man this game is good. amazing soundtrack, satisfying and crunchy sound effects, and beautiful artwork. the story is incredibly confusing, yet intriguing. gameplay is incredible, with one of the smoothest time-stop mechanics in any video game i've ever played. the boss fights are great, and because it works the death mechanic into the story, boss fights specifically feel like you can predict the future. the game is certainly difficult, but it rarely feels unfair and i never got stuck on a specific room or boss for too long. npc dialogue is funny and adds another layer of immersion to each room, and it often references itself over time (rip strong terry).
hard mode however, is absolutely brutal and i still haven't beaten a run on it. (EDIT: i have beaten a hard mode run now) i've attempted a few speedruns but never got that far, so the only two achievements i'm missing are the gold speedrun one and the hard mode one. (no longer the hard mode one)
it's pretty short, but including speedruns and secrets you could certainly stretch out the playtime quite a bit.
absolutely recommended.

great game. artwork and character animation is amazing, music is great too and sound design is nice as well. controls are responsive and the parry system is well designed. it's easily my favorite 2d shooter, but that's not really a genre i get into much so who knows. difficulty is nice and challenging yet fair, and the extra challenges like run and gun levels and mausoleums are fun as well. the run and gun levels do get a bit repetitive though, so i'm glad they went with a boss focused structure instead. the flying boss segments were a low point for me though, really felt like they were a step away from the fun platforming and more just like bullet hell asteroids gameplay.
really good game and worth the price

absolutely beautiful game. the sound design for this game is very satisfying and clean, and the music is incredible and fits every chapter perfectly. the art is amazing and also feels in line with the rest of the game. the story is nice, although a little cliche, and the characters feel very real.
the movement is hands down the best in any platformer i've every played, and there is so much depth and tech to the movement that it's massively replayable. the base game isn't particularly difficult, but the extra content such as b and c sides are quite a challenge, and none of the difficulty feels artificially raised. the strawberry collectibles are a nice way to add replayability to the base chapters, and they all feel pretty balanced in difficulty.
there is one free dlc at the time of this review, which adds one more chapter which is vastly more difficult than the base game, and probably harder than the b sides as well. this is easily the longest chapter in the game, and it took me almost as long as the main seven chapters combined. the dlc chapter, farewell, teaches the player the wavedash, which is a piece of movement tech that had been utilized by speedrunners since the game came out. this chapter has more beautiful music, incredible artwork and backgrounds, and precise gameplay.
one of the most difficult parts of this game to complete are the golden strawberries, which appear at the beginning of each chapter after beating the core c side, and require you to beat the whole chapter entirely deathless and in one sitting. given that (from what i've seen) the average amount of deaths on first completion is around twenty thousand, it's pretty daunting to attempt to collect these. however, i think it adds another layer of replayability, and they are pretty fun to grind for all things consider, as long as you do it casually
golden strawberries don't count for achievements, so feel free to avoid them if you want 100%
the modding community is huge for this game, with custom levels and map packs being released constantly. there are several large collaboration projects like strawberry jam or spring collab that are incredibly high quality with amazing music and art.
my biggest complaint with the game is the crystal heart collectibles, they are locked behind very abstract puzzles and references, and are incredibly hard to find without a guide. this wouldn't be an issue if not for the fact that they are literally required to progress past the first half of the dlc chapter, unless you want to do a speedrun skip. if you arent very confident in your puzzle solving skills, i suggest just looking up a guide or at least some hints for the crystal hearts because they are definitely frustrating to look for.

i've completed all achievements for this game on steam, and collected the golden strawberries for the main game chapters as well as the c sides and some of the b sides. ive spent over a thousand hours in the game so far at the time of review, a large part of that being speedrunning.
this is one of my favorites, if not my favorite video game of all time.
absolutely incredible.

