Recent reviews by Phoenix

You want to be a hero, don't you?
You don't like Nazis, do you?
You want to shoot Nazis, don't you?
Well, what are you waiting for?

One of the first First-person shooters, and the one that started the Genre, Wolfenstein 3D has a very simple premise: Shoot Nazis, don't die, and find the exit. Of course, there's a bit more to it than that, but that's the general idea. Find keys to open doors, scour levels for secrets and hidden treasure, health kits to keep you alive, and most importantly, weapons and ammunition to take down those goose-stepping goons. The action is fast-paced, and while extremely primitive by today's standards, it's the classic that launched Id Software on it's meteoric rise, and spawned the absolute beasts that are Doom and Quake. You get six episodes with ten levels each, four weapons of increasing lethality, and an assortment of enemies to take down, from guard dogs to common soldiers to elite SS units, and bosses that can both take and deliver a beating.

Included is the followup prequel: Spear of Destiny, in which you infiltrate Castle Nuremberg to wrest the holy relic that pierced the side of Christ out from Hitler's grasp. From the deepest dungeon to the highest tower, it's up to you to find and retrieve the Spear to bring it safely into allied hands. Keep that Gatling gun handy as you're going to seriously need it to survive this campaign.

Scorn is definitely a unique experience. I say experience because it's less of a traditional game and more akin to an interactive movie in a sense. There are high points and low points, and unfortunately I feel the lows outweigh the highs, so I cannot recommend Scorn for a few reasons. I'd really like to, but it feels like the bad just barely edges out the good.

Let's start with the good first. The visuals are fantastically done. Scorn shines in the artistry. The team nailed it there. Everything looks fantastic. The H.R. Geiger aesthetic has not been handled better since Aliens in my opinion, and you can see the attention to detail is present everywhere. Performance is also fantastic. I'm playing on outdated hardware and it's very smooth. The team made Unreal Engine 4 behave very nicely.

Sound is a bit so-so. The effects sounds are fine, but for an atmospheric game I feel there was not enough effort spent on the soundscape. There is some immersive ambience as opposed to music, but It just felt a bit lacking in that department.

There are puzzles that must be solved for progression, and this has its upsides and downsides as well. In one sense, some of the puzzles are very clever in their execution. You have to move real-world objects around to progress, not just "find key to open door", though there certainly is an equivalent of that present here. The only really annoying puzzle is found early on where you have to slide some "eggs" around on a wall to release the correct one into a machine. It's just a tedious variation of a "slide the blocks" puzzle. The other puzzles do not hold your hand in any way. You MUST figure everything out on your own. This might be a turn-off to some players as some of the puzzles are not entirely intuitive. There's a bit of real-world problem solving involved. On the other hand, the progression is fairly linear so if you're stuck on something it's not to far to backtrack to figure out what you're doing wrong, and once you've solved it, you know for certain that you've solved it.

Combat is where things start to get a bit lackluster. There are only five types of enemies - including the "boss" fight near the end, and your weapons are woefully inadequate. For the weapons, there's a melee weapon that doubles as a key. It can "fire" two shots before needing to recharge. It's basically a captive piston, and it's pretty weak. There is a pistol that can hold six shots, and it takes a long time to aim it effectively, but it's also very weak. The shotgun is VERY powerful, but holds only three shots, and finally there is a grenade launcher. Unfortunately by the time you get the grenade launcher you use it in exactly one fight, which happens immediately after acquiring it, and after that it's really only used to solve three environmental puzzles. You can carry only a very small amount of reserve ammo for any weapon, and the refilling stations for health and ammo are very scarce and typically become exhausted after a single interaction.

The enemy types consist of a stationary tentacle that can fling acid at you, a crawling meat sack that will try to vomit acid on you at close range, a smaller meat sack with... baby bird wings?... that will spit a glob of acid at you VERY accurately from a distance, a larger quadrupedal meat sack that will charge like a bull and takes a full magazine from anything to put down, and finally a cybernetic monstrosity that serves as the end boss.

