HotPocketHPE
2007
Voivod is my favorite band ever. While their whole discography is awash with greatness, the run of 1987's Killing Technology, 1988's Dimension Hatross, and 1989's Nothingface is unreal. The band took its otherworldly cold-metal dystopian phantasmagoria vision, spearheaded by guitarist Piggy's signature bizarre dissonant riffs, and channeled it through 3 masterpiece albums that each feel distinct yet interconnected, breaking new ground with a deftness that makes it seem trodden a thousand times before.
When thinking about Hellsinker, I am struck with the same sense of awe. Hellsinker, impossibly, manages to be both wildly experimental and meticulously refined, bursting with new ideas yet grounded in strong fundamentals. Made by a single person over years of hard work, but that's the cost: something of this nature can only exist in a compact idea-space, and an individual's mind is the most compact of all.
I hesitate to talk about the mechanics too much, because the process of discovery is so core to the game's soul, but I'll mention a couple as both a cross-section and to entice you.
One of the game's main mechanics is the suppression field, a small aura that appears when you aren't using your main shot and slows down nearby bullets. In contrast to rounded bullets though, pointy-looking bullets are slowed down less, or not at all. And an interesting and deadly emergent property is how slowing bullets causes them to clump up together, suddenly denying you space and breaking a pattern's natural symmetry. Hellsinker takes these as an opportunity to construct frenetic patterns of push-and-pull between player offense, space control, and dodging, and flicks them on and off with whiplash pacing.
Like many shmups, some enemies will be blocked from firing if you are close enough. But unlike almost all other shmups, touching an enemy won't kill you, but instead bounce you away erratically. These two factors, combined with most characters having some sort of melee ability, make Hellsinker one of the most aggressive shmups I've ever played. Like when locking-on in Crimzon Clover, knowing when to get up in somebody's face vs. when to back off is a critical skill. But instead of the calculating sound of "click-click-click," it's a rusty knife rushdown, standing in stark contrast to the game's alien aesthetic and evoking the same electrifying chemical reaction between cold metal and fiery aggression that Voivod harnesses in their music.
Once again, music comes to mind. Music, especially instrument-driven music, is actually quite an abstract medium, since it doesn't rely on traditional storytelling/narrative. Instead, it excels at creating complex mixes and flows of feelings by interfacing with the subconscious. Much like the lyrics of many songs, the literal meaning of Hellsinker's story isn't important. The connotations and the delivery are the substance, mingling with the cold blues and lonely techno-religious environments. The synth trance is deliberately synced with the events of the stages, a la fellow doujin work Touhou. The crunch of quasi-gunfire-on-metal and gauges narrated by artificial voices calls to mind both shmup monolith Ikaruga and Cynic's tech-death classic Focus.
Hellsinker is notorious for being offputting to newcomers, as this review humorously illustrates, but in a certain sense that's simply another piece in the whole. The many esoteric mechanics, the dreamlike storytelling, even the bizarrely in-character manual, all of it loops back into each other and contributes to the complex feelings of alienation, exhilaration, melancholy, and awe that is Hellsinker. But don't take my word for it, take the dev's:
"I don’t really consider story, setting, characters, and music as something standing apart from “game design” per se. Even if one of those elements is excellent, it’s more about the holistic, overall vision I’m trying to present, and in that sense, all those elements are just one part of the whole (on the other hand, provided it doesn’t feel like something is lacking, not everything has to be “perfect” for me). Ultimately one is creating a single cohesive experience, and I think it should be conceived that way from the outset." - Tonnor in a 2019 interview
In a certain sense, I consider this to be the highest calling of the medium: aesthetics and mechanics unified as one, without sacrificing either. This describes many of the canonical classics of course, but works that flower like this from an alien core, such as Hellsinker and Voivod's albums, are often doomed to the fringes, for that's the only place they can be born. Yet their flames burn, silently but ferociously, waiting to entrance the next unsuspecting passerby who gazes too deeply inside.
An utter masterwork.
When thinking about Hellsinker, I am struck with the same sense of awe. Hellsinker, impossibly, manages to be both wildly experimental and meticulously refined, bursting with new ideas yet grounded in strong fundamentals. Made by a single person over years of hard work, but that's the cost: something of this nature can only exist in a compact idea-space, and an individual's mind is the most compact of all.
I hesitate to talk about the mechanics too much, because the process of discovery is so core to the game's soul, but I'll mention a couple as both a cross-section and to entice you.
One of the game's main mechanics is the suppression field, a small aura that appears when you aren't using your main shot and slows down nearby bullets. In contrast to rounded bullets though, pointy-looking bullets are slowed down less, or not at all. And an interesting and deadly emergent property is how slowing bullets causes them to clump up together, suddenly denying you space and breaking a pattern's natural symmetry. Hellsinker takes these as an opportunity to construct frenetic patterns of push-and-pull between player offense, space control, and dodging, and flicks them on and off with whiplash pacing.
Like many shmups, some enemies will be blocked from firing if you are close enough. But unlike almost all other shmups, touching an enemy won't kill you, but instead bounce you away erratically. These two factors, combined with most characters having some sort of melee ability, make Hellsinker one of the most aggressive shmups I've ever played. Like when locking-on in Crimzon Clover, knowing when to get up in somebody's face vs. when to back off is a critical skill. But instead of the calculating sound of "click-click-click," it's a rusty knife rushdown, standing in stark contrast to the game's alien aesthetic and evoking the same electrifying chemical reaction between cold metal and fiery aggression that Voivod harnesses in their music.
Once again, music comes to mind. Music, especially instrument-driven music, is actually quite an abstract medium, since it doesn't rely on traditional storytelling/narrative. Instead, it excels at creating complex mixes and flows of feelings by interfacing with the subconscious. Much like the lyrics of many songs, the literal meaning of Hellsinker's story isn't important. The connotations and the delivery are the substance, mingling with the cold blues and lonely techno-religious environments. The synth trance is deliberately synced with the events of the stages, a la fellow doujin work Touhou. The crunch of quasi-gunfire-on-metal and gauges narrated by artificial voices calls to mind both shmup monolith Ikaruga and Cynic's tech-death classic Focus.
Hellsinker is notorious for being offputting to newcomers, as this review humorously illustrates, but in a certain sense that's simply another piece in the whole. The many esoteric mechanics, the dreamlike storytelling, even the bizarrely in-character manual, all of it loops back into each other and contributes to the complex feelings of alienation, exhilaration, melancholy, and awe that is Hellsinker. But don't take my word for it, take the dev's:
"I don’t really consider story, setting, characters, and music as something standing apart from “game design” per se. Even if one of those elements is excellent, it’s more about the holistic, overall vision I’m trying to present, and in that sense, all those elements are just one part of the whole (on the other hand, provided it doesn’t feel like something is lacking, not everything has to be “perfect” for me). Ultimately one is creating a single cohesive experience, and I think it should be conceived that way from the outset." - Tonnor in a 2019 interview
In a certain sense, I consider this to be the highest calling of the medium: aesthetics and mechanics unified as one, without sacrificing either. This describes many of the canonical classics of course, but works that flower like this from an alien core, such as Hellsinker and Voivod's albums, are often doomed to the fringes, for that's the only place they can be born. Yet their flames burn, silently but ferociously, waiting to entrance the next unsuspecting passerby who gazes too deeply inside.
An utter masterwork.
2021
Recommended by @JohnHarrelson for being like Bangai-O Spirits. Rapid-fire review, much like the game itself.
At its best, the game is accommodating of a fast-and-loose, impulsive playstyle. Bounce around like a mad dog off its chain as you dump whatever guns you grab and blow through whatever's in your way. If you're not clicking with it at first stick around, it gets better. For FPS fans, I recommend Severed Steel difficulty on NG and Tempered Steel difficulty on NG+.
Obvious selling point is the destructible levels. Blast open walls with your arm cannon to get the drop on enemies, enter sealed rooms, or just go fast. It's entertaining in its own right but yearns for more enemies or mechanics that really contextualize you tearing up the floorboards. The shield guy is good, but it feels like the start of a more interesting roster, not a punctuation mark to this one. Many of the weapons are pretty bog-standard and similar to each other, though I can't fault the terrain-piercing sniper rifle or the explosive automatic shotgun.
The main way to avoid damage (read: not explode instantly) is by sliding, diving, wall-running, etc. which all give you full iframes. It's an alright system, leads to frenetic movement which is fun and exhilarating, if not particularly thoughtful. Bullet-time via a meter a la FEAR is a fine and fitting addition on paper, but the balance isn't quite there, especially when you can still use it during stunts (which you want to be doing nearly constantly) even if your meter is empty. "Rebalanced Bullet-Time," unlockable via the Rogue Steel gamemode, removes this which helps some. Health and meter only refill on kills, which can create an interesting dynamic in desperate situations, but also makes clearing rooms full of goons quite easy.
Levels are short and punchy, with little to no bloat. The major strength of this game, and its main similarity to Bangai-O Spirits, is how it sidesteps the need for considered level design. Place some cool-looking stuff, some stacked rooms, and some walls to jump around with, and the terrain destruction will do the rest of the work. That's not to say the campaign is phoned-in: there's a constant desire to mix things up with fun objectives and silly environments. 5 custom user campaigns are also included, I didn't play all of them but I quite liked "Command: Exist." There's a ton of bonus content and customizability in general which is fantastic if you find the game too easy/hard or just want to mix things up.
Unrefined execution, but its heart's in the right place. Fun for a few solid playsessions. We need more games like this!
At its best, the game is accommodating of a fast-and-loose, impulsive playstyle. Bounce around like a mad dog off its chain as you dump whatever guns you grab and blow through whatever's in your way. If you're not clicking with it at first stick around, it gets better. For FPS fans, I recommend Severed Steel difficulty on NG and Tempered Steel difficulty on NG+.
Obvious selling point is the destructible levels. Blast open walls with your arm cannon to get the drop on enemies, enter sealed rooms, or just go fast. It's entertaining in its own right but yearns for more enemies or mechanics that really contextualize you tearing up the floorboards. The shield guy is good, but it feels like the start of a more interesting roster, not a punctuation mark to this one. Many of the weapons are pretty bog-standard and similar to each other, though I can't fault the terrain-piercing sniper rifle or the explosive automatic shotgun.
The main way to avoid damage (read: not explode instantly) is by sliding, diving, wall-running, etc. which all give you full iframes. It's an alright system, leads to frenetic movement which is fun and exhilarating, if not particularly thoughtful. Bullet-time via a meter a la FEAR is a fine and fitting addition on paper, but the balance isn't quite there, especially when you can still use it during stunts (which you want to be doing nearly constantly) even if your meter is empty. "Rebalanced Bullet-Time," unlockable via the Rogue Steel gamemode, removes this which helps some. Health and meter only refill on kills, which can create an interesting dynamic in desperate situations, but also makes clearing rooms full of goons quite easy.
Levels are short and punchy, with little to no bloat. The major strength of this game, and its main similarity to Bangai-O Spirits, is how it sidesteps the need for considered level design. Place some cool-looking stuff, some stacked rooms, and some walls to jump around with, and the terrain destruction will do the rest of the work. That's not to say the campaign is phoned-in: there's a constant desire to mix things up with fun objectives and silly environments. 5 custom user campaigns are also included, I didn't play all of them but I quite liked "Command: Exist." There's a ton of bonus content and customizability in general which is fantastic if you find the game too easy/hard or just want to mix things up.
Unrefined execution, but its heart's in the right place. Fun for a few solid playsessions. We need more games like this!
Edit 1/17/24: Don't like this writeup anymore, still have tons of problems but didn't get at them well here
THIS IS FOR THE BASE GAME ONLY
I've written too many positive things lately, let's change that. Here's an unhinged rant, written in a paroxysm of rage. If that doesn't sound appealing then click off; otherwise, read on.
