Recent reviews by Jean

Thou Shalt Not Staple Squirrels (I stapled Squirrels)
My wife was ugly (I made my wife beautiful)
God arrived (I met God)

I originally got this during the Early Access for the cute and funny aesthetics but returned and stayed for the gameplay in the full release. It takes patience but once I got the hang of the parrying system and feeling out what spells worked best on the bosses I went on a Little Witch Nobeta gaming spree. It feels great to play even if I occasionally despair in disbelief that a boss's attack got to me.

All that remains for me at time of writing is refining the craft in the boss rush tower. And enjoying the $600 of Little Witch Nobeta merch I bought before finishing the game yesterday (Longtime Nobeta fan finishes the game for the first time).

The Doom Slayer dies of embarrassment. This DLC ended up getting the short end of the development stick and quickly moves to close the story of Doom Eternal out.

Beyond Doom - Doom Eternal

As far as sequels are concerned there's always a worry that it won't live up to hype. That it'll take some steps backward. Doom Eternal charges forward with an even more eager and higher tempo than the first game.

Hell has finally arrived on Earth. The Doom Slayer returns and, as quickly as the first game's intro, is set loose upon the Hell Priests leading the demonic invasion. From corrupted temples, ruined city landscapes, frozen wastelands, overrun UAC facilities, and other dimensions Doom Eternal met my hopes for environments of all kinds now that we've moved away from the facilities on Mars and the depths of Hell itself. The demonic roster has even expanded with new enemies to challenge the Slayer and some loved(?) familiar faces like the Arachnotron, Archvile, Pain Elemental, and even the classic Cyberdemons now called Tyrants.

The gameplay has intensified. Whereas Doom 2016 was a fine launch id Software took notice that, perhaps, the first one was too easy and a sequel should demand more of its player. Doom Eternal feels crafted around engaging the player relentlessly once combat is underway. As you challenge larger numbers of demons at once you're pressed to make full use of the tools at your disposal. Equipped with a flamethrower that makes enemies drop armor shards, a recharging chainsaw for procuring ammunition, and the ever brutal glory kills for health, you'll never pull away from a battle to scavenge ammunition or health pickups unless something has gone terribly wrong in managing these precious resources. It comes together as a system that rewards the player for engaging in combat- keeping the Slayer healthy (and slaying) and fully armed to use whatever weapon he wishes.

In light of the game's attitude toward gameplay, I would certainly recommend playing at a normal difficulty until you've got the Slayer fully equipped before tackling higher, more traditional, difficulties. The pinch on resources in the early game will certainly go over much better when you aren't desperately clinging to Nightmare difficulty with few weapons.

Customization, upgrades, level challenges, and secrets all return with their rewards. The addition of Slayer Gates, self contained challenge encounters that reward keys that unlock the coveted Unmakyr laser weapon from Doom 64, are engaging festivals of carnage that you can't always get in the campaign.

The set up of the campaign and multiplayer content in Doom Eternal are stunningly selfaware of the franchise's attractions. The multiplayer, a three player 1v2 setup with a Slayer and two Player controlled Demons, is a fun little sideshow with few achievements related to it.

Rather than prioritizing the novelty multiplayer with content, however, it's been decided that Doom Eternal will receive two Campaign DLCs. To be given more campaigning against the Damned I feel is exactly what the fanbase is clawing for however it surprisingly didn't come at the cost to the main campaign. Even the online challenges, part of Bethesda's online Slayers Club, are mostly centered around playing the campaign.

It's my hope, I end with this, that the future Campaign DLC will give us cooperative play that'll allow Slayers to collaborate against the hordes of Hell for some years to come.

Rip and tear, until it is done.

"Ecks Dee"
Seriously?

I can't believe there's a working example of DayZ as a mod but the standalone has been limping along for four years. I'd call it vaporware but unfortunately this trainwreck is (still) available to suffer through right now.

