Recent reviews by jzplr

it's meh

this software's one and only job is to put a 3d model of miku on your desktop for $15, which it does. the question is whether this product sold for money does more than a shimeji which were popular desktop pets in uh... 2012? 2010? earlier?

she has about five animations total and you will see all of them within two minutes of opening the program; she cycles through a new one every eight seconds. more animations and significantly less adhd from the idol could go a long way here

interactivity includes petting her with your mouse cursor, holding your mouse cursor (but not doing anything rude like moving it for you). she also does exactly one thing when you click on her

you can click and drag her to put her on whatever windows you want but you cannot throw her which is a very significant missing feature

if we're still doing desktop pets in the year of our lord 2025 i think it should wow the user by being meticulously aware of what you're doing; enough that every once in a while u discover a new thing she can do. make her greet u when u unlock your desktop, make her dance to music ur listening to (maybe intelligently aware of the bpm who knows). make her watch the videos you're watching or something. we have the technology

i purchased this program because (vaguely gestures toward blue haired woman) but if u like hatsune miku u can get fulfillment from these activities which have a similar level of interactivity:

- listen to vocaloid music: chug jug with you miku cover does not count its $CURRENTYEAR why can U not name 3 wowaka songs what is Ur deal dude.
- peruse art of hatsune miku on xitter: there is a lot of it and you can make it your desktop wallpaper or something
- play hatsune miku project diva: dont like rhythm games? me neither dude but i deal
- buy a plush of her: great as a sleeping companion and/or football
- think about her: usually blue, but can be green depending on taste

she's also coming to fortnite apparently so u can purchase her there if thats to your liking

Game is unplayable on the 6700 XT build I'm on. Google suggests that the id Tech 5 Engine in general is unfriendly to AMD cards, which is a shame because I was very excited to get my hands on this game.

As much as I love classic shooters and would have loved to get into the Wolfenstein reboots that I've been overlooking for so long, I cannot in good conscience recommend a video game that is optimized this poorly. I'm not dusting off the old 1050 Ti, swapping my video card and installing new drivers to play one video game from 2014. Sorry.

Made in an era post-Doom 2 where the Doom formula was widely understood and developers were no longer as tightly-bound to hardware limitations, DOOM 64 was the unfortunate product of being an amazing game held hostage by a platform unworthy of its presence. The clunky Nintendo 64 controller was serviceable for Doom action, but it would never compare to a keyboard and mouse. With no official PC release until recently, the only ways to experience DOOM 64 was by emulation of shaky reliability or bastardized fan-made ports, because God knows you don't own a Nintendo 64 with a working controller and a cartridge of this game that I literally can't even find sales numbers for online.

Where DOOM finds its footing in metal and adrenaline-pumping action, its N64 counterpart finds strength in atmosphere and horror. Reinforced by the inclusion of colored lighting, parallaxed skies, and a tense ambient soundtrack by Audrey Hodges, every pixel of DOOM 64 oozes atmosphere. DOOM 64's monsters are dark and claymation-esque, and do a great job at blending into the gloomy, ambient scenery. It's obvious the artistic directors for this game knew what they were doing with the Doom license.

While I have low playtime on this version of the game, I've played through the fan-remakes several times; and about half of the official N64 release. While having an official way to play the game is great for purists who swear by playing games as the developers intended, for the rest of the playerbase, you might find that you'll get more enjoyment out of a port like Doom 64: Retribution. Retribution has the advantage of running natively on GZDoom, meaning it keeps your configuration settings and allows unrestricted mouselook alongside smaller quality-of-life changes. If that sounds like something you're interested in, it might be worth it to skip out on this one and just play the version that works better on PC. If the thought of playing a bastardization of Doom 64 that adds smoother animations and freelook makes you shudder, this is just about your only option.

If you've never had a chance to play Doom 64, this is your chance to experience what is probably the best classic Doom game to hit store shelves, as well as the only official way that doesn't involve emulation or digging up an overpriced N64 cartridge off of eBay. Just be warned that you might get more enjoyment out of one of several fan-made ports that improves quality-of-life for PC players. With that in mind, there's not a better classic Doom experience.

(This review is broken up by a Pastebin, but you can read the entire review in a Pastebin here[pastebin.com] if you prefer.)

Background

When id Software's DOOM launched in 2016, it received effectively universal acclaim from critics and audiences alike. Explaining what made the 2016 game so great is a review for another day, but the short of it is that it occupied a practically untapped niche in the shooter market at the time.

The 2016 game threw away practically everything that served to slow or dumb down the mainstream shooter genre - there was no weapon reloading, the player character runs at full speed at all times, you can carry an illogical amount of weapons, and the effectiveness of cover was greatly diminished by the lack of regenerating health. You'd get health and ammo back from killing demons, which means the easiest way to ward off death was to brutalize demons until there were no more demons left to red mist - and you don't need me to explain why that kind of gameplay beelines directly into the dopamine center of any gamer even remotely familiar with the concept of "fun".

