Recent reviews by Erick

Neon White is a speedrunning FPS, puzzle-platforming game where the player has one simple objective in almost every level; kill every demon and finish the level fast. Originally conceived as a "card-based arena shooter" by lead designer Ben Esposito, Neon White has players control the titular Neon White using soul cards which not only acts as weapons to use, but also as parkour moves to navigate through the levels. By default, you have a Katana that can be used at melee range and reflect enemy projectiles, but it doesn't have a parkour move to it so you will want to keep an eye out for soul cards placed in the levels. You'll have soul cards making up weapons like a pistol and shotgun for example, but if you sacrifice a soul card, you'll discard the weapon for a single use of a parkour move.

You can carry two different soul cards at once and can stack three of each soul card, allowing you to make use of multiple parkour moves in quick succession. Most levels are short and linear enough to make it clear on what to do with the cards at hand, but experienced players can think of clever use of the soul cards to perform shortcuts outside the main level path. This freedom for the player to make their own shortcuts is all intended design and there is little randomness to the game, so you are in control of improving your times as you replay levels. All this is what makes Neon White addicting to play, creating that dopamine to make one more attempt to beat your own best time (or your friend's best time).

For additional replay value, the game has a feature called "Insight" which is designed to incentivize replaying a level for a better time. After completing a level, you are awarded a medal which ranks your performance. The four medals are Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Ace. The medals are what grants the player Insight after level completion, with each medal giving the player further aid in their replays of a level.

The first time a player enters a level, they are given no visual aid on how they can go fast in a level, so it can be normal for your first run of a level to be a bit sluggish. Completing a level will reward the player a Bronze medal, however it also allows players to see their time in a level in all future replays. Going faster in a level can reward the player a Silver medal, which levels up your Insight to include a ghost reenacting your inputs from your current best run. By mastering the main level's path, you will be rewarded a Gold medal, with your Insight now leveled up to show a hint to the shortcut required to get the Ace medal.

Neon White gradually builds up the incentive to replay a level multiple times over, the Insight system helps give players a hand on seeing where they can do better in replays. Insight gives players the confidence that they can achieve those once seemingly hard to get Ace medals, you'll feel like you are becoming a skilled speedrunner in just mere minutes. If you really want to push yourself, you can go for the hidden Red Ace medals (developer best times), which will require you to be at your best and figure out shortcuts not hinted to the player. I have obtained all the Red Ace medals and it's a challenge for sure, but the feeling that you can do better even by just a couple milliseconds does do a lot to someone like me!

Also found in the levels after completing them once are gifts that you can find. These gifts are often placed far out the main level path and will require the player to think carefully on what parkour moves to make and what soul cards to keep in order to reach those gifts. Some gifts can be difficult to get, even the ones in plain sight can be hard to reach. You can give the gifts you collected to other characters in the hub to get rewarded new dialogue, side quests in the form of additional levels, and lore to the game's story.

After you beat the game and go towards 100%, you can unlock Heaven Rushes and Hell Rushes. There are both Rushes for the main game's levels and the separate side quests of the different characters. A Heaven Rush is just going through the levels like normal, just in a singular run. You can restart as many times as you need to, you just need to complete all the levels in said singular run.

The more interesting Rush is the Hell Rush, which is also a singular run of the levels but with the twist of having to complete every level in one life. Your health is also shared between levels, meaning you need to play with extra care. Failing the level by death or missing an enemy you cannot backtrack to will force you to restart the whole Hell Rush. To help you out, your default Katana can be discarded to refill your health and grant a soul card of your choosing in case you need to save yourself and avoid a restart. You can only discard the Katana once per level and you can only do this up to three times in a Hell Rush. The main game's Hell Rush will test your skills, be fast but don't die.

I haven't brought up the story but to summarize, it's cheesy 90s/2000s anime you would discover on TV by some chance. You got corny lines, Steve Blum voicing the main protagonist himself, a love interest with some angst towards said protagonist, and the main characters are deceased assassins. The story is for a niche audience and the bad writing is very much intentional, though admittedly the game's story does pick up to be interesting later on. Still, you do have the option to skip the dialogue if you're not interested in the story nor want to hear the dialogue.