starting this off by saying that i can't speak on it's similarities to doom 2016, given that i still haven't played it.
i absolutely love doom eternal, and i also hate so many parts of it. the actual combat feels amazing and fluid, the guns are great and i like the weapon mod system. the enemies feel like good extensions of the enemy ideas from classic doom, the graphics are great and the world looks incredible. some of the best looking architecture and levels that i've seen in a long time. sound design is satisfying and the music is genuinely a contender for best video game soundtrack of all time.
it isn't all positives though. i don't think the movement in doom eternal is good enough to warrant the amount of first person platforming it requires you to do here. i had more deaths to falling off a platform/missing a jump than to any actual enemy encounters for the first almost half of the campaign. the story feels confusing and incoherent, while the devs still assume you understand it and tries to incorporate it into the game much more than they should imo.
the upgrade system with sentinel crystals, runes and the praetor suit is something i kind of despise, this might be something other people enjoy but other than using a few sentinel crystals, i didn't end up using any runes or praetor suit points at all, because i forgot soon after i was told to do so. this might be on me, but i just found the whole system to be unfun and immersion breaking. speaking of upgrades, even without them i still thought the game was relatively easy. i played through the game on the ultraviolence difficulty, and never really found myself struggling with any boss or arena. when nearing the last third or so of the game, i found the arenas to be more and more repetitive, and it really felt more like a slog to get to the next cool thing than a game that i was playing for fun. the multiplayer mode is something that i only tried out a couple times, and it seemed absurdly imbalanced in the favor of the doomslayer but maybe i'm just dogshit.
that's a lot of complaints, but i still really enjoyed most of my first playthrough. i doubt i will be revisiting this game, but i don't want to come across like the game is shit. i like it, i just have too many issues with it to give it a much higher score.
i haven't gotten all achievements, but i don't think i'm even going to try given how many multiplayer achievements are on there.

a revolutionary game for it's time, and i still go back to the campaign every couple months. i'm including doom II in this, because besides adding monsters and the super shotgun it doesnt change much about the actual gameplay. music is amazing and iconic, and sound design is nice as well. visuals are obviously outdated by a couple decades, but it has it's charm. gameplay is definitely behind, and if you are used to modern shooters it's pretty jarring having a lack of y axis camera movement and no jumping, but it's something you can get used to. the real replayability of the game in the modern day is definitely modded content. the classic doom games have one of the largest and longest standing modding communities of any video game ever, and there is some incredible mods out there that in my opinion, surpass the original games in level design and artwork. beyond normal map packs there are things such as total conversion mods, which turn doom into a completely different game with different gameplay and art such as ashes 2063, and more experimental and technical maps like myhouse.wad.
i haven't gotten into the speedrunning scene for doom other than some amateur times on the original game but from what i've seen it can be quite advanced.
the game has many flaws, but almost anything you can think of has been fixed/changed by modders over the years, and the community surrounding this game is very welcoming.
definitely worth playing and one of my all time favorites in terms of community made content.

amazing turn based strategy fighting game that also functions as a stick fight animation software somehow.
this easily should have won most innovative gameplay on steam, but starfield is starfield i guess.
this game manages to feel both completely overwhelming and also super understandable. the only way you will consistently win is by learning to read your opponent based off of the situation. there is almost always an effective counter that you can perform to any attack, and you just have to be right. there is a singleplayer training mode that doesnt currently have any ai, so the two characters in training mode are both controlled by the player. this can be used to script cinematic fights, or just mess around with different moves and see what they do. at the time of the review there are four characters, but a fifth is soon to be added. most achievements are just around little secrets you can find in game or milestones like fifty wins. there are also character specific achievements where you need to do specific things in a multiplayer match for the achievement.
ive gotten all achievements except for two that you kind of need to cheese, (kick them while they're down and evenly matched) both of which are extremely difficult and involve kinda being a dick to your opponent for most of the game. i'll probably just get a friend online to beat these. this shit is only five bucks and absolutely worth it. infinitely replayable.
very excited to see where this game goes and definitely going to keep playing it.