The combat overall is soured by the fact that the weapons are largely ineffective against the enemies, coupled with the fact that health and ammo is incredibly scarce, so there is zero margin for error. To fire a weapon you must hold down an "aiming" key, and for the pistol to hit with any degree of accuracy you have to STAND COMPLETELY STILL while aiming, which gives the evil little chicken things plenty of time to land one or two shots on you, which severely depletes your health. In addition, by the time you get the pistol you're likely to be facing three enemies at a time. Aiming takes an eternity, reloading takes an eternity, and to avoid getting hit you MUST sprint, and guess what you can't do while sprinting? Seasoned FPS players will find this frustrating beyond belief. Combine that with the fact that there are specific cut scenes that involve your life being drained by a full bar as part of the story progression, and if you're left with almost no health after a fight the subsequent cinematic could end you. Fighting the boss is a bit unintuitive as well, making it easy to waste precious ammo unnecessarily.

The worst bit, however, is the ending. It's painfully clear how the game had to be cut and its ending tacked on. Very little is explained or made clear as to why anything is happening, and from what I've read, some of this is explained in the art book as having been kept deliberately vague, but once you get to the ending it feels like the entire thing was a colossal waste of time. It's not simply the fact that it is a negative ending - that's a common trope within the sci-fi horror genre. What bothered me is that it felt lazy, or at least rushed, in its execution. It was definitely a "That's IT?" moment. Ending a game on a negative note is one thing. Ending it on disappointment is another matter.

After my own experience, I wish I could recommend Scorn due to the effort involved in creating a very visually immersive environment, but that in and of itself just doesn't seem to be enough to justify the time spent playing through. It's a largely empty world with very difficult and tedious combat midway through and some puzzles that can be fairly tough at times. If you can see past the downsides the visuals are fantastically executed. That being said, it feels a bit unfinished. Scorn definitely needed more time to complete and a lot more polish to be what it could have been.

Separated from your other cat companions, you find yourself lost, alone, and injured in the bowels of some kind of city. You soon discover that you're not alone. The city is inhabited by humanoid robots who have long forgotten their purpose, and it's up to you to figure out where to go next.

Stray is a unique spin on the third-person game genre. You play as a cat, but you're not completely alone. You encounter a robotic companion that helps guide you through your journey and interact with the world, while you also help this companion recover its lost memories. There are platforming and puzzle elements, some combat, questing, and plenty of exploration. Visually rich with a unique aesthetic, charming characters, and intuitive game play, Stray will keep you immersed in a subterranean mystery for hours on end.

Pros:

Intuitive controls. All you need is a keyboard and mouse. Gamepad is supported and recommended by the devs.
Excellent graphics and great performance, even on older hardware.
Interesting and unique characters and envirnoments.
Great storytelling. A simple premise that is well executed.
Cut scenes are letterboxed so you know it's a cut scene but you're still "in the world" with very smooth transitions.
It's about a cat. You like cats, don't you? Who doesn't like cats?

Cons:

Sometimes the third-person camera movement can be a little disorienting for some. If you're sensitive to motion keep this in mind.
Occasionally the jump interaction icon can be hard to get into focus in some places, making a necessary jump difficult. This isn't game breaking and it only happens a few specific times during the game.
Some of the action sequences can have strange difficulty ramping, going from absurdly easy to instant death depending on where you are in the game. Not game breaking but it can be frustrating in certain points.
If you die during an action sequence sometimes the checkpoint makes you backtrack a little father than should be necessary.

Bugs Encountered:

None. Game ran flawlessly for me.

Final Thoughts:

Worth the price.

The good:

It's Duke Nukem. Duke is once again voiced by the legendary John St. John. All of Duke's attitude is on display. You get all the classic one-liners and pre-2000's humor. You get most of the classic enemies, and a few new ones. There's plenty of familiar weapons to play with. Difficulty scales well, so if you're getting your ass kicked, lowering the difficulty helps. If it's not challenging enough, play on the harder skill and you'll get more of a challenge. Graphics-wise there's nothing to complain about. It's appropriate to the game's release, and a modern system should have no problem running at high visual settings. The combat is pretty straight-forward FPS action. All the guns feel pretty solid and fill different roles, and explosives are pretty destructive. There's plenty of things to interact with in the environment, as classic Duke fans would expect.

