Scourge of Armagon is a must. Definitely. I mean, a lot has been said about how Quake’s fantastic gameplay was kinda degraded by it’s flawed level design (you can read my review on Quake, where i basically agreed on that idea). This mission pack, released a year later, is a more than succesful attempt at redeeming those flaws.

There are many things to say here. First of all: Aesthetically, they decided to bring some thematic cohesiveness throughout the episodes. That’s why the first one is essentially a tech base episode, and the second a medieval one, while the third is pretty much a mix of both. Secondly, i think they administrated vanilla textures in such a masterful way that they basically destroyed the “Quake is too brown” meme.

They also incorporated some very interesting evironment interaction, with certain exploding walls, demolishing structures and such. I also like the vertical design some of these levels have, especially those where you have to go from a higher point to a lower one, somehow resembling a slow descent to hell, which is somehow a very proper metaphor.

In terms of gameplay, some people seem to claim that a few levels get too cerebral or complicated at some point. While this might be true, i have to say that, in my case, i never really got lost wandering around in circles trying to find an exit after killing 100% of the enemies. That actually happened to me many times in the original Quake, instead. It’s a very overwhelming and exhausting feeling, and is one of the reasons i didn’t like many of the original Quake maps.

Probably some of those complex moments are mostly found in the third episode, which is in many ways the weakest (with the exception of HIP3M1 and HIP3M) but despite that, these levels just flow very organically, and with very little backtracking, just the perfect amount of it.
The balance is just great. You’ll have a lot of deadly encounters and traps filled with enemies in a Plutonia way. Yet, you can rest asure that the game will never get skimpy about giving you enough resources to face those encounters.

You’ll also find new weapons and enemies. The new laser canon was a very interesting addition, i couldn’t really say the same about the other two weapon additions. As for the enemies, i understand that the function of the Centroid is esentially having a chaingunner (should i say nailgunner?) added to the cast, but it’s design (a large scorpion) just seems way too unrelated to the both the grunts and the lovecraftian creatures. The gremlins are ok, not really a problem. Spike mines can be a real bitch at times. And then Armagon, i think it was nice having a final boss you can actually fight, but that Q2-Cyborg design also felt pretty unrelated to the rest of the lore.

All in all, i see myself replaying this one even more than Quake’s original game.

Favourite Maps: HIP1M3 (The Lost Mine) /HIP3M1 (Tur Torment)

Worst Maps: Althought the third episode seems to me like the one with the weakest maps, i wouldn’t call them bad really.

It’s easy to see how much love and dedication was put into this game. It shows, and that’s why the game is worth checking. But honestly, i feel there are two major flaws: writing and puzzle design.

If i had to describe the writing (both story and dialogue) in one word, that word would be “naive”. The whole conception of politics implied here, at least the most superficial one, is just naively manicheistic. And i understand that the ending is supposed to justify all the sillyness we’ve seen so far, and that just like it happens in films like The Wicker Man or They Live, you are supposed to see stupid characters being stupid while the story at some point shows how self-conscious the whole thing was. But somehow, it fails. Even if it made sense, you would've been kinda forced to see a very bland dialogue reminiscent of the worst early 00’s tv shows. And the voice acting doesn’t help at all.

Then, the puzzle design, whose main problem was relying too much on moon logic, in a story where that kind of logic just doesn't fit at all. The somber mood and general story wasn’t the proper setting for that kind of puzzles.

Besides that, i think the general story and the way it unfolds is pretty ok. The artwork is nice, very reminiscent of the first Gabriel Knight game. Despite being a slow burner (the first third of the game felt pretty boring) you can be sure that there will be some very thrilling moments.

I understand this is the first game for this studio. It’s certainly a good start. I’m looking forward to see their future projects.

The premise of this game made me expect a larger development on methaphisical/theological themes. The supposed approach from a jewish perspective made it more interesting for a goi like me, although one can suppose that certain issues about questioning faith are universal to any religion. Sadly, the game only hinted with this themes, and the overall approach was pretty shallow.

The noir/detective plot was incredibly lazy, too. Like, it was extremely easy to go from point A to B. Very poorly written. Oh and a boxing rabbi, all of a sudden, i’m not saying it like it was an impossible thing, but it felt to me like they pulled a very weak and evident Deus Ex Machina there.

