DOOM: The Dark Ages Review

DOOM: The Dark Ages

Developed by: id Software

Published by: Microsoft Game Studios

Date of Release: May 15, 2025

Price: $69.99    

In these modern times it seems that first person shooters are being released at a rapid-fire pace, with cookie-cutter Call of Duty games, Fortnite clones, shovelware asset-flip boomer shooter wannabes, and extraction shooters right out the arse. While they're not all bad, the utter deluge of sameyness is really starting to stagnate the market, which is why it's such a breath of fresh air whenever a new Doom game comes out. in 2016 we had the excellent semi-reboot of Doom, Doom eternal following on it's heels in 2020, and now here in 2025 we're taken back in time with the prequel Doom: The Dark Ages. Taking place well before the events of Doom 2016, it weaves a heavy-metal power fantasy of ripatorious glory.

    Plunking you into the iron-clad boots and fur cape of the Doomslayer, Doom: The Dark Ages tells a tale of an era when the Makyr-backed Night Sentinels still reigned supreme against the forces of hell, though things are never quite as simple as they seem. In this barbaric era the Maykrs saw fit to enslave the mighty Doomslayer out of fear for his nearly limitless godlike potential. Kept in line by an electrifying tether and driven by his mindless hatred of demonkind, he is used as a living weapon against their foes and launched with all the aplomb of a tactical nuke onto the battlefield. And this is where the game starts, as the Kreed Makyr's ship fires the Slayer from orbit like a railgun round onto the planet below.

    Starting out with an appetizing cinematic intro to set up the story, the Slayer heads to the kitchen equipped to tenderize hell's legions with his trusty combat shotgun and shield, the flavorful combat garnished with a sprinkling of tutorials to steep the player in the game's mechanics as you go along. Everything is well laid out, and nothing really takes you out of the action unlike the tutorial rooms of 2016. Parrying enemy attacks quickly becomes second nature, and the combat moves at a much nicer pace than that in Doom Eternal, relying less on mobility and glory kills, and more on just bringing the pain in whatever flavor you choose to dish it out. For myself a meaty shield tackle followed up with unloading both barrels of the super shotgun directly in my foe's faces was the preferred soup du jour. Unlike in Eternal you don't feel punished for not using certain weapons to season certain enemies, you can just rip and tear until it is well done. And for a Doom game that is how it should be served. Now I should stop the food puns before I get thrown out of the buffet...

    The visuals in Doom: TDA are absolutely breathtaking, with far-off vistas visible in the massive levels that are quite akin to the good old days of doom, with plenty of places to get lost in and secrets to be found in each one. The variety in every area is quite nice as well, with some impressive surprises near the endgame. And with the gameplay, there are some nice variations there as well. There are a few parts where you get to pilot a towering Atlan mech against titans from hell, and ariel dogfights on your trusty cyberdragon steed. Honestly I wished there had been more of those sections, but what was there is still quite satisfying. All in all the graphics as well as the performance were perfect IMO. I played through the game with a 4080 at 4k144 and never had so much as a hitch in the framerate.

    Then we get to the music. Hoo boy, does The Dark Ages have a banger of a soundtrack. Don't get me wrong though, it's not QUITE on the level of Mick Gordon, but it's almost there. Finishing Move Inc. handled the soundtrack, and did an incredible job of living up to the other games. Especially near the end, and in the final battles, this is a score to frigging RIP AND TEAR to. The cinematic score is also very fitting, with a dark forboding soundscape. My two favorite tracks have got to be Infernal Chasm and Between Hex and Flame. The Dark Ages' soundtrack feels much like the way the Slayer handles this time, beefy and tankier.

    At the end of the day, Doom: The Dark Ages manages to live up to the majesty of Doom 2016 and Eternal, combining the best of what made both great all while managing to do it's own thing. I had a frigging blast with it, and I can only hope the future DLC campaign will be more of the same awesomeness. I'm so glad they put out a fully single player experience this time rather than wasting effort on lackluster multiplayer. As it stands right now, Doom: The Dark Ages is my GOTY, and I doubt that will change unless a Quake reboot suddenly materializes from the aether.

RIP AND TEAR, UNTIL IT IS DONE.

Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered Review

Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered

Developed by: Aspyr, Crystal Dynamics

Published by: Aspyr

Date of Release: February 14, 2025

Price: $29.99

Well here we are yet again with a quality remaster from Aspyr who could have known? One year after the successful release of Tomb Raider I - III Remastered, we have this second package launching with The Last Revelation, Chronicles, and The Angel of Darkness. And just like last time this release makes playing these classic titles an absolute joy, even if one of them is not quite up to the quality of previous titles. I'm looking at you, Angel of Darkness. As with the previous collection, this new batch of remasters have had a fair amount of cut content restored and are by far the definitive way to play all three titles.

Just as with the first Tomb Raider collection, this second package has upgraded the visuals, though the visual updates to Angel of Darkness are very subtle at best. The Last Revelation and Chronicles by far received the most improvements, having gone from PlayStation era graphics to the modern style of the remaster.  Angel of darkness stays much closer to it's PS2 style of graphics, so much so that it's hard to keep track of which version you're playing until you look at fine details. Either way though it's really nice to once again be able to swap between the artstyles with the touch of a button. Not only that but you can play the retro mode in 60fps this time around rather than 30fps (it's a toggle in the menu), which would be a welcome addition to the original trilogy if Aspyr ever decides to update them.

Also matching the first remaster collection, the modern controls are a much needed improvement over the dated tank controls of the original. Of course if you're feeling like some nostalgic masochism you can switch back at any time to the old style of gameplay. Altogether this is a lovely collection and definitely worth playing, but it's just a shame that even with all the cut content restored to Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness it still falls flat. Also there are pretty much no graphical settings on the PC at all, simply defaulting to your monitor's native resolution, what is up with that? Despite that minor shortcoming I still highly recommend it. Now where is the 60fps patch for the first collection, Apsyr?

The Thing Remastered Review

The Thing Remastered

Developed By: Nightdive Studios, Computer Artworks

Published By: Nightdive Studios

Date of Release: December 5, 2024

Price: $29.99

When it comes to the cult classic film franchise The Thing I have to admit right off the bat that my first experience with it was not the film by John Carpenter, but the sequel in video game form when it was released on the original Xbox back in 2002. I found it to be quite interesting take on survival horror at the beginning, but the forced mechanics became so overwhelmingly frustrating later on that I abandoned playing it, and shelved it never to play it again. or so I thought. Who would have known that 22 years later, Nightdive studios would helm a remaster of the original with their usual degree of quality of life fixes thrown in for good measure.

The original release of The Thing was a wildly ambitions project, set as a direct sequel to the 1982 film of the same name. It had some impressive mechanics such as having to deal with cold conditions, manage your teammate's fear, and running tests on them to ensure that they weren't infected. Sadly it was held back by some of the very mechanics that made it so unique, namely scripted events where your team members would turn. Thankfully Nightdive saw fit to cut out those forced events, which has greatly improved the game in my opinion, making things much gentler but without diluting the challenge.

Of course it wouldn't be a Nightdive remaster without a vault containing a crapload of goodies, and on this The Thing Remastered delivers as well. It's loaded with concept art and development materials, which IMO are always a great inclusion. All in all, it's great to be able to play The Thing in 4K with all the modern creature comforts, and anyone who was a fan of the original will find a lot to love here. It's definitely a good pickup for anyone who was a fan of the John Carpenter film as well. I know i sound like a broken record at this point, but Nightdive has just pulled yet another hat trick imo. At the rate they're fixing up these old flawed classics, it wouldn't surprise me if they even manage to fix up the likes of Blood II someday.  

Clock Tower Rewind Review

Clock Tower Rewind

Developed by: Wayforward/LRG

Published by: Wayforward/Sunsoft/Capcom

Date of Release: October 29, 2024

Price: $19.99

Oh how I was excited for this remaster, and OH how heartbroken I am with the results. Clock Tower Rewind is a remaster of the classic Super Famicom survival horror game, and it's first official release in the western world, but boy is it terrifying in all the ways it shouldn't have been. Wayforward worked with LRG games to remaster the game on the Carbon Engine, and despite having over a year for development, it's clear it needed MUCH more time in the oven.

All the promised quality of life updates are present and accounted for, with some lovely cinematics, the motion comic, and other goodies. However the game is pretty much unplayable with rampant input lag, an EXTREMELY unintuitive control scheme, and to top it all off the game engine just randomly slows down to a crawl, and crashes frequently resulting in corrupted saves. I've completely given up on trying to get through this title, it's fought me at every step. Therefore my suggestion is to play a fan translated version of the original, and wait and see if the devs manage to fix this broken mess.

