Video Game Review #256: Doom 64

Doom 64

Nintendo 64

Nostalgia Factor:

I originally played Doom 64 back in 1997, the year the game first came out. I remember being completely enthralled by it at the time. The graphics, the presentation, the sound, the atmosphere - everything about this game was much better than what I had seen in Dooms 1 or 2. 

I never actually owned the game, however. I had only rented it. Due to the limited time I had to play the game, I fondly remember long nights staying up and playing this until the birds started chirping at 4 or 5 in the morning. I think I ended up having to rent it twice before I was finally able to beat the game and drop it into the slot at Blockbuster Video. Several years passed before I found a used copy of the game at Mega Media Exchange and picked it up for a couple dollars. Even more years passed.. and passed... and passed before I finally got around to actually playing the game again. And that brings us to 2021 - 24 years after the game's initial release. This is the first time I have replayed it since 1997.

Would Doom 64 still hold up, or would it show its age? Time to find out.

Story:

There's not much of a story to be found here. You are a badass soldier and it is your job to kill all the demons that are coming through a portal from hell. Then you enter the portal and you kill all the demons on their home turf. Basically the same plot as any other Doom game. This one differs from the norm in the sense that it is a direct sequel to Dooms 1 and 2, and not an original Doom story. It might as well be though. Let's be real: nobody plays these old school Doom games for their stories. No one.

Gameplay:

This game is a blast to play. It handles well, the controls are easy to remember, gameplay itself is super smooth. I enjoyed it a lot.

If you've never played a Doom game, I'll break it down for you. This is a fast paced, guns blazing first-person shooter. You have a giant arsenal of weapons at your disposal. You race through each level, gunning down an endless number of enemies. Each stage is a maze, with keycards needed to advance to the next section of the stage. There are secrets galore and countless power-ups to help you on your way.

The gunplay is satisfying and a lot of fun. If you are more familiar with how modern first-person shooters work, it may take you a while to adapt. There is less "strategizing" to be found here. There is no ducking, although you can move behind walls for cover. The enemy AI doesn't play around: they see you, they come for you. Your character can take a ton of damage before he is killed, too. Expect to slug it out with your enemies quite a bit in this game. And the action is FAST. I actually prefer games like this to newer first-person shooters like BioShock or Far Cry. I'd use Call of Duty as an example but believe it or not I have never played a Call of Duty game.

Enemies range from simple armed soldiers to projectile flinging demons to flying monsters that shoot fireballs at you. Almost all of the enemies you face are reincarnations of enemies from Dooms 1 and 2. It would have been nice to have some original foes for this game, but at the same time it is super satisfying seeing classic Doom staples like Cyberdemons, Cacodemons, Bull Demons, and Lost Souls (ugh, HATE these things!) make the graphical leap to 64 bit.

When you aren't fighting you are going to be working on this game's puzzles. I say puzzles in only the loosest sense of the word. You aren't going to be rearranging blocks or pushing things around. Almost every "puzzle" in the game revolves around flipping a switch and trying to figure out what that switch does. For example, flipping a switch might open up a door or raise a bridge back towards the beginning of a level. But the game doesn't show you or tell you what happened. You have to explore and figure it out yourself. Other switches are timed. They may only open a door or raise a bridge for a few seconds - and it is up to you to race back and try to find it. Other switches you can shoot from a distance. Sometimes you have to push on walls to try to open them up as if they were doors. Mainly you are looking for keycards which open up the next section of the level, until you can find the stage's exit point. Complete the stage and you move on to the next one.

Admittedly, some of these switches and area puzzles can be a bit obscure or hard to figure out, especially considering the size and scope of some of these maps. I got completely lost numerous times as I played this game, clueless as to where I was supposed to go next. The map system is... okay. It's not great and it doesn't really do much to help. Despite this, I still had a pretty fun time with the game. This did not ruin my enjoyment of it one tiny bit.

Graphics:

I'm surprised at how well this game has held up. It is hard to believe it is as old as it is. Environments are dark and foreboding. Enemies, while flat and occasionally quite pixelated, fit the whole aesthetic of the game perfectly. What really sold me on this game's visual appeal is its atmosphere. Dread and tension fill every step you take as you make your way through this game. The environments are a perfect blend of sci-fi and horror. The lighting effects are terrific as well. There is a level very early in the game that has a dark hallway intermittently lit up by red lights, and I just remember thinking HOW FREAKING COOL IS THIS as I walked through it. It looked terrific in 1997 and it looks terrific now.