The bad:

When initially released there was a two-weapon limit. That was shortly patched to a 4 weapon expanded inventory, which helps tremendously, though it does manage to ruin one particular joke. There is regenerating health in the form of Duke's "Ego" meter. You can increase this by interacting with the environment - playing pinball and beating the high score, working out, sinking all the balls in pool, etc. The regenerating health system is not really conducive to push-forward gameplay, but if you're a veteran FPS gamer that shouldn't be too much of a problem. There are some button-mash events, again, a product of the time, and gameplay is very linear. There are two vehicle sections that are not exactly the best thing in the world, and some turret sections that can be mildly frustrating until you realize that if you just tap the fire button instead of holding it down you'll never overheat your weapon and it fires just as fast.

The ugly:

The hype. The vaporware. The reputation as a bad game. If Duke Nukem Forever has one glaring flaw it's that it was a victim of its own ambitions. Duke Nukem 3D was such a blast and so well received that nothing like it could ever really happen again, and too much was promised, too much kept changing and being re-worked, and it was stuck in development hell for far too long. Compromises were made to the game play in the form of the Ego system and weapon limit, and it really hurt what could have been a much better game.

Conclusion:

Don't expect the best game ever made. Expect a fun game with some decent combat. If you like Duke's humor it hasn't changed. If you've never played a Duke Nukem game before, I recommend playing Duke Nukem 3D first to really understand the character and what he's about. I do recommend Duke Nukem Forever as I enjoy the hell out of it, but I'm fairly easy to please. Your mileage may vary.

Pros:

It's Serious Sam.
The weapons are awesome.
The enemies are awesome.
The graphics are awesome.
The environments are awesome.
Fun gadgets. Portable black hole? Check. Gas to make monsters infight? Check. Holo-Sam? Check.
S.A.M. skill tree lets you dual-wield weapons and ride enemies around.
Flaming Rocket-Propelled Chainsaw Launcher. Say it again: Flaming Rocket-Propelled Chainsaw Launcher. Could there BE a more awesome weapon in name and concept? Executed flawlessly as well.

Cons:

Have to reload the Tommy Gun, Devastator, and Auto Shotgun.
You lose all your gadgets later in the game so you can't save them for the big boss fight.
No deathmatch (but who plays Sam for deathmatch?).
Dual-wielding drastically hurts accuracy so it's very situational.
Lacking some classic enemies.
Some open sections lacking enemies.
Secrets.

I found Sam 4 to be in many ways more enjoyable then Sam 3, and I like Sam 3 so they're both good games. The core gameplay is pretty solid. There are a few vehicle sections that are not entirely terrible, but I found the motorcycle section to be unpleasant. It's long, open, kind of boring, and for some reason riding the motorcycle made me feel dizzy. I didn't have that issue with the other vehicles, so I'm not sure what was up with that. Even outside the vehicles, there are some sections where you go a long way without finding enemies. Usually you trigger fights by picking up an item or entering a specific location, enemies spawn in, you fight, and it's over. First Encounter I think did the best job of making sure there was always someone to fight without having to run a long ways to find them. Sam 4 could have handled enemy placement a bit better.

New to the game are some serious weapon upgrades. The Rocket Launcher gets a multi-homing rocket attachment, the Grenade Launcher gets a multi-grenade remote detonation, the Single-Barreled Shotgun gets an under-barrel grenade attachment that is VERY useful, and the Laser Cannon gets a Death Ray. I have nothing bad to say about any of these upgrades. They all kick ass. That doesn't even bring up the FRPCL. It looks like a rocket launcher painted red, but that's where the similarities end. The primary attack launches a rocket-propelled chainsaw that homes in on its target and saws into it, doing massive damage. If the target dies the chainsaw will then find ANOTHER target and keep sawing until it does a certain amount of damage and finally explodes or hits a solid object and explodes. What's better is the secondary attack lets you use it as a melee weapon. Hordes of Gnarr or Reprocessed become piles of gibs and you get to save bullets. Who ever said that a chainsaw isn't a ranged weapon really needs to try this thing out.

Also new are gadgets. They're holdable items you can use whenever needed. These range from health boosts, a bullet-time device, a portable black hole, a holo-Sam decoy, attack drones, "rage" serum that ups your movement speed, fire rate, and damage, a mini-nuke that works like a Serious bomb (Only 2 exist in the game), and gas that makes your enemies in-fight. It is very satisfying to see a horde of enemies charging at you suddenly turn and start going after each other after tossing one of these, especially when there's kamikazes in the mix. Same goes for the black hole. Just throw it and see for yourself.