Now, to be fair, i know this was Dave Gilbert/Wadjet Eye first game ever. And i played the whole thing in probably less than 2 hours so it wasn’t a big waste of time. But still, i can’t help it than just feeling dissapointed anyway. This is a game that could definitely use a proper remake.

I wouldn’t recommend this game to anyone, except if you were a die-hard fan of Wadjet Eye and you were looking forward to own their whole catalog. Otherwise, just skip this.

Retro-FPS and point n’click adventures are my favourite video-game genres. Doom and The Secret of Monkey Island are, respectively, my favourite games from each genre. And someone decided to put them together in a doom conversion. It will be hard to play this game and make a serious review about it, because i’m completely biased even before playing it. Man just playing the first map got me super hyped for the whole thing.

Pirate Doom serves as a good example of how important art design is in a fps. I have this hot take: the doom engine is the best game engine of all time. Yet, honestly, it gets a little tiring to play Doom wads with vanilla textures. Like, sometimes you want something more besides classic archaic doom. And then when wads like Pirate Doom appear, they feel like a whole different game, even if you know the gameplay is exactly the same: you’re fighting the exact same monsters with almost the same exact weapons. But the change in mood, textures, sprites, music, sound, in concrete, the whole artistic side of it, has leveled up the experience and made it unique. Yes, you can’t go wrong with the idtech 1 or GZDoom engine, but you better get to work in the art department. This is how you know that FPS are not just simply about shooting things. Funny how a game whose whole mood is that of a comedy made me think about the essence of a whole genre.

Anyway, this game is not just a great use of sprites, textures and music: This has a fantastic gameplay. Level design is just perfect, the balance is so great, it even has a very progressive and well thought difficulty curve throughout the levels. No map here is bad. As for the weapons, you have a big arsenal that is inpired by the classic Doom arsenal, with sprite borrowed from Outlaw, but with a whole new different feeling. They’re just spectacular.

Oh, and i love the fact that this wad is only 18 maps long. I think the regular 32 map longrun ends up being a bit too much, most of the times, even in Doom II. 18 seems like a perfect number to me.

I recommend this game energically.

Fav maps: Map 5 Barnacle Bar / Map 7 Booty Bay / Map 10 Lost City / Map 14 Port Royale

Worst maps: Map 4 Sunken Ghost Ship (It’s not a bad map really, and it’s also pretty short, i’m just not fond of the underwater physics)

I included this game in a list i titled “myst-clones” as a joke, so you can get an idea about what’s this game about pretty easily.

Going further in detail: Zork Nemesis is essentially a darker take on what Myst and Riven previously did. The Zork franchise was originally a collection of text adventures in the 80’s. During the 90’s, they decided to go full point and click, and they went for an fmv-based first person approach.
Actually, the first game from that period, Return to Zork, was released before Myst, so it had a bit of the same luck that The 7th Guest had. What matters here, is that anything included within the Zork universe had shown the darkness and gloom of Zork Nemesis, which of course might have been a big surprise for long-time fans. It feels like a completely different game which was labeled as a Zork game in the last minute just to sell more copies.

Thematically, the main focus of the game is based around alchemy. Nonetheless, they bring elements from a wide variety of different backgrounds: pre-socratic philosophy, astrology, baroque art, phrenology, classical music, and probably some others. To borrow from such an heterogenic selection and be able to bring up something that is not just cohesive but also beautiful, shows up that there’s not just ambition but also real talent behind the writing of this game. The basic story might share many elements with Myst, but overall works just fine. Certain twists might not be very well handled, but it’s no big deal, since the main goal here, which is unfolding a mistery in a progressive way, it’s delivered right.

Puzzle design is excelent in my opinion. Except for a few tricky puzzles, everything here is straight regular logic, and every solution is hinted at some point of the game. Is just about looking carefully and having enough patience, but i think this game can be solved almost entirely without the need of a walkthrough. I would even say that, overall, Zork Nemesis is easier than Myst, and in a very good way.

Probably the biggest achievement of this game is the overall atmosphere. Both the sound design and the visuals (they created incredible pieces of architecture in here) range from mysterious to straight out disturbing and horrifying. After the first part of the game, you’ll wander through four different worlds, each representing a different element. And oh boy, it’s in the air world where things get almost horror-like. Don’t want to spoil things for you, only gonna give my own advice here. Try to explore the worlds in the following order: first, earth; second, water; third, air; fourth, fire. This is the order i did, just randomly, and it worked just fantastic for the progression of the story. After some serious thought i’m still convinced that this order was crucial for my enjoyment of the game, and probably a different order would have somehow lowered the whole experience.

