Exploring DOOM

But should you choose to get lost and ignore the guiding lights, you’re bound to discover something. And that’s the fun thing about exploration in DOOM: it’s never forced, but it’s almost always rewarding.

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First Impressions

Battlefield 1 and the Pigeon of Doom

Remember that it is 1918. They didn’t have radios in tanks back then. And yes, they really did use messenger pigeons during The Great War. So given a bit of context, it’s not that absurd for a commander to send a message back to HQ on the foot of a pigeon.

Learning New Things

The Wind… of Change

“You hear that? It’s the wind… of change.” Change can be a funny thing. Depending on what it is and when it occurs people might refer to changes as crises, opportunities, or seasons. My changes began about six months ago. I got promoted at work to a supervisory role and my responsibilities expanded. My major…

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Deus Ex – The End!

“Here is a sandbox where you get to play with all the different game mechanics; figure it out and have fun doing so. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the second half of that mission. It takes place in tunnels underneath the base and is guarded by devious four-legged security bots that don’t hesitate to electrocute you to death. “

How to Run

The Definitive RollerCoaster Tycoon Experience

“OpenRCT2 is an open-source re-implementation of RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 (RCT2), expanding the game with new features, fixing original bugs and raising game limits.”. To put it another way, a dedicated group of fans have spent years voluntarily rebuilding RollerCoaster Tycoon and improving it in nearly every way.

Deus Ex – Betrayal!

Turns out, murdering a fellow agent isn’t the thing to do if you want to earn favor with your boss. But surprisingly enough all I got was a scolding. […] In retaliation for the betrayal, they’ve remotely deactivated Paul’s augmentation and activated his kill switch. Your brother has twenty-four hours to live. If Paul has a kill switch, that means I do too. Step out of line, and the powers that be will snuff me out. This kind of puts a dampener on morale; nobody likes to work for a jerk!

Deus Ex – Dealing Drugs, and the Dumpster That Should Not Be

Owing to my inability to tell the difference between the men’s room and the women’s room, I find myself in the men’s bathroom. There’s a junkie here named Lenny, and he’s in bad shape. He threatens to blow me up unless I can get him a fix. As luck would have it, I picked up some drugs in Hell’s Kitchen. Here is where I have a brief moment of internal crisis. Do I really want to be a low-level drug dealer?

Deus Ex – Hell’s Kitchen

All of these paths forward are completely optional. If I’d wanted to, I could have skipped all these other distractions and just walked through an alley to approach the warehouse head on. Tactics dictated that doing that was a bad idea for me. Since I’ve been playing with a stealthy, mostly non-lethal approach, I have no practical means of neutralizing multiple enemies at long range. Plus, I just don’t want to go in with guns blazing. It’s that Deus Ex thing again: giving players a choice about how to play the game.

Deus Ex – Beginning Again

So what makes this game so special? The gameplay takes place from a first-person perspective and combines elements of action and shooting, stealth, role-playing games, and character-rich dialog trees. In short, it aimed to be a game where any style of play was a viable option. Enemy outpost ahead? You can mount a frontal assault with guns blazing, or you can sneak around to find the back door. Talk to a few civilians nearby, and they might even offer other alternatives. It’s possible for two people to play the same game and have wildly variable experiences.

World of Goo

For me, most of the game’s challenge comes from managing the monstrous goo structures I constructed. Goo itself isn’t rigid, and neither is a structure built from goo blobs. Everything built will shiver and wiggle like it can barely contain the energy contained within. Imagine a game of Jenga where the blocks of wood are actually made of Jell-O! It’s this variable turns simple puzzles into a chaotic affair.

Enter the Gungeon Makes Failing Fun!

Most of your enemies are bullets, and I mean that literally. Enemies are sentient bullets that move and fire guns. Which, in turn, send actual bullets in your direction. I couldn’t make this stuff up.

Dark Souls II – Scholar of the First Sin

The challenge itself is the draw. For the most part, that’s enough. But you may reach a moment, as I did, when you start to wonder why you’re doing this. I made it about halfway through before this persistent question began to erode my enjoyment of the combat.