Last, there's what are known as Serious Artifacts of Might, or S.A.M.'s. Collecting these lets you pick abilities from a skill tree, from having enemies drop ammo when killed to dual-wielding weapons to performing melee attacks on progressively larger enemies. You can ride around on werebulls, hammer-wielding fanatics, Khnums, and even biomechanoids. You can upgrade your ability to reload faster as well.

My biggest gripe about Sam 4 is the secrets. There are a lot of them, but mostly they consist of finding a gadget hidden either behind a bush, wrecked cars, up on top of a ledge, or on a building's roof. I really, really do not like the jumping mechanics in the Serious series and having to parkour to get to yet-another-health-gadget is kind of obnoxious. The creativity with secrets from The Second Encounter is very much lost. There's a few health item traps to trigger some enemies, and two good callbacks to classic Sam trap secrets, but 95% of the secrets are just finding a hidden item tucked away. No exploding walls, no boulders rolling at you, no biomechs disguised as a bush.

Overall Sam 4 is a great game. It could be better, but it's a worthy addition to the series.

This is a free visual novel game with some minor arcade elements.

The premise is simple: You're a new employee on a party train and Sonic and his friends are having a birthday party for Amy, with the theme of a murder mystery. Things seem to go wrong, and you're not sure exactly what's going on. You work alongside Tails to find clues and solve the mystery.

The majority of the game play is clicking through dialogue and making some dialogue selections, as well as selecting items in the environment to progress the story. There's no branching story arcs. It's pretty straight forward, and making an incorrect choice usually loops you back to choosing the right answer, so there's little to no difficulty in that area. Remembering details does help to solve the mystery in the end. During the course of the investigation you will often have to "think" about something, which involves playing a Sonic minigame, where you run a straight track and use arrow keys and spacebar to jump and collect rings while avoiding hazards and drops. If you lose you simply play the game over. If the minigame is too difficult or the player doesn't care for the arcade portion you can activate menu options for invulnerability and/or remove dropoffs. This is useful if you just want to play the story or if someone has physical disabilities or just doesn't care for the arcade play.

Visually the art is well done, and everything is easy to understand. Younger players will have no trouble telling what's going on. There's little on the line of audio beyond a few sound effects at specific times except during the mini games, but there is music throughout that changes depending on the situation. Unless you're running a toaster the game runs very fast, so this should play on the majority of computers out there. Controls are simple, and there are three save slots available to save any time. I did not encounter any bugs during play.

If you're a Sonic fan you'll probably enjoy this. If you're not a Sonic fan or aren't familiar with the characters the game is straight forward enough to understand what's going on. The game is short, I completed it in about 2.6 hours. If you're into mysteries, visual novels in general, or just like Sonic it's free so you risk nothing by playing.

This is Id Software's second entry in the Quake series. The connections with the first Quake are extremely loose. Quake 2 is set in the same universe technically, but you'll be fighting a much different enemy. In this game, Earth has been decimated by an invading alien cyborg race, the Strogg. They have come for Earth's resources, and not just metal or rock, but flesh and bone as well. They are turning humanity into cyborgs and raw organic material to feed their ever expanding war machine. Now its your chance to strike back.

The game begins as your carrier ship enters orbit above the Strogg homeworld, but things soon go wrong and your drop pod crashes to the surface. You are alone behind enemy lines. Can you survive? What's more, can you complete your mission or is humanity doomed?

Quake 2's gameplay is largely similar to Id's other previous titles - find weapons and ammo, kill monsters, find key, open door, profit. Where Quake 2 differs is primarily the engine and level progression. Quake 2 introduced colored lighting and hardware acceleration, interpolated model animation (smooth model motion as opposed to Quake's at the time choppy animation), and a hub-style level system where the game is divided into large units, with each unit having several interconnected levels. In addition, you are provided with mission objectives by your computer uplink. Completing one objective may open up a second objective, and so on. Once a unit's primary objective is complete and you exit the unit a cut scene is played with a status update and new orders regarding the primary objective for the new unit. While you are isolated you are still part of an overall military campaign. There are no NPC's to help you, though you can play in Coop mode with friends to bring additional firepower to the fight.