---
Finally, Monster Hunter has reached the AAA market! The series's core systems have been massively improved in a few important ways: graphical fidelity has been increased, the game is on home platforms, and the marketing budget is much bigger. Unprecedented sales numbers, especially in the West, are a natural consequence of fans noticing how these changes make the game fundamentally better to play.
Ostensibly this is a return to the grounded aesthetic of Gen 1 and 2, of being in touch with nature and your place in the ecosystem. And of course, what better way to do that than with loads of unskippable cutscenes and NPCs chattering at you in the field? If we have characters constantly say "Wow, isn't nature beautiful?" then it should be clear how much deep resonance the plot has. Games like Super Metroid, Dark Souls 1, or Monster Hunter 2 are far too subtle in their execution of themes. But that method is perfect for addressing important combat mechanics like sharpness damage modifier, staggers, and true raw!
With Ancient Forest, by taking inspiration from the iconic area 9 of Forest and Hills, Capcom has truly managed to capture the essence of a hostile environment, clearly shown by player comments like "Why the fuck is Anjanath camping in the hallway?", "Why do I keep doing sliding attacks?", and the repeated "Where the fuck do I even go?". The other maps are disappointingly playable, but luckily still have readability issues and their own obtrusive environmental gimmicks to keep flow state at bay.
In a break from past games, monsters will fight each other when they get close. This is impresively scripted and repetitive, but unfortunately falls flat by keeping the focus on the 1v1s that the combat is built for. Luckily, non-target monsters can still disrupt players by entering, roaring, inciting the target to roar, roaring in response, then leaving, wasting 10+ seconds and possibly causing the player to take damage. Phew, dodged a bullet there!
Don't think Capcom has forgotten their roots though. In a brilliant reprise of one of the most beloved elements of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, Lao-Shan Lung key quests, the new titanic monster Zorah Magdaros appears twice in the story of the game. Hammer users will be delighted to hear that underneath the bombast, the same thrilling Triangle-Triangle-Triangle gameplay is alive and well. Wisely, Capcom dedicated a large amount of dev staff and time to this, more than any other monster, to make sure that the 2 hours players spent in their 100+ hour playtime would be memorable and thrilling.
One of the most disappointing aspects of Doom 2016 is how it presented a flawed-but-promising base to build upon that was distinct from the classic Doom games. It's clear the team working on World was aware of this pitfall, as they adopted a decidedly different mindset: haphazardly change core mechanics and let the other teams sort it out. By removing commitment in potion drinking and weapon sharpening, and allowing gunners to both shoot and reload while moving, they've managed to deftly replace decision points dependent on monster knowledge and situational awareness with flowcharted reaction tests. Add restocking items from camp, which completely breaks the gunner ammo system and enables potion spam indefinitely, and the picture is complete. It's obvious that this approach has worked wonders when you look at the janky, fight-specific mechanisms like DPS checks, strict time limits, and Farcaster bans that Iceborne's Alatreon and Fatalis designers were forced to resort to when creating difficult endgame fights.
The logical counterpart to making the players more powerful is to make the monsters weaker. Fights in World are satisfyingly lethargic, exemplified by new monsters Pukei-Pukei and Paolumu as well as returning favorites like Barroth and Diablos. Monsters stagger extremely often, which wisely rewards unskilled aggression and hit trades. Flagship monster Nergigante is a perfect example: breaking his spikes before they harden will trip him, giving you an opportunity to damage the other spikes. Skilled players will be rewarded with an unengaging fight where the monster is completely locked down and unable to fight back!
Reactive combat, a concept lurking in the background for the series for several years now, also makes its triumphant entrance into the starring role. Past hunters leveraged positioning and prediction to commit themselves to risky decisions, but this is antiquated, clunky gameplay that belongs on the NES. NES games are old and terrible, so to advance the series, monsters now move randomly, erratically, and often. Small positioning differences thankfully aren't very relevant anymore, and those disgusting-looking head turns are long gone.
Many weapons have been changed to align with this new focus. Greatsword now has most of its damage in the very last hit of a set of 3 charge moves, which pairs beautifully with the new highly random monster AI. Longsword takes some much-needed inspiration from other action games by adding an overcentralizing, generous iframe move that bypasses meter management. Disappointingly, Switch Axe's forms are well-integrated with each other, but some missteps are understandable.
Overall, I'm glad Capcom has finally modernized this old, clunky series. Modern gaming has come a long way, and a lot of the classics, while great for nostalgia, simply don't live up to modern AAA standards. Hopefully the new Silent Hill 2 remake can recognize how flawed a PS2-era game must be, and follow in Monster Hunter World's footsteps!
THIS IS FOR THE BASE GAME ONLY
I've written too many positive things lately, let's change that. Here's an unhinged rant, written in a paroxysm of rage. If that doesn't sound appealing then click off; otherwise, read on.
---
Finally, Monster Hunter has reached the AAA market! The series's core systems have been massively improved in a few important ways: graphical fidelity has been increased, the game is on home platforms, and the marketing budget is much bigger. Unprecedented sales numbers, especially in the West, are a natural consequence of fans noticing how these changes make the game fundamentally better to play.
Ostensibly this is a return to the grounded aesthetic of Gen 1 and 2, of being in touch with nature and your place in the ecosystem. And of course, what better way to do that than with loads of unskippable cutscenes and NPCs chattering at you in the field? If we have characters constantly say "Wow, isn't nature beautiful?" then it should be clear how much deep resonance the plot has. Games like Super Metroid, Dark Souls 1, or Monster Hunter 2 are far too subtle in their execution of themes. But that method is perfect for addressing important combat mechanics like sharpness damage modifier, staggers, and true raw!
With Ancient Forest, by taking inspiration from the iconic area 9 of Forest and Hills, Capcom has truly managed to capture the essence of a hostile environment, clearly shown by player comments like "Why the fuck is Anjanath camping in the hallway?", "Why do I keep doing sliding attacks?", and the repeated "Where the fuck do I even go?". The other maps are disappointingly playable, but luckily still have readability issues and their own obtrusive environmental gimmicks to keep flow state at bay.
In a break from past games, monsters will fight each other when they get close. This is impresively scripted and repetitive, but unfortunately falls flat by keeping the focus on the 1v1s that the combat is built for. Luckily, non-target monsters can still disrupt players by entering, roaring, inciting the target to roar, roaring in response, then leaving, wasting 10+ seconds and possibly causing the player to take damage. Phew, dodged a bullet there!
Don't think Capcom has forgotten their roots though. In a brilliant reprise of one of the most beloved elements of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, Lao-Shan Lung key quests, the new titanic monster Zorah Magdaros appears twice in the story of the game. Hammer users will be delighted to hear that underneath the bombast, the same thrilling Triangle-Triangle-Triangle gameplay is alive and well. Wisely, Capcom dedicated a large amount of dev staff and time to this, more than any other monster, to make sure that the 2 hours players spent in their 100+ hour playtime would be memorable and thrilling.
One of the most disappointing aspects of Doom 2016 is how it presented a flawed-but-promising base to build upon that was distinct from the classic Doom games. It's clear the team working on World was aware of this pitfall, as they adopted a decidedly different mindset: haphazardly change core mechanics and let the other teams sort it out. By removing commitment in potion drinking and weapon sharpening, and allowing gunners to both shoot and reload while moving, they've managed to deftly replace decision points dependent on monster knowledge and situational awareness with flowcharted reaction tests. Add restocking items from camp, which completely breaks the gunner ammo system and enables potion spam indefinitely, and the picture is complete. It's obvious that this approach has worked wonders when you look at the janky, fight-specific mechanisms like DPS checks, strict time limits, and Farcaster bans that Iceborne's Alatreon and Fatalis designers were forced to resort to when creating difficult endgame fights.
The logical counterpart to making the players more powerful is to make the monsters weaker. Fights in World are satisfyingly lethargic, exemplified by new monsters Pukei-Pukei and Paolumu as well as returning favorites like Barroth and Diablos. Monsters stagger extremely often, which wisely rewards unskilled aggression and hit trades. Flagship monster Nergigante is a perfect example: breaking his spikes before they harden will trip him, giving you an opportunity to damage the other spikes. Skilled players will be rewarded with an unengaging fight where the monster is completely locked down and unable to fight back!
Reactive combat, a concept lurking in the background for the series for several years now, also makes its triumphant entrance into the starring role. Past hunters leveraged positioning and prediction to commit themselves to risky decisions, but this is antiquated, clunky gameplay that belongs on the NES. NES games are old and terrible, so to advance the series, monsters now move randomly, erratically, and often. Small positioning differences thankfully aren't very relevant anymore, and those disgusting-looking head turns are long gone.
Many weapons have been changed to align with this new focus. Greatsword now has most of its damage in the very last hit of a set of 3 charge moves, which pairs beautifully with the new highly random monster AI. Longsword takes some much-needed inspiration from other action games by adding an overcentralizing, generous iframe move that bypasses meter management. Disappointingly, Switch Axe's forms are well-integrated with each other, but some missteps are understandable.
Overall, I'm glad Capcom has finally modernized this old, clunky series. Modern gaming has come a long way, and a lot of the classics, while great for nostalgia, simply don't live up to modern AAA standards. Hopefully the new Silent Hill 2 remake can recognize how flawed a PS2-era game must be, and follow in Monster Hunter World's footsteps!
2001
My previous classic Doom review here.
Meditations on Doom
=== Mechanics ===
Bangai-O Spirits, Treasure's 2008 DS masterpiece, is superficially quite like Doom in structure. All the levels can be created and changed with the included editor, and players can (jankily) share levels online. However, a distinct trait of the game is that Treasure's mastery of mechanics-as-such is remarkably tolerant of sloppy level design. Many of the included levels are borderline shitposts, and fittingly, one of the best is just a pixel-art portrait of the player character with lots of enemies thrown in. Treasure has done most of the work for you: all you need to do is place some stuff in the editor and let it rip.
In contrast, Doom levels need to be constructed with intentionality - certainly the enemies' AI pull some weight on their own but smart placement vastly amplifies their effectiveness. Huy Pham, creator of Deus Vult II, cites Alien Vendetta as a major inspiration and draws explicit comparisons to chess in the included text file:
"Map20 of DVII is a strong example of the Chess influence with the natural, non-teleport monster traps that simply springs from the map's sneaky layout. The Berserk trap on the uppermost level of Map20 is a reflection of a forced combination, with low health, the player is compelled to pick up the stimpack, entering the trap full of imps, grabbing the berserk as a counterattack, and then confronting the counter-counterattacking hell knight. In the yellow key complex, the two barons of hell were placed like two rooks on open files, firing down the corridor and putting pressure on the player's position and inducing him to make a mistake. The final archvile after taking the blue armor was placed in a way that parallels the black fianchettoed bishop in the Sicilian Dragon Yugoslav Attack opening, firing down the most crucial control point in the room."
The concept here is territory control. Chess is an apt comparison, but what's really interesting is to notice the similarities to shmups, that other game genre so focused on real-time territory control. The heavy emphasis on projectiles in Doom's combat means many common shmup techniques/concepts, such as streaming, moving with projectiles, misdirecting, safe spots, dodging within vs. outside of patterns, holding ground closer to enemies to keep control of space behind you, etc. directly translate.
In a structural sense, a tough section in a shmup demands a unity of macro-level routing, micro-level decisionmaking, and instinctual execution. Take Dodonpachi Daioujou's "hive" from stage 5. Clearing this demands the player work out a viable path that kills key enemies quickly while leaving movement paths open, have the requisite ability to precisely control their ship, and be able to quickly adapt to the slight unpredictability of bullet trajectories. Alien Vendetta's Map 32: No Guts No Glory (while being far less intense) uses those same core elements of macro-level routing through the map, micro-level decisionmaking via unpredictability of monster AI, and instinctual execution.