Within the game's large, open levels were skatepark-like combat arenas that encouraged the player to use their full faculties of mobility, and the diverse cast of demons each occupied a distinct role to play in taking down the player - it's called "orthogonal unit differentiation", which is a game design methodology that Mark Brown explains well in his video "What We Can Learn From Doom".

Overall, 2016's entry into the Doom series returned to many of the game design philosophies that were sorely absent from the current mainstream shooter and reminded gamers worldwide that there was once a time where shooters were about moving illogically fast, scouring sprawling levels for secrets, and - most importantly - the only obstacle between you and killing the ♥♥♥♥ out of everything is how good you are at bouncing around the arena and using the full capabilities of your specialized murder equipment. Proof of the sheer amount of dopamine this game produced can be found in the rave reviews, and it spawned a slew of retro-throwback shooters in its wake - see DUSK, ULTRAKILL and Nightmare Reaper, to name a few.

Gameplay

This history lesson is important because 2020's DOOM Eternal is, by all accounts, a game that entirely doubles down on the precedent set by 2016's DOOM. Almost all of the weapons function roughly similar to their 2016 counterparts, and the returning demons often have the exact same moveset as the previous entry. At its core, the two games are incredibly similar mechanically, but Eternal's weapon and enemy balance is much more well-realized and the game has a much higher skill ceiling as a result.

Perhaps the most major difference between Eternal's combat and 2016's combat can be found in the ammo economy - running out of ammo is practically a non-factor in the 2016 game, but you'll be running out of ammo constantly in Eternal unless you are spreading your ammo usage across your entire arsenal and intelligently resupplying your ammo with chainsaw kills, which now recharges on a timer rather than solely through pickups to ensure you always have a chance to restock.

The enemies in Eternal are faster, more aggressive, and more numerous. Many enemies have variations that are always tougher than their base counterparts - the bulky Hell Knight will rush you down and won't do much else, but the variant Dread Knight has a projectile and creates a damaging energy field when it slams the ground. The Imps are weak cannon fodder on their own but become marginally more annoying when they're given wings and become Gargoyles. Eternal also employs the Degraded Boss[tvtropes.org] trope, with several enemies making their introduction as boss monsters and gradually becoming normal enemies, which serves to demonstrate the manner in which the difficulty scales throughout the campaign.

But the player, too, is upgraded proportionally to the demons. The player is given a dash move which can be used to dart away from oncoming attacks and extend air mobility, and the double-barreled shotgun is equipped with a grappling hook that pulls the player towards its target and doubles as a mechanism to fling yourself tens of meters into the air, which is invaluable for keeping away from the onslaught of demons in each arena. Additionally, many of the enemies have an exploitable weak point, which can be targeted to kill or severely reduce an enemy's effectiveness.

One such example is the energy shield that certain enemies have, which can be overloaded by the otherwise rather anemic Plasma Gun, causing it to explode and deal massive damage to the enemies caught in the blast. Every gun has a place in Doom Eternal's combat loop and never becomes "irrelevant". Additionally, weapon cooldowns can be bypassed by rapidly cycling through your arsenal, which means maximizing your damage output involves quickly switching weapons rather than firing a single one for an extended period of time. At times, the complexity of the combat resembles a fighting game, where a skilled enough player can render even the toughest enemies helpless through precise inputs and skillful use of the tools the player is granted.

The resulting combat loop involves arena battles where your success in combat is dictated entirely by your ability to manage your resources, assess the right weapon to use at the right time, and exercise the movement and raw aim necessary to clear arenas. Doom Eternal is a hard game, and the enemy AI wastes no time reminding you that they want you dead. But it also allows the player a huge degree of freedom to tackle combat situations in the way they find the most efficient, and with enough dedication, there is nothing stopping the player from becoming the ruthless, demon-slaying badass depicted in the game's lore and promotional material. Playing Doom Eternal well is an adrenaline rush I have seen no other game replicate, and it's worth every moment.

However, the complexity and freedom allowed by Eternal's combat is simultaneously its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. Enjoying Doom Eternal requires you to learn every function of the player's arsenal, and the game is incredibly punishing to those that fail to utilize certain weapons. This is great news if you're looking for the kind of complex combat experience Eternal can provide, but not if you're a casual gamer not concerned with learning the weaknesses of every enemy and the slew of additional mechanics worth learning.

...

(The review is continued in this Pastebin, where I speak more on the difficulty, talk about the level design, narrative, multiplayer and DLCs.[pastebin.com].)

...

Conclusion

I don't like to give out scores on numeric scales, since I think the praise and criticisms I give in the meat of the review are infinitely more important than any arbitrary number. I don't know how much Doom Eternal would resonate with someone who doesn't particularly care to deeply engage with the game's systems or pour countless hours into becoming the player they can be, but I think that somebody who goes in with an open mind and is willing to learn and interact with the game's many mechanics and improve over multiple playthroughs can get a lot of enjoyment out of this game. It's certainly a game I love. Whether it's for you, though, is something you've probably already picked up on by now.