Unloved, unnoticed, and...missing. You are the Fool, on a Fool's Journey, through the dark Abyss. Malicious spirits given flesh gnash their crooked teeth. Mutilated beings sharpen their blades to peel flesh from bone. Those that preyed on the helpless twist and writhe into unsightly forms. The punished wicked are turned to be wicked punishers. Your foes are a mirror reflection of evil in the id, the mind, the human subconsciousness. All these things that dwell in deep recesses creep forward to the surface to snuff those unfortunate enough to wander this place they've made home. You are the invader here, dear Fool.

Unloved is true to its origins, an Unreal Engine recreation of a Doom 2 Mod, and it plays as you'd expect. Whilst the twisted enemies move in a predictable fashion you wouldn't want it any other way in these tight corridors or twisted chambers. The map room layouts are randomized everytime you play, ensuring nothing gets too predictable unless you use a Daily Seed. The difficulties are quite varied and bring in greater challenges should you feel comfortable where you are. The higher difficulties, of course, promise more lucrative (and useful) rewards for your risk.

Not a horror game in the sense of appearances but rather a horror game for its lethality. To progress recklessly can invoke the Abyss's aggro, known as Heat, and spawn a horde of foes on your position. Unprepared at a high difficultly you can be quickly overwhelmed by evil. Thus, every item pick up in your session becomes meaningful because each item has its price in Heat. Risk and reward...but ultimately you should want to escape.

To escape you have to find colored keys (familiar?) to open the corresponding doors. The final Sun room is the climax of your struggle as you participate in a blood offering to waiting machines. Only after all the machines are satisfied will the Elevator ferry you deeper into the Abyss. Dear Fool, where do you think you're going by continuing to persist here?

To continue to persist there's a wide selection of weapons that can be found in the map. Trinkets can also be unlocked for your character that can modify the damage these weapons deal, firing/loading rates, carryable ammunition, and modify your health and speed. These trinkets are of course absolutely necessary if you wish to see higher difficulties and greater challenges in the Abyss. With persistence you can find the trinkets that work for you and work toward collecting their higher tiers.

It's a game that is truly best for cooperative play. Whilst the community is small you can still find other wayward spirits from time to time to aid you. Though there's no shame in playing a more managable difficulty solo, I can understand the longing for companionship in such a dark place.

The Fool is usually interpreted as the protagonist of a story...so how will this story of suffering end?

This review is going to be an unusual one as I'm actually going to write about a game that's ate up a lot of my ingame time so far. I speak of Atari's 1982 Gravitar.

I picked up Gravitar in passing whilst trying the Atari Vault and my first reaction likely followed many people's, "This... is really hard. I think I'd rather play something I'm familiar with like Centipede or Missile Command instead." This stayed true until I crossed paths with the Atari 2600 version of Gravitar. "I remember Gravitar was hard, I'll see how the 2600 version is." It was actually easier in the sense the gravity was not as quick to drag you under...but difficult in that many tunnels and small gaps were introduced in the absence of sharp vector graphics. With persistence I became good at it and with preserverance I looped through the game's four universes. I was impressed with the game and quickly returned to arcade Gravitar to see if I had misunderstood a challenging but skill rewarding game.

I had misunderstood it, bringing the fundamentals over from the 2600 release I took to it again and can at least clear a single Solar System. Not impressive compared to the progress I made on the 2600 but truly better than nothing. Facing the difficulty of this title and getting either further in a game or pulling off difficult manuevers has felt very rewarding and continues to bring me back. It's a game of skill that has never been demanded of me before.

Gravitar is a descendent, of sorts, to Space Duel (it itself a flashy descendent of Asteroids). Taking with it the thrust mechanics and shields of its predecessor Gravitar set out to be an even harder game. You descend on planets (in any order of your choosing) with the objective of taking out enemy bunkers and collecting precious ship fuel to continue your journey. It's a bleak game where the gravity features as your greatest oppressor, a sharp contrast from the rocks and UFOs from Asteroids and Space Duel. One misthought or executed thrust or graze along the terrain quickly puts delusions of swift progression in check. The game is simply merciless and demands your best.