Like most shmups, and many older arcade-style games in general, there's also an intense focus on the fundamentals of movement and positioning. In this dev diary, Matthewmatosis talks about how compared to classic 2D games like Ghosts 'n Goblins, defensive decisionmaking in many 3D action games has been simplified by powerful get-out-of-jail-free cards such as rolls and parries:
"Imagine you were tasked with creating an AI which could complete these games without taking damage. You have access to all the relevant variables like enemy position and status, in other words you know when an attack is one frame away from hitting the player character. Despite being one of the most recent releases on the list, Devil May Cry 5 is one of the easiest to solve, especially if we’re talking about Bloody Palace. Simply attack until you’re in danger, then instantly activate Royalguard to negate damage. Others like Revengeance and Sekiro will require slightly more awareness about which attack type is coming but will ultimately be solved by pressing a certain button in response to the enemy...this isn’t some irrelevant curiosity, these defensive algorithms are running in your brain as you play...think about how clever Arthur’s [GnG player character] AI would need to be by comparison. If a grim reaper is running at him, it’s not enough to jump or throw a dagger on the last possible frame. You need to be able to think ahead and position yourself in the safest way to advance."
Doom is decidedly part of this old-school tradition, where avoiding sticky situations is contingent on many higher-level decisions that can't be easily reversed on a whim. High-level player David Assad has a great video on how survival in many tough fights demands creating space, which demands tactical play. Youtuber SoBad explains how the conventional advice about monster prioritization is in practice highly dependent on enemy positioning and composition (and he doesn't even mention infighting!). And in a nonlinear map, routing can recontextualize all of this.
My favorite map in Alien Vendetta is probably Anders Johnsen's Dark Dome. What's really cool about this map is how nearly the entire level is open to you from the start. This is because the entire level is shooting at you from the start. The opening minutes are a frenzied scramble to carve out a foothold somewhere as you dart around while constantly under fire. Clearing out one area opens up angles to attack new ones, which do the same in turn; this style of mapping has been called "zone-of-influence". And one of the great things that flows from this structure is how many viable ways there are to route the map. I used an invincibility to clear out a Archvile-guarded Revenant bonepile, but you might opt to assault from the window overlook instead and save it for one of the close-range Cyberdemon tangoes.
The "hot starts" in maps like Dark Dome also illuminates a truth: running away is deep! Trying to squeeze past a mob of chittering Revenants can be just as engaging as filling them with buckshot, and meaningfully deciding between the two is a joy rarely afforded in modern games. And those living Revenants won't just disappear: maybe later they'll pop back up at an inopportune time, or join the fray of another brawl. Mancubus battalions meet Cacodemon migrations; Cyberdemons rage at far-flung Revenant missiles; caged Archviles catch quick glimpses of their foe across twisted geometry; the boundaries between encounters, so rigid in most games, loosen, and their contents ooze together.
Certainly the door problem is a foremost cause of this rigidity, and some lock-ins here and there (like the BFG survival-horror blue key room) are far from unwelcome, but we can give up a bit of ground. Let the player play lame if they really want, you're not their babysitter. It's worth it when what's gained is a unique structure and flow that I haven't seen in any other game.
Even in 2022, especially in 2022, Doom has a wealth of ideas to offer. Don't think the iceberg stops at surface-level elements like fast movespeed or no reloading. Dig deeper and you'll find something timeless yet shockingly ahead of its time, a medium for mappers to explore yet grounded by solid and versatile fundamentals. Universally known, widely loved, rarely appreciated, never replicated.
=== History ===
"By the turn of the millennium, many players and mappers had moved on from Doom to Quake and other more modern games. Some of the greatest early mappers, including Iikka Keranen, Matthias Worch, and Dario Casali, had graduated to careers in commercial game design. Many of the major post-Requiem mappers—Anders Johnsen, Anthony Soto, Brad Spencer, Lee Szymanski, Kim Andre Malde, and others—had gotten together to create a team megawad out of Johnsen’s struggling one-man project, after which most of them would drift away from Doom. The twilight of the game’s odd little mapping community had always seemed like it would inevitably arrive sooner or later, and with the coming of the new millennium and the biggest of the “Doom killer” games themselves becoming obsolete, it must have felt more imminent than ever.
In other words, it was about time for somebody to create the most influential PWAD of all time."
- The Roots of Doom Mapping on Alien Vendetta
As you can probably tell if you've read any of my other writings, I'm mostly a "mechanics person". That's not to disparage other aspects of games, it's merely what I enjoy analyzing. But even for someone like myself, when playing Alien Vendetta it's impossible not to get sucked into the sheer history of it all.
Playing Misri Halek, listed as the most memorable map in history by Doomworld, might not have been a particularly great experience for me in an immediate gameplay sense. But imagine someone in 2001 experiencing something with this scale and architecture in a virtual world for the first time: how breathtaking and inspiring it must have been! (Luckily most of the maps have good gameplay too.)
Authorship is a large part of this meta-appreciation. After you beat a level, the stats screen lists the map creator(s) right under the title. Just spent hours banging your head against Dark Dome? You have Anders Johnsen to thank for that. And in a collaborative project, much like the original Doom games, each author has a distinct style. See Brad Spencer's name? Expect a fangs-bared techbase. Kim Andre Malde? Thick atmosphere and striking architecture. Anders Johnsen? Anything from a brisk romp to an all-out siege assault, depending on what the larger progression demands.
This is a pleasure that sadly seems to be limited to small indie teams and modding scenes. Devil May Cry 3's first level is one of the most fun to play in the series, but I have no clue who to credit for it. Itsuno the game director? One of the 10+ programmers listed in the credits? Someone else? Sometimes names emerge from the mist, but it's rare. In this sense, Doom is far more akin to a music genre or art scene: webs of influence can be traced, styles explored.
The larger narrative is equally captivating. It might be easy to forget, but Doom has really been "indie" from the beginning. id Software was just a handful of guys working out of a random building, and the community has always been just a bunch of fans making stuff as a hobby for the game they love. Certainly Doom was massively popular and influential, but there was no guarantee that the scene behind it would last.
Alien Vendetta is a line in the sand. A vindication of the past: 7 years on and the Doom 2 fundamentals aren't even close to being exhausted. A gift to the present: here's our last hurrah. A signpost to the future: mappers, look at what we did, what you can do. Surely you can do better, hmmm?
Playing with the custom MIDI pack feels fitting. Alien Vendetta was a gift to the community; now the community gives back. It's hard not to sense the emotion in Anders Johnsen's reaction to this WAD, 20 years later, still getting love from Doom players new and old.
For that matter, it's hard to imagine anyone at the time foreseeing what the classic Doom scene has become. Alien Vendetta's synthesis of aesthetics and challenge has been driven into new territory, most uniquely with Sunder and its slaughter progeny. Thanks to Doom's engine code being released, sourceports provide a modern experience while preserving all the idiosyncracies of the original, if you so desire. While level design has seemingly stagnated or even regressed in gaming at large, what's on offer in custom Doom maps, through three decades of knowledge, has risen to the best in the medium bar none.
So often, it feels like this medium has a capricious taste and a forgetful memory. Like so many others, Doom should have been confined to the history books, an unmoving artifact, a museum piece that gets gestured to when people talk about the FPS genre, then locked back up in its case. Maybe a few would see the deeper possibilities, feel intrigue and sadness, then get dragged along with the tide like all the others. Everyone moves on.
Not this time.
The fire still burns!
Meditations on Doom
=== Mechanics ===
Bangai-O Spirits, Treasure's 2008 DS masterpiece, is superficially quite like Doom in structure. All the levels can be created and changed with the included editor, and players can (jankily) share levels online. However, a distinct trait of the game is that Treasure's mastery of mechanics-as-such is remarkably tolerant of sloppy level design. Many of the included levels are borderline shitposts, and fittingly, one of the best is just a pixel-art portrait of the player character with lots of enemies thrown in. Treasure has done most of the work for you: all you need to do is place some stuff in the editor and let it rip.
In contrast, Doom levels need to be constructed with intentionality - certainly the enemies' AI pull some weight on their own but smart placement vastly amplifies their effectiveness. Huy Pham, creator of Deus Vult II, cites Alien Vendetta as a major inspiration and draws explicit comparisons to chess in the included text file:
"Map20 of DVII is a strong example of the Chess influence with the natural, non-teleport monster traps that simply springs from the map's sneaky layout. The Berserk trap on the uppermost level of Map20 is a reflection of a forced combination, with low health, the player is compelled to pick up the stimpack, entering the trap full of imps, grabbing the berserk as a counterattack, and then confronting the counter-counterattacking hell knight. In the yellow key complex, the two barons of hell were placed like two rooks on open files, firing down the corridor and putting pressure on the player's position and inducing him to make a mistake. The final archvile after taking the blue armor was placed in a way that parallels the black fianchettoed bishop in the Sicilian Dragon Yugoslav Attack opening, firing down the most crucial control point in the room."
The concept here is territory control. Chess is an apt comparison, but what's really interesting is to notice the similarities to shmups, that other game genre so focused on real-time territory control. The heavy emphasis on projectiles in Doom's combat means many common shmup techniques/concepts, such as streaming, moving with projectiles, misdirecting, safe spots, dodging within vs. outside of patterns, holding ground closer to enemies to keep control of space behind you, etc. directly translate.
In a structural sense, a tough section in a shmup demands a unity of macro-level routing, micro-level decisionmaking, and instinctual execution. Take Dodonpachi Daioujou's "hive" from stage 5. Clearing this demands the player work out a viable path that kills key enemies quickly while leaving movement paths open, have the requisite ability to precisely control their ship, and be able to quickly adapt to the slight unpredictability of bullet trajectories. Alien Vendetta's Map 32: No Guts No Glory (while being far less intense) uses those same core elements of macro-level routing through the map, micro-level decisionmaking via unpredictability of monster AI, and instinctual execution.
Like most shmups, and many older arcade-style games in general, there's also an intense focus on the fundamentals of movement and positioning. In this dev diary, Matthewmatosis talks about how compared to classic 2D games like Ghosts 'n Goblins, defensive decisionmaking in many 3D action games has been simplified by powerful get-out-of-jail-free cards such as rolls and parries:
"Imagine you were tasked with creating an AI which could complete these games without taking damage. You have access to all the relevant variables like enemy position and status, in other words you know when an attack is one frame away from hitting the player character. Despite being one of the most recent releases on the list, Devil May Cry 5 is one of the easiest to solve, especially if we’re talking about Bloody Palace. Simply attack until you’re in danger, then instantly activate Royalguard to negate damage. Others like Revengeance and Sekiro will require slightly more awareness about which attack type is coming but will ultimately be solved by pressing a certain button in response to the enemy...this isn’t some irrelevant curiosity, these defensive algorithms are running in your brain as you play...think about how clever Arthur’s [GnG player character] AI would need to be by comparison. If a grim reaper is running at him, it’s not enough to jump or throw a dagger on the last possible frame. You need to be able to think ahead and position yourself in the safest way to advance."
Doom is decidedly part of this old-school tradition, where avoiding sticky situations is contingent on many higher-level decisions that can't be easily reversed on a whim. High-level player David Assad has a great video on how survival in many tough fights demands creating space, which demands tactical play. Youtuber SoBad explains how the conventional advice about monster prioritization is in practice highly dependent on enemy positioning and composition (and he doesn't even mention infighting!). And in a nonlinear map, routing can recontextualize all of this.
