32 map soft remake of Doom 2 by Snaxalotl.
The motifs of the original classic Doom games (themselves largely drawn from D&D, metal music, movies, etc) seem quaint to the modern eye, through both technological advances and raw repetition in popular culture. But if one scrapes away the crust, reaching back deeply enough across the chain of thoughts, their fundamental power remains. The inhumanity of the industrial; being part of something bigger, yet uncaring; the twisted reflection of ourselves in our stories of the demonic; alienation from the world; anxiety of life; fear of death.
Abscission's emotional core is undergirded by the conviction that drawing out that power requires one to give it the proper respect. Snaxalotl isn't looking at Doom 2, but into and through it, like when you tell a joke to a friend, and they respond totally seriously, and you think to yourself that maybe you weren't actually joking at all. The set's MP3 soundtrack (though there are MIDI versions as well) is absolutely crucial to this, and throws out any sort of catchy riffs to focus completely on dark ambience. Aesthetically it evokes a bit of scaled down Sunder to me, with its striking structures of symmetry, but mixes in the more primitive abstraction of the original games to great effect.
Since this is classic Doom, the mechanics are deep enough to express emotions while remaining immediately engaging. Snaxalotl eschews slaughter type encounter dynamics to focus on traps and scramble fights, which creates more of a chaotic, dungeoncrawly fight-for-survival feel than the methodical and analytical character of the slaughter I've played. One of my favorites is probably her take on The Chasm: every fight has this strange awkwardness to it, which when combined with platforming and nonlinear progression gives a continual feeling that you're doing something wrong. Later on I sensed that she was reaching the bottom of her bag of tricks, especially in big group fights, but luckily the set ends before this feeling became too strong.
I wouldn't say this quite reaches transcendent status (random example: the interstitial level text is a big missed opportunity given that it's one of the few times to directly speak to the player) but is undoubtedly evocative, original, and top shelf. Yet another example of the pulse of creativity and life that still beats through the veins of the best game ever made.
The motifs of the original classic Doom games (themselves largely drawn from D&D, metal music, movies, etc) seem quaint to the modern eye, through both technological advances and raw repetition in popular culture. But if one scrapes away the crust, reaching back deeply enough across the chain of thoughts, their fundamental power remains. The inhumanity of the industrial; being part of something bigger, yet uncaring; the twisted reflection of ourselves in our stories of the demonic; alienation from the world; anxiety of life; fear of death.
Abscission's emotional core is undergirded by the conviction that drawing out that power requires one to give it the proper respect. Snaxalotl isn't looking at Doom 2, but into and through it, like when you tell a joke to a friend, and they respond totally seriously, and you think to yourself that maybe you weren't actually joking at all. The set's MP3 soundtrack (though there are MIDI versions as well) is absolutely crucial to this, and throws out any sort of catchy riffs to focus completely on dark ambience. Aesthetically it evokes a bit of scaled down Sunder to me, with its striking structures of symmetry, but mixes in the more primitive abstraction of the original games to great effect.
Since this is classic Doom, the mechanics are deep enough to express emotions while remaining immediately engaging. Snaxalotl eschews slaughter type encounter dynamics to focus on traps and scramble fights, which creates more of a chaotic, dungeoncrawly fight-for-survival feel than the methodical and analytical character of the slaughter I've played. One of my favorites is probably her take on The Chasm: every fight has this strange awkwardness to it, which when combined with platforming and nonlinear progression gives a continual feeling that you're doing something wrong. Later on I sensed that she was reaching the bottom of her bag of tricks, especially in big group fights, but luckily the set ends before this feeling became too strong.
I wouldn't say this quite reaches transcendent status (random example: the interstitial level text is a big missed opportunity given that it's one of the few times to directly speak to the player) but is undoubtedly evocative, original, and top shelf. Yet another example of the pulse of creativity and life that still beats through the veins of the best game ever made.