If you’re a fan of the Myst games, and you’re looking more stuff like that, be sure to check Zork Nemesis, a forgotten gem, a very underrated piece of gaming art, and for sure, one of the darkest takes on the genre.

Sam and Max is a game with almost no flaws. The kind of game whose perfection make it kinda hard to review.

The story is simple but it serves pretty well as an excuse for the action and, mostly, the humor.

Most of the puzzles, while framed in typical lucasarts moon logic, are easy to solve, except for a few cases when a walkthrough will definitely come in handy.

This is a Lucasarts top 5 for me. Can’t really say much than that.

It was very nice to experience Doom 1’s balance after a long time. It is well known that once Doom 2 introduced the Super Shotgun, that balance was lost forever. And of course i don’t mean it as a negative thing, just saying a fact: considering that 99% of fan made wads are based on Doom 2, Sigil is a good reminder of what Doom was originally about. It’s crazy how a Cacodemon or a Baron of Hell can become a serious threat in that framework.

I mentioned balance, because i think that’s probably the best thing out of this wad and the aspect i guess everybody would agree about being great. The rest is a mix of many Romero-design tropes: lots of damaging floor, verticality, tiny ledges, dark areas, very well hidden secrets, Cyberdemons blasting misiles from a long distance, and so on. All of those thing, i guess are mostly a matter of taste. But sure, you can’t deny the man has his own style.

I usually like some of those design tropes when it comes to Doom, but i’m not entirely sure if i like how they were applied this time. None of this maps were really mindblowing. Some even had their tedious moments, and most of them have really confusing areas. Besides that i think the spritework is something to appreciate: The man pulled up an aesthetic that is neither techbase nor hell, is just a unique atmosphere made up with all kinds of textures but in a very cohesive way.

Long story short, i didn’t like Sigil. It looks amazing, music kicks ass, but i didn’t like playing it. And i really wanted to like it. But it just didn’t worked.

I’m aware how Sigil has been quite polarizing in it’s reception. So, don’t mind me, give it a chance anyway.

Unpopular opinion: I think i liked Romero’s two maps from Thy Flesh Consumed a lot more than anything on Sigil.

Shock Troopers 2nd Squad is a downgrade in almost every aspect that made it’s predecessor so legendary.

An aspect of which i’m neutral about is the fact that they decided to put only 4 characters instead of 8, and to made them more unique in terms of functionality. For sure, they are a lot less charismatic than some of their predecessors. This time you can pick between gym bro Gordon Freeman, a blonde with bigger boobs than the blonde from the first game, a petit e-girl, and the laser guy no one cares about.

Probably the most interesting addition is the inclusion of vehicles in a very Metal Slug fashion, but sadly it’s not a really good implementation, i couldn’t last 30 seconds on any of them because of how janky they were.

Besides that, pixel art is less appealing (they went for a more “cartoony” fashion this time), music is cringey at times, sound design (specially voice-acting or whatever they use as human voices) is simply terrible. And they almost completely scrapped one of the key aspects of the original Shock Troopers, which is the option of choosing which route to take.

This game feels almost like a shoot em up in many sections, specially in boss fights, which tend to be a bullet hell mess. Not really my cup of tea. And as a design choice, i’m not sure if i should qualify it as a misconception (the fact that is a top-down game doesn’t make it a Shoot em’up) or simply a risky/polarizing decision.

Now, the truth is that 2nd Squad is not a bad game at all. The problem of this game is living under the shadow of such a perfect title like Shock Troopers. If you never played the original you’ll probably enjoy this game a lot, because you won’t feel biased at all. But still, i have to say that if you already enjoyed the first title, you should play this one too, because at some point is more of the same, which is not a bad thing at all considering how short Shock Troopers was.

It’s kinda sad that we could never see this becoming a bigger franchise.

Oh f*ck this game was such a blast. The pinnacle of top-down shooters from the 90s.

