Sickness update (February 21, 2018)

So I'm still sick, but getting much better.  I also have houseguests at the moment, so that's complicating my schedule just a wee bit, not to mention all the time I've been spending in bed angrily trying to force myself to be well again.

All things considered, though, and barring any complications, we should be back to our regularly scheduled program starting next Monday, February 26.

Thank you for your patience.  Now I'm going back to bed.

I'm sick :(

So yeah,  I appear to have been struck down in my prime with a virulent plague.  There will, therefore, be no post today.  I deeply apologize.

Tell my wife I love her.

Vault of the Obscure Introduction

Hello hello hello!  Yes, I'm aware I totally missed last Friday's post.  That was all my fault, I made some miscalculations regarding when certain things were happening, and it kind of got missed.  Sorry about that.

But that's okay, because I'll be posting last Friday's article right now, in addition to another post tomorrow evening.  For this first part, I'm very happy to finally be formally introducing the Vault of the Obscure!  I've mentioned this new series before, but just in case you're new around here, allow me to bring you up to speed.

The Vault of the Obscure is a mysterious place, located deep within the recesses of the obsessive part of my mind.  The collection housed within, though initially seeming slapdash and haphazard, is rather a feverishly-cultivated gallery of the hidden, the forgotten, and the obscure.  This could mean a random television show you've never heard of, but it's usually a bit more focused than that.  I am the curator, after all, and so this collection is particular to me and my interests.

See, when I get into something, I get way into it.  Let's say, for example, that I one day become interested in (fictional) video game series Dwarfstone.  Well, I'd start playing the game, of course, but I wouldn't stop there.  I'd watch the Dwarfstone animated series, not to mention the awful live action Dwarfstone movie from the '80s.  I'd even track down a copy of the brilliant but short-lived '90s comic book adaptation, the one that managed to perfectly capture everything great about the video games in one self-contained, twelve-issue epic.

And maybe it wouldn't even stop there.  I mean, we all remember the Dwarfstone toys, right?  Well, I'd read about those and lament the fact that I got rid of the ones I had as a kid, since they're ridiculously expensive now. Oh well.

Wait, what?  There was a Dwarfstone soundtrack?  And a tabletop roleplaying game?  And a cereal???

Now, Dwarfstone may not technically be a real thing, but it offers up a perfect example of what I want to highlight.  Here we have a long-running franchise that started as a series of pretty good video games, that eventually branched its way out into every kind of media you can think of.  And yet, with the passage of time, and maybe a reboot of the series here and there, these things often get left behind, and become little more than faded memories.

The problem is, a lot of times these things don't deserve to be forgotten.  And that's exactly why I created the Vault of the Obscure.  I've taken it upon myself to, in some small way, catalog the flotsam and jetsam of pop culture in the way I know best: by writing about it.  It won't always be a spin-off from a popular franchise, there's no real overarching plan, no road map to follow.  It'll just be me, as the Keeper of the Vault, bringing a new curiosity to your attention every week, more or less.

Vault of the Obscure won't be replacing the things I usually post, such as Confirmed Kills or Worth Your Time.  Instead, it will allow me to have a steadier stream of content, since those two things are highly situational and fairly inconsistent.  But don't worry, I'm still hacking away at finishing games, and I have plans for other things in the future.

For now, though, the Vault will be the focus around here.  Not only will it allow me to more consistently have new things to talk about, but it will hopefully play into my attention-deficit nature by always giving me something new to focus on.

And so, with all that said, I hope you guys are half as excited as I am about all this new stuff.  Like I said, the first entry in the Vault will be up tomorrow evening, plus the regularly scheduled post on Friday.  Look forward to it!

For the record, that Dwarfstone cereal is gross.  Don't eat it.

Until next time!

Current interests:
Listening - Various
Playing - Euro Truck Simulator 2 (2012)
Reading - Judge Dredd Complete Case File 05 (2003)
Watching - Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Return (2017)

Confirmed Kill: DOOM (1993)

Title: DOOM

Original Release: December 10, 1993 (MS-DOS)

Finished Release: The Ultimate DOOM (1995) [Modded]

Oh, here we go.

So let's be straight with each other right from the beginning.  See, you don't need me to write this review.  If you're my age or older (or even several years younger), you've probably played DOOM.  If you haven't played it you probably know someone who has.  No matter your age, the odds are very high that you've heard of it, and seen bits and pieces of it here and there.

So much has been said about what a masterpiece this game is, and you don't need me to tell you it's all true.  Beyond that, I don't even know if I could do the game any justice by attempting to be analytical towards it.  This game and the legacy it created is so much bigger than me that all I can really offer you is an explanation of what it means to me.  So that's all I'm going to do.