Merciless difficulty aside the controls are very precise. With two buttons for your ship's rotation and one button each for feature of your ship being to activate thrust, to shoot, and one last button shared between shielding yourself and tractoring fuel. You have complete control of your space craft amidst a running battle between gravity and enemy forces throughout a beseiged galaxy. Becoming proficient at managing your rotation, your thrust, and making well timed shield deflections is key to success. Despite the considerable strain it puts on you the ship operator there's a feeling of satisfaction that comes from doing well in the task. I think it's a feeling of being in control that only arcade games seem to produce, compared to the unrelenting chaos of games played online.

"You're the last rebel in a galaxy held hostage." as Gravitar's game poster could be quoted. There's no one else but the roaming nomad Gravitar to undertake the task. The task is to end the galactic threat from life stripping Death Stars created by the reactors held in the depths of foreboding Red Planets. Only by disarming the Red Planet or by destroying the bunkers in each solar system can you advance forward. Not to be a simple task even after one masters the first universe of systems, gravity will go into reverse, and eventually even the terrain will disappear from your sight. Gravitar is a deceptively simple (though punishingly hard) game with a surprising amount of depth and playtime to it... provided you take the time to learn and succeed at it.


The Atari Vault's selection of games provides a large choice of vectors to lose yourself in nostalgia or finding something new as I did. The developers of Code Mystics, very active in improving the Atari Vault, have paid a great deal of attention to emulation that reflects the games as they were originally presented. Especially coming to mind are the arcade games with trackball controlled cursors have had their moving speed limits preserved, preventing the racing speed of a mouse from breaking the authenticity that Code Mystics set out to emulate. Continuing to be true to that end any setting you could toggle on an Atari 2600 is there as well as the typical modifiers for the arcade lineup.

Controller compatibility has been a continued battle for Code Mystics as they try to bring in Trackball compatibility, as many of the games deserve, though it seems there's such a wide breadth of controllers that this struggle will easily continue as updates arrive. For other controllers there's always some light of hope for a work around which the users active on the game's discussion board appear ready and willing to provide.

Multiplayer, another thing continuing to be worked on, is fickle at its best. Trying to bring people in to the orbit of Gravitar through multiplayer saw one player's game pulled to a frame crunching crawl...whilst when the second player was up it was quite smooth. The Code Mystic developers have been active on trying to address the problem as it seems to only affect a few games.

At it's current price, $9.99, I would say you are receiving well over what you would expect for such a price. Besides the games themselves Code Mystics has rounded out each game with Galleries possessing pictures of promotional materials associated with each game and even the readable manuals of the 2600 titles. Overall the Atari Vault is a true and faithful collection to Atari's arcade and console traditions.

If you want to find out more about Gravitar's intricacies I would refer you to the website of the game's world champion:
Dan Coogan[cooganphoto.com]. His website helped me realize the game wasn't indestructible and worth giving the time it was denied when it released to poor reception.

The world of DonPachi is a tragic one. Though I suppose it had to be for battalions of mechanized armies, swarms of aircraft squadrons, and super weapons of all sizes to be mobilized. DoDonPachi Resurrection is the fourth in this saga of cyclical violence. After the most violent event in its history, the Blissful Death Wars, one would hope for a true lasting peace...though it was never meant to be. The vengeful shadows of the Blissful Death Wars now invade the past, forcing the elite DonPachi Corps' hand into action to preserve the course of human history. A single fighter craft exits the time portal to a past Earth and is immediately beset by legions of foes... welcome to the past, dear pilot, but it's time to die.

I've enjoyed these styles of games casually. They provide a formidable challenge for the uninitiated whilst for myself getting one more stage or wave of bullets further without continuing is reward enough. The essence of the game is shooting for high scores, chaining score boosting hyper charges, and maintaining large multipliers. With 8 modes of play available mastering one version of the game leaves you plenty to look forward to if this is your sort of challenge.