My favorite map in Alien Vendetta is probably Anders Johnsen's Dark Dome. What's really cool about this map is how nearly the entire level is open to you from the start. This is because the entire level is shooting at you from the start. The opening minutes are a frenzied scramble to carve out a foothold somewhere as you dart around while constantly under fire. Clearing out one area opens up angles to attack new ones, which do the same in turn; this style of mapping has been called "zone-of-influence". And one of the great things that flows from this structure is how many viable ways there are to route the map. I used an invincibility to clear out a Archvile-guarded Revenant bonepile, but you might opt to assault from the window overlook instead and save it for one of the close-range Cyberdemon tangoes.
The "hot starts" in maps like Dark Dome also illuminates a truth: running away is deep! Trying to squeeze past a mob of chittering Revenants can be just as engaging as filling them with buckshot, and meaningfully deciding between the two is a joy rarely afforded in modern games. And those living Revenants won't just disappear: maybe later they'll pop back up at an inopportune time, or join the fray of another brawl. Mancubus battalions meet Cacodemon migrations; Cyberdemons rage at far-flung Revenant missiles; caged Archviles catch quick glimpses of their foe across twisted geometry; the boundaries between encounters, so rigid in most games, loosen, and their contents ooze together.
Certainly the door problem is a foremost cause of this rigidity, and some lock-ins here and there (like the BFG survival-horror blue key room) are far from unwelcome, but we can give up a bit of ground. Let the player play lame if they really want, you're not their babysitter. It's worth it when what's gained is a unique structure and flow that I haven't seen in any other game.
Even in 2022, especially in 2022, Doom has a wealth of ideas to offer. Don't think the iceberg stops at surface-level elements like fast movespeed or no reloading. Dig deeper and you'll find something timeless yet shockingly ahead of its time, a medium for mappers to explore yet grounded by solid and versatile fundamentals. Universally known, widely loved, rarely appreciated, never replicated.
=== History ===
"By the turn of the millennium, many players and mappers had moved on from Doom to Quake and other more modern games. Some of the greatest early mappers, including Iikka Keranen, Matthias Worch, and Dario Casali, had graduated to careers in commercial game design. Many of the major post-Requiem mappers—Anders Johnsen, Anthony Soto, Brad Spencer, Lee Szymanski, Kim Andre Malde, and others—had gotten together to create a team megawad out of Johnsen’s struggling one-man project, after which most of them would drift away from Doom. The twilight of the game’s odd little mapping community had always seemed like it would inevitably arrive sooner or later, and with the coming of the new millennium and the biggest of the “Doom killer” games themselves becoming obsolete, it must have felt more imminent than ever.
In other words, it was about time for somebody to create the most influential PWAD of all time."
- The Roots of Doom Mapping on Alien Vendetta
As you can probably tell if you've read any of my other writings, I'm mostly a "mechanics person". That's not to disparage other aspects of games, it's merely what I enjoy analyzing. But even for someone like myself, when playing Alien Vendetta it's impossible not to get sucked into the sheer history of it all.
Playing Misri Halek, listed as the most memorable map in history by Doomworld, might not have been a particularly great experience for me in an immediate gameplay sense. But imagine someone in 2001 experiencing something with this scale and architecture in a virtual world for the first time: how breathtaking and inspiring it must have been! (Luckily most of the maps have good gameplay too.)
Authorship is a large part of this meta-appreciation. After you beat a level, the stats screen lists the map creator(s) right under the title. Just spent hours banging your head against Dark Dome? You have Anders Johnsen to thank for that. And in a collaborative project, much like the original Doom games, each author has a distinct style. See Brad Spencer's name? Expect a fangs-bared techbase. Kim Andre Malde? Thick atmosphere and striking architecture. Anders Johnsen? Anything from a brisk romp to an all-out siege assault, depending on what the larger progression demands.
This is a pleasure that sadly seems to be limited to small indie teams and modding scenes. Devil May Cry 3's first level is one of the most fun to play in the series, but I have no clue who to credit for it. Itsuno the game director? One of the 10+ programmers listed in the credits? Someone else? Sometimes names emerge from the mist, but it's rare. In this sense, Doom is far more akin to a music genre or art scene: webs of influence can be traced, styles explored.
The larger narrative is equally captivating. It might be easy to forget, but Doom has really been "indie" from the beginning. id Software was just a handful of guys working out of a random building, and the community has always been just a bunch of fans making stuff as a hobby for the game they love. Certainly Doom was massively popular and influential, but there was no guarantee that the scene behind it would last.
Alien Vendetta is a line in the sand. A vindication of the past: 7 years on and the Doom 2 fundamentals aren't even close to being exhausted. A gift to the present: here's our last hurrah. A signpost to the future: mappers, look at what we did, what you can do. Surely you can do better, hmmm?
Playing with the custom MIDI pack feels fitting. Alien Vendetta was a gift to the community; now the community gives back. It's hard not to sense the emotion in Anders Johnsen's reaction to this WAD, 20 years later, still getting love from Doom players new and old.
For that matter, it's hard to imagine anyone at the time foreseeing what the classic Doom scene has become. Alien Vendetta's synthesis of aesthetics and challenge has been driven into new territory, most uniquely with Sunder and its slaughter progeny. Thanks to Doom's engine code being released, sourceports provide a modern experience while preserving all the idiosyncracies of the original, if you so desire. While level design has seemingly stagnated or even regressed in gaming at large, what's on offer in custom Doom maps, through three decades of knowledge, has risen to the best in the medium bar none.
So often, it feels like this medium has a capricious taste and a forgetful memory. Like so many others, Doom should have been confined to the history books, an unmoving artifact, a museum piece that gets gestured to when people talk about the FPS genre, then locked back up in its case. Maybe a few would see the deeper possibilities, feel intrigue and sadness, then get dragged along with the tide like all the others. Everyone moves on.
Not this time.
The fire still burns!
2022
My best score is 146.441 as of writing, run here. Another short review, wrote this one pretty quickly.
Ninja Gaiden essence: the game. If you've played NG that should immediately give you an idea of the type of interactions at play here, but if you haven't Yeahlookiehere has a good review, I won't bother repeating it all. I would just add that the official replay website is simple to use, and the spider and fish enemies are very well-designed. The core design is pretty damn solid, the devs are clearly on the right track and know what to go for.
However, there are some notable issues that started getting under my skin after a bunch of runs. It's clear that the devs have made giving the player lots of information a priority, but nonetheless readability can be an issue. Certainly the aesthetic is unique and striking, but the spherical projection combined with only having one main color for enemies makes things blend into a black-and-gold soup at times. The spider re-emerging is especially prone to get lost in this, which can be quite deadly. For some reason enemies will disappear from view if they go into the darkness, a very odd decision. Usually this isn't too bad, but for the skulls and especially the centipede it gets very obnoxious.
The centipede in general doesn't fit this game well IMO, apparently it's a carryover from Devil Daggers. It doesn't really interact with the essence system at all, and the only reliable way to deal with it seems to be to stand under it and shoot, but then it becomes difficult to see because it's so large and can curl in on itself. Laser ricochet feels a bit awkward to use, it's difficult to tell what (if anything) it will go for in many situations and big shots have a tendency to wet-noodle and not do much. Grab and laser being bound to the same key is a major design flaw, you will naturally be wanting to aim your laser at the big gems so it's very easy to accidentally mouse over and grab them instead. Stomp has a similar issue, and not having access to it out of normal jumps feels counterintuitive, especially in the heat of the moment.
Despite my issues, the game is lots of fun overall. Any fan of fast-paced arcadey action or Ultrakill's Cyber Grind should add it to their list, it's well worth a spin.
Edit: The final boss sucks ass
Ninja Gaiden essence: the game. If you've played NG that should immediately give you an idea of the type of interactions at play here, but if you haven't Yeahlookiehere has a good review, I won't bother repeating it all. I would just add that the official replay website is simple to use, and the spider and fish enemies are very well-designed. The core design is pretty damn solid, the devs are clearly on the right track and know what to go for.
However, there are some notable issues that started getting under my skin after a bunch of runs. It's clear that the devs have made giving the player lots of information a priority, but nonetheless readability can be an issue. Certainly the aesthetic is unique and striking, but the spherical projection combined with only having one main color for enemies makes things blend into a black-and-gold soup at times. The spider re-emerging is especially prone to get lost in this, which can be quite deadly. For some reason enemies will disappear from view if they go into the darkness, a very odd decision. Usually this isn't too bad, but for the skulls and especially the centipede it gets very obnoxious.
The centipede in general doesn't fit this game well IMO, apparently it's a carryover from Devil Daggers. It doesn't really interact with the essence system at all, and the only reliable way to deal with it seems to be to stand under it and shoot, but then it becomes difficult to see because it's so large and can curl in on itself. Laser ricochet feels a bit awkward to use, it's difficult to tell what (if anything) it will go for in many situations and big shots have a tendency to wet-noodle and not do much. Grab and laser being bound to the same key is a major design flaw, you will naturally be wanting to aim your laser at the big gems so it's very easy to accidentally mouse over and grab them instead. Stomp has a similar issue, and not having access to it out of normal jumps feels counterintuitive, especially in the heat of the moment.
Despite my issues, the game is lots of fun overall. Any fan of fast-paced arcadey action or Ultrakill's Cyber Grind should add it to their list, it's well worth a spin.
Edit: The final boss sucks ass
2018
Replayed on Cero Miedo (equivalent to Ultra-Violence in Doom), Intruder Mode (aka pistol start from Doom), no mid-level saves. This will be a quick one, not as analytical as my usual fare.
Mechanically, SimonDedalus's review is pretty much on the money. Elements from classic FPS (movement from Quake, infighting from Doom, secrets from Build Engine, prop shenanigans from Half Life) are haphazardly smashed together without any real sense of a cohesive, balanced end product. Movement is fun to hop around with but utterly dominates open-air encounters. Map design is serviceable I guess? Nothing awe-inspiring but I haven't played Quake custom maps so I have no idea what the bar is here.
Enemies are mostly Doom 1 clones, weapons are mostly Quake clones except for the crossbow which is kinda neat. Infighting is a lot more circle-strafy than Doom (which could already get circle-strafy on some maps) and less strategic since enemies of the same type can fight each other. The props are borderline overpowered, but throwing barrels over and over is kinda boring and error-prone so whatever I guess? Ammo is usually everywhere even if you don't find the secrets, but health and armor get gobbled up quick. Enemies do huge damage on Cero Miedo, probably because the dev realized that the only way you can die with this combat and movement system is to get clipped by stray pseudo-hitscan projectiles like 5 times over the course of the whole level. Play a good Doom map and you'll understand what I mean here when I say the balancing and structure is pretty bad for protracted combat encounters.
The atmosphere, sense of pacing, and general presentation save the game. There's a sense of constant forward momentum, going towards something, though you're never quite sure what. Maps alternate between combat-heavy arenas and claustrophobic crawls, which elevates both beyond their standalone level of quality. Low-poly blends great with backwoods and industrial horror, think those PS1-style short horror games. Sound design is generally solid. I love the dual shotguns, satisfying to use. The powerups are fun and stacking them is pretty neat. And the ending is genuinely good, which is bizarrely rare in other classic FPS.
I definitely don't hate this game, it has the good sense to keep its runtime short and it was made when classic FPS design was only just coming back into vogue. If you haven't played the classics you'll probably like this a lot. Moral of the story is go play Doom and Blood.
Mechanically, SimonDedalus's review is pretty much on the money. Elements from classic FPS (movement from Quake, infighting from Doom, secrets from Build Engine, prop shenanigans from Half Life) are haphazardly smashed together without any real sense of a cohesive, balanced end product. Movement is fun to hop around with but utterly dominates open-air encounters. Map design is serviceable I guess? Nothing awe-inspiring but I haven't played Quake custom maps so I have no idea what the bar is here.