Sound:

Sound is great too. The music of the game fits the look and feel of the levels perfectly: dark, foreboding, and ominous. Some of the musical tracks are actually quite scary. One of them sounds like it has babies crying or some shit in the background. It scared the crap out of me while I was playing.

A big part of the game is listening for audio cues. You can hear enemies coming based on the noises they make. When you flip a switch you can listen for the door opening and make a break towards the sound. Really, sound plays a huge factor in this game. I would suggest using headphones as you play. It makes for a quite immersive experience. Even with no headphones, however, the game still sounds really great.

Overall:

To answer the question I posed earlier: yes, the game still holds up. It holds up quite well in fact. I enjoyed it more than I did the 2016 reboot of the series, which I gave a middling score. I enjoyed it more than the old Doom games (which I have yet to review). I enjoyed it more than pretty much every other first-person shooter I have played in recent memory. Heck, I even enjoyed it more than I did the campaign version of Goldeneye 007, which I consider to be an all time classic. It's just a lot of fun to play, and very addicting too. Each of my play sessions lasted way longer than I intended, because I didn't want to turn the game off. Just one more level. Just let me solve this one puzzle. Let me get through this one boss fight. On and on it went. To me, someone with an extremely short attention span, that is an obvious mark of a really good game. I couldn't put it down.

As far as flaws, I already mentioned the game's map. It is pretty useless. I also would have liked to see a wider variety in the game's enemies. Many of the puzzles and their solutions were a bit obscure for my taste as well. And the game is quite short. I beat it in just a couple days. 

But that's just me being thorough, as I try to be in these reviews. Really, the game is a lot of fun. I consider it to be the best Doom title out there. Admittedly, I haven't played them all. But of the ones I have, this game takes the cake. It was recently remastered in HD and put on the PlayStation Store, so even if you don't have a Nintendo 64 you can still play this game. I suggest you do. Totally worth it. Great game.

Final Score:

A

If you liked this review, check out some of my other game reviews:

Doom (2016)

Goldeneye 007

Goldeneye 007: Reloaded

Wolfenstein 3D

Alien Trilogy

Video Game Review #255: The Walking Dead: The Final Season

The Walking Dead: The Final Season

PlayStation 4

Nostalgia Factor:

It's been a long ride. I first played a brief demo of Telltale's original Walking Dead game back in 2012, nearly TEN freaking years ago. Believe it or not, I actually wasn't very impressed by the game and didn't bother checking out the rest of the first season. A year or so passed before I finally came back to the game, mainly at the urging of one of my close friends, who sang its praises. 

I don't know what changed, but this time around I absolutely loved the game. I ate up all of its episodes, its DLC, and its second season. After that, the series kind of lost me for a little bit. Back then I only had a PlayStation 3, and the third season (A New Frontier) was only available on the PS4. A few years passed, but eventually I purchased a PS4 and was able to play the third game. By then the fourth season was already in development, but then Telltale Games shut down, putting season four (and the fate of Clementine) in limbo. 

I never bothered to check out what had been released of season four, as I didn't want to play a game that possibly may not ever be finished. Luckily, they did indeed find a way to finish this game and release it to the public. The final episode of season four would be released in 2019, seven years after the release of the first entry in the series. Still, for whatever reason, I never played season four. I think I kept waiting for it to go on sale on the PlayStation Store, and it never did. So in 2021 I did what any sensible person would do: I ordered the title from GameFly.

This was it. My journey with Clementine began back in 2012. In 2021, it would come to an end. Read on for my final thoughts on the last season of what I consider to be a pretty darn epic game series.

Story:

As always, I don't shy away from spoilers. Consider this fair warning.

Some time has passed since the end of season three. Clementine and AJ are out in the wild - fighting off walkers, scrounging for food and supplies, and looking for a potential group to join up with. The last time we had seen AJ, he was just a little baby. Clementine had been on her way to rescue him from the people who had taken him away from her. So how are they together now? What happened in that gap between the third and fourth game? All is revealed through flashbacks as you play.