I was more of a Metal Slug guy back in the day but i always felt curious about this one. Also, Shock Troopers was a lot harder to find as an arcade, where i live. I remember as a kid thinking how cool those characters were. Now i think it’s a great example on how japanese’s takes on american culture can get pretty comical. But for sure that’s part of the charm in this game’s art direction.

There’s not much complexity here: Just shoot everything that moves (and also everything that doesn’t, because buildings can also be destroyed). Controls might take a while to get used to, but it’s not really a big deal.

The game allows you to choose a max of 3 characters over 8, all of which have their own special features (different kind of weapon, more or less health or speed, etc). That, alongside the possibility of choosing different paths, give this game A LOT of replayable value.

Only flaws i can point out: first, the bosses. It’s a bit underwhelming that no matter which route you take, you will always fight the same bosses, just with a different colour and in a different order. It would have been a lot more exciting to have different bosses depending on the selected route.
Second, the length. Short games are my go-to, usually, but Shock Troopers just feels like it’s excesively short. And sadly, unlike Metal Slug, there’s only one sequel.

On a side note: one of the characters here looks an awful lot like one of the Midnight Resistance guys.

As i got more and more interested in metroidvanias, i got more convinced that my starting point should be right at the beginning. That’s why i decided to start this journey with Super Metroid. Of course, i’m aware that some older games pioneered the elements of metroidvanias, but Super Metroid is largely considered to be the foundational.

There has been a lot of discussion about what makes a metroidvania, and i feel the need to have a position about it. My opinion is that “metroidvania” is essentially a decission when it comes to level design in a 2D side-scrolling platform game, and that’s all, there’s no need to make so much fuss about it. But for sure, as a decission and -given it’s popularity- as a style, i have to say that i’m impressed. Super Metroid deserves a whole chapter in the books of history of level design, if those book are written eventually.

I tend to stay away from platform games –except for run and gun, which tend to be lighter on the platforming department, most of the times- because i tend to get frustrated by them pretty easily. Super Metroid is probably the first platform game to grab my attention this way, the first one to make me feel so compelled to actually made me want to play it in it’s entirety.

And i have to say that’s due to it’s ambience and it’s storytelling. Both aspects are, in my opinion, pioneering what Half-Life would do a few years later, in another genre for sure, but with groundbreaking effects. It’s not really about telling a complex story. You can have a pretty simple and canonical story (Super Metroid in particular feels pretty inspired by Alien 3) but you can use all of your artistic and technical possibilities to make the player involve in a deeper way. Super Metroid should also have it’s own page when it comes to environmental storytelling, another very popular concept when it comes to video game design/analysis.

Super Metroid is a must play for many reasons: it’s historical relevance, the fact that is probably the best SNES game ever, the fact that it defined a whole genre decades prior of it's existence... But mostly because of how good it has aged decades after and how amazing it is. Seriously this is simply top-notch gaming.

Playing the first Metal Slug on an arcade machine when i was 5 years old was probably one of the turning points of my childhood gaming days. That was not only a moment when i were always looking forward to the next time some adult could take me to the arcades, but also a time when i inquisitively looked forward to some other game that could, at some extent, fill the void of not having a Neo Geo or anything that could run Metal Slug at home. Thanks to MAME and Sega Genesis emulators i got to play dozens of run and gun games. Most of them were thrash i guess. But two games stood out for me: Contra Hard Corps, and as you might have guessed, Gunstar Heroes.

As a kid (and still to this day) i wasn’t only looking for good gameplay but also some really good-looking visuals, narrative somehow being less important to me (for that matter i always preferred Point n’ click adventures, with a few exceptions like Half- Life or Metal Gear Solid). To me, videogames were not just an interactive piece of entertainment , but also a whole aesthetic experience. Gunstar Heroes offered all of that to me. I actually thought, as a 90’s kid, that this game was probably based on some manga or anime that wasn’t still available in my country. I guess that’s not just because of the anime-inspired aesthetic, but also because the narrative, the characters and many other things just teased a whole new world which sadly wasn’t developed further. Maybe, it was for the best.

I’m still imagining to this day what would’ve been of Gunstar Heroes if it became a bigger franchise, and i can’t really understand why a game that has been largely considered as, at least, one of the Sega Genesis top-5 games ever, hasn’t been rebooted yet.

I always tend to prefer shorter games, but in the case of Gunstar Heroes, i would say it's shortness is actually it's only negative thing.