Weapon-wise you start out with a blaster pistol that has unlimited ammunition but a slow fire rate and inflicts minimal damage. You'll want something better. Fortunately the only way to go from there is up. You'll soon find a shotgun and throwable hand grenades. There's a super-shotgun that deals twice the damage at the cost of twice the shells, a lightweight machinegun that tends to be a little hard to control, a massive enemy-shredding chaingun, a launcher for those grenades, a rocket launcher, a hyperblaster that fires bolts like your blaster pistol but uses energy cells to shred through enemy armor, a railgun that liquefies all but the strongest enemies in its path, and the mighty BFG10K which provides an enemy filled room with a new red paint job. In addition to weapons you'll find several items and powerups such as health packs, armor, adrenaline that instantly heals you and increases your max health, and a powerful energy shield that significantly reduces incoming damage at the cost of energy cells. You'll have to choose between firing that BFG or taking hits. The epic Quad Damage powerup returns, along with an invulnerability artifact, as well as a weapon silencer, a rebreather to keep you from drowning, and an envirosuit for surviving toxic conditions. What's more is you can carry these items in your inventory instead of having to use them right away as in the original Quake. Just be sure to use them at some point as you can only carry one of each item.

Your enemies range from easy to kill guards with built-in prosthetic guns up to lumbering tanks that can withstand a beating, railgun-equipped gladiators that will punch a hole clean through you at a moment's notice, fliers that strafe you with blaster weapons, gunners that either lob rapid-fire grenades at you or fill you full of lead, and berserkers that like to get in close and smack you with arm-mounted spikes and hammers, among others. You will need your full arsenal to effectively deal with them. You will also encounter some boss enemies guarding specific areas. You'll know them when you see them as they will be large, imposing, and rain heavy firepower down on you.

For gameplay modes there's the default single player campaign, a cooperative mode, and a free-for-all deathmatch mode. Beyond the standard modes, Quake 2 supports a large number of third-party mods available for the game. These can transform Quake 2 into a completely different experience. Most are available through moddb.com. Some popular multiplayer mods include bots such as the Gladiator or Eraser bots which allow deathmatch practice, and capture the flag. Quake 2 has a heavy metal soundtrack by Sonic Mayhem - a must have if you are playing single player.

The downsides? The Steam version does not include the soundtrack, and the included Quake2 executable does not behave well with newer OS's such as Windows 10. You will be wanting to use a sourceport like Yamagi to get the best experience on a modern machine. Since it is a 1990's era game the graphics are very dated by today's standards, though there is an RTX port that adds ray-tracing on graphics cards that support it, bringing a completely different look and feel, and various mods to improve the visual quality of the existing graphics. The overall pacing in Quake 2 is much slower than Quake 1, so if you prefer the fast adrenaline rush of the original Quake it may feel a little absent.

If you are into so-called "boomer shooters" or just a fan of FPS games in general this is a must for your library. The Strogg are waiting. Let the gibbing begin!

I received Prodeus as a gift from a fellow gamer.

Prodeus is a retro-style shooter using a modern game engine. Visually enemies, items, and weapons are rendered as sprites, but this is done "on-the-fly" in the engine. There is a toggle option to render enemies as models, which the sprites are drawn from, though this does not affect already present corpses, weapon models, or item models.

The backstory is revealed through the game, what little story there is. Focus is primarily on the gunplay, but I'm about halfway through and it's pretty standard fare for a Doom-style FPS - Humans were experimenting with something on an asteroid, something went wrong, and now everyone's dead or zombified except you, and you have to fight your way through to accomplish... something, but whatever that something is primarily involves fragging anything that moves. You have fairly basic objectives - find key, open door, flip switch, exit the level. Story info is provided by level descriptions before beginning a map and by radio logs found throughout the game - usually one per level though sometimes there is no log.

Overall progression is displayed by a navigable world map. You can replay levels to find missed items and secrets, restock on ammo and armor, or just for kicks. Some levels are blocked by needing a certain number of runes to progress, and there are special "store" levels that lack enemies but give you access to additional weapons and abilities. There are also special "trial" levels where the objective is to beat the level within a specific time in order to collect an ore reward at the end. Once beaten you can also return to the level to restock on ammo specific to that map's weapon, as well as "turtle" the map for secrets that can't be collected effectively during the speedrun. Map-based hazards include the standard fare - bubbling slime, lava, and falling into inescapable death pits. Normal falling does not hurt you.