After nearly being killed by walkers in a train station, Clementine and AJ are rescued by a group of angsty teens who have been holing up in their old school. They are distrusting of Clem and AJ at first, for reasons that become apparent later. I don't know how exactly the choices you make change things, but in my playthrough AJ ends up killing the leader of these kids when he finds out that he's been double crossing the group. AJ in general is just a giant brat, and his actions get both himself and Clementine exiled from the school. AJ and Clem are attacked by a hostile group after their banishment, and come running back to the school for help.

Turns out, the kids have been at odds with this hostile group all along. Clementine uses her survival skills to help the group fight off these attackers, and even brings the battle to their base (a large ship off the coast). It is revealed that the leader of this group is Lilly, who you may remember as the woman with the asshole father in the first Walking Dead season. The battle gets ugly and causes some interesting moral dilemmas, as Lilly's group had kidnapped kids from the school in the past and have now trained them to fight on her side. Clementine's side reigns victorious, but at great cost.

Clementine is bit. Both her and AJ are separated from the group. It looks like the end is nigh for our dear Clementine. Her face has gone pale, she can barely walk. Clearly she is very close to turning. You have two choices: let AJ leave while you turn into a walker or have him kill you. I chose to have him kill me. The parallels of Clem's situation with Lee in the first game were undeniable. Now Clementine was acting as the Lee figure and AJ was acting as young Clem. Tears were freely flowing from the eyes of yours truly as AJ raised the axe in the air. The axe drops, and the screen goes blank.

After a short flashback sequence that shows Clementine killing innocent people to rescue AJ as a baby several years ago, we return to the present time. The community at the school is prospering. AJ is working and pulling his weight. Clementine's noble sacrifice seems to have paid off.... until we find out SHE'S STILL ALIVE!!!

AJ had simply chopped her leg off when she'd asked him to kill her. He chopped her leg off, Coral!

Things end on a high note for our characters as they all build a life together at the school. The end. But damn. Damn. Did I feel manipulated or what? I was glad Clementine was alive. I know this sounds silly, but I had come to care for her well-being over the course of the last 9 years. Her apparent death had completely wrecked me as I played this game. But at the same time I was not happy she was alive either. A tragic ending like that almost seemed inevitable for Clementine - and the way she went out had so much symmetry with what had happened between her and Lee. It was poetic, gutsy, and perfect. The game should have ended there. Clementine should have died.

Sigh.

Aside from that, I really enjoyed this game's story. I barely scratched the surface of the character dynamics, but Clem, AJ, and their relationships with the kids at the school were very well-written. You can romance some of these kids, you can squabble with them, you can have deep conversations with them, you can make bad personal relationship choices and you can make good ones too. The things you say to AJ and the lessons you teach him play a giant factor in how the game unfolds as well.

Gameplay:

For the most part this game acts as any other Telltale Walking Dead game, but there are some welcome changes this time around. When you are walking about and checking out your environment, it actually feels like you are playing a "real" video game this time around. You can walk slowly, you can run, you can pick up collectibles, there are even real battle sequences that involve more than just pointing a cursor and hitting a button. It is like they tried to make this game more of a mainstream experience and less of the same old same old. And it is appreciated!

At its heart though, this is a Telltale game through and through. You have conversations, you make choices. You're playing for the story and not the gameplay itself. And I am totally okay with that. The game doesn't drag. It doesn't ever get boring. I was fairly hooked the whole way through.

Graphics:

This game looks so much better than A New Frontier. Colorful graphics, detailed environments, varied and distinct character models. The whole thing has a decidedly more cinematic feel to it as well. It's no graphical masterpiece, but it does a great job at embracing the "graphic novel" look and bringing it to life.

Really though, no one plays these Walking Dead games for their graphics.

Sound:

The music is fantastic. The characters are well-voiced. I don't know what else I can say that I haven't said in my previous Walking Dead reviews. Telltale (or whoever the heck finished this game) has done it again. 

Overall:

I had a good time with this game. I only use the word good because although I liked the game, I can't say for sure that I loved it. 

The story is good. The game has a good cast with some good twists. I like how your choices matter. There are some good, heart-wrenching scenes to be found in this game. There's some good action too. The word good can describe just about everything that has to do with this game. Good good good. It's a good game. 

