Recent reviews by Maxel

I have decided to give the game a thumbs up again because of how well optimized it is for being a forced-raytracing game. Despite my original review stating that forcing raytracing is a problem, which it is still is, the game itself is a very fun experience once your card can also handle the performance. As I stated, I ran this game on a 6750 XT, and yet I was able to archieve 60-70 fps through the campaign on medium settings.

SPOILER FREE REVIEW

Doom: The Dark Ages plays as the prequel of Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal. The story tells us about a man, which is known to be several titles, some say its a "one-man-army", others say "satans nemesis", even the most goofy ones, who would say "Jesus, if he had a gun". But the real title that all of us know, which was also given to him by hell itself is the "Doom Slayer". The lore follows us through the dark times, when sentinels where still a thing and the makyrs assisting sentinels through war against hell. The Slayer himself is used as a weapon from both sides against hell. Despite him only attacking demons, humans still feared of him because of his power and strength, that even gods would fear.

Each map's atmosphere has improved greatly ever since Doom Eternal, you can feel and really tell what's going on around you with lively backgrounds filling up each play area, which also includes how huge the play areas became from it's previous titles. even though you would need to walk more to find collectives, you will also be greeted with way more battlefields filled with enemies for you to rip through. So you won't really get bored much when trying to backtrack on things or find your ways to your objectives.

When it comes on archieving objectives and building up your gear, it's not necessary to spend your hours to grind up for them as they would come to you through gameplay, at least the most important parts such as health, armor and ammo. Though if you do take your time while exploring each map, you will be rewarded with many goodies such as gold to help you upgrade your armory to slay even more demons.

Compared to previous titles, this game takes it serious when it comes on standing your own ground. You don't need to jump around platforms to fight against enemies. Instead you use your shield to defend yourself aswell as parry their attacks and then use your heavy weapons to fight them off. Since this game also plays in a more medieval timeline, not only will your weapon arsenal feel and sound more powerful but your melee aswell. Each weapon comes with unique abilities that you can also use to fight through hordes of enemies, without needing to switch up between them much, compared to how it was with Doom Eternal. But still, I would highly suggest you try each weapon out and see how they feel since there will be quite a few to have fun with.

Since the engine the game runs with got an upgrade, so does the animations aswell as graphical improvements. Characters feel way more lively. Enemies have more animations and unique designs, even the main protagonist shows more of himself (despite still being the mute chad that we know and love). You can clearly see the love the developers have put into to give us a very cinematic feeling through the campaign. The only huge downside this game has with the engine is the mandetory requirement of a raytracing capable GPU, since this game will have Raytracing forced on, you sadly cannot change it in the settings.

The Sound design is really well made, as mentioned previously, weapon have way more powerful sounds to them, sounds that would make you have an eargasm. It's not too bassy nor too high pitched and still gives out heavy punches.

Now when it comes to the music, I must say that the new musicians knew what they were doing, the soundtrack is really awesome and adds that heavy metal feeling that also fits very well with the medieval timeline this story plays in, it's not too much and neither is it lacking much. It sadly won't give us fully back on what mick gordon archieved, but they still tried and gave us an awesome soundtrack to vibe on while still slaying several armies of demons.


Story/Dialog: 9/10 (Deep and immersive lore, you get to play more than just see what's going on, most cinematic out of all previous titles)
Character Design: 9/10 (Greatly improved over previous titles, each character have unique lively animations)
World Design: 10/10 (It's huge and has lively backgrounds that make you feel very immersed into each map, you can see what's going on around you, very decent art choices)
Gameplay: 8/10 (You are a walking one-tank-army, gun's blazing, not much need to switch up but that also means you mostly just need 2-3 weapons to proceed)
Soundtrack: 9/10 (Guns and Worlds are very unique and give you an eargasm, the music was performed by actual musicians that had the right tools to make them.)
Performance & Graphics: 8/10 (I have not encountered any bugs so far, despite forced raytracing still solid performance, beautiful textures and effects)

Story playtime: 15 - 16 Hours
Overall playtime: 20+ Hours with grind included (has decent replayability though)
Singleplayer Only, DLCs will be included.

Would recommend the game for at least -10% off

PREVIOUS REVIEW:

As much as I would REALLY recommend the game, I'm a bit dissapointed how beefy this game is, even for modern mid-range PC builds. Forcing raytracing this early by the devs was NOT a good idea, in fact, forcing raytracing should not be done at all. In order to use Raytracing methods nowadays, you would have to consider either getting RTX 40-50s card or an 9070 XT in order to compete with that requirement. Even RX 7000 cards by AMD can't hold up that well with RT, which leaves you with only those options, which are also still very pricey nontheless.

I'm currently running the game with an i7-13700K and an RX 6750 XT at 1440p. Even those specs, the game barely runs at 60-80 fps at low settings with FSR turned on. It's massive downstep from their previous more optimized games such as Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal.

I doubt that the game will switch from mandetory to optional Raytracing, but I hope the devs will at least optimize their game a bit more to the point that it's also still playable for at least the RTX 30s and more playable for RX 6700 series cards.

Yes I'm not writing a review about this game but rather the company that "supported" the devs behind this project. Half-life 2 on it's own is a iconic game that revolutionized the Gaming Industry for decades and has made its name big into the titles themselves. I grew up playing the series and was dumb enough to also once again get hyped up for yet another "RTX" titled game, that I was even blinded by the title itself saying "RTX".

And dumb I felt for this to finally come out, I was indeed.

What you see here is not an official remake of a game, this is basically the source engine that has been fondled with by the devs but the tools they used to fondle the engine with was given by a company that clearly made its message clear for consumers in order to be able to enjoy those given "assets", that you should also use the "dedicated" hardware from the same company, that also gave the tools to the devs.