Regarding items, you have the standard health, armor, and ammo picks for your weapons. In addition there are runes, which tend to spawn a big fight when you pick them up as they are integrated into the story and are needed to progress past certain specific levels, and there is also ore, which is often but not always hidden behind a secret. Ore is the game's "currency", which you use to purchase upgrades and new weapons in the game's Store levels. Some weapons are found during gameplay, others must be purchased. Once you reach the second store map you have the option to use ore to purchase ammunition, but I don't recommend this - ore is limited and can only be picked up once per level, and if you spend it on ammunition before acquiring new weapons you can lose the ability to buy those weapons later. It's better to replay an easier level or a trial map to restock on ammo that way. There is an automap to help you navigate through levels, and if you find an automap item on a level it will reveal the entire level, though not necessarily every secret area as some don't show on the map at all.

Weapons vary from your bare fists to pistols, a minigun, a plasma rifle, a railgun-like weapon, rockets, grenades, and a quad-barreled super-shotgun that even the Doom Slayer would be jealous of. Every weapon has some kind of secondary function that alters how the weapon works or just unleashes hell in a single shot. There are movement upgrades you can acquire such as double-jump and a dash module. Both are very helpful so you will want these as soon as possible. So far every weapon has a niche and even the lowly pistol is useful later in the game to pick off distant enemies or down the stray zombie.

Speaking of zombies, the enemies come in three varieties. There's zombified humans, which either wander slowly and try to smack you, shotgunners that take a moment to shoot but will move more quickly toward you, a minigun-toting tank of a zombie, and snipers that use the Arc-rail weapon. The first two are annoying, the last two are very dangerous. There's also the odd hazard-suited zombie that blows up into an acid puddle when shot. Protip- don't step in it. There's the "Chaos" - basically the game's hell spawn, which range form imp-like "fiends" that throw fireballs, floating "Bloaters" that spit a lava projectile, crawling baddies that do the same, flying "skull-fish" that fly at you and explode on impact, a minotaur-like charging "demon" - see the parallels with Doom yet? There's also a few more powerful monsters. Then there's the Prodeans. These are fairly rare, but have the ability to "possess" some of the Chaos monsters and control them, altering their appearance and attacks. Prodeans by themselves are extremely dangerous as well. Who the Chaos and Prodeans are is not revealed immediately in the game, so you'll get the backstory on where they came from as you play. If you do happen to die there are Nexus Points scattered throughout the maps that act as checkpoints. Whichever one you have touched last will be your respawn location. You'll have the option to respawn at a Nexus Point or restart the level from scratch if you die.

Pros: Boomer shooter in a modern engine with a huge arsenal, great bestiary, excellent gameplay and level design.

Cons: The "model-to-sprite" visuals might be jarring to some newer gamers that haven't played many sprite-based shooters. Some maps do block your return path after a point so you will have to replay levels to get missed secrets.

If you like the original Doom combined with a bit of Doom '16 you will definitely want this game. There's plenty of action, gore, secrets to find, and badass weaponry to blow stuff to kingdom come and back. There's so much good and really not many negatives.

Succubus is a spin off/sequel to Agony. If you've played Agony, you know the background. If not, I recommend playing through Agony (the Unrated version) first and completing all the endings to get the full experience.

Now for the content warning. This game IS for adults only. Besides the intense violence there is total nudity and explicit sexual content. By default the game comes with a censored mode enabled that pixelates and blurs genitalia, but are you really buying this for a censored version? To be clear this is primarily an action game with sexual content, not a sex game. Either way you will be seeing body parts, male and female and... whatever chorts have. There is also torture and mutilation - this is set in Hell, after all - so if any of that bothers you be aware before hitting the "buy" button.

That being said, Succubus is a hack-and-slash set in Hell, where you play the role of a demon that has been abandoned by her former master the Red Goddess and left to fight her way through hell. The big bad in this case is Baphomet, who has decided this is the chance to seize power in the absence of the Red Goddess.

