Only a year after the first wave of indie throwback shooters (Dusk, Amid Evil, etc.), Australian jam band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard (what a name) saw the potential in promoting their thrash metal album via a mini-FPS. I'm not about to say it went well, or did anything a more evocative music video could have done better, but the effort's appreciated. Infest the Rats' Nest deserved way better, though. Back in my day [grandpa voice] our free FPS flash games let us shoot Bill Gates for the crime of Microshaft Winblows! This honestly just does way too little with the single's subject matter and feels like a last-minute promo.
We've basically got just one little combat arena available from the jump, with usable but very basic movement and controls. Then there's a super limited bestiary to fight, pulling as much from the iconography of albums like Nonagon Infinity as it does Infest the Rats' Nest. Building even a small demo game for the latter's top single—a roaring banger satirizing Elon Musk and other techbro imperialists' dreams of abandoning Earth—shouldn't be difficult. Just have two or three punchy guns, simple yet replayable levels to blast through, and some of that juicy, inscrutable Jason Galea psychedelia. What could go wrong?
It could just be a big fat nothingburger, that's what. The arena's all you get, as are a bunch of annoying bats to shoot at. Low-end Serious Sam/Painkiller noodling under weed-excited skies isn't all that engaging, sorry fellas. And while the music does the heavy lifting as it should, I just don't think Flightless Records committed any ambition to this beyond ticking a marketing checklist. Seriously, the very idea of a King Gizzard boomer shooter is awesome. The band's variety of genres, their loosely-connected musical multiverse with albums and videos nodding to each other...so much potential, yet it's hardly hinted at here. The most I'll say is that this isn't abominable to play, just an annoying reminder of what could be. Maybe I just gotta work on my Doom mapping chops and start a community project to fill the gap.
A full-bore King Gizzard WAD would have to cover the following key points:
•Has to loop in on itself (last map leads into the first)
•Total conversion of all graphics, monsters, weapons, and power-ups (aka some real GZDoom shit)
•Copious references to everything throughout the Gizzverse, from Han-Tyumi's barf bag to a trip down The River and into the Crumbling Castle
•Game flow that just feels like a series of effortless, chaotic band jams, transitioning between incidental and slaughter combat
•Some breather levels playing off the folk pop/rock songs; similarly, the secret maps could use concepts from Gumboot Soup and the band's demos
•Full MIDI remixes of relevant KGatLW songs, alongside the originals themselves if the player desires
•The band's gotta stream themselves attempting to play the thing on Ultra-Violent at least once
I could go on. Basically what I'm saying is we live in a timeline where masterpieces of music industry multimedia like Frankie, Ed Hunter, Spice World, Tomarunner Vs L'Arc En Ciel, and Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style exist (among others). Something's going terribly wrong if the likes of zero-to-hero Aussie maximalist rockers are settling for this by contrast. They can go harder, cheesier, zanier...more extra in every way, just like their music videos and performances, yet look what the Mars for the Rich online game has amounted to. Sorry state of affairs, or just a mistimed and under-resourced gift to fans excited for the album? I don't know—it just irks me. Maybe I'm underestimating the labor and budgeting a longer ludonarrative experience requires, but I doubt it'd break the bank to make something simple but more involved and replayable than this.
We've basically got just one little combat arena available from the jump, with usable but very basic movement and controls. Then there's a super limited bestiary to fight, pulling as much from the iconography of albums like Nonagon Infinity as it does Infest the Rats' Nest. Building even a small demo game for the latter's top single—a roaring banger satirizing Elon Musk and other techbro imperialists' dreams of abandoning Earth—shouldn't be difficult. Just have two or three punchy guns, simple yet replayable levels to blast through, and some of that juicy, inscrutable Jason Galea psychedelia. What could go wrong?
It could just be a big fat nothingburger, that's what. The arena's all you get, as are a bunch of annoying bats to shoot at. Low-end Serious Sam/Painkiller noodling under weed-excited skies isn't all that engaging, sorry fellas. And while the music does the heavy lifting as it should, I just don't think Flightless Records committed any ambition to this beyond ticking a marketing checklist. Seriously, the very idea of a King Gizzard boomer shooter is awesome. The band's variety of genres, their loosely-connected musical multiverse with albums and videos nodding to each other...so much potential, yet it's hardly hinted at here. The most I'll say is that this isn't abominable to play, just an annoying reminder of what could be. Maybe I just gotta work on my Doom mapping chops and start a community project to fill the gap.
A full-bore King Gizzard WAD would have to cover the following key points:
•Has to loop in on itself (last map leads into the first)
•Total conversion of all graphics, monsters, weapons, and power-ups (aka some real GZDoom shit)
•Copious references to everything throughout the Gizzverse, from Han-Tyumi's barf bag to a trip down The River and into the Crumbling Castle
•Game flow that just feels like a series of effortless, chaotic band jams, transitioning between incidental and slaughter combat
•Some breather levels playing off the folk pop/rock songs; similarly, the secret maps could use concepts from Gumboot Soup and the band's demos
•Full MIDI remixes of relevant KGatLW songs, alongside the originals themselves if the player desires
•The band's gotta stream themselves attempting to play the thing on Ultra-Violent at least once
I could go on. Basically what I'm saying is we live in a timeline where masterpieces of music industry multimedia like Frankie, Ed Hunter, Spice World, Tomarunner Vs L'Arc En Ciel, and Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style exist (among others). Something's going terribly wrong if the likes of zero-to-hero Aussie maximalist rockers are settling for this by contrast. They can go harder, cheesier, zanier...more extra in every way, just like their music videos and performances, yet look what the Mars for the Rich online game has amounted to. Sorry state of affairs, or just a mistimed and under-resourced gift to fans excited for the album? I don't know—it just irks me. Maybe I'm underestimating the labor and budgeting a longer ludonarrative experience requires, but I doubt it'd break the bank to make something simple but more involved and replayable than this.
7 Comments
No worries, it's not like I ever got as hard into mapping as others I used to chat with. It's something I find a lot easier when collaborating with someone I know, like, for realsies (or who always makes time to test your creations, small and large).
yeah the closest thing I ever got to anything like that was making warcraft 3 maps and it definitely felt like collaboration and the opportunity for feedback helped a ton there. even making music it's always some relief to have someone else to bounce ideas off of. kinda nice not to be the first and last word on something you create I guess
Our conversation will resonate in due time, once the Backloggd Doom Modding Club begins... >:)
Went ahead and added some wishlist ideas for the Gizzverse megawad which may or may not ever happen. I always find it easy to take some music I like and use it as broad strokes for a map, so this might not be too unreasonable.
Went ahead and added some wishlist ideas for the Gizzverse megawad which may or may not ever happen. I always find it easy to take some music I like and use it as broad strokes for a map, so this might not be too unreasonable.
yes.. yess rubs hand together feverishly
I've worked on some stuff in trenchbroom and ue so I'm not entirely in the dark. might try to stretch my muscles a bit in advent of the possibility coming about
I've worked on some stuff in trenchbroom and ue so I'm not entirely in the dark. might try to stretch my muscles a bit in advent of the possibility coming about
Ultimate Doom Builder is very easy to use (I started with Doom Builder X, but found the QoL additions to UDB more my style). I should futz around with Trenchbroom, even just to learn some brush-making so I can touch Quake modding one day.
UDB seems sick at first glance. will definitely check it out. I found trenchbroom to be really intuitive and coupled with firealpaca covered a lot of my needs when trying to muck around with making an fps thing, would give them two big thumbs up
curse
3 months ago
wish this was better but I would pick up and learn mapping if you ever made a community project so you could reject my ghoulish concoction (no hard feelings)