After making it my mission to play through as many iconic FPS games as possible, I gave this game a go shortly after the release of the remaster and hated it, resolving to never play the damned thing again.

Fast forward a few months and I gave it another try, and I'm glad I did.

First of all, I love everything about how the game looks, feels and sounds. Digitized actors are a fetish of mine, and I adore the bizarre and often hellish liminal spaces the game makes you inhabit.

My first issue is the weapons. They look and feel good, generally. But the machinegun is so much more useful than anything else in the game that you'll only be switching off it if you have ammo to spare for one of your special weapons (almost all of which are explosives.)

This means that while it's cool to dual-wield pistols, you never feel the need to. And many of the more interesting special weapons are lost in the crowd amidst one another, reduced to serving the same purpose of nuking the stronger enemies on sight.

Then there's the level design which is labyrinthian, obsessed with hidden switches and invisible touchplates and obnoxious traps.

That being said, the game does several things I adore, particularly with the way it handles having multiple playable characters. And the powerups, while often annoying on purpose (shrooms and elasto come to mind) are a fun novelty.

There's also so much character to everything, for better or for worse. The game is ridiculous and doesn't take a single moment of itself seriously. And I never got tired of seeing a cultist get down on their knees and beg for mercy.

It also has an absolute banger of a soundtrack.

In summary, I find myself endeared to the game despite it's problems. And I just might play it again someday with another character or try out the new episode.