Enemies are mostly Doom 1 clones, weapons are mostly Quake clones except for the crossbow which is kinda neat. Infighting is a lot more circle-strafy than Doom (which could already get circle-strafy on some maps) and less strategic since enemies of the same type can fight each other. The props are borderline overpowered, but throwing barrels over and over is kinda boring and error-prone so whatever I guess? Ammo is usually everywhere even if you don't find the secrets, but health and armor get gobbled up quick. Enemies do huge damage on Cero Miedo, probably because the dev realized that the only way you can die with this combat and movement system is to get clipped by stray pseudo-hitscan projectiles like 5 times over the course of the whole level. Play a good Doom map and you'll understand what I mean here when I say the balancing and structure is pretty bad for protracted combat encounters.
The atmosphere, sense of pacing, and general presentation save the game. There's a sense of constant forward momentum, going towards something, though you're never quite sure what. Maps alternate between combat-heavy arenas and claustrophobic crawls, which elevates both beyond their standalone level of quality. Low-poly blends great with backwoods and industrial horror, think those PS1-style short horror games. Sound design is generally solid. I love the dual shotguns, satisfying to use. The powerups are fun and stacking them is pretty neat. And the ending is genuinely good, which is bizarrely rare in other classic FPS.
I definitely don't hate this game, it has the good sense to keep its runtime short and it was made when classic FPS design was only just coming back into vogue. If you haven't played the classics you'll probably like this a lot. Moral of the story is go play Doom and Blood.
Despite being one of the most popular and influential games of all time, somehow, Doom 2 is still severely underrated.
Someone who agrees is Danbo, fellow Doom lover and developer of the shmup Blue Revolver. In his old article (https://blog.danbo.vg/post/50094276897/the-most-misunderstood-game-of-all-time) he explains:
"While Doom was no doubt the product of a bunch of nerds doing what they love, the game offers a more intelligent gameplay palette than just about any other pure FPS in the world...Doom perfection is achieved where the visceral meets the intelligent."
Everyone knows the obvious: the timeless joy of the Super Shotgun, the surreal demonic aesthetic, the beloved metal MIDIs that rip off Metallica and Slayer, and so on. But there's an iceberg of elements below the surface that oft go overlooked by those uninitiated in deeper Dooming ways. To bring up just a few examples:
The famous BFG is a brilliant, quirky weapon that operates like some bizarre hybrid of a delayed-fire rocket launcher and shotgun. The ball does a good chunk of damage, but the real firepower is in the spread of 40 invisible tracers that shoot out from you a bit after the ball explodes, in the direction you initially fired. You can fire at packs of enemies to spread out the damage for crowd control, or get right up next to something to put all the tracers on it for massive destruction (both incredibly useful and incredibly dangerous against Cyberdemons). You can fire the BFG at long range, do other things (run around, switch weapons), then move into position for the tracers as the ball makes impact. You can hide behind cover, shoot the ball into a wall, then quickly peek outside cover to forgo the ball damage in favor of safety. You can even shoot, realize that you're in a bad position, and retreat, wasting ammo but possibly saving your life.
Switching weapons is both critical to success and surprisingly slow, especially if you compare with Doom's modern entries. But this adds commitment, that deep shard of the action game's soul, in a way that ties into the ever-present ammo system. Say you pump two Super Shotgun blasts into a Revenant, and are confident that it's a hair away from death. You can switch to the Chaingun to fire a quick burst, which is highly ammo-efficient, but takes time and leaves you vulnerable. You can stick with the Super Shotgun, which trades ammo for safety and speed. You can even use the Rocket Launcher to put heavy damage on another foe while killing the first with splash damage, but this opens the door for the classic-yet-catastrophic rocket to your own face. id could have easily made the weapon switch speed near-instant, but whether by intention or happenstance, they didn't, and the game is better for it.
I could go on and on about all the nuances that add to the game, but there are two critical elements that set Doom apart from every other FPS. The first is its emphasis on space control. Take the humble Pinky, for instance: low health and it's bites are easily dodged, so not much threat, right? Well, put Doomguy in a room with fifty of them (Doom 2 MAP08: Tricks and Traps for instance) and the assessment rapidly changes. If you're not careful, you'll be surrounded on all sides, and while killing a few may be easy, others will quickly rush into the gaps to further constrict you. Controlling territory with movement and smart (or copious) use of ammo is critical to survival. Now imagine how much the situation would evolve with just a single Archvile added to the mix!
The other aspect, almost completely unique to Doom as far as I know, is monster infighting and its importance. Baiting one monster type to attack another will cause it to switch aggro and retaliate. Purposefully leaving some monsters alive to tear each other apart can save you tons of ammo, but also presents a huge risk, as the resulting fight is more chaotic and dangerous.
A great example is the slime pit in Alien Vendetta's MAP14: Overwhelming Odds. The whole pit is filled with Pinkies, and the only way to exit the pit is a lift opposite the switch you need to hit. But hitting the switch releases two Cyberdemons, who can easily kill you if you get trapped, but can also easily dispatch the Pinkies and save you lots of ammo. How many Pinkies do you kill to get to the lift safely, vs. how many do you leave alive for the Cyberdemons? A little later, you need to return to the pit to activate another switch, which releases a massive cloud of Cacodemons. Do you kill the Cyberdemons before hitting the switch, while the field is nice and clear, but go it alone against the Cacos? Or do you leave the Cyberdemons to thin out the horde, then risk fighting them with random Cacos floating around? Or maybe you only kill one Cyberdemon to split the difference? I've tried all of these strategies, and each has its own strengths, weaknesses, and gameplay flow.
It's truly astonishing to me how much id managed to get right so early on. The fundamentals here are rock-solid, and the blend of fast paced action, using enemies against each other, heavy resource management, and a thick coating of atmosphere for good measure prefigures Resident Evil 4 by a decade. All the dynamic layers of decision-making I yearn for in action games are here, weaving into each other in wonderful interplay. Split-second decisions and execution are, as always, a matter of life and death, but also affect your health and ammo, which leaks into the next encounters. Making too hasty of a retreat at the wrong time can cost you precious territory and create openings for monsters to stake out unfavorable positions, the consequences of which might not be felt until later in the fight. The overall route you devise for tackling a map can vastly change how the onslaught plays out, both in terms of what gear you have access to and what mix of monsters are active.
It should be an obvious conclusion by now that the map has a massive impact on gameplay, especially if you are pistol starting. (sidenote: you should absolutely pistol start levels, lower the difficulty if you have to) Placement of monsters, weapons, resources, and geometry will make or break the experience. and the true mapping virtuoso has a commanding sense of how to arrange these elements to create gripping scenarios that challenge, terrify, surprise, and delight.
Danbo again:
"It’s not artificial intelligence you fight when you’re locked in a room full of Barons of Hell and Revenants and voicelessly asked to pick a side in the resulting infighting (It’ll take more ammo to finish off the barons, but revenants are more likely to give you a nasty right hook or slap you with a rocket in the process) - it’s human intelligence."
Doom 1 and 2's base maps, given the time and constraints id was working under, are an admirable work and good bit of fun, and have undoubtedly served as a crucial creative jumping-off point for the community. But they weren't able to reveal the true brilliance of the game's design: it would be the Casali brothers' Plutonia Experiment, distributed commercially in Final Doom by id a couple years after Doom 2, that began to show off how careful arrangement could bring out the best (and most deadly) in each monster.
As Doomworld's Not Jabba puts it, in their epic history Roots of Doom Mapping (https://www.doomworld.com/25years/the-roots-of-doom-mapping/):
"The Casali brothers laid so much groundwork that all combat-oriented mapping has been a series of footnotes to Plutonia."
The Doom 2 enemies in particular are some of the best ever made, and in Plutonia we can see that each contribute something unique. Hell Knights are balanced bruisers who eat space, health, and ammo in equal measure. Revenants are fragile, but their fast movespeed and homing missiles demand nimble footwork. Chaingunners fall over to stiff breezes, but call forth lead torrents within their sightlines. Mancubi and Arachnotrons lay down blankets of fire, but can be easily dodged close up and are especially prone to starting infights. Pain Elementals are harmless if you stop their Lost Souls from spawning, but sponge up piles of ammo if you let them roam free for too long. Archviles exert their tyrannical rule through long range, delayed-hitscan fire attacks, and they brutally punish inaction by resurrecting nearby fallen foes.
Since the release of Final Doom, Doom's almost 30-year-old community has been steadily building on this foundation, its continued vitality attributable to a complex mix of historical circumstance, id's openness to fan modifications (a stance I am immensely greatful for, and has been highly influential in PC gaming at large), and love of Doom. I confess that I have only begun to dip my toes into the vast world of custom maps, but the tremendous fun I've had so far, as well as the glowing reception for projects like Scythe 2, Valiant, Ancient Aliens, and Sunlust, has me eager to dive deeper. This is a community that most games would kill for, and the fact that it's gone largely overlooked, even by many fellow lovers of game mechanics, can only be described as utterly criminal.
An all-around great resource for learning more is MtPain27's Dean of Doom Youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/MtPain27), where he reviews both new and old WADs level-by-level. His love of Doom is infectious, and he gives a great sense for the age, breadth, and brilliance of the mapping scene. Skilled players like Decino (https://www.youtube.com/c/decino) can also help show off the deeper aspects of gameplay, as well as engine quirks to add to your knowledge repertoire.
There are certainly some problems with the game (random damage and berserk with the chainsaw come to mind) but these are negligible when juxtaposed with the whole. I am utterly awed and humbled by what has been created here, and I don't see anything comparable emerging again. This is the type of game you could spend your whole life exploring and mastering.
Simply put: One of the greatest games of all time.
Someone who agrees is Danbo, fellow Doom lover and developer of the shmup Blue Revolver. In his old article (https://blog.danbo.vg/post/50094276897/the-most-misunderstood-game-of-all-time) he explains:
"While Doom was no doubt the product of a bunch of nerds doing what they love, the game offers a more intelligent gameplay palette than just about any other pure FPS in the world...Doom perfection is achieved where the visceral meets the intelligent."
Everyone knows the obvious: the timeless joy of the Super Shotgun, the surreal demonic aesthetic, the beloved metal MIDIs that rip off Metallica and Slayer, and so on. But there's an iceberg of elements below the surface that oft go overlooked by those uninitiated in deeper Dooming ways. To bring up just a few examples:
The famous BFG is a brilliant, quirky weapon that operates like some bizarre hybrid of a delayed-fire rocket launcher and shotgun. The ball does a good chunk of damage, but the real firepower is in the spread of 40 invisible tracers that shoot out from you a bit after the ball explodes, in the direction you initially fired. You can fire at packs of enemies to spread out the damage for crowd control, or get right up next to something to put all the tracers on it for massive destruction (both incredibly useful and incredibly dangerous against Cyberdemons). You can fire the BFG at long range, do other things (run around, switch weapons), then move into position for the tracers as the ball makes impact. You can hide behind cover, shoot the ball into a wall, then quickly peek outside cover to forgo the ball damage in favor of safety. You can even shoot, realize that you're in a bad position, and retreat, wasting ammo but possibly saving your life.
Switching weapons is both critical to success and surprisingly slow, especially if you compare with Doom's modern entries. But this adds commitment, that deep shard of the action game's soul, in a way that ties into the ever-present ammo system. Say you pump two Super Shotgun blasts into a Revenant, and are confident that it's a hair away from death. You can switch to the Chaingun to fire a quick burst, which is highly ammo-efficient, but takes time and leaves you vulnerable. You can stick with the Super Shotgun, which trades ammo for safety and speed. You can even use the Rocket Launcher to put heavy damage on another foe while killing the first with splash damage, but this opens the door for the classic-yet-catastrophic rocket to your own face. id could have easily made the weapon switch speed near-instant, but whether by intention or happenstance, they didn't, and the game is better for it.