A very very fun game for a very specific audience; people who like 90s shooters. If that's what you're interested in, you can't get much better than Dusk. Also the soundtrack slaps, even if you don't play the game listen to the soundtrack it's crazy
https://youtu.be/9u9Kf7qTUXY

Also, don't go in the ruins.

There are two things to know about Quake.

One: Quake, the game.

Quake is up there with Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time as games that, despite very clearly being early 3D games that have a lot of weird and outdated design elements, are nonetheless universally lovable, still very enjoyable today, and, for better or for worse, set the standard that pretty much every game that has ever been released since follow.

For Christ's sake, Half-Life Alyx is still using snippets from Quake's code. Quake is twenty-five years old, and invented solutions to problems that we're still having today. I'm pretty sure that when we put man on Mars, we'll find that the software used to calculate the rocket's trajectory have code comments signed by John Carmack.

Do you like moving and shooting? You will like Quake. You run around collecting keycards and shooting monsters. All of the monsters do different things that cause you to react differently, which'll make you use your brain so that you don't blow yourself up with rockets. It's a tried and tested formula that worked in Doom, and it still works today. It doesn't get old.

It's not very long, the main campaign maybe takes six hours to complete from start to finish. You like shooting? You'll like Quake. And if the admittedly rather threadbare mechanics the game has to offer in the present day starts to get tiring, it gets out of your way fast.

Quake is just a game that everyone should play. Period. See what it's about. You'll agree.

Two: Actually playing the damn game in the first place.

Prior to the recent rerelease, Steam shipped Quake with GLQuake, an official source port of Quake released in 1997. I forgot why GLQuake was bad and why you should grab a fan-made source port instead, so I booted it up to remind myself.

Immediately upon launching GLQuake, I was greeted to my monitor resolution being squished down to something like 300x240 and I think being set to 60hz. I noticed the game was too dark, so I tried adjusting the brightness settings - nothing. I forgot brightness settings didn't work in GLQuake. I hopped into the game. Mouse sensitivity feels weird, almost like mouse acceleration was on even though there was no way it would have been set. It also doesn't know 1920x1080 is a resolution, I think you'd need a launch option to get it to work if it works at all. Also there's no music, unless you have the CD. So - yeah. GLQuake in 2021? No go.

The way you'd get around this is by downloading a fan-made source port like Darkplaces[icculus.org], Quakespasm[quakespasm.sourceforge.net] or vkQuake[github.com], which are all designed to make Quake run well on modern systems with lots of enhancements to keep the game up to a modern standard. They're all excellent, except for the problem where you actually need the knowledge on how to do this, which is not a luxury that the average Joe buying Quake on Steam and expecting to start playing has.

The Twist!

Now, the cool thing about the official remaster is that it makes the second topic moot, because it's an updated version of Quake that runs well on modern computers and actually ships with the Steam game. So now you've just got Quake, which is a great game. And the kicker? It's a pretty damn good remaster.

It comes with the music, it's got a ton of user-friendly options, it comes with all the expansions, and - for ♥♥♥♥♥ and giggles - it even has the multiplayer in all of its janky, low-framerate glory, if you want to play some classic deathmatch.

It's idiot-proof Quake. It's something anyone can boot up in 2021 and play Quake with, which is always a good thing. Fan-made source ports often offer more flexibility, but the official remaster works and doesn't require any additional setup. It gives you Quake, and gets out of your way.

And Quake? Quake is good for you[i.redd.it].

>hasn't played CoD online ever

>assume the stereotypes don't really mean much

>get called a f*ggot on my first game for using the Shotgun by a child no older than 11 probably

Memes aside, I did not enjoy the three matches I played so far. The controls are slippery and do not feel at all like you're actually controlling a video game character;

The pacing is extremely sluggish; thanks to the poor map design which blatantly fails to balance every weapon to be good on every map, the effectively zero HP and an emphasis on cover,

On my moderately powerful PC (i7-6700/GTX 1050 TI) it still runs like absolute garbage. No framerate dips, but it occasionally just pauses itself for half a second, which is something I'd expect out of a 2007 game.

Among other gripes, like the graphics not being as cutting edge as I hoped a AAA 2017 title would be, bland, boring design which has you looking at very similar geometry and textures on every individual frame and other smaller details, I don't know if I can recommend this game in its current state, and it needs some major overhauls to be worth anything past $10.

A GOTY-worthy campaign filled to the brim with fast-paced action, classic id Software level design and a versatile combat system, a powerful in-game level-editor which houses some real gems made by the community with in-depth tutorials and an easy-to-learn multiplayer PvP mode, DOOM is absolutely worth the thirty US dollar price tag.

The multiplayer is far from perfect, but it's fun in moderation. The rest of the game is hovering around the 9/10 area.

Plus; it runs well! If your PC can handle it, the game is incredibly well optimized, considering how great the game looks even on the lowest settings.

steam wants me to update my review

having played this game competitively for almost 2 years now i can say with confidence that this game is horrible

10/10 would recommend very very fun!