I think what keeps this game from being more than just good is the ending. I hate to come back to that again, but I can't tell you enough how much it rubbed me the wrong way. They could have given us a memorable gut punch of an ending but took the easy way out. And it was totally unnecessary too. They could have made a way for everyone to live happily ever after that didn't involve the most ridiculous fake out in video game history. It just felt cheap and manipulative, and honestly it soured the whole game for me.

I still like the game. I'm still going to give it a B, which to me is a pretty decent score. Although I wasn't a fan of the ending, I had a solid time with this game the whole way through. But still; it could have been so much better. Clementine deserved a more memorable ending than this. 

Even though this game is officially titled The Final Season, I hope that someday we are able to revisit with our good pal Clementine (or maybe have her character cross over with one of the TV shows. Wouldn't that be awesome?). Until then, I guess we'll have to settle for just a "good" ending to the series. I guess it could have been worse. If you've played the previous games in the series, you still have to check this one out.

Final Score:

B

Every Walking Dead Game reviewed (twice!)

The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead Season Two

The Walking Dead: Michonne

The Walking Dead: A New Frontier

Re-Reviews:

The Walking Dead Season One (PS3)

The Walking Dead Season Two (PS3)

The Walking Dead: Michonne (PS3)

The Walking Dead: A New Frontier (PS4)

2020 Movie Ranking: The Top 5

It's March, so I guess I'd better hurry up and finish this ranking. Without further adieu, here is my top five. 

#5

Parasite

I wanted to see this movie even before it did so well at the Oscars. I came into it with no idea what to expect, and all I can say is that I liked it a lot. It's about a poor family that worms their way into the lives of a rich family. The way they do it is really clever, sabotaging all the help and one by one taking their place. Needless to say, things go south pretty quickly as the ex-housekeeper returns to the house and uncovers their lies. Violence and chaos ensue. People die, the family frantically tries to cover things up. All I can say is that it is a bonkers movie and well-worth watching. Not only very entertaining but a very clever and very well-crafted and filmed too.

#4

Bloodsport

Another movie I had never seen before watching it in 2020. I'd always heard it was one of Van Damme's better movies, but seeing as how I'm not really a martial arts movie kind of person (which is ironic when you look at my top 5) I never gave it a chance. I finally bit the bullet last year. Much to my surprise, I found this movie to be fantastic. It's part 80s cheese fest but also really well-done at the same time too. It's easy to follow, it's got great characters, the fights are highly entertaining, and it is just freaking fun to watch. I loved it. Why had I never given this a chance before? 

#3

Big Hero 6

I watched this movie on Disney Plus while scouting out kids' movies that I have never seen before that I might want to watch with my son Channing when he gets older. Little did I know that I would actually really, really like this movie. It may be my new favorite Disney movie of all time. It's fun to look at it, it's got an entertaining storyline, fun characters, and some moving plot moments that really get you in the feels. Why didn't this movie blow up bigger than it actually did? I think it is great.

#2

The Karate Kid

A classic movie that has only gotten better with age. This is as close to a flawless movie as you can get. The acting, the music, the cinematography. This movie is pure 80s fun. None of its sequels have come close to touching it, although I do admit that I absolutely love the Cobra Kai TV show. And it all started right here. Watch it and bask in its glory.

#1

Mandy

No movie had as big an impact on me in 2020 as Mandy. I came into this film having no idea whatsoever what it was about, other than that it was "crazy." Well, that is a bit of an understatement. I don't even know if I can put this movie's greatness into words. It's just so... different. The basic plot breakdown is that Nicolas Cage and his girl Mandy are living in a relatively isolated environment, in peace and totally in love with each other. All this changes when Mandy is drugged and kidnapped by a psychedelic hippy cult. Mandy mocks the fragile cult leader and is murdered in front of Nic Cage in brutal fashion. Nic is released and returns home to drink and watch weird TV commercials and freak out and have a mental breakdown in such an overacted way that only Nic Cage can pull off. But it works. Everything about this movie works. Nic goes on a brutal revenge tour to kill the cult that murdered his girlfriend, armed demonic biker guard patrol and all. It's just so freaking weird, but I loved every second of it. The colors, the acting, the way it is filmed, the trippy and hallucinogenic haze that has its influence everywhere. This is a brilliant freaking movie, and it left me in absolute awe every step of the way. I understand this movie won't be for everyone, but it definitely left a giant impact on me. I couldn't stop thinking about it for days. Mandy truly has to be seen to be believed.