I could go on and on about all the nuances that add to the game, but there are two critical elements that set Doom apart from every other FPS. The first is its emphasis on space control. Take the humble Pinky, for instance: low health and it's bites are easily dodged, so not much threat, right? Well, put Doomguy in a room with fifty of them (Doom 2 MAP08: Tricks and Traps for instance) and the assessment rapidly changes. If you're not careful, you'll be surrounded on all sides, and while killing a few may be easy, others will quickly rush into the gaps to further constrict you. Controlling territory with movement and smart (or copious) use of ammo is critical to survival. Now imagine how much the situation would evolve with just a single Archvile added to the mix!
The other aspect, almost completely unique to Doom as far as I know, is monster infighting and its importance. Baiting one monster type to attack another will cause it to switch aggro and retaliate. Purposefully leaving some monsters alive to tear each other apart can save you tons of ammo, but also presents a huge risk, as the resulting fight is more chaotic and dangerous.
A great example is the slime pit in Alien Vendetta's MAP14: Overwhelming Odds. The whole pit is filled with Pinkies, and the only way to exit the pit is a lift opposite the switch you need to hit. But hitting the switch releases two Cyberdemons, who can easily kill you if you get trapped, but can also easily dispatch the Pinkies and save you lots of ammo. How many Pinkies do you kill to get to the lift safely, vs. how many do you leave alive for the Cyberdemons? A little later, you need to return to the pit to activate another switch, which releases a massive cloud of Cacodemons. Do you kill the Cyberdemons before hitting the switch, while the field is nice and clear, but go it alone against the Cacos? Or do you leave the Cyberdemons to thin out the horde, then risk fighting them with random Cacos floating around? Or maybe you only kill one Cyberdemon to split the difference? I've tried all of these strategies, and each has its own strengths, weaknesses, and gameplay flow.
It's truly astonishing to me how much id managed to get right so early on. The fundamentals here are rock-solid, and the blend of fast paced action, using enemies against each other, heavy resource management, and a thick coating of atmosphere for good measure prefigures Resident Evil 4 by a decade. All the dynamic layers of decision-making I yearn for in action games are here, weaving into each other in wonderful interplay. Split-second decisions and execution are, as always, a matter of life and death, but also affect your health and ammo, which leaks into the next encounters. Making too hasty of a retreat at the wrong time can cost you precious territory and create openings for monsters to stake out unfavorable positions, the consequences of which might not be felt until later in the fight. The overall route you devise for tackling a map can vastly change how the onslaught plays out, both in terms of what gear you have access to and what mix of monsters are active.
It should be an obvious conclusion by now that the map has a massive impact on gameplay, especially if you are pistol starting. (sidenote: you should absolutely pistol start levels, lower the difficulty if you have to) Placement of monsters, weapons, resources, and geometry will make or break the experience. and the true mapping virtuoso has a commanding sense of how to arrange these elements to create gripping scenarios that challenge, terrify, surprise, and delight.
Danbo again:
"It’s not artificial intelligence you fight when you’re locked in a room full of Barons of Hell and Revenants and voicelessly asked to pick a side in the resulting infighting (It’ll take more ammo to finish off the barons, but revenants are more likely to give you a nasty right hook or slap you with a rocket in the process) - it’s human intelligence."
Doom 1 and 2's base maps, given the time and constraints id was working under, are an admirable work and good bit of fun, and have undoubtedly served as a crucial creative jumping-off point for the community. But they weren't able to reveal the true brilliance of the game's design: it would be the Casali brothers' Plutonia Experiment, distributed commercially in Final Doom by id a couple years after Doom 2, that began to show off how careful arrangement could bring out the best (and most deadly) in each monster.
As Doomworld's Not Jabba puts it, in their epic history Roots of Doom Mapping (https://www.doomworld.com/25years/the-roots-of-doom-mapping/):
"The Casali brothers laid so much groundwork that all combat-oriented mapping has been a series of footnotes to Plutonia."
The Doom 2 enemies in particular are some of the best ever made, and in Plutonia we can see that each contribute something unique. Hell Knights are balanced bruisers who eat space, health, and ammo in equal measure. Revenants are fragile, but their fast movespeed and homing missiles demand nimble footwork. Chaingunners fall over to stiff breezes, but call forth lead torrents within their sightlines. Mancubi and Arachnotrons lay down blankets of fire, but can be easily dodged close up and are especially prone to starting infights. Pain Elementals are harmless if you stop their Lost Souls from spawning, but sponge up piles of ammo if you let them roam free for too long. Archviles exert their tyrannical rule through long range, delayed-hitscan fire attacks, and they brutally punish inaction by resurrecting nearby fallen foes.
Since the release of Final Doom, Doom's almost 30-year-old community has been steadily building on this foundation, its continued vitality attributable to a complex mix of historical circumstance, id's openness to fan modifications (a stance I am immensely greatful for, and has been highly influential in PC gaming at large), and love of Doom. I confess that I have only begun to dip my toes into the vast world of custom maps, but the tremendous fun I've had so far, as well as the glowing reception for projects like Scythe 2, Valiant, Ancient Aliens, and Sunlust, has me eager to dive deeper. This is a community that most games would kill for, and the fact that it's gone largely overlooked, even by many fellow lovers of game mechanics, can only be described as utterly criminal.
An all-around great resource for learning more is MtPain27's Dean of Doom Youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/MtPain27), where he reviews both new and old WADs level-by-level. His love of Doom is infectious, and he gives a great sense for the age, breadth, and brilliance of the mapping scene. Skilled players like Decino (https://www.youtube.com/c/decino) can also help show off the deeper aspects of gameplay, as well as engine quirks to add to your knowledge repertoire.
There are certainly some problems with the game (random damage and berserk with the chainsaw come to mind) but these are negligible when juxtaposed with the whole. I am utterly awed and humbled by what has been created here, and I don't see anything comparable emerging again. This is the type of game you could spend your whole life exploring and mastering.
Simply put: One of the greatest games of all time.
This is a weird one for me. I've enjoyed my time with Sunbreak, certainly more than with base Rise, and at first I was hooked, but sadly it's become clear that this isn't the pivot into smart, fast, ability-based combat I was hoping for, but instead just a repair crew led by a new director coming to fix base Rise's baffling mistakes. It's definitely the best 5th gen game, but a 5th gen game nonetheless, with all the baggage that entails, plus some new problems for good measure.
Most of this review will be negative, but the game as a whole is actually decent, hence my rating. I played it, I mildly enjoyed it, I would tentatively recommend it to others depending on their interest and the price point. I like Gunlance, good weapon. But the discussion around this series endlessly frustrates me, because it seems that flaws are either glossed over or only superficially addressed. You can find plenty of people online talking up Sunbreak's virtues, especially over Rise: the progression, difficulty, no Rampages, endgame systems, gear balance, crabs (damn I love the crabs), and so on. Flowery writing and nice sentiments have their place, but you can read that elsewhere. What I find lacking is deep, meaty analysis.
So I'll save us some time and just reach straight for the butcher's knife.
---
I will overlook a lot of bullshit if a game's fundamentals are high-quality, see DMC3, MHFU, etc. But sadly it's just not fully there for Sunbreak, despite all the improvements, and my gut says that there are some deep flaws here that are hard to ignore. If I had to pin it down in a few words, the combat feels too "passive" and "reactive"; it feels like my actions don't have much influence on the state of the monster beyond just dealing damage.
In most other action games (DMC, Ninja Gaiden, etc.), each individual enemy can be put into a variety of states, such as hitstunned, launched, grabbed, jumped on, etc. which all have different causes and effects. But monsters only have a few states: normal, flinch, exhausted, and immobilized. Immobilizing a monster generally isn't very interactive, and just serves as a reward for the player using some simple mechanic (KO, damage topple, wyvern ride, hunting helpers, ...). Exhaust is a similar story, albeit nice for varying the pace more organically. Flinching can interrupt monster attacks, but because monsters move around so much, keeping track of flinch thresholds is very difficult (moreso than older games) and only done at the highest levels of play. So most of your time will be spent with the monster moving and attacking while being unaffected by your actions.
In the past, Freedom Unite tackled this problem with monster AI. Monsters moved and attacked in predictable ways based on where you were standing, but their attacks were quite dangerous unless you were well-positioned in advance, so balancing offense and defense with an eye towards the future was key. These days this is mostly gone, as what the monster does is largely determined by raw RNG that you have little control over, excepting the specific fixed strings of moves that are coded into the AI. Furthermore, the monsters have so many moves and so much movement they can do from neutral, that it's not feasible to play around them in advance. These two factors combined essentially eliminate preemptive positioning beyond the canned "monster will do X -> Y -> Z, so prepare for Y and Z if you see X".
So your best bet in neutral is to stand somewhere midrange and do one of two things: wait for the monster to attack, then dodge and punish, or throw out big attacks and take trades. While this can be fun in its own right, especially when you experiment with aggressive ways to leverage openings within or after attacks, eventually it inches dangerously close to a call-and-response structure that gets old fast. Even the micropositioning that's long been a series staple, while still enjoyable to a degree, is dampened by the ridiculous tracking on many moves, which is there to hit players using the various extremely powerful defensive tools attached to wirebugs, and partially because higher framerates than 30 are glitched and increase tracking.
Because your attacks can't really affect the monster beyond dealing damage, and the micropositioning of hitboxes and movement is less emphasized, more pressure is put on balancing to differentiate moves. MH has never really been that good at balance, but in the past it's been serviceable, with the major exception of Generations Ultimate, where at least you can ignore most of it if you really want. While Sunbreak is probably better off balance-wise than GU (really not saying much), now the stakes are higher, with the core mechanics of Wirebugs and Switch Skills at play.
Wirebugs in general don't really feel like much of a resource to manage at all. This is partially because most of the cooldowns are low, so by the time you would need a bug, you almost always have it (unless you're wirefalling on every single hit). It's also partially because the tradeoffs between silkbinds aren't really there. Often there is either one silkbind that is obviously the best to spam (Hammer's Impact Crater, Switch Axe's counter, Charge Blade's Counter Peak Performance, etc.), or the desirable silkbinds (many of which have ridiculous defensive properties) are low cooldown as previously mentioned.
Wirefall, a mechanic with great potential for defensive decision-making, is severely hurt by this, as the intended cooldown tradeoff is mostly irrelevant compared to its power. This forced the developers to add:
- "Gotcha" followups that catch wirefall, which are trivially memorized and don't contribute to depth long-term.
- Combos that need wirefall to break out of, which feels less like a strategic decision to conserve wirebugs and more like being punished for getting caught at an unlucky time.
- Simply banning wirefall for certain attacks, which "works" but is rather clumsy and has no pattern that I could discern.
For better implementations of resources like Wirebugs see Nioh 2 Anima meter, Unsouled meter/Ghost Orbs, probably many fighting games, and MHGU hunter arts.
Switch Skills are a little less egregious, and there are some gems like Greatsword's Surge Slash Combo and Gunlance's Blast Dash, but a lot of them are just bad compared to their alternatives, and not even situationally useful or significantly different to play, which really limits the impact of Switch Skill Swap beyond the skills that impact the swap action itself. It's sort of like if Nioh only had 1-2 stances per weapon but still had flux, it's neat I guess but falls short of its potential.
