I also played the game a lot when it debuted and didn’t actually get around to seeing the movie it was based on until much later - doing it backwards meant that there was a vivid deja-vu effect seeing the places I was so familiar with brought to life like that.

One of my favorite shows I’ve ever been to was when I saw Gwar in 2010 during the Lust In Space tour - I had never before seen a band play a live show which concluded in a boss fight. As always, the band spilled and sprayed blood and ichor all over the audience, and I emerged from that concert hall stained green…

A few years ago, I spent a couple bucks on Quake so that I could move the files into a source port. And yesterday I woke up to discover that an unexpected gift had shown up in my Steam library.

Blood On The Sand is such a treasure. It’s the only 3rd-person action game with a dedicated Swear button (and you can spend currency later on to unlock additional swears!), and it’s delightfully ludicrous how 50 Cent (along with a G-Unit sidekick) cuts a bloody swath across a war-torn nation, taking out the entire…

Oh, that’s easy. Pizza, Lamps, Jackie Chan-DAMMIT.

If you’ve never played the first level of Liberty Island, this youtube video helpfully sums up Deus Ex’s opening chapter in less than 5 minutes.

Terraria got its big final update last month, and I had started a brand new world to see what was new. This week I hit a comfortable plateau: with a set of Jungle Armor, I’m as geared-up as I possibly can be without escalating the game out of its initial state and breaking this peace & quiet. I’ve traveled far enough…

In the late 2000s, I was a college student who had befriended a like-minded group of introverts who were only now experimenting with cannabis for the first time. And “Patience” was a crucible we all passed through; a beautiful trauma we all shared. The way it slowly sinks in that the show is not going to relent -that…

I think I’d suggest it before Final Doom, since it’s more light and breezy. Cruel, of course, but with that all-important sense of humor lending it a deft touch. It’s more interested in making the player go “Holy Shit!” than it is in making them immediately reload their save. By comparison, Final Doom is more grueling…

Thanks for the kind words, and congratulations on achieving that goal!

Back To Saturn X: Episode 2 is a 2014 megawad built around a new texture set. The gameplay is unchanged from the vanilla game but the look of this episode was made whole-cloth by the project members. It’s a collection of castles & dungeons that are gorgeous to look at and tough-but-fair to play through... for the most…

Sorry to hear about those Dark Aeon roadblocks. I really think that their introduction into the rerelease was a mistake. This is a game that rewards backtracking - not just for the purposes of Stealing materials and Hunting monsters, but also through the way that townsfolks’ dialogue will change over time, and how…

Yesssssssss. The delayed gratification of having to sit on a big stockpile of levels before the dam finally breaks and Kimahri learns Steal (and much more!) is one of the best parts of that game.

I’ve put some more time into Stardew Valley this week. Nearly through Fall now, and the novelty of new seeds to sow and new plants to forage has carried things along pretty smoothly so far, combined with getting new dialogue from the townsfolk at every turn. The game’s main questlog recommends that I should be…

Since you’re committing to catching up on the story and gameplay from before the last time you shelved the game, may I suggest a strategy?

I tried Stardew Valley this week. I’m not sure if it’ll challenge the two reigning Comfort Game champions of Minecraft & Terraria, but at the moment it’s really got its hooks into me. I’ve just reached Summer, and there is still a lot of novelty and a lot of things to discover. The way the game provides a bunch of…

I also tried out a low-stakes distraction game this week: I had always heard that Borderlands 2 was the best in the series, but had never played it. A friend wanted to start a co-op campaign, and I had to get over the initial hump that tactics don’t matter, systems-mastery doesn’t matter, and teamwork doesn’t matter.

That’s certainly true how Plutonia maintains an even tone across its entire runtime. Every single level taxes the player, with no wasted space: no breathers or tutorials to be found. Whether you’re playing Map27 or Map01, it’s going to be the same style of gameplay. This “all killer no filler” consistency is part of…

Plutonia Revisited is a 2011 community project where multiple mappers came together to create a tribute to 1996's The Plutonia Experiment, which is a Doom WAD with a distinct visual style and a reputation for having levels with a well-tuned linear sequence of challenges to overcome. That visual style has been…

I have some Terraria and Stellaris games on the go with friends that we revisit at least once per week, but a lot of my leisure time has been taken up by this “write 30 things in 30 days” challenge I’ve joined. For the month of March, the doomworld forums’ Book Club For Megawads has chosen plain old vanilla Doom 2 as…