Killing Time Resurrected Review

Killing Time Resurrected

Developed By: NightDive Studios, 3DO

Published By: Nightdive Studios, Ziggurat

Date of Release: October 17, 2024

Price: $24.99 

Well it would seem that NightDive is on an absolute roll with 3DO remasters these days. Hot off the heels of the wonderfully bizarre PO'ed Definitive Edition, NightDive has seen fit to resurrect the 3DO cult classic Killing Time! Its an amazing story set at an island manor trapped in time during the prohibition, and the story you uncover is told by ghostly exchoes of conversations the inhabitants had while still alive. You'll have to fight off zombie gangsters, hunters, maids and even creepy clowns as you explore the massive island and try to solve the mysteries of what exactly happened there. 

With NightDive's remaster of Killing Time all the expanded areas from the PC version's metroidvania style open world map are here, with redrawn textures and vastly improved lighting to boot. For the textures NightDive went back to the original source materials and re-created everything from scratch, resulting in a much richer and colorful look to the environments. As for the enemy sprites, they took the source materials from the 3DO version and reimported them at 4x the original size of the originals, making them incredibly detailed compared to the originals. For the enemies left that didn't have a 3DO counterpart, they created new 3D models to match the style of the game and made replacement sprites for those.

So what you get in the end with Killing Time Resurrected is a glorious first person shooter that falls halfway between Metroid Prime and Bioshock on the gameplay spectrum. The acting and writing for the FMV sequences are top notch, and the soundtrack is an amazing assortment of ambiance, jazz, ragtime and the like. The colorful art deco environments are still amazing to look at, especially with the fresh coat of paint the remaster ads. But if all that gets to be too much you can turn it all off and go back to the original PC graphics. The gunplay is great and the enemies are often times hilariously varied. The game does end up featuring a lot of key hunting and backtracking, but the automap helps a lot.

I guess the only thing I can complain about with Killing Time Resurrected is that there is no dedicated button you can use to toggle the enhanced graphics on and off in realtime, instead requiring you to go through the menus to toggle the 3DO actors and High- Res textures respectively. It would have also been nice to be able to go through the original 3DO maps, but this is really just nitpicking as the PC environment is much nicer. It took me around 8 hours to play through the game and get the good ending, which is a pretty satisfying chunk of gameplay IMO. I wholeheartedly recommend Killing Time Resurrected for anyone who loves a good boomer shooter, and also for anyone who loves FMV games as well.

PO'ed Definitive Edition Review

PO'ed Definitive Edition

Developed By: Any Channel/Nightdive Studios

Published By: Nightdive Studios

Date of Release: May 16, 2024

Price: $19.99

Ahh, the humble chef. Perfectly at home in the hottest kitchen and the most frigid of walk-in freezers, this majestic beast can make a masterful meal out of any adversary. Who would be better suited to fight off an invasion force of freakish aliens when the badass space marines have all failed? Such is the plot of the 3DO classic PO'd, a First-Person Shooter from developer Any Channel released way back in 1995 for Panasonic's ill-fated console. And now Nightdive Studios have seen fit to let their mad genius KEX engine developer Kaiser helm a remaster of this absurd culinary killfest.

As usual for a Nightdive release the first thing that has been updated to modern standards are the controls. In the original game you had to contend with the bloody 3DO controller (which is basically an subpar genesis controller with shoulder buttons tacked on) to control the game, and it was a pretty tough experience. Thankfully the modern controls make up for ALL of those shortcomings, which I am thankful for as PO'ed has a lot of first-person platforming to contend with. The added precision helps so much in that regard.

The visuals and sounds have also been brought up to modern standards, and though the game engine is very simplistic, it gets the job done with some really batcrap insane level design. There's a lot of verticality to these levels, which wasn't a common thing in first person shooters of the time. The sheer wackiness of the enemy designs really stands out in a positive way. Where else are you going to get to fight walking butts that fart in your general direction?

Nightdive has certainly proven once again that no matter the age of the game, the absurdity of its subject matter, and the general unplayable jankiness of the original gameplay are all obstacles they can overcome quite handily with their KEX engine. All in all PO'ed Definitive Edition is fully worth experiencing, as it was one of the best FPS games on the 3DO. I'm thankful for the resurgence in 3DO games lately, it truly was an underrated system, and I'm looking forward to Nightdive's upcoming remaster of Killing Time.