Why nobody brings this next point up continually baffles me: 5th gen MH feels substantially worse to control than older games. Movement feels slippery, and the animations smooth into each other in an unsatisfying way. One of the joys of classic MH was how weighty yet precise everything felt. Slamming your meticuously-aimed Greatsword into a monster's head, waiting just the right amount of split-seconds, then watching your hunter snap into motion to iframe the next attack was a fantastic feeling that never got old. But that's gone now, presumably for "realism"/"fluidity"/trailer footage. And it's not like this is some unsolvable problem; DMC, Ninja Gaiden, and Nioh are as least as fast-paced as Sunbreak but feel much better to control. This might sound like a nitpick, but this is the type of thing that gets stuck in your subconscious, silently influencing the texture of your experience.
Given that this series has adopted a Call of Duty style dev cycle, it's not terribly surprising that the systems around the fundamentals, even the newer additions, have accrued MMO-like bloat and internal tension. Just to name a few:
- Why are you allowed to ride the dog and sharpen during combat?
- Why would you ever use more than one ammo type for gun if you can just restock your best type?
- Why do the strongest healing items in the game have the fastest use animation?
- Why is the inventory limited at all if you can just restock?
- Why are there still tons of completely useless armor skills?
- Why does wyvern ride do so much damage yet has nothing to do with the regular combat systems?
- Why do weapons still have obviously garbage moves like GS upswing that are almost 20 years old?
- Why does auto-farm still need busywork maintenance?
- etc.
You basically have to self-restrict to work around these problems, which would be alright if there were only a few obvious things to ban, like Freedom Unite's traps and flashes or DMC/Bayo's consumable items. But here it's a mess because they're littered everywhere, mixed in with other mechanics, and difficult to identify for inexperienced players. It's like if there were a hundred DMC/Bayo items in the same category as the weapons. And plenty of them either exert broad influence on the game or can't be easily banned at all.
---
Let's be crystal clear on this point: the problem is NOT that Sunbreak isn't old MH. Old MH is useful as a point of comparison, because it faces many of the same critical design questions. But as the context around those questions changes, those existing answers need to be reevaluated.
I'm not asking for Freedom Unite 2, Freedom Unite already exists and I can play it right now. What I am asking for is a solid game.
Every so often I hear people say that Rise is "a bad MH game, but a good action game." Frankly I suspect the people saying this don't play other action games (except maybe Souls which is another can of worms). But they are "right" in one sense: MH doesn't have some special privilege that protects it from comparisons to games outside of its series.
Nioh 2 has tons of bosses, a stamina system, powerful abilities tied to a shared meter, a handful of weapon types,
and on the fly moveset switching. It executes nearly all of these better than Sunbreak. But that's because Team Ninja is an experienced studio whose reputation and livelihood depends on making solid, polished games, while Monster Hunter is a juggernaut series that's accrued plenty of inertia through loyalty, branding, and multiplayer, so the quality (or lack thereof) in its mechanics is mostly lost on the playerbase. I commend Monster Hunter's dev teams and management for maintaining a reasonable level of craftsmanship even in these conditions, but is missed potential really surprising when all the incentives are pushing against it?
At the end of the day, if you are looking for good 1v1 boss fights, Monster Hunter is still the best series by a big margin. The fundamentals of timing and positioning are still intact enough to have a good time running through the main story with your weapon(s) of choice, and many of the classic MH trappings are as fun as they've ever been. But, sadly, I'm not seeing this entry, or future ones if the series's recent history is anything to go by, as a game to deeply invest into and love.
Ah well, nothing lasts forever.
Most of this review will be negative, but the game as a whole is actually decent, hence my rating. I played it, I mildly enjoyed it, I would tentatively recommend it to others depending on their interest and the price point. I like Gunlance, good weapon. But the discussion around this series endlessly frustrates me, because it seems that flaws are either glossed over or only superficially addressed. You can find plenty of people online talking up Sunbreak's virtues, especially over Rise: the progression, difficulty, no Rampages, endgame systems, gear balance, crabs (damn I love the crabs), and so on. Flowery writing and nice sentiments have their place, but you can read that elsewhere. What I find lacking is deep, meaty analysis.
So I'll save us some time and just reach straight for the butcher's knife.
---
I will overlook a lot of bullshit if a game's fundamentals are high-quality, see DMC3, MHFU, etc. But sadly it's just not fully there for Sunbreak, despite all the improvements, and my gut says that there are some deep flaws here that are hard to ignore. If I had to pin it down in a few words, the combat feels too "passive" and "reactive"; it feels like my actions don't have much influence on the state of the monster beyond just dealing damage.
In most other action games (DMC, Ninja Gaiden, etc.), each individual enemy can be put into a variety of states, such as hitstunned, launched, grabbed, jumped on, etc. which all have different causes and effects. But monsters only have a few states: normal, flinch, exhausted, and immobilized. Immobilizing a monster generally isn't very interactive, and just serves as a reward for the player using some simple mechanic (KO, damage topple, wyvern ride, hunting helpers, ...). Exhaust is a similar story, albeit nice for varying the pace more organically. Flinching can interrupt monster attacks, but because monsters move around so much, keeping track of flinch thresholds is very difficult (moreso than older games) and only done at the highest levels of play. So most of your time will be spent with the monster moving and attacking while being unaffected by your actions.
In the past, Freedom Unite tackled this problem with monster AI. Monsters moved and attacked in predictable ways based on where you were standing, but their attacks were quite dangerous unless you were well-positioned in advance, so balancing offense and defense with an eye towards the future was key. These days this is mostly gone, as what the monster does is largely determined by raw RNG that you have little control over, excepting the specific fixed strings of moves that are coded into the AI. Furthermore, the monsters have so many moves and so much movement they can do from neutral, that it's not feasible to play around them in advance. These two factors combined essentially eliminate preemptive positioning beyond the canned "monster will do X -> Y -> Z, so prepare for Y and Z if you see X".
So your best bet in neutral is to stand somewhere midrange and do one of two things: wait for the monster to attack, then dodge and punish, or throw out big attacks and take trades. While this can be fun in its own right, especially when you experiment with aggressive ways to leverage openings within or after attacks, eventually it inches dangerously close to a call-and-response structure that gets old fast. Even the micropositioning that's long been a series staple, while still enjoyable to a degree, is dampened by the ridiculous tracking on many moves, which is there to hit players using the various extremely powerful defensive tools attached to wirebugs, and partially because higher framerates than 30 are glitched and increase tracking.
Because your attacks can't really affect the monster beyond dealing damage, and the micropositioning of hitboxes and movement is less emphasized, more pressure is put on balancing to differentiate moves. MH has never really been that good at balance, but in the past it's been serviceable, with the major exception of Generations Ultimate, where at least you can ignore most of it if you really want. While Sunbreak is probably better off balance-wise than GU (really not saying much), now the stakes are higher, with the core mechanics of Wirebugs and Switch Skills at play.
Wirebugs in general don't really feel like much of a resource to manage at all. This is partially because most of the cooldowns are low, so by the time you would need a bug, you almost always have it (unless you're wirefalling on every single hit). It's also partially because the tradeoffs between silkbinds aren't really there. Often there is either one silkbind that is obviously the best to spam (Hammer's Impact Crater, Switch Axe's counter, Charge Blade's Counter Peak Performance, etc.), or the desirable silkbinds (many of which have ridiculous defensive properties) are low cooldown as previously mentioned.
Wirefall, a mechanic with great potential for defensive decision-making, is severely hurt by this, as the intended cooldown tradeoff is mostly irrelevant compared to its power. This forced the developers to add:
- "Gotcha" followups that catch wirefall, which are trivially memorized and don't contribute to depth long-term.
- Combos that need wirefall to break out of, which feels less like a strategic decision to conserve wirebugs and more like being punished for getting caught at an unlucky time.
- Simply banning wirefall for certain attacks, which "works" but is rather clumsy and has no pattern that I could discern.
For better implementations of resources like Wirebugs see Nioh 2 Anima meter, Unsouled meter/Ghost Orbs, probably many fighting games, and MHGU hunter arts.
Switch Skills are a little less egregious, and there are some gems like Greatsword's Surge Slash Combo and Gunlance's Blast Dash, but a lot of them are just bad compared to their alternatives, and not even situationally useful or significantly different to play, which really limits the impact of Switch Skill Swap beyond the skills that impact the swap action itself. It's sort of like if Nioh only had 1-2 stances per weapon but still had flux, it's neat I guess but falls short of its potential.
Why nobody brings this next point up continually baffles me: 5th gen MH feels substantially worse to control than older games. Movement feels slippery, and the animations smooth into each other in an unsatisfying way. One of the joys of classic MH was how weighty yet precise everything felt. Slamming your meticuously-aimed Greatsword into a monster's head, waiting just the right amount of split-seconds, then watching your hunter snap into motion to iframe the next attack was a fantastic feeling that never got old. But that's gone now, presumably for "realism"/"fluidity"/trailer footage. And it's not like this is some unsolvable problem; DMC, Ninja Gaiden, and Nioh are as least as fast-paced as Sunbreak but feel much better to control. This might sound like a nitpick, but this is the type of thing that gets stuck in your subconscious, silently influencing the texture of your experience.
Given that this series has adopted a Call of Duty style dev cycle, it's not terribly surprising that the systems around the fundamentals, even the newer additions, have accrued MMO-like bloat and internal tension. Just to name a few:
- Why are you allowed to ride the dog and sharpen during combat?
- Why would you ever use more than one ammo type for gun if you can just restock your best type?
- Why do the strongest healing items in the game have the fastest use animation?
- Why is the inventory limited at all if you can just restock?
- Why are there still tons of completely useless armor skills?
- Why does wyvern ride do so much damage yet has nothing to do with the regular combat systems?
- Why do weapons still have obviously garbage moves like GS upswing that are almost 20 years old?
- Why does auto-farm still need busywork maintenance?
- etc.
You basically have to self-restrict to work around these problems, which would be alright if there were only a few obvious things to ban, like Freedom Unite's traps and flashes or DMC/Bayo's consumable items. But here it's a mess because they're littered everywhere, mixed in with other mechanics, and difficult to identify for inexperienced players. It's like if there were a hundred DMC/Bayo items in the same category as the weapons. And plenty of them either exert broad influence on the game or can't be easily banned at all.
---
Let's be crystal clear on this point: the problem is NOT that Sunbreak isn't old MH. Old MH is useful as a point of comparison, because it faces many of the same critical design questions. But as the context around those questions changes, those existing answers need to be reevaluated.
I'm not asking for Freedom Unite 2, Freedom Unite already exists and I can play it right now. What I am asking for is a solid game.
Every so often I hear people say that Rise is "a bad MH game, but a good action game." Frankly I suspect the people saying this don't play other action games (except maybe Souls which is another can of worms). But they are "right" in one sense: MH doesn't have some special privilege that protects it from comparisons to games outside of its series.
Nioh 2 has tons of bosses, a stamina system, powerful abilities tied to a shared meter, a handful of weapon types,
and on the fly moveset switching. It executes nearly all of these better than Sunbreak. But that's because Team Ninja is an experienced studio whose reputation and livelihood depends on making solid, polished games, while Monster Hunter is a juggernaut series that's accrued plenty of inertia through loyalty, branding, and multiplayer, so the quality (or lack thereof) in its mechanics is mostly lost on the playerbase. I commend Monster Hunter's dev teams and management for maintaining a reasonable level of craftsmanship even in these conditions, but is missed potential really surprising when all the incentives are pushing against it?
At the end of the day, if you are looking for good 1v1 boss fights, Monster Hunter is still the best series by a big margin. The fundamentals of timing and positioning are still intact enough to have a good time running through the main story with your weapon(s) of choice, and many of the classic MH trappings are as fun as they've ever been. But, sadly, I'm not seeing this entry, or future ones if the series's recent history is anything to go by, as a game to deeply invest into and love.