To fight your enemies you have a selection of melee weapons, armor, and magic spells to use. As you progress through the game new armors are unlocked that hold different magic spells and abilities, and new weapon types unlock as well. By defeating condemned humans as well as demons you gain soul points which can be spent on improved versions of the different weapon types, as well as new armors, information in the bestiary, and new content for your lair. Everything is unlockable by gameplay alone. There are NO LOOT BOXES. Score for Madmind there.

All weapons have secondary attacks, and the secondary for some weapons includes a ranged attack. Examples of weapons are blades, which can stab quickly or be thrown; swords, which inflict more damage and have a larger sweep attack; scythes, which inflict massive damage and have a larger range than the sword; spears, which can stab or be thrown; hammers - first-person bowling simulator, just imagine you enemies as the pins; and more. The humble blades you start with can set some things on fire when thrown as well.

Magic spells are tied to your armor selection, and different armors also have different abilities. Some armors buff your health a lot but don't give much in the line of movement, while other armors may not give you as many health bars but increase your movement stats quite a bit. Magic spells include a basic fireball, a homing fireball, a shield to protect from damage, a lure that produces a doppleganger of yourself that can fool enemies, magic tentacles that can grab an opponent and throw it into other enemies or hazards, and a mine field that will hurt any enemies that walk into it.

Combat is largely arena-based although connecting sections do host enemies in places. Your enemies vary from basic condemned humans that have picked up bones to use as weapons to massive demons and bosses that take strategy to deal with. Some weapons are more effective against certain enemies, and your objectives may vary from killing everything in sight to protecting a sacred object to destroying specific objects in an area. Enemies damaged enough can be executed to regain a bit of health, and by dealing and taking damage you have a Fury meter that builds. Once full you can unleash a berserker rage that throws every enemy in sight away from you and allows you to immediately perform an execution on all but the largest enemies. You can end the Fury before the meter runs out as well. Interestingly you do not have the ability to jump or crouch, though you can dash in any direction. Your dash ability regenerates, along with your magic charges, and the number of charges and its regeneration rate depends on your armor choice. In addition to using weapons and magic to deal with enemies, there are numerous hazards in every area that you can use to your advantage - pools of lava, writhing tentacles, hooks hanging on chains, spikes and thorns that can impale enemies, iron spiked balls, explosive eggs/cocoons, and fiery traps. You can perform a powerful kick that can send enemies flying into hazards, and use a telekinetic pull that can falter enemies and pull explosive eggs or the mace ball into range for use. There are also special prisoners that can be set on fire and serve as a source of damage - use the pull ability to drag a line of fire that can hurt anything except you.

Since you are a demonic succubus, you gain health from the souls of the slain. By performing executions in combat or killing the condemned that are loitering around you'll gain some health back. Infant demons also serve as a form of health as well. There are also special prisoners that can be brutalized for extra health benefits and blood goblets at certain shrines that give a large health boost. If you take enough damage to get knocked down you can revive once and instantly use any fury you've accumulated, but you will only have two health bars. You'll have to fill up the rest. If you die a second time without regaining your revive point you will have to restart from a saved check point with a penalty - about 7% of any souls you've accumulated.

There are side objectives and secret items on most levels as well. Some levels may require a specific difficulty to beat for credit, others may require you to perform a number of kills with a specific weapon, avoid taking damage, or destroy a certain number of demons. All of these are optional for completing the story but add extra challenge. The secrets unlock information in the bestiary. There is also a ranked mode where you compete in an arena for high score, facing waves of ever increasing difficulty.

When not slaying enemies you have a lair that you can explore and customize. There are several different looks which can be unlocked during play, along with actions - from bathing to sleeping to lifting weights. You can customize the look of your succubus - hair, facial features, skin tone and paints, horns, and body features can all be adjusted to your liking. There's a "selfie" mode in game where you can take snapshots in various poses next to fallen enemies, interesting scenery, or pretty much anything you like.

Visually the game is stunning, set in a hellish landscape that varies from barren rock, boiling lava, trees and vines of an alien appearance, and ghoulish blood and bone constructs. Performance options can be adjusted, and even on an older system you can maintain greater than 60 FPS fairly easily through settings. The game runs on Unreal Engine 4, so if you have any other UE4 games that should provide a good benchmark.

On the downside there are a few bugs, which Madmind will probably correct shortly as they have a track record of being very attentive to feedback on the message boards - something other companies could really learn from. There are some unexpected and unpredictable crashes, sometimes enemies will spawn outside an arena and block progression, and some female enemies have the wrong sounds. I still highly recommend the game despite this.

