I'm going to take this opportunity to reflect (and ramble) on my gaming experience in 2018, since I was convinced it couldn't measure up to 2017, which was the year I played Doom, Half-Life 1, System Shock 1 and 2, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and Dark Souls. Following
HansDampf 's format (* = replay), but also with ratings because TL;DR and this is for my own sake anyway.
Doom 4 - I finished the original Doom right before the new year, so I figured I'd finally put my new graphics card of one year to the test and see what the fuss was about. Was thoroughly
fine, worth a play, but I was far less enthralled than I was with Doom. Anyone saying that it's a similar experience doesn't know anything about old-school level design. Granted, there are some cool aspects of the new design direction, and I'm generally happy to see it bust the balls of the stagnant excuse for FPS that the modern genre has come to.
*System Shock 2 - After installing F:NV with a bunch of mods, I discovered a nasty audio bug that caused ear-rape skipping and popping sounds. So I replayed SS2 on Impossible with
these conservative mods instead. Still my second favorite game after Deus Ex, and I still notice myself daydreaming about its atmosphere, systems, and story at least once a week. Went for Heavy + Psi + Repair, no Hacking/Research and Maintenance only at the end since I could afford it. Muh "necessary skills" BTFO
Fallout: New Vegas + Old World Blues DLC - I did eventually get the audio issue sorted... mostly (needed to install a new audio codec through ffdshow, Snap Crackle Pop still happened after every hour or so). Had a good time with it, played mostly vanilla but installed QoL mods as I went. Regretted not using JSawyer. My favorite part was the brilliant open world quest design, which managed to branch me out into exploring the entire wasteland in a very organic way. The RPG systems are also quite impressive, and I loved exploring in OWB. However, there was a period of a month where I didn't play anything at all, partly because I was bored of the game at Freeside with overpowered companions and also because I started working on my GMDX addon, so it didn't grip me quite like I would have hoped.
Doom 2 - When I finally started playing games again, I knew I needed a jolt in the arm before I resumed F:NV. This hit the spot, picking up right where Doom left off and fixing many problems I had with Ultimate Doom's (IMO pretty crappy) E4 with the super shotgun, new enemy types, and some insane level designs. Didn't care for some of the Earth levels, but I love the hell levels, even the gimmicky ones like Barrels O' Fun. Played with GZDoom with
vertical aim like I did with Doom, don't care who's triggered
Quake - My new favorite old-school FPS. It was no surprise to me that I found the atmosphere immediately engrossing since I own almost every NIN album (haven't gotten around to buying the recent EP trilogy), but the gothic horror visuals and general spooky audio design accomplish a lot too. Though there are aspects that could be narrowly viewed as downgraded from Doom (fewer enemies on screen, fewer unique weapons), I find that the game manages to accomplish more with its intricate enemy AI behaviors and tighter gunplay that emphasizes masterful weapon switching and resource management. Episodes 2, 3, and 4 ramped up in difficulty and gave me some genuinely tense and adrenaline-pumping moments at their conclusions. Finally getting to and surviving the elevator ride at the end of E2 only to find myself up against a totally new enemy type was terrifying and thrilling. Played with the DarkPlaces sourceport.
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon - I'm pretty sure I got through at least half of this game six years ago, but I finally picked it up again and had a blast. It's now one of my favorite Igavania games (though with no involvement from Igarashi) just for how challenging it is. It's definitely on the clunky side, with more deliberate Classicvania-style movement, but the experience is deftly crafted around that, with a nice sense of exploration and progression and a very fun magic system. My only gripes are that the item drop rates are obscenely low, so you'll not get to play with most of the magic card combinations or use nearly any healing potions, and the Dracula bossfight is so ridiculously hard that I broke my rule against using save states just to defeat its second half.
*Prey - My highly anticipated Survival Mode patch was finally released during E3, so I jumped back in to see the changes. I came away from the game with a much more positive impression this time, though I found that the Survival Mode options were poorly tuned and ceased to matter after the first few hours. Still, something clicked with me the second time and I believe its potential can be semi-realized with a few tweaks to its gameplay systems through a mod... which I guess I plan to make now.
More impressions here.