When you try to boot up the game with and AMD built system, the game will immediantely run like complete ass. You barely get 9 fps. Even with 1080p, low RT with an RX 9070, the game will most likely run at 30 fps with graphics even worse than the original title's low settings. And when you try to run the game any higher, the graphics will most likely not even change, since the tools that the fondled engine requires you to, don't even exist (for example DLSS and Nvidia's RT). So basically lesser FPS for almost no graphical changes.

For those who don't trust my words, there's a video that literally confirms my statement: https://youtu.be/9mYaOWfOYuA?si=qnuKCtnmrt_1dJFY

What I'm saying here is, Nvidia does not want you to enjoy a game sponsored by them with a diffirent hardware that was not made by them. What's even worse that they won't even let you enjoy it if that hardware that you got from them is older than their most previous ones.

"You got an AMD card? Even latest gen??? Well guess what, try our cards instead! Maybe you will finally enjoy even having almost 30 fps on our beloved game that "we" enjoyed so much back in the days! Wait you say don't like 30 fps? Well try our latest AI slop machine for at least 2000 USD extra, that will probably make the game look like papersand but hey, you got 100+ fps!!"


But jokes aside. As a dedicated fan, who grew up with this game series, I can't say anything else other than being dissapointed and ashamed. This clearly isn't the dev's "final" product yet, maybe we will have a much better improved version in future. But for now, my review will stay that way. I cannot give that hate to the devs who worked on this, they do care about their project and so stated it themselves in the interviews that everything they were working on were indeed made by hand, but the way how nvidia butchered the game to not be enjoyable for anyone, who simply cannot spent extra 2000 USD just to be able to enjoy this game, is just plain unjustifiable.

This is another great example why you prepare before tease, it seems the game has been abandoned since the studio did promise to us that we would get a 2nd chapter last year, yet still got nothing up until now. It really sucks though because when I saw the reviews and tried the game myself, I got high hopes. But now...

Honestly if you came by this game, as good as the trailer and screenshots look, don't get the game until you see the reviews becoming better. I'm not the only one complaining about their lack of communication.

The game is still only offering the first chapter, still has a lot of bugs, wierd AI and buggy mechanics.

The game is running on an outdated game engine that does not want to fit with the right resolution of modern Monitors such as 1440p or 4K. When I try to switch the game to 1080p. Alt tabbing out the game makes the system freezing.

For the new players that want to visit the SCP game lore, don't play this game. It's very confusing on what you have to do and you can get lost very easily. Best is to look up youtube videos and guides to even understand what your mission is.

If the devs update the game engine, fix the server peer-to-peer problems. I might give this game a positive review but as of right now, it's too jank.

For those who seek a better direct answer; Imagine having the effort of making unique lore based art for the game that is meant to take the "AAA" title serious, that includes every content ever made in it. The effort and time put for others to enjoy on, and to make it worth spending money/time on if it means looking dope af or just enjoying the view of it. Now lets imagine you just fire those artists because you found out you can also just save up even more money by just generating it on your own golden-plated PCs and call it "Art" and still selling them at the same price, not even caring much how badly generated it could become. This is what Activision has told the devs to do, this is how they are used on making money from your wallets.


I was about to write a positive review for ONCE in my lifetime when playing yet another CoD game. I wanted to include how treyarch finally went back to good story telling, solid gunplay, good graphics and gameplay mechanics feeling unique. But honestly after seeing that they literally did the worst thing that I never thought they would actually do, I won't even try to justify it.

Unironically, this is better than modern warfare III

Despite the jiggle physics, this game is a pretty relaxful game to play. The game design is simple and doesn't take much space at all for your PC to run at, meaning that even older hardware can easily perform this game well. Dungeons are enjoyable to play, can get quite hard through process but not in a way that would literally cause someone to rip their hair out. Of course this game is still in early beta but so far I have been very pleased with the experience and hope for the dev team to get as much support as needed.

This game is a gem indeed and I can see huge potentional coming in the near future.

I'm gonna be brutally honest.

If you want to enjoy a game as a casual gamer, this game does not go well for PC. You need extra mods to configure the FPS issue, even if you have the latest high-end PC. That alone takes away the fun, and the worst part is the fact how much visuals you have to sacrifice to be able to fluently enjoy the game in only 60 FPS. You can't go higher than 60.

Sega please come back and properly fix this game...

It does not run on the steam deck.

Tried setting up the resolution through PC to the native Steam deck resolution, tried it on the steam deck on its own through Steam settings. reduced and highered the FPS but still nothing works.

It's just constant white screen with only audio being hearable.

Whether you are a seasoned VR veteran or new, this game is a must-have as a shooter. It's simple and easy to understand:
You get a gun. You shoot. You kill.

A story does exist here but the main concept is just to roam around and kill every enemy and clear every room until you reach to the endboss unless you die in the process and have the restart from the beginning. The more you play, the more you improve and the more diffirent guns you get for your run-and-gun funtime.

The atmosphere soundtrack is not really main key to the game but still is lovely and gives off that retro-style perspective with how it was composed, giving off an even better indication which map you currently are at. It is not a must-have to have it on but if you do enjoy the retro design already, then the soundtrack won't really let you down either.

From the performance and graphics this game does not really require a beefy PC (obviously from the graphics), so you can even have fun as a VR budget friendly user. (Did you know they also released this game for Quest Standalone?)

If you are not sure of your purchase still, you can still try it out on the demo and decide whether it's your cake or not. But is is it worth to try out at least once? 100% It is!