This week I’ve spent most of my time playing the Ultimate
Doom. I reached the end of the Inferno episode a week or so ago, and I’m now
trying to play through the levels of the fourth episode, Thy Flesh Consumed. I’d
tried this before and I’d forgotten how brutally difficult these levels were, I
don’t think I ever got past the first level when I played Doom before on the Xbox
– and that’s when I was playing it on standard difficulty; I’m at Ultra Violence
now! I ended up watching a video on YouTube to show me how to get past it, and
while it helped me on the first level and shown me what to do on the second, I
haven’t got the accuracy to pull it off yet. Hopefully I’ll do it in the future!
 |
| I've used this picture before, somewhere... |
Now I’m aware that these levels are designed to be very
difficult; indeed, the first two levels are supposed to be the hardest levels
in the entire Doom franchise. I’ve also sung the praises of Id Software’s level
design in the past, celebrating what they managed to achieve with very limited
resources. So, are the levels on Thy Flesh Consumed well-designed? I reckon
they are. They’re tough, no doubt about that, but they include some quite unique
puzzles of deciding what to do and in what order, knowing where the weapons
are, and what is appropriate to use and when. For example, before last week I’d
never even have considered wasting ammo for the plasma gun on shotgunners. These
days, I’ve developed an instinct for making sure all the hitscan-wielding
enemies die very quickly, as they’re arguably more deadly than even the
toughest demons.
If you don’t know, hitscan weapons are guns in early video
games that don’t faff about with things like bullet velocity or trajectory –
you point at the thing, press fire, and the shot instantly connects. In Doom,
this is how the Pistol, Shotgun and Chain gun work, and why the Shotgun is
pretty much the most commonly used weapon. If enemies have such weapons, which
a number of early ones do in Doom, there’s usually a delay between the monster
seeing you and shooting you to give you time to react – but if they get a shot
off, you have no way of dodging it. This is different from the fireballs launched
by the Imps, Cacodemons and Barons of Hell, as those enemies shoot projectiles
you can see coming and can dodge. It’s also why the Spider Demon is the final
boss of the game, rather than the Cyber Demon which guards the end of the second
episode. Even though the latter has the stronger gun, its shots are easily seen
coming, whereas the Spider Demon has a hitscan chain gun and you don’t get as
much of a chance to dodge. (It’s still quite easy to beat if you don’t kill the
other demons, as it will be distracted by them.)
So, defeating these levels will be a learning process, but I’m
happy to accept the challenge!
 |
| Looks like quite a nice day, actually! |
Elsewhere, I’ve been playing Syndicate on the Xbox 360. I
mentioned this last week and having played through a little more of it I can say
that this is probably going to be another average game. It’s got some good ideas,
like hacking the enemy chips to force them to break cover or shoot their
allies. But in fight after fight, their use becomes quite routine, and the
occasions where their use is obvious don’t contribute to the challenge of the
game. I’d also probably appreciate it more if I hadn’t played the first two Bioshock
games to their endings, as what they do to develop the idea of single player
shooters added a lot more to the experience. Some critics have said Syndicate
was rubbish, and I’m not disagreeing with them; most of them will have played
better games than this. It’s not as bad as all that, and I’m having a decent
amount of fun with it, but I doubt I’ll feel the need to come back to it once I
reach the end.
Let’s see if I can beat a game before the end of the month…
No comments:
Post a Comment