Oh yeah, the soundtrack is composed by Machine Girl. I don't really listen to them personally but the soundtrack of this game is pretty good. If you love their music, I feel you will love the music of this game too.

Overall, Neon White is a fun, addicting speedrunning game that hooks players into becoming speedrunners themselves. I played quite a lot of this game and even through a lot of fails in many runs, I had a blast playing this. It's my favorite game from 2022 and I highly recommend this game to anyone who wants a fast game that will make them want to go even faster. This is a game For Freaks, By Freaks!

A short but fun platformer from the PS1 in 1999. Remakes of classic platformers such as Crash Bandicoot are seeing a comeback, so to see Pac-Man make his return with Pac-Man World Re-Pac is by all means great. Being revealed shortly after Pac-Man Museum+'s release, many Pac-Man fans were excited to see the return of the Pac-Man World series after it has been laid dormant since Pac-Man World 3 and World Rally. So how well does this classic PS1 game hold up after all these years? Well it's definitely not only nostalgia holding the PS1 game together, because I can say Pac-Man World is a classic and it's still fun to play. And with that said, I am happy to say this remake is great fun like the PS1 game it's based on!

The game runs well without any issues for me, it isn't a very demanding game and the framerate is smooth from start to finish. Level design and mazes are very much the same as the PS1 game. That said, some changes were made to the gameplay to make it stand out from the original game. The flutter move added to Pac-Man's moveset is a good addition, it lets Pac-Man flutter in the air a bit which can give you a bit of extra time to make some tight jumps. The game also includes an Easy Mode which not only extends your flutter time, but it also adds some blocks to the levels to make the levels easier for anyone who may be struggling on any.

One change that could be seen as a bit intrusive is how power pellets work. In the original game, eating a power pellet just lets Pac-Man be able to eat ghosts and nothing else. In Re-Pac, eating a power pellet turns you into a giant version of Pac-Man resembling how he appears in Pac-Mania. Besides letting you eat ghosts, you can destroy objects such as crates, blocky platforms appear so you don't fall off any ledges, and you are invincible until the effects of the power pellet wear off. Where this really breaks the game is in the mazes, as the effects of the power pellets apply the same way as they do in ordinary levels. You basically can breeze through mazes as not even the traps can harm you, making it very difficult to lose in them compared to the original game.

Bosses have been changed up a bit since the original, some were given "pinch" modes to make them a bit more challenging, others were changed up significantly. The Anubis is made much less frustrating, you now have platforms between the rev-roll plates to stand on so you don't have to worry about instant death as much. The King Galaxian level is more manageable as your projectiles are much faster than they were on the original PS1 game (I think). The Krome Keeper boss has been completely changed from its original boss fight, being based off concept art of the original game and made much more fast-paced than it was on PS1. Safe to say some creative liberties were made to make the bosses either less frustrating or have them be a little more exciting to fight against.

Overall, despite some gameplay changes I am not entirely fond of, Pac-Man World Re-Pac is a solid remake and while it is a short 6 hour game, it's enjoyable from start to finish and offers some replay value with additional mazes and items to collect to master the levels. Hopefully if this game succeeds across all platforms, we can see Pac-Man World 2 (and maybe World 3) see a remake as well. Oh and there's also the original Pac-Man included here much like the original game. It isn't a modern Pac-Man game without the original game somewhere now, glad to see tradition is still going.

Solid collection of many games throughout Pac-Man's history. There are some exclusions such as Ms. Pac-Man and some games that could see a return such as Pac-Man: Adventures in Time. Nonetheless, the games present here all have their place and offer a variety of experiences, from the old to new.

All the games in my experience run and play well, there's some input lag issues in games such as Pac-Land and Pac-Man: Championship Edition, but for the most part the games play well. Games are played in their correction aspect ratios, controls work fine on most games, and all the arcade games are their actual arcade versions.