Prey: Mooncrash DLC - After having my faith in Arkane's principles somewhat restored, I jumped into the new Mooncrash DLC and was pleasantly surprised. A lot of the the base game's underutilized systems find their proper footing here, and come together to form a tightly coherent and hardcore experience... for the first half. Again, the ball was dropped with overpowered character progression, which is bafflingly maintained across resets despite the general Roguelike structure, and the meta resource economy is totally out of wack. Still was the best thing I bought all year, though. Impressions and analysis from
before and
after the halfway point.
Half-Life 2 - I came into this game with middling expectations, and I still managed to walk away disappointed. I seriously don't get the hype for this game, and would rather replay HL1 any day. It's hugely competent on a technical level, and there are certainly some fun and cool scripted moments, but I did not connect with this game's gameplay on anything but the most surface level. The combat is mediocre or even bad by my standards, mostly characterized by hordes of the same hitscan enemies over and over who are 10% as fun to fight as the marines from HL1. Challenging first-person platforming is gone, the puzzles are stupidly obvious, resource management is all but sanded down to nothing, the arsenal is boring, and the gravity gun wears out its welcome very quickly. I did like the boat section, the antlion sandtraps, and Nova Prospekt, and Ravenholm was pretty fun. Screw the buggy levels, the entirety of the return to City 1, and the Citadel though. I won't say it's a bad game, I just don't really like it. More gripes
here in the Doom 5 thread for some reason.
*Deus Ex - Replayed to test the beta version of my
GMDX addon. I was surprised after working on the game for 8 months that I still loved it -- I think the difference was that I turned the music off for testing, and all of my old feelings for the game came rushing back when I re-enabled it. It's hard for me to be objective anymore since I've dug through the game's code and design so deeply now, but I don't think I'll ever not love this game. My beta sucks though; I barely spotted and fixed some enormous bugs before launch and there are some massive oversights still there. Back to work, RSD!
*System Shock - Tried it out a bit to give some
impressions after the source port came out, and I ended up replaying the entire thing in only a few days on the max difficulty settings. The game is still incredible, and an amazing achievement for its time. Read
here about my harrowing experience finishing the game with only 59 seconds to spare.
*Goldeneye - Forgot I replayed this. I first played it many years ago on the N64, and later Perfect Dark became one of my favorite shooters. Since I've been replaying PD for several years now on an emulator with 720p 60FPS and mouselook support (
RIP Stolen), I was curious to see how GE held up. Both PD and GE feel like proper PC shooters with mouse aiming and autoaim disabled. GE is honestly still quite fun, though definitely more basic in every way. Missions are well structured but not terribly interesting, combat is less varied with weapons being rather samey, and level design is occasionally more open but less intricate overall. Still had some cool moments of strategy and a few tense firefights on Secret Agent. Used the new
Carnivorous Build of the 1964 emulator.
Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance - Heard this one is the black sheep of the Igavania games, but I actually liked it quite a bit. It's a tad too easy, and the music and audio are downright awful on a technical level, but it looks vibrant and plays great. The magic system is a huge highlight of the experience, adding a ton of combinatoric breadth and variety -- honestly, it's the best use of subweapons in the newer games. Too bad the upgrade progression is boring, the bosses are mostly crap, and the A/B castle layout can get confusing.
*Quake - I liked it so much that I played it again. It probably helps that I have plenty of circle- and strafe-jumping practice from Quake Live, so I have a lot of fun rushing headlong into enemies and treacherous platforming gauntlets with reckless abandon. Second time was just as much fun as the first, with a greater focus on secret hunting and optimizing quicker runs. Yes, I'm listing it twice, buzz off!
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow - Just barely completed this as the New Year hit. What a game. At first I wasn't getting the hype, but the game just got better and better, with a heavy focus on player-driven exploration and an expressive combat system that continues to expand and reward the player for their curiosity. There's a huge amount of variety, the game is extremely polished, it actually ramps up to an appreciable level of challenge, and there are a bunch of clever little aspects to the world design that nudge the player in the right direction while still allowing them to make the experience their own. Plus, I actually found myself invested in its shonen anime-tier narrative, which is almost unheard of.
Sadly, I have not yet finished Ultima Underworld, which I got halfway through and was
greatly enjoying but generally cannot play in the short bursts of time I have for other games. I don't know when the grind will end. That leaves a lot of incline for 2019, at least, as I plan to play Arx Fatalis, Dark Souls 2, the Thief games, Fallout 1/2, Final Fantasy 7, the Build engine FPS games, Hollow Knight, and maybe a marathon of the Classicvanias.
EDIT: Added Goldeneye