DOOMATHON entry #11/20
List: https://www.backloggd.com/u/Mariofan717/list/doom--quake-campaigns-ranked/
Fittingly developed by the same team as the previous game's second mission pack, Ground Zero is to The Reckoning more or less what Dissolution of Eternity is to Scourge of Armagon; the new ideas on offer here are generally more distinctive, and not necessarily for good reason. This is still at its core more Quake 2, but this time it's more Quake 2 with like 25% more backtracking and quite possibly the single most obnoxious enemy in this entire marathon, which is really saying something.
Given that I take no shame in save scumming, I was almost able to admire just how distinctively obnoxious some of the design choices here - by the time Ground Zero was over, I was a certified expert at checking every corner for a deviously placed turret, and I was going out of my way to put an extra super shotgun blast or rocket in corpses of higher tier enemies in the presence of the godforsaken medic commanders. A tanky enemy type that revives fallen enemies as well as summons other tanky enemies makes it more intimidating than any iteration of Doom's Archvile that has ever existed - and there are even a few battles in which they're given the opportunity to revive each other! That's honestly hilarious.
Just as with the previous mission pack, Nightdive has extensively tweaked the balance of these added elements in the remaster to make them much more bearable, and I was actually able to tell this time because I correctly remembered the turrets being a lot harder to destroy in the original release. They even gave them armor to make the otherwise unremarkable armor-penetrating ETF rifle extra effective!
Despite its many quirks, Ground Zeroes is at the end of the day, as I said, more Quake 2. It's the weaker of the two mission packs for sure, but it's still a really solid solid shooter at its core, one that you'll get an extra kick out of if you can appreciate its more sadistic design choices.
Cross-posted on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mariofan717/status/1755443725961146831
List: https://www.backloggd.com/u/Mariofan717/list/doom--quake-campaigns-ranked/
Fittingly developed by the same team as the previous game's second mission pack, Ground Zero is to The Reckoning more or less what Dissolution of Eternity is to Scourge of Armagon; the new ideas on offer here are generally more distinctive, and not necessarily for good reason. This is still at its core more Quake 2, but this time it's more Quake 2 with like 25% more backtracking and quite possibly the single most obnoxious enemy in this entire marathon, which is really saying something.
Given that I take no shame in save scumming, I was almost able to admire just how distinctively obnoxious some of the design choices here - by the time Ground Zero was over, I was a certified expert at checking every corner for a deviously placed turret, and I was going out of my way to put an extra super shotgun blast or rocket in corpses of higher tier enemies in the presence of the godforsaken medic commanders. A tanky enemy type that revives fallen enemies as well as summons other tanky enemies makes it more intimidating than any iteration of Doom's Archvile that has ever existed - and there are even a few battles in which they're given the opportunity to revive each other! That's honestly hilarious.
Just as with the previous mission pack, Nightdive has extensively tweaked the balance of these added elements in the remaster to make them much more bearable, and I was actually able to tell this time because I correctly remembered the turrets being a lot harder to destroy in the original release. They even gave them armor to make the otherwise unremarkable armor-penetrating ETF rifle extra effective!
Despite its many quirks, Ground Zeroes is at the end of the day, as I said, more Quake 2. It's the weaker of the two mission packs for sure, but it's still a really solid solid shooter at its core, one that you'll get an extra kick out of if you can appreciate its more sadistic design choices.
Cross-posted on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mariofan717/status/1755443725961146831