain't a world beater, but it's fine to a point. The Stroggification scene was the highlight for me. I found that scene genuinely unsettling, in a way I haven't felt since watching a ten year old get repeatedly minced in Inside. Half-Life did a similar thing at the start of the Citadel, but it didn't lean into the body horror anywhere near as much. It's Quake though, it's alri-wait, hang on, I say the story's fine up to a point - that point is the ending. Strogg Kane getting remanded into custody and essentially betrayed by the army would've been quite a good ending and would've left you feeling terrible for how Kane was treated after saving humanity. It would raise questions about the nature of racism, the value or futility of serving your country - there's a poignant ending in there with a bit of thought. Instead we get a stilted bro-banter chat about winning them aliens, then the officer answers the strawberry floating phone - ON A SPACE SHIP HE'S USING AN ACTUAL PHONE. Then he nips off out of the group because he can't hear the new orders - "Field Marshall...sorry?...Sorry? Hold on I'm just in the All Bar One and it's rammed, let me get outside...yeah, the war went great...pardon? Are you on a train?" Turns out there's a new mission for Strogg Kane (life is full, full of surprises...[/Cilla]). BUT WAIT! IN HIS HEAD HE HEARS THE STROGG BADDY LAUGHING! It's the contextless cliffhanger of Control mixed with the bit at the end of X-Men: DOFP when they throw Mystique eyes onto Stryker despite that making no sense. Just so, so crap.
Overall though it's a banger of a game and I'm glad I finally went through it.
nfs unbound - so after the poor experience i had with the other nfs on the pc, i thought id actually try a console one and get some use out of the ps5, and as expected the console one runs way better. it looks and runs with less jank and seems to maintain a solid frame rate outside of menus, bizarrely. my problems with the game are that its too hard to see anything because there is so much visual noise, and whilst it seems like they have put a lot of effort into how a lot of the world and stuff looks, you dont get to see any of it. the dialogue is a bit cringe but im just putting that down to me aging out of it, so not a major problem. the handling model i dont enjoy, i got used to it towards the end but to say i like it would be a lie. and i appreciate im in the minority on this or why would they keep bringing it back, but i dont enjoy cop chases in racing games. final thing is im not sure if its credited but i definitely feel a touch of codemasters in there, some grid influences, definitely. game feels like a bit of a weird crossbreed between burnout and grid in many respects. credits rolled, done, though i might try a few of the challenge things.
I'm not going to say too much about the story on this as I know at least one other person is playing it, but this is a short sci-fi survival horror FPS based around a science project gone wrong in Berlin just as the Wall is coming down. Something goes wrong and now there's killer robots... BUT WHY?!
In the credits the devs thank "the makers of Half-Life 2" and you can see why. It's set a dilapidated European city with scars of cybernetic invasion (big metal barriers, arachnid door braces, cables EVERYWHERE) - they're one jumbotron of Dr Breen away from a cease and desist from Valve. Furthermore, interstitial segments take place in a brutalist office that is very reminiscent of the Federal Bureau of Control. So it would be disingenuous to say this game has original locations, but they've used two cracking locations that I'd happily have another gaming experience in, so things could be worse! The game uses these locations to create a really liminal atmosphere that is laced with tension - I often found myself anxious to take that next step in an area for fear of what was around the corner.
I read another review of this and they said it started out good but the developers ran out of ideas. I find it hard to disagree with that assessment. There are some fun little puzzles in the early sections, but later on they tend to rely a bit too much on making everything dark and hard to find. Don't get me wrong, darkness is important in a horror game, but twice I had to consult a guide: once because I missed a useable button in the gloomy environment, and another time because they just started throwing enemies at me in the dark without telling me what I actually had to do. Certainly in the second example they could've lit the area to increase the tension and make the end objective clear before killing the lights, but it was completely pitch black. This leads me on to the torch. You have a torch that you have to find batteries for. I played on normal difficulty because hardcore seemed too much for me. When I was stuck on the first section above, I ran out of torch battery - but the torch carried on working. It looks like the torch only runs out on hardcore mode. I'm not complaining - quite frankly if they think I'm playing through this game without infinite torch battery they can take a running jump - not enough "nope" in the world! But it just looks like a bug...
The combat is conducted by a small but well balanced set of weapons. There's only five to choose from but they all do something different and pack a proper punch. My criticisms of the weapons are massively cosmetic: the guns look a bit boring and the ammo pickups are hard to tell apart. Also, there aren't enough types of enemy in the game - again, it just seems like they ran out of ideas.
All in all, an enjoyable but flawed experience. Industria 2 has apparently been announced and I was excited about that when I started, but at the end of the game I'm probably only curious about it.
