Just a fantastic game. Might be one of my very favorite boomer shooters to date, if only for the atmosphere alone. It's not perfect, and some levels and episodes definitely dragged on. Some weapons felt useless and/or superfluous like the different types of dynamite and the lost soul thing (besides its secondary fire), but the weapons that do land, land oh-so-very well. As someone who hates using grenades in games, the dynamite has made me a convert, though I suppose it's partially because it almost feels more like a wind-up grenade launcher than it does a throwable. Save those earlier mentioned exceptions, every weapon was extremely fun to use, and felt like it had its place by the end of the game. Atmosphere and music was incredible. Enemy variety was enjoyable and mostly fair. I would still tone down the twitchiness of the cultists, especially the tommy-gun toting ones, because they were by far the reason I save-scummed the most. That said, the remake does have a custom difficulty option which allows you to adjust many aspects of the enemies, like their health pool and aggression levels. I'm sure enough tweaking would allow folks to enjoy the game however they want. I would love to see a DOOM 2016 treatment done to this franchise, and I'm excited to mess around more with any WADs / mods for it in the future.

This one is tough, but worth it. I'm sure a ton of WADs got their inspiration from the level of difficulty this one provided. Instead of big sprawling levels with a ton of low-level garbage on them (like its Final DOOM companion, TNT), Plutonia opted for tight, compact levels with interesting enemy placement and variety. A lot closer to the rhythm we got out of the modern games, wherein combat almost felt like more of a puzzle at times, but also wasn't afraid to turn it into a matter of reflex and punishment for sloppy playing. There were some absolutely bonkers levels, like... I think Twilight was the name of one? I have an extra save of it because it was insane, just no breathing room at all. And "Hunted" was great, nothing but Archviles teleported across a labyrinth. Clever and cool concepts, big fan and looking forward to others like it... as long as I actually have the skill and ability needed to play through them!