PO'ed Definitive edition gets 9.35 farting butts out of 10

System Shock Remake Review (Xbox Series X)

System Shock Remake (Xbox Series X)

Developed by: Nightdive Studios

Published by: Prime Matter

Date of Release: May 21, 2024

Price: $39.99

Back in the mid 90's when I was still quite young my grandparents took me to Walmart to pick out some PC games for my birthday, as they had a massive bin of clearance titles. I ended up with quite a haul... Final Doom, Electro Man, Ultima Underworld 1&2, Syndicate Plus, and this one game with a rather creepy looking cyborg on the front... "System Shock". The other games ended up being pretty good, but none sucked me in quite as much as Looking Glass's sci-fi magnum opus. Now here we are in the year 2023, and System Shock has at last been updated for modern times.

The gaming industry has seen its fair share of remakes and remasters over the years, but few titles have generated as much anticipation and excitement (not to mention salt over the Kickstarter campaign!) as the remake of System Shock. With it's original release in 1994, System Shock was a groundbreaking game that blended elements of first-person shooters and dungeon crawling RPGs, pretty much birthing the immersive sim genre. Now, Nightdive Studios has undertaken the ambitious task of revitalizing this beloved classic and porting it to the Xbox Series X. In this review, we delve into the intricacies of the System Shock remake to see how it measures up to the original and whether it successfully captures the essence of, and lives up to the reputation of the iconic cyberpunk adventure.

Diving right in you'll notice that one of the most noticeable improvements in the System Shock remake is its visually stunning presentation. The developers have transformed the dated graphics of the original into a modern, immersive experience. The updated environments are rich in detail, featuring intricate textures (with a glorious retro pixel aesthetic baked in), dynamic lighting, and impressive special effects. The revamped Citadel Station now feels that much more alive and foreboding, effectively creating a sense of isolation and dread. The best part about all this is on the Xbox Series X it runs at native 4K60, and stays rock solid. Furthermore, the developers have paid great attention to enhancing the dark and atmospheric tone that made the original so memorable. From the flickering lights and haunting audio cues to the eerie sound design, the remake expertly captures the unsettling ambiance of the original game. Exploring the station's twisted corridors and encountering its horrifying inhabitants is an intense and chilling experience, just as it was in the original.

While the remake remains faithful to the core gameplay mechanics that defined the original, it also introduces several improvements and modernizations to enhance the overall experience. The controls have been perfectly adapted to suit the Xbox controller, providing fluid and responsive movement, making combat and exploration feel just as intuitive as the PC version. The inclusion of modern conveniences like quick-saving and an improved user interface and inventory system inspired by the sequel System Shock 2 also streamline the overall gameplay experience without sacrificing the challenge and depth of the original. Moreover, Nightdive Studios has taken the opportunity to refine certain gameplay elements. The combat mechanics have been reworked to provide a better balance between gunplay and melee combat, ensuring that players have viable options in dealing with the station's threats.

System Shock's narrative has always been one of its strongest aspects, told through the myriad of voice logs and data entries strewn throughout the station, and the remake manages to faithfully recreate the intricate and engrossing storyline. The game effortlessly weaves together elements of cyberpunk, horror, and science fiction to create a captivating and immersive world. The iconic antagonist, SHODAN, is as menacing and memorable as ever, and the remake successfully captures the sense of dread and unpredictability associated with this rogue AI. The voice acting and audio design deserve special praise, as they breathe new life into the game's cast of characters. The voice actors deliver convincing performances, adding depth and personality to the inhabitants of Citadel Station. Combined with the atmospheric soundtrack, the audio design serves to immerse players even further into the haunting world of System Shock.

When it comes right down to it, despite the extended development time and Kickstarter controversies, the System Shock remake is a labor of love that pays homage to a timeless classic while perfectly modernizing it for a new generation of players. Nightdive Studios has successfully captured the spirit of the original game, offering improved visuals, refined gameplay mechanics, and an immersive atmosphere. While some die-hard fans may have reservations about certain changes, overall, the remake stays true to the essence of System Shock, delivering a captivating and unforgettable experience. Whether you are a longtime fan or a newcomer to the franchise, the System Shock remake is an excellent port to the Xbox hardware, and an adventure that shouldn't be missed. I'm certainly glad I could be along for this wild ride.