New to the series are lasers, that you can block with your narrow beam Shot, whilst bullet cancelling is accomplished with your wide fanning Turbo Shot whilst in Hyper mode. You'll appreciate these tools (even if some veterans found it to make it oh so easy) as you weave into the gaps of wave after wave of bullets. Stages that start quite tame suddenly become quite lively as larger foes step forward to protect their lighter brethren. You'll be in quite a zone of focus to succeed even as wave after wave of enemies brilliantly explode at the hands of your arsenal.

Speaking further about your arsenal, there are three ships to pick from: the red Type A with its powerful narrow firing weapons, the green Type B and its movement controlled weapons, and the blue Type C that fires with the widest fan of bullets. Even after selecting your craft you have three styles of operation to choose from: Bomb Style which emphasizes the availability of bullet discarding Bombs, Power Style which allows you to immediately toggle the strength of your Shot weapons, and finally Strong Style which combines the advantages of the other two styles (at the cost of a higher difficulty). DoDonPachi Resurrection gives the player many choices in how they want to tackle its challenges.

There's a large array of bosses present in DoDonPachi Resurrection. Not only are you fighting androids styled after those that served in the Blissful Death Wars, there are also returning super weapons from previous Donpachi titles, some are even hidden on exclusive Stage Routes that can only be uncovered by meeting certain conditions in the stage itself... Depending what route you take and how well you struggle a timeless enemy awaits for you at the end of this war displaced across time: the Golden Disaster Hibachi. Will you be able to overcome the final onslaught and see what lies beyond it?

The emulation of this beloved title is apparently not precise in places. Slowdown that might have been present in the arcade either doesn't happen at all or the speed changes too suddenly, with often fatal results for those that burned the original game to memory, I do not feel it's a make or break issue for someone new to the series. To me the privilege to see DoDonPachi on Steam at all is blessing enough. Maybe, one day, I will die blissfully in a clutch victory of my own.

"At last, it's time for you to die. Farewell."

EDF does not have a happy ending but if you try, it can have an honorable one.

Service in the Earth Defense Force is not for everyone. I enlisted in the Earth Defense Force as a Fencer out of four possible choices (and I'll never change). Each class has their own unique philosophy in approaching the extermination of giant insects and it's up to you to find what fits you best. Rangers are reasonably quick and well equipped to battle anything on even terms. Air Raiders deploy vehicles, equipment, and airstrikes to support the combat action. Wing Divers take flight and strike with devastating energy weapons. And finally the Fencer, heavily armored and heavily armed, looks to deal heavy blows with meaningful shots.

With there being four classes in mind this is where a bit of grinding slog comes into play. All four classes have a massive arsenal of weapons to unlock. Not all of these weapons are immediately useful direct upgrades but the variety, if you're willing to experiment at the cost of possibly being knocked unconscious, is a welcome change of pace from games where everything shoots the same bullets just at a slightly different rate.

The enemy ranges from basic ants trying to drown you in acid to horrifying alien machines razing the landscape. Ants, spiders, hornets, alien walkers, drones, drop ships, motherships, kaiju, there's quite a line up of enemies that is only doubled by more deadly variants them on higher difficulties. Whilst individually these things are easy to dispatch there's a slightly complicating twist: they'll come at you in furious marauding armies and mobs. It's here that the game can mean two things to you, either its repetitive, or it's a challenge. I've embraced it as a repetitive challenge, one that I'll faithfully meet until I've cleared all the missions on each of the harder difficulties. (But seriously someone please remove spiders)

If you bring friends (I would recommend bringing friends) or take your game online the difficulty scales with the number of participants. To make this repetitive challenge more interesting, I would strongly encourage playing the multiplayer. Whilst the multiplayer component isn't perfect, the occasional game lobby crash for example, it is well worth it to fight and struggle alongside fellow members of the EDF to save the planet. Some enemies will test your patience. Some missions will test your skill. Overall EDF is a fulfilling journey in killing piles of foes if you allow it to.

EDF does not have a happy ending but if you try, it can have an honorable one.