I came at this game with very little nostalgia for the design ethos of the 90s shooter; I've never played Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, Wolfenstein 3D, Marathon, Doom 2, or Hexen, largely because what little of that era I've tapped into felt like an exercise in historically contextualizing the lineage shooters have much diverged from than my seeking out a delivery mechanism of adrenaline fueled, non-stop aggressive play that is so frequently touted as the main characteristic of early 90s shooters. And, if I'm being honest, that type of hyperactive, all out play is not terribly enticing when I think about it abstractly in comparison to the mechanized, Ford-like construction of a dynamic encounter curve, differentiated with sculpted ebbs and flows of broader systemic play, that I had grown up with in 2nd gen FPSs, some of which purposely de-emphasized the shooting part of FPSs, so as to, maybe foolishly given the marketability the genre went through for 15 years after Doom, force a growth out of the simplistic interaction style gunplay enforces in a systemic state.
Nostalgia, however, has very little to do with Project Warlock's genuine thrill. Where Half-Life felt like the next iteration of the genuinely necessary, yet difficultly foreseen, integration of fidelity into game worlds that the systems pioneered and actionalized by the early Id games, only hinted at in their early shooter catalogue, affected with merely minor afterthoughts, Project Warlock (and DUSK and, to a much lesser extent, Doom (2016)) takes the mechanical interaction a step beyond the game world dissonance that shooters have largely been mired in since Duke Nukem 3D gave way to Half Life gave way to Halo gave way to Bioshock, etc. etc.
While the grounding of the play within a concerted and asserted cause and effect extension of the actual verb set beyond shoot at _____ becomes shot _______, the shooter had to grapple with shot ________ becomes why have you shot _________? As modern 'games about games' have shown, this is a largely fruitless endeavour to interrogate in AAA games because systems orientation for that initial question investigates all necessary questioning but then reinforces an ignorance of it with a game's recidivistic rhetorical structure. Project Warlock plays both sides of the bargain with the framing and world design knelling only gunplay without absolutely abstracting it. Doom did something similar obviously but the context of its gameplay came before it could be regressed, and as such, progressed.
Even if you look at Project Warlock in wireframe, the tunnelling of the PC is deterministic in a way that seems counter-intuitive - yet it sells the world with its play in a way that something like Deus Ex never could with its mechanical interactions. And what's great is you never would wireframe PW because the package is so enticing that the idea of dropping the veneer plays into the arc of the excellently scant narrative explication.
Amazing soundtrack too, wow.
Nostalgia, however, has very little to do with Project Warlock's genuine thrill. Where Half-Life felt like the next iteration of the genuinely necessary, yet difficultly foreseen, integration of fidelity into game worlds that the systems pioneered and actionalized by the early Id games, only hinted at in their early shooter catalogue, affected with merely minor afterthoughts, Project Warlock (and DUSK and, to a much lesser extent, Doom (2016)) takes the mechanical interaction a step beyond the game world dissonance that shooters have largely been mired in since Duke Nukem 3D gave way to Half Life gave way to Halo gave way to Bioshock, etc. etc.
While the grounding of the play within a concerted and asserted cause and effect extension of the actual verb set beyond shoot at _____ becomes shot _______, the shooter had to grapple with shot ________ becomes why have you shot _________? As modern 'games about games' have shown, this is a largely fruitless endeavour to interrogate in AAA games because systems orientation for that initial question investigates all necessary questioning but then reinforces an ignorance of it with a game's recidivistic rhetorical structure. Project Warlock plays both sides of the bargain with the framing and world design knelling only gunplay without absolutely abstracting it. Doom did something similar obviously but the context of its gameplay came before it could be regressed, and as such, progressed.
Even if you look at Project Warlock in wireframe, the tunnelling of the PC is deterministic in a way that seems counter-intuitive - yet it sells the world with its play in a way that something like Deus Ex never could with its mechanical interactions. And what's great is you never would wireframe PW because the package is so enticing that the idea of dropping the veneer plays into the arc of the excellently scant narrative explication.
Amazing soundtrack too, wow.