If you like the idea of hacking your way through Hell as a female protagonist and absolutely brutalizing your enemies this is worth a play. There's also a Prologue version you can try out for free if you're uncertain, though beware that the performance and gameplay isn't fully optimized there.

Some of you may have been seeing a lot of negative reviews of late. There's a review bomb going on as Id Software has added Denuvo's Anti Cheat system to Doom Eternal. There's a lot of misinformation being spread about what this is and what it does. Some facts:

Yes, it does use a kernel mode driver. So do a lot of other utilities. Use Corsair CUE? Use Gigabyte RGBFusion? Both use a kernel mode driver. Your antivirus? That uses a kernel mode driver. Other anti-cheat programs such as Punkbuster also use kernel-mode drivers. Running in kernel mode does not automatically mean something is a "rootkit" or "malware". If you're uncertain or find any of this frightening I recommend doing research and educating yourself on just what kernel mode applications are, how they work, and then make an informed decision on whether you consider this a danger to your system or not. To see what is running in kernel mode already on your Windows-based computer, open a command window and type "driverquery". As for how the Anti-Cheat works, the driver stays resident and the anti-cheat program is only loaded when you run Doom Eternal, and is shut down when you close it. It monitors the game and makes sure there's no cheating going on. If there is, you get suspended for being a cheater. That's the goal - keep the cheaters out. There's been some criticism that this should be optional and only concern the multiplayer portion of the game. Id may or may not address this in an future update. For now it is necessary for playing Doom Eternal. As for why people are review bombing, it's a massive knee-jerk reaction. Some people are legitimately concerned, others just do not like the name Denuvo attached to anything. Do some research. Learn the facts. There's no reason to miss out on this great game due to fear-mongering!

That being said, let's move on to the game part of the review.

Doom Eternal continues the fight from Doom '16. Here's a few basic notes:

You fight on several worlds - Earth, the Sentinel homeworld, Mars, Hell, and Urdak, the homeworld of the mysterious Maykrs. It's not just tech hallways and some barren rock. The battlefield has been expanded and you'll see much more varied environs.
All the weapons are back, with some changes to the weapon mods. There's also a new unlockable weapon that Doom 64 fans will remember. The Gauss Cannon has been replaced with a new weapon, the Ballista, which fills the same role.
The combat has been re-tuned with an emphasis on fast movement and "push forward" gameplay. If you need resources, such as health, ammo, or armor, it can all be acquired by killing your demon foes. You'll have to watch your ammo count and vary your weapons a bit more than in the past. You're equipped with the tools to make this happen - glory kills for health, chainsaw for ammunition, and the "flame belch" for armor.
Demons are now "destructible". Some have weaknesses that can be exploited, such as shooting the turret off of an arachnotron, and all demons show damage. The more you hurt them, the more bloodied they become.
There's new enemies, such as the Arachnotron, Gargoyle, Dread Knight, and Whiplash to keep you on your toes.
Multiplayer has been reworked. The multiplayer from 2016, along with snap map, are no longer present. Included is Battlemode, which allows one fully-loaded Slayer to go against two player-controlled demons that can summon in AI-controlled demons, heal each other, and directly attack the Slayer. In addition, demons that kill players during the campaign can appear on other players' campaigns as "empowered" demons, which are much tougher and more aggressive, but provide more experience and resources when killed. Avenge your fellow Slayers! Also upcoming is Invasion mode. This is not implemented at present but is in the works according to Id.

Overall the combat and gameplay is pretty solid. It takes a little adjusting to get used to the resource management as the ammo counts are lower, though you can upgrade ammo capacity to a degree throughout the game's progression. There is a platforming element introduced with swing bars and airborne dashing, along with climbable walls, that expand the battlefield and allow you to reach places mere mortals never could. There are also easter eggs galore, so if you're up on your Doom lore you'll find plenty of nods to earlier games. There's a larger story element than in previous Doom titles. You'll learn the history of the Slayer, how he became more powerful, as well as what Argent really is. If you've played Doom '16 and enjoyed it you will almost certainly enjoy this addition to the Doom franchise.

If you're a Doom fan you don't want to pass this up.