The shareware version of DOOM was originally released six days after my fourth birthday, so my memories of its beginning are hazy at best, and almost certainly unreliable.  Even once I was older I can't remember ever really playing it all that much myself.  I definitely started it, probably several times, but my attention span then was somehow worse than it is now.  It was also probably a bit too difficult for me, if I had to guess.

Instead, my earliest memories of DOOM are of my dad playing it.  He was still in his early twenties at the time, and PC gaming was always his thing, and so of course DOOM was installed on every computer he built for years to come.  I can vaguely remember him starting it up on new computers all throughout my childhood, just to see how it ran on the new hardware.

In a lot of ways, DOOM is to Wolfenstein 3D what Super Mario Bros. 3 is to Super Mario Bros.  That is to say, the original showed what a particular style of game could do, while the follow-up showed what that same style of game could be.  I'll always love Wolf3D, and it may have more or less created the FPS genre, but DOOM made sure it was here to stay.

And we can't forget shovelware!

The reason for that is that DOOM is more than just one amazing game.  Sure, it had a sequel the next year, and it was great too, but that's really just one part of the wave that DOOM brought with it.  This was the Age of the FPS, and it's an era that lasted for more than a decade and was responsible for some of my fondest memories.  I miss those days, but I'm happy that I now live in a

n age where it's easier than ever to appreciate them.

And beyond that, nostalgia has brought about a resurgence of interest in games from that time.  New, awesome mods for DOOM are still being made to this day (such as this one), and that's to say nothing of the throwback games currently being developed.  DUSK looks amazing. Amid Evil is basically a new version of Heretic.  And there's rumblings that 3D Realms is even developing a new game using the Build Engine, the same development suite used to make Duke Nukem 3D.  It's a great time to be a gamer.

And yet, with all that said, I still never got around to actually sitting down and playing it through until now, just under a year shy of its 25th anniversary.  I dunno what took me so long, but I expected greatness, and I was not disappointed.

In the interest of clarity, I'll just quickly explain that I played through all four episodes of The Ultimate DOOM release currently available on Steam and GOG.  I applied the latest release of fan mod GZDoom, but the only options I had applied were a more modern mouse and keyboard control scheme (but still with no Y axis) and a larger screen resolution.  I played on the neutral difficulty level, Hurt Me Plenty, and didn't put any great effort into finding secrets.

My amazement with DOOM began before I had even reached the title screen, right from the staff credits screen:

The sheer amount of talent represented on that screen is staggering.  You have the obvious ones, like John Carmack, John Romero, and Adrian Carmack, all founding fathers of id Software and titans in their own right.  But then you also have names like American McGee, who would later create the underrated American McGee's Alice just a few years later, which was one of my favorite games as a kid.  And my personal favorite on this list, Sandy Petersen, creator of the classic Call of Cthulhu tabletop RPG.   Not only that, but he would later go on to create one of my favorite board games, Cthulhu Wars, and here he is designing levels for one of the most influential games of all time.

Anyway, I then went on to start up the game itself, and a weird thing happened: the controls threw me off.  I don't know if it was because I had gotten so used to Wolf3D or if DOOM is just that particular, but it didn't feel the way I expected it to.  There's this momentum-based movement that was strange at first, where it takes a split second to get up to full speed and another split second to stop. It took me a while to get used to.

And when I say "a while" I actually mean 30 seconds.  At most.  Because as strange as the whole thing felt at first blush, it immediately became second-nature.  By the end of the game movement in DOOM had become an automatic function of my biology so that I all I needed to be concerned about was killing demons... and switch puzzles.

There was also some D&D mixed in.

Other than that, everything is exactly what everyone else says it is.  The graphics are bright and colorful, but in a way that it still brings across the gloomy and deadly atmosphere.  I especially loved how the locations slowly transitioned away from the futuristic colony feeling and more into a very hard rock version of Hell itself.

In fact, "hard rock," is a good thing to bring up, since the whole game is just metal.  From the soundtrack itself (sometimes liberally borrowed from bands such as Black Sabbath and the like) to the creature designs, the whole game just feels like you stepped into a rock album, and I meant that in the best possible way.  Just look at the game cover up there; it perfectly captures the feel of the game.

Except for that other space marine.  I dunno why he's there.

It's difficult for me to find bad things to say about this game.  I can look at it as a whole, and I can tell you that it's not perfect, but I'd be hard-pressed to tell you why.  I mean, I guess the very fact that I had to mod the control scheme is technically a point against it, but that's not really the fault of the game.  Some of the levels aren't as good as the rest, maybe?