The addition of the Arcade adds a lot of charm to the collection, being able to decorate your own Arcade room however you wish. You start off with a basic room, but you can earn more decorations by completing missions in the games, which can include missions such as eating a set number of ghosts or completing a certain level. These missions can earn you rewards to use in the Arcade room such as new decorations, more arcade cabinets, and background music to play.

As you play games, you can earn coins to use in the Arcade. The amount of coins you can earn from the games can depend on your performance in a game session, mainly your high score for most games. Normally you would use these coins to insert them into the arcade games such as the original Pac-Man (like a real arcade), but you can also use these coins to buy more decorations from the Vending Machine and figures from the Gashapon. Figures in the Gashapon can consist of characters and items, including the fruits and the ghosts. These figures can also come in silver or gold, though they are rarer to obtain.

Pac-Man: Museum+ is a nice collection of Pac-Man games at an affordable price, it is a nice way to get back into Pac-Man and explore some of his familiar and even unknown titles over the years. It has a nice amount of replay value and getting better at Pac-Man is always a fun time. Looking forward to Pac-Man World Re-Pac!

Doom 3 is an odd game since despite having a greater focus on horror, it's still an action game at the end of the day. There's more story compared to the original games, however it is nothing too special and it can be very predictable at times. Since Doom 3 is still an action game, your weapons are pretty strong and you can carry a ton of ammo with you. I am aware the BFG Edition added more but considering the lockers give you a ton of ammo anyways in the original Doom 3, I am confused as to why they even added more ammo to begin with. Doom 3 still has good atmosphere and a great interpretation of Hell that I think even Doom 2016 and Eternal do not capture. It really shows how terrifying Hell is for your normal person, or in this game's case, a marine who is usually indifferent to a lot of things.

Most people know the Doom 3 shotgun is pretty bad, and honestly I can't deny that. It may kill Imps and many other monsters in one hit, but you need to be in point-blank range for it to be effective. Because Doom 3 is still an action game, having a crappy shotgun does not make the game scary, especially when 75% of the game's enemies are really Imps, Z-Sec and zombies. Besides the shotgun though, a lot of Doom 3's weapons are great fun to use. Real standouts in the crowd are the Chaingun and Plasma Rifle, both very powerful weapons and disposes your enemies quickly. The BFG Edition does add more ammo as I mentioned earlier so I pretty much ditch the shotgun and use the better weapons as much as I can. The weapon sounds are also good, I never get tired of hearing the Plasma Rifle reload sound.

When it comes to difficulty however, Doom 3 is the easiest Doom game ever released. The BFG Edition does not make the game harder, it is easier here due to the added ammo and armor-mounted flashlight. Since most enemies in the game are Imps or variations of them, you never need to worry about tough monsters like the Hell Knight appearing often. Even when those tough monsters do appear, they all walk slow and your weapons are powerful enough to take down out quickly. Armor is useless in this game, but health is plentiful to the point that armor being useless doesn't weaken the player much. If you want to play Doom 3 and its expansions with any sort of challenge, Nightmare is your best bet. You get the Soul Cube from the start in Doom 3 and Lost Mission, plus your health drains by 5HP every 5 seconds until it reaches 25HP, so you'll need to use the Soul Cube sparingly if you want to stay alive. In Resurrection of Evil, you get the Artifact from the start, leaving your only source of health to be health monitors. Not only that, there are far less opportunities to use the Artifact on Nightmare in Resurrection of Evil so you'll need to decide when you need the extra power.

Speaking of Lost Mission, it is the only new content in the BFG Edition. It features 8 new levels and a new story where you play as one of the member of Bravo Team after his squad got killed. He is left alone to stop the invasion of Hell on Mars and he meets up with a scientist named Richard Davis to help him out. This takes place during the events of Doom 3 and being an expansion released 8 years after the original release of the game, this sounds like a good bonus. Lost Mission definitely has some of the best Hell levels in all of Doom 3 and some of the best combat as well, but it is still underwhelming overall. Atmosphere outside of the Hell levels is pretty lacking and story is pretty minimal as it gets. The expansion can be beaten in 1-2 hours if you're just playing casually, so it's not very long either. It's not bad but it could have been both longer and better.

