Doom : The Dark Ages
Doom is pretty great. I felt like Eternal introduced a little to much speed and mobility. I’ve become old and couldn’t really manage but I still wanted to rip and tear! The larger maps less prorus maps and slower pace are certainly welcome.
I love “counter” style games and I feel like they made a really admirable attempt at making “the counter shooter”. I feel like it’s much easier when your performance elements are largely unsynced and animation assets basically amount to some hands doing sign language in front of the camera. However in the flow of combat it all comes together to create a really coherent “battle” experience.
All the other elements of doom you might expect are still there and excellent. I think all in all this an excellent re imagination of doom that acts as a good midpoint between the speed and density of eternal and the “base new doom” experience of Doom 2016.
Sekiro
I’m still playing through Sekiro on my steam deck. It’s still amazing. I didn’t make a huge amount of progress this month but that’s because I started…
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Oh and also finished! That’s a really neat game. That feels like a remake of the best PS2 era JRPG that never made it to America. It feels “old” in some very specific production oriented and systemic ways. Menu UX is horrible but player UX is generally great.
The combat implementation allows players to functionally choose to grind and play like a more traditional JRPG or to embrace it’s dodge/counter system to play it more like and execution focused action game! I would have liked a little more FFX and a little less Persona there but all all I thought it was well put together.
Despite being able to grok through the games veil almost immediately I still greatly enjoyed the world building and journey through that world. Easy mid year contender for “goty” for sure!