great fmv game with a baller soundtrack. the best description i've heard of the music in this game is a youtube comment that said it sounded like a side project by liquid tension experiment. if you heard the music then you could believe this! but actually it's by a guy named Bill King who would later go on to score Michelle Kwan Figure Skating.

anyway this is a good no-nonsense game and a great starter video game for a kid. turn it on, steer to make turns, go fast, do cool stunts, try not to crash. satisfying sound effects when you do well and great environments seen through the eye of a tiny hot wheels car

there's a bit of old game jank - sometimes it's hard to tell whether you'll land flat on the next surface or not, which can be frustrating when you do. i imagine it's also hard to run on a computer these days. those are my only real complaints.

Into the Pit is a throwback FPS style rogue-lite with clear inspiration taken from Doom, Bloodborne, and the string of wildly popular rogue-lites seen over the past decade, such as the Binding of Isaac and Hades.

I had originally played the demo for Into the Pit during Steam’s Next Fest indie games showcase, and I really enjoyed what they had to show off. The actual moment to moment gameplay and shooting in Into the Pit feels really good. I love the low poly aesthetic and PS1-inspired lighting, giving me Dusk and Cultic vibes. That is about all I have to say positively about the game.

In absolutely stunning move, Into the Pit is a rogue-lite without random level generation. There are about two dozen (if even) level layouts that you will encounter over and over again. These levels are incredibly small and all of them can be completed without rushing in about two minutes. Despite the small amount of levels, they still manage to feel robotically crafted with minor variation.

In addition, thought the game features a handful of uniquely designed dungeons, each with its own theme (swamp, forest, etc), it is genuinely difficult to tell the difference between them. The player must complete four levels per floor, and each dungeon has four floors in addition to a boss fight at the end. No matter what dungeon the player chooses to venture into, this layout will be identical on every single playthrough. Floors 1 and 3 will feature a room that heals you, and floors 2 and 4 will feature a room where you can rescue a villager, one of the game’s collectables that unlock more shops in your home base. This completely gets rid of any and all surprise on repeated playthroughs, another huge negative when it comes to rogue-lites.

The game’s weapons, spells that fit comfortably into traditional FPS weapons (shotgun, sniper rifle, etc), honestly all feel really nice to shoot and enemies gib into satisfying chunks. However, the game’s upgrades, earned by completing a level, are incredibly boring and unimaginative. Passive damage % upgrades are not fun or interesting to collect, and they consist of nearly all of them. In addition to the monotonous level design, these also contribute to basically every single run feeling identical.

I think it’s a shame, honestly. They have a really solid foundation here when it comes to gunplay and aesthetics. Without a massive overhaul that I suppose could come in the form of free updates or paid expansions, there is essentially no added value in playing past the free demo.

The Road to Elden Ring #2.5: Dark Souls – Artorias of the Abyss

This is a small review of just the Artorias DLC for Dark Souls 1, meant to be read in addition to my Dark Souls review as a whole.

I think that the Artorias of the Abyss DLC is really great and showcases a lot of the main game’s biggest strengths. The map of Oolacile is quite literally the same as Darkroot Garden/Basin in the main game, but set a few hundred years in the past. Players who really know the maps inside out will get a kick out of seeing locations they remember but slightly different. For example, Black Dragon Kalameet is fought at the same location as the Hydra’s lake. This is both a cool look at a distant civilization as well as clever reusage of maps that doesn’t feel cheap or lazy.

I love the NPC interactions in this DLC. Players can rescue Sif, a boss from the main game, when she is a pup, and she can even be summoned to face the final boss of the DLC. This also results is a really cool alternate cutscene when initiating her boss fight in the main game if the player hasn’t killed her yet. The standout NPC for me in this DLC is Hawkeye Gough, who helps the player shoot down Kalameet for a tough and optional boss battle. I think the more interactive NPCs helped influence the later Souls games with their more lively and helpful NPCs.

The DLC offers a slew of new and interesting enemies to fight, but the peak of this DLC is definitely the boss fights. Sanctuary Guardian offers a simple fast and intense monster fight, Kalameet is the first proper dragon fight in the series, and Manus is a challenging and wild fight that would have many aspects of it taken for the Cleric Beast in Bloodborne and the Demon of Hatred in Sekiro.

However, the clear winner here is the fight with Artorias himself. I think this fight kind of set a new standard for Souls bosses, and its influence can be seen in Dark Souls II and III with their incredibly tense 1-on-1 knight duels. Artorias takes you on with 1 good arm and gives you the toughest fight of the game, unrelenting in his brutal swings and slashes. Not only is he a great fight in terms of gameplay, Artorias’s story relevance also puts him on another level. We hear about the legend of Artorias throughout the main game, and follow his footsteps into the Abyss, but to see him in his true state – corrupted, suffering, dying – is truly tragic and finishing his quest for him really fits into the solemn, grim world of Dark Souls.

The only issue I have with the DLC is the extremely obtuse way of finding and accessing it. Kudos to anyone who figured this out without wiki-diving.