It's weird to look back at the BFG Edition since initially I disliked it for how poor Classic Doom plays here and I was not entirely fond of the changes made to Doom 3. Playing through the Doom 3 portion after a long while, I don't dislike it as much as I used to. In a weird twist, I ended up disliking the flashlight mechanic in the original Doom 3 and ended up liking the armor-mounted flashlight in the BFG Edition. The pitch black rooms in the original Doom 3 is not scary because all it does is just take away your right to even see anything and pulling the flashlight just wastes your time when the game tosses another easy to dispose Imp. Basically, this armor-mounted flashlight lets you waste no time to kill monsters and doesn't have you putting away your weapon just to see a single zombie that poses no issue when health and ammo is everywhere.

With that rant on the flashlight out of the way, I still dislike the Classic Doom portion of the BFG Edition since all id Software did was just the bare minimum to have Classic Doom running. Bugs from the original DOS versions of Doom are still present and resolution scaling is messed up so if you're playing in widescreen, the game won't be in a proper 4:3 aspect ratio. It is also still capped at 35FPS and No Rest For The Living is missing its metadata on what MIDI tracks to play. No Rest For The Living is a great 9 level WAD for Doom 2 and it really shows how good modern vanilla-styled Doom levels can be, but I recommend playing it with a source port like Crispy Doom over the BFG Edition. Did I mentioned there's also pitch-shifted sounds, hope you don't mind that. The Unity re-releases of Doom have came a long way, go play that if you want an easy to set up way to play Classic Doom. That release also has support for custom vanilla WADs, so there is not many reasons to play Classic Doom in the BFG Edition unless you want Steam achievements.

Overall, the BFG Edition is not a bad package to play Doom 3, but I recommend getting it on sale since unfortunately you are also paying for the Classic Doom portion of it when paying $20 for this. Whenever it goes for around $5, I'd say it worth picking up and finishing your Doom collection that way. If you want to play Doom 3: BFG Edition with a source port, you can check out RBDoom3BFG or Doom BFA and see how you can improve your Doom 3 experience.

Endless amounts of new community content, addictive gameplay, and fun characters. Left 4 Dead 2 is a great game that is better with friends!

A fun arena shooter, if a little quirky. For bot play it should do fine enough, though navigating the menus is somewhat confusing. The "Practice Offline" mode only lets you play through the game's stock maps with preset rules and bots, but if you want to play the DLC maps and customize how you want play, you'll have to go "Host Server" and set things up that way.

What is even more odd is that if you quit the game, the bots you set for each map is saved, but the server settings you made do not get saved. This can get annoying if you just want to jump in right away after setting up your preferred gameplay settings. Also, stats only save after you quit the game properly, so the achievements will only pop up after you quit the game. By the way, hope you have time to waste for 10,000 matches, at least at the time I posted this review.

Some issues aside, the game is pretty pick up and play, movement feels great and while the weapons are odd to use at first, it takes no time to get a feel for them. The game runs pretty well and for just $1, I'd say this game is good for fast-paced matches. The game's stock maps are fine, though if you really want some more interesting maps, do consider downloading all the DLC map packs to get the most you can with this game. It's nice to see that there was post-launch support for this game.

Overall, this is a fun game, I'd say it's worth a shot.

Achievement asset flip looking game. No other words to describe it.

So while Quake Champions will inevitably get released and possibly have this game be as populated as Quake 3 (only not a botzone), I guess I should take a look at this Quake game before moving onto the next multiplayer title in the series. Quake Live is a multiplayer Quake game that can be summarized as an updated Quake 3, over the years it received plenty of updates and went from a browser game to a F2P game on Steam and now a $10 game on the platform. Having dozens of arenas with the same Quake 3 cast nearly 20 years ago, Quake 3's gameplay still holds up well in how its core deathmatch mode still feels fun and frantic.