I dunno, I'm genuinely trying to come up with negative things and I find myself at a loss.  Logically speaking, nothing is perfect.  But DOOM is just so enjoyable that looking back over it I guess I manage to ignore the little things that may have bothered me when I was playing it.  It is the game that every other game like it was measured against for years after for good reason, and it still puts up a good fight against most games released since. I fully believe that it will continue to be looked upon as one of the best the genre has ever had to offer for years and years to come.

Hell, I'd play it again right now.

Until next time!

Current interests:

Listening - Various

Playing - DOOM II (1994)

Reading - Thor: God of Thunder (2011)

Watching - Lazy Game Reviews

I'm apocryphal!

Confirmed Kill: Spear of Destiny

Title: Spear of Destiny

Original Release: MS-DOS (September 18, 1992)

Finished Release: MS-DOS (1992) [Modded]

So this is weird.  I'm sure you remember Wolfenstein 3D, which we talked about last time (and you can read about rightcha).  I'll just quickly reiterate that, even though it wasn't technically the first "first person shooter" ever made, it essentially created the genre.  Admittedly, the follow-up, DOOM (which we'll be discussing soon, possibly) solidified that the genre was actually going somewhere, but Wolf3D was the first big stepping stone.

And yet no one ever talks about the sequel.  I'll admit up front that I'm nothing like a gaming historian or anything like that, but I'm pretty sure that I had never even heard of this game before I bought the pack on Steam.  But it does exist, I played it, and you have to read about it, so here we go.

So here's a big spoiler for the original Wolfenstein 3D: it ends with you, as B.J. Blazkowicz, killing Adolf Hitler (who's in a robot suit), thus presumably bringing an end to World War II.  That's pretty sweet and obviously historically accurate, but it creates a problem: where do you go from there?

Well, that's a question left unanswered, since Spear of Destiny, much like the Nocturnal Missions from the original game, takes place before any of that.  In fact, Spear of Destiny takes place before even those add-on missions, thus making this B.J. Blazkowicz's first mission, at least as far as we're allowed to play.  And his mission this time is an interesting one, as we're tasked with infiltrating a Nazi base in order to retrieve the titular Spear of Destiny, which Hitler's forces intend to use in some sort of supernatural powerplay to turn the tide of the war in their favor.

I warned you that you should get used to it.

It's actually kind of difficult to talk about Spear of Destiny, because it's basically just more of Wolfenstein 3D, and in that respect it succeeds, mostly.  The first big change I noticed was that one of the early levels has vines hanging from the ceiling that you can walk through, which I thought was really cool the first time I saw it.  Unfortunately things like this almost completely obscure your vision, and the creators seemed to really enjoy throwing bunches of enemies into them, making those sections sheer trial and error as you try to learn where all of the enemies are without dying.  Still, it's a cool effect.

But when I say that Spear of Destiny is just more of Wolfenstein 3D, I really mean it.  The enemies look the same, the level textures are often the same, the weapons are the same, and that's pretty much it.  The previously-mentioned vines notwithstanding, the only majorly new things are the bosses, but they did not disappoint.  Sure, the first boss is literally just a reskin of the first boss of Wolf3D, but the rest are unique, at least in design, and the final boss is genuinely surprising when you see it, possibly on par with robo-Hitler.  And one of them (the best one, obviously), is an Ubermutant!

"Ubermutant" literally means "it's a mutant, but better, obviously," in German.

In terms of complexity, the Spear of Destiny levels feel like they pick up directly from where Wolf3D left off, and this is, unfortunately, almost always a bad thing.  The labyrinthine feeling of the Nocturnal Missions is back in all its glory, and it really gets to the point where each level starts to feel like more and more of a slog.  This doesn't detract from the overall atmosphere of the game itself, which I still love, but I had easily had my fill of it by the end of SoD's 27 levels (not including secret levels).

So like I said above, the Spear of Destiny campaign is 27 levels, not counting secret levels, which is just as many as the original three episodes of Wolfenstein 3D put together.  The difference here is that the game isn't broken into episodes.  Instead it's just one continuous set of levels, with a boss level every five or so.  Some levels are fun, some are ridiculously frustrating, but it's overall a positive experience, and the final level features a twist that I knew was coming, yet somehow didn't see coming.  I don't know if I'd go so far as to say that it's worth playing through the whole game just for that, but it definitely made the whole experience that much more memorable.

And then you finish that level, you get a few story scenes congratulating you for a job well done, and the game is over.  OR IS IT?

Well, no.