Ah well, nothing lasts forever.
2021
Played for ~60 hours, SSS rank on hardest available difficulty for all levels. Runs here.
Really, really solid piece of work, especially for a game with 2/3rds of its planned content still forthcoming. Considering the game is free, there is no reason not to try it if you're an action game fan.
Magenta Horizon holds a deep reverence for two of the most fundamental pillars of action games: positioning and dynamism. Hollow Knight's influence on the movement (and the game in general) is obvious, but the addition of a diagonal dive and a hook attack that pulls you through enemies makes things significantly more interesting than simply jumping and pogoing around. DMC-like strings with various useful properties also add much-needed nuance and agency to the ground combat. The tension between safety/mobility in the air and options/damage potential on the ground informs almost every decision you make, and you'll find yourself constantly evaluating which is better suited for the moment.
A varied and volatile enemy roster puts this into context, and each disrupts you in different ways with melee attacks, speed, projectiles, or sheer size. The small helicopters are a favorite of mine: their simple attacks aren't much threat, but their spinning propellers will hit you on contact, making aerial getaways from more oppressive enemies deceptively challenging. Arenas filling up with hordes of different foes, all acting independently, gives rise to the delightful controlled chaos that so many of the action game greats are known for. Bosses are also pleasantly dynamic, with varied attack patterns and a Souls/Monster Hunter-style stagger system to keep things fresh. Once you beat the middle difficulty, give the highest a shot, it's where the game truly shines. Each encounter is completely redone, with tough enemies from the last stage suddenly appearing in the very first. Some of the best and most creative fights are found here, as the dev starts to go wild with cramped arenas, oppressive environmental hazards, enemy spawning setups, and synergistic compositions.
Each of the subweapons in the game are distinct, and have multiple situationally useful properties rather than explicitly hard countering anything. Creating the spike in midair will slam you to the ground (invaluable for movement), and the boomerang can be aimed in different trajectories to deal general damage over a wide area or stagger fliers quickly. Some even combine with each other: for example, timing your spike to skewer a boomerang creates a stationary spinning blade that deals massive DPS to anything in reach. A la Alien Soldier, each weapon can be assigned to one or more of 8 possible slots, and each slot has its own meter. The frightening levels of lethality you can achieve by maximizing this brings combat to a blistering speed, especially in later stages where tough arenas reward clean speedkilling.
Artwork and music are both obvious standouts that anyone can appreciate, and lend the game a distinct character. Pinks and purples cover otherworldly vistas, and the enemy menagerie is both delightfully creative and a treat to watch in motion. The progressive metal soundtrack is also fantastic, one of the best in recent memory.
There are definitely still some kinks to be worked out. As a new player, especially one without high-level action game experience, the initial experience is extremely overwhelming with the amount of options and movement you have. Almost nothing can be canceled out of, which works great as a design decision but feels punishing early on. UI needs some polish, and can feel cheap and awkward to navigate. Early level design is both needlessly confusing to traverse (especially since there's no map) and doesn't stand out much in terms of creative fights. Luckily, both of these improve as you get further in. Bugs pop up every so often since the game's still in heavy development, but in my experience these rarely affected gameplay. You can report any you find to the dev and he'll usually fix it quickly. The necklace system (equippables with playstyle-altering buffs) simply doesn't have enough options yet to provide meaningful tradeoffs. The game is also a bit light on content currently, as expected, but what's there is high quality.
Overall, I'm extremely impressed at the level of achievement here so far, especially in the context of a solo dev project. I can't wait to see where the project goes next, I only see things getting better from here.
TLDR just go play it, it's free. https://maddison-baek.itch.io/magenta-horizon
Really, really solid piece of work, especially for a game with 2/3rds of its planned content still forthcoming. Considering the game is free, there is no reason not to try it if you're an action game fan.
Magenta Horizon holds a deep reverence for two of the most fundamental pillars of action games: positioning and dynamism. Hollow Knight's influence on the movement (and the game in general) is obvious, but the addition of a diagonal dive and a hook attack that pulls you through enemies makes things significantly more interesting than simply jumping and pogoing around. DMC-like strings with various useful properties also add much-needed nuance and agency to the ground combat. The tension between safety/mobility in the air and options/damage potential on the ground informs almost every decision you make, and you'll find yourself constantly evaluating which is better suited for the moment.
A varied and volatile enemy roster puts this into context, and each disrupts you in different ways with melee attacks, speed, projectiles, or sheer size. The small helicopters are a favorite of mine: their simple attacks aren't much threat, but their spinning propellers will hit you on contact, making aerial getaways from more oppressive enemies deceptively challenging. Arenas filling up with hordes of different foes, all acting independently, gives rise to the delightful controlled chaos that so many of the action game greats are known for. Bosses are also pleasantly dynamic, with varied attack patterns and a Souls/Monster Hunter-style stagger system to keep things fresh. Once you beat the middle difficulty, give the highest a shot, it's where the game truly shines. Each encounter is completely redone, with tough enemies from the last stage suddenly appearing in the very first. Some of the best and most creative fights are found here, as the dev starts to go wild with cramped arenas, oppressive environmental hazards, enemy spawning setups, and synergistic compositions.
Each of the subweapons in the game are distinct, and have multiple situationally useful properties rather than explicitly hard countering anything. Creating the spike in midair will slam you to the ground (invaluable for movement), and the boomerang can be aimed in different trajectories to deal general damage over a wide area or stagger fliers quickly. Some even combine with each other: for example, timing your spike to skewer a boomerang creates a stationary spinning blade that deals massive DPS to anything in reach. A la Alien Soldier, each weapon can be assigned to one or more of 8 possible slots, and each slot has its own meter. The frightening levels of lethality you can achieve by maximizing this brings combat to a blistering speed, especially in later stages where tough arenas reward clean speedkilling.
Artwork and music are both obvious standouts that anyone can appreciate, and lend the game a distinct character. Pinks and purples cover otherworldly vistas, and the enemy menagerie is both delightfully creative and a treat to watch in motion. The progressive metal soundtrack is also fantastic, one of the best in recent memory.
There are definitely still some kinks to be worked out. As a new player, especially one without high-level action game experience, the initial experience is extremely overwhelming with the amount of options and movement you have. Almost nothing can be canceled out of, which works great as a design decision but feels punishing early on. UI needs some polish, and can feel cheap and awkward to navigate. Early level design is both needlessly confusing to traverse (especially since there's no map) and doesn't stand out much in terms of creative fights. Luckily, both of these improve as you get further in. Bugs pop up every so often since the game's still in heavy development, but in my experience these rarely affected gameplay. You can report any you find to the dev and he'll usually fix it quickly. The necklace system (equippables with playstyle-altering buffs) simply doesn't have enough options yet to provide meaningful tradeoffs. The game is also a bit light on content currently, as expected, but what's there is high quality.
Overall, I'm extremely impressed at the level of achievement here so far, especially in the context of a solo dev project. I can't wait to see where the project goes next, I only see things getting better from here.
TLDR just go play it, it's free. https://maddison-baek.itch.io/magenta-horizon
2022
Joseph Anderson made an excellent video on this game, so for the sake of brevity I'll just refer you to it, while adding some short comments of my own below. Video here
The first 20-30 hours really are magical, and the force of that experience can't be denied. Seeing fantastic new areas and enemies, taking in the massive scope of the world, getting lost somewhere unfamiliar, spotting some distant location on the horizon and realizing you can actually go there, if you can figure out a path. It evokes Dark Souls 1's best moments, and I wouldn't begrudge anyone for loving the game from this alone.
The legacy dungeon design is characteristically impressive but still feels like a regression in some aspects. The sheer size and complexity of many dungeons is breathtaking, the ambition really shines through here. Jumping lets you traverse the environment in lots of creative and organic ways, and interacts well with the aforementioned complexity. Unfortunately however, nothing here really comes close to DS1 classics like Sen's Fortress in terms of considered design. The Stake of Marika is a fantastic addition, but its potential is largely wasted, as instead of leaning into it to make bonfires more scarce and important, bonfires appear at the same or higher frequency than previous games. For some reason fast travel is allowed within legacy dungeons, which kills a lot of the tension of exploration and the risk of losing souls. Shortcuts feel less important and traps feel less deadly.
It's also far too easy to run past everything in the open world with the horse, with only a few exceptions. A hostile landscape with enemies and hazards at every turn should not feel like a walk in the park to traverse. It was only after making a second character that I realized how badly this murders the replayability. Fast travel serves as yet another bandaid fix here, reprising its usual modern FromSoft role.
For all the game's virtues, the feeling I'm left with at the end is bitterness, which is probably why this is still on my mind. I'm bitter that I can sense an awareness of the typical open world pitfalls but somehow the game still falls into them. I'm bitter that I can't trust FromSoft to learn from its mistakes here, especially in the combat. I'm bitter that the enjoyable level design almost feels squandered by the other elements. I'm bitter that the daring spirit of Demon's Souls, the willingness to wildly experiment and defy expectations, has floated away like a soul leaving a corpse. But most of all I'm bitter that the game really does reach the lofty heights of Dark Souls 1 at times. It climbs the mountain, ascending higher than even the old mentor, until, with a confidence bordering on absentmindedness, it loses its grip and plummets down, down, down into the abyss.
"…But even so, one day the flames will fade, and only Dark will remain. And even a legend such as thineself can do nothing to stop that." - Hawkeye Gough
The first 20-30 hours really are magical, and the force of that experience can't be denied. Seeing fantastic new areas and enemies, taking in the massive scope of the world, getting lost somewhere unfamiliar, spotting some distant location on the horizon and realizing you can actually go there, if you can figure out a path. It evokes Dark Souls 1's best moments, and I wouldn't begrudge anyone for loving the game from this alone.
The legacy dungeon design is characteristically impressive but still feels like a regression in some aspects. The sheer size and complexity of many dungeons is breathtaking, the ambition really shines through here. Jumping lets you traverse the environment in lots of creative and organic ways, and interacts well with the aforementioned complexity. Unfortunately however, nothing here really comes close to DS1 classics like Sen's Fortress in terms of considered design. The Stake of Marika is a fantastic addition, but its potential is largely wasted, as instead of leaning into it to make bonfires more scarce and important, bonfires appear at the same or higher frequency than previous games. For some reason fast travel is allowed within legacy dungeons, which kills a lot of the tension of exploration and the risk of losing souls. Shortcuts feel less important and traps feel less deadly.
It's also far too easy to run past everything in the open world with the horse, with only a few exceptions. A hostile landscape with enemies and hazards at every turn should not feel like a walk in the park to traverse. It was only after making a second character that I realized how badly this murders the replayability. Fast travel serves as yet another bandaid fix here, reprising its usual modern FromSoft role.
For all the game's virtues, the feeling I'm left with at the end is bitterness, which is probably why this is still on my mind. I'm bitter that I can sense an awareness of the typical open world pitfalls but somehow the game still falls into them. I'm bitter that I can't trust FromSoft to learn from its mistakes here, especially in the combat. I'm bitter that the enjoyable level design almost feels squandered by the other elements. I'm bitter that the daring spirit of Demon's Souls, the willingness to wildly experiment and defy expectations, has floated away like a soul leaving a corpse. But most of all I'm bitter that the game really does reach the lofty heights of Dark Souls 1 at times. It climbs the mountain, ascending higher than even the old mentor, until, with a confidence bordering on absentmindedness, it loses its grip and plummets down, down, down into the abyss.
"…But even so, one day the flames will fade, and only Dark will remain. And even a legend such as thineself can do nothing to stop that." - Hawkeye Gough