In terms of content, Quake Live contains the maps of Quake 3 Arena and its expansion, Team Arena as well as many new official maps and some made by the community. To add to that, you don't just have your standard deathmatch and CTF, you also have new modes with varying objectives, some that can be compared to other games out there, but still, refreshing to have some new modes, even if nobody plays them unfortunately. The main modes you'll find yourself playing (given the low player population) are FFA Deathmatch and Clan Arena, of which the latter is a one-life mode. Yep, not even CTF is being played often, a shame. Clan Arena gives you all the weapons and has you facing off another team through a series of rounds, of which if one team wipes out the other, they win a round. Winning enough rounds wins the game. The biggest problem? This is what people think of Quake's multiplayer community just on this mode, and given the high skill ceiling of the game, it is very easy for new players or just players who are not as good (such as myself) to quit playing altogether.

Gameplay is reminiscient of Quake 3, every man equal and they go around a map gathering better weapons that are (mostly) not superior to one another. Weapons have their advantages and disadvantages, and they all add to the depth of the gameplay of Quake's Arena combat. On top of the weapons having their unique characteristics, you can use them to perform tricks to further improve your movement and have a skillful advantage against your opponents, such as the all-ever famous "Rocket Jumping" with the Rocket Launcher and even other skills like wall-jumping with your Plasma Rifle by inflicting self-damage on yourself. You have many skills in Quake Live like strafejumping and the likes that can make you a devastating opponent upon mastering, and it's hard to put into words on why practice matters when trying to get good in this game. Video tutorials may say a thousand words, but actually practicing yourself speaks millions, like Quake 3, Quake Live, while simple in the core of it, has a lot more to it once you really get into the parts where skill really changes how you play. Even if you're not into that, you also have bot support if you just want to gun down some bots and chat with them for some humor, and some of the stock Quake 3 maps still hold up well to this day.

So I stated that only about two modes are played and that one of them isn't really good if you are unsure of yourself, so why am I recommending? Mostly for those who want to play a game of a classic Arena Shooter or for those who want a way to relive Quake 3 with a bit of an updated touch, such as Steamworks and improved performance even. You may be most likely to pick this game up if you are curious or really into the Quake games and are into competitive Arena shooters in general. The bots are still entertaining to play against, they still carry some of their old dialogue even! As much as I enjoy doing a CTF bot game, as I said, I mostly recommend this game if you're curious about the multiplayer side of Quake or are into Arena Shooters. Otherwise, might want to take this as raw practice before the upcoming Quake Champions gets a finished release. Happy fragging onto the next game, but still good to frag on the classics!

Master Levels of Doom II is somewhat of an expansion to Doom 2 in that it contains 20 PWADs with 20+1 levels to play (one of which is a secret level in one of the wads). Master Levels consist of high quality levels for their time with the intention of being challenging and difficulty. Of course the difficult is easy compared to the Final Doom IWADs, Plutonia and TNT, and modern WADs pretty much make all the levels pretty much puts the levels to shame. Considering that 1994 WADs aren't known for their quality and seeing that we're paying for what is basically community map pack of WADs, well they must be good, right? For the most part, yes actually, and seeing that this comes for free if you buy Doom 2, I really can't complain since it's not like you'll pay much for it. Doom 2 is already enough of a great game and having more Doom to play is welcoming.

As for the levels themselves, they are for the most part solid and enjoyable, albeit some are a bit sloppy. Only level I do not like is the secret level, and to spoil it, it's just a room full of Cyberdemons with nothing else to it. So much for wanting to play a secret level. Other than that, I can't say a whole lot other than that it's free for buying Doom 2, you can run the WADs on any source port these days (don't complain about my lack of playtime), and of course, you don't need to launch it through Steam as the original Doom is DRM free.