See, Spear of Destiny was followed up by two "Mission Packs," referred to as Mission 2: Return to Danger and Mission 3: Ultimate Challenge, and these things... hoo boy.

See, after all the trouble you went through to steal the Spear from the Nazis, it gets stolen back from the Allies offscreen, and only B.J. Blazkowicz can get it back.  That's irritating right off the bat (that will be a pun in a second), but whatever.  Let's get this over with.  27 new levels! Here we go!

So first, the cool: the mission packs are actually a total conversion for the game.  Basically what that means is that everything plays exactly like Wolfenstein 3D, but it's been completely overhauled, graphically speaking.  The stage textures have all been redesigned, as have the enemy sprites, weapons, and items.  After the entirety of the first game and the base missions of Spear, this was a very welcome change, if for no other reason than just having something new to look at.  It helps that the updated designs are almost universally improvements on the old look of the game.

Everything's so blue...

The new enemy designs are especially good with one glaring omission, which I'll get to in a moment.  For the most part, the new designs do a great job of preserving the feel of the original designs, while not being quite so cartoony.   The one big exception to this is the mutant.  Why?  Because it isn't a mutant anymore.  Seriously, my favorite enemy is the one that gets completely changed, because of course.  And that wouldn't be so bad, but what did it get changed to?

A bat.  A bat, flapping around, carrying machine guns in its feet.  Now don't get me wrong, Wolfenstein is at its best when it's straining credulity, but this just breaks it in two.  And it raises so many questions!  Who's training these bats to fire guns?  Who's designing the guns so that they can be held and fired by bat-feet??  And the most pertinent follow-up question to both of those is Why???  Not to mention that the bats are hard to see, thus them ten times as frustrating as the mutants ever were, and the mutants were already on that spectrum.

Pictured: Bat-feet

But other than that, Mission 2 is fine, right?  'Cause it's just more Wolfenstein 3D again?  Well, no, because it's here where the game starts making a cardinal mistake.  This is something I was afraid of for the entirety of the original game, but by this point had convinced myself wasn't going to happen.

So remember how the secrets worked in Wolf3D?  Certain walls could just be interacted with, so you could push them out of the way, revealing the secret behind them?  Remember how much I hated that system?  Yeah, well, here it's needed to progress.  Let me make that clearer: in order to complete this game, you are required to find pushwalls.  This means vast stretches of time were you're running throughout the entirety of a given level, pounding the spacebar like it insulted your mother, all in the hopes of finally revealing the path forward.

There is almost never any indication of which part of the wall is the one you're looking for, and the levels are huge.  And this doesn't just happen once or twice, it quickly becomes normal.  It isn't fun, it isn't engaging, and it doesn't make you feel any sense of accomplishment when you finally figure it out.  It is the very definition of a waste of time.

Eat your heart out, Skeletor.

But hey, new bosses!  On the whole I don't think they're quite as interesting as the ones in the base Spear of Destiny game, but they're still pretty cool, for the most part.  Hell, one of them, "The Axe" is probably my favorite boss in the series.  He looks like an '80s cartoon villain!

But yeah, you get the Spear (again), they pull the exact same twist again, show the exact same ending scenes, and the game is over.

Don't get me wrong, there's still fun to be had here, and the new look of everything, for the most part, does a lot to freshen things up.  But it's clear to see that we're getting further and further away from the trendsetter the original Wolfenstein 3D was.

And then we come to Mission 3, and I honestly don't know why they bothered.  The Spear has been stolen by the Nazis.  Again.  The graphics are the same as Mission 2.  The enemies are the same.  The pushwalls are the same, the bosses are the same, the ending is the same (again.), it's just all the same.  Except that by this point, each level has gone past the point of being a slog, and well into the realm of tedium.

The only real saving grace of this mission pack is the final level.  It pulls the same twist for the third time, but there's a clever little tweak to it that I quite enjoyed, so that was a pleasant surprise.

But overall, Mission 3 is an exercise in patience, and I can't recommend it to anyone unless you're absolutely dying to play more Wolfenstein 3D.  Even then, you could probably easily find a fanmade mod that would be a better use of your time.

So, at the end of the day, Spear of Destiny and its add-ons are a mixed bag with more bad than good.  There's fun to be had, but it's hard to recommend any of it outright.  Honestly, the best thing to do is probably to mod the original Wolfenstein 3D so that it uses the graphics introduced to Mission 2.  But even that isn't much of a good idea, because then you'd have no mutants.

And no one wants that.

Until next time!

Current interests:
Listening - Various
Playing - Elite Dangerous: Horizons (2015)
Reading - Thor: God of Thunder (2011)
Watching - Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

Why do you exist?!