I should say this, if you want to make playing the levels more convenient and a 20+1 level episode instead of multiple PWADs that almost all replace MAP01: Entryway, try out this tool, it bundles all the WADs in one WAD file and you can launch it with DOOM2.wad with the episodes Hell on Earth and Master showing up, Master being the Master Levels. The tool is linked here.

Download for Master Levels Patch: http://maniacsvault.net/projects

Last thing to say about the Master Levels is that it comes with Maximum Doom, which can be summarized as WAD Shovelware with 1,830 amaetur PWADs, which includes 191 PWADs for Doom 1/Ultimate Doom, 1629 Doom 2 PWADs, and surprisingly, 10 PWADs for Heretic. May seem great with all those WADs to play, right? Well no, it's not anything worth checking out as the amount of low quality WADs is astounding. Sure we have more WADs now than then, but seriously, to think Maximum Doom is officially licensed shovelware and pretty much forgotten since no one really wants to mention it. Yes, back then the internet wasn't all that great so having a disc full of WADs sounds great in theory. But even back then the quality is just horrific, and it's even worse now seeing that it's mind-boggling to think people can make some of the stupidest mistakes possible. HOMs everywhere, texture problems, poorly designed levels that aren't even playtested by the looks of it, and simple mistakes breaking whole maps (How can you mess up a square room?!). The quality speaks for itself when one of the maps is a room with the letter G. Yeah, let's praise G the map. Doesn't help many of the Doom 2 levels are Doom 1 levels poorly converted over to Doom 2, which means more texture issues, perhaps even missing textures if I can recall. Also most maps seem to be made with deathmatch in mind, but who wants to play deathmatch with god awful maps like these, especially when they don't even play right on single-player as it is. Maximum Doom only exists to go talk back at D!Zone, but really, neither are good and Maximum Doom being officially licensed means nothing as the quality of the WADs remains poor.

I don't recommend checking out Maximum Doom but if you really want to see what it is, well there is an archive of all the Maximum Doom levels for you to play, all 3,943 levels with some copyrighted music and sounds here and there (from the SImpsons and Monty Python for example). Funny enough, some of the level designers involved with the Master Levels did not got there levels in the package, but they got it in Maximum Doom instead. Whether they're good or not, I wouldn't know since I have not gone through more than 50 levels of Maximum Doom. Anyways, play the 20+1 levels of the Master Levels, they are worth your time to play. Maximum Doom, just skip it unless you are really bored or just want to experience some abysmal WADs, but that is your choice after all. I should note that the Heretic levels are not in this download but not like you really want to play 10 crappy PWADs, especially on a game like Heretic, why would you.

Maximum Doom Download: https://archive.org/details/maximum_doom

I have played the Classic versions of the original game and from what I have played, Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter enhances the visuals of the original game and made some gameplay changes with a new engine to boot. Nevertheless, this HD remaster makes the original game even better and more fun to play with added secrets and Steam online play! You also have leaderboards so if you want to reach the top, try customizing the difficulty and get the most points as you can get. Serious Sam is fun and doing it again with modern graphics is great!

Unfortunately though, the online community in this game is pretty much gone, so if you plan on getting any other achievement that isn't single-player and maybe a few of the co-op ones, don't count on it, everyone has moved onto Fusion, BFE, and heck, all of TFE is ported over to Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter through the Fusion DLC, where if you bought this game and TSE HD, you get both games on TSE HD anyways. Because of TSE HD and Fusion, TFE HD is pretty much there in your library and unless you're going for achievements and the leaderboard, you are better off playing it on Fusion or even TSE HD if you own that too.

Even then, if you buy any of the Serious Sam HD games (And soon to be BFE), you get the Fusion versions of any of the Encounters, so if you want an even more enhanced version of the games and have an online community, Fusion is pretty much your best bet.

However, it's still Serious Sam fun and the game itself is still enjoyable even after years since it was first launched in 2001, so whether you're new or old to the series, try out the HD games regardless. They're a good time and offer a great challenge that will really test your skills.