... and speaking of tank controls and lots and lots of backtracking...

Resident Evil!

I'm giving it a go for the first time ever. I've just finished cd1 of RE2 on the Dreamcast and after playing cd2 for a bit I've decided to go back to PS1's RE1, as I gave up on it 'cause the zombies were giving me a hard time and I couldn't get past the first 15 minutes of the game 😖 buuut I've discovered the Director's Cut and its Training (a.k.a. wuss) Mode and now it plays like a pretty chill adventure game 😁

gerry wrote on Today, 10:00:

I started Doom3 and have played a few stages - it is still and impressive looking game in my view and makes good use of lighting, shadows, sound and texture. The game itself is good too, a departure from Doom 1 and Doom 2 but in retrospect it works well as a sci-fi horror survival shooter. Its a game where the visuals overpromise though, lots that you do not interact with at all despite looking like you should be able to - still, i liked the PDA and voice recordings thing, that added story and background to it, the disorientation effect when hit feels more realistic. the base itself makes no sense at all 😀 some rooms have deadly exposed machinery! everything is essentially a path, like half life, giving the impression but not the actuality of a large complex. still a fun game, perhaps not as memorable as original Doom though

Also Return to Castle Wolfenstein , with this game i really like the environments - the mix of castle, compound, base and the heavy machinery of the period. the game play itself is fine, i much prefer the levels without supernatural stuff but its all entertaining fun

I've enjoyed both of these games. Somehow my memory of the specifics of RtCW environments is very vague, even though I've played it far more recently. It's a general blur of the mix you mentioned, and I remember the boss encounters had some challenge to them.

Doom 3 did a better job creating in-game suspense with the voice acting and ambient sounds. In RtCW you are mostly reading the history between missions, and there are some cutscenes. Not surprising, considering Doom 3 is newer.

badmojo wrote on Today, 11:50:

I've always thought that F.E.A.R out DOOMed DOOM3.

Yes, in some sense. They have a different vibe altogether. Doom 3 is all about jumpscares in the dark. F.E.A.R. gives you a genuine feel of uneasiness at times.

Bloodborne

My trip to Byrgenwerth was very short, as there was little to do there besides fighting the boss. And boy, was that huge spider annoying. Not so much on its own, but mostly due to the gazillion smaller spiders that were protecting it. I summoned an NPC hoping he would distract the smaller ones, but that guy was practically useless. So I just had to tough it out on my own, dodging around the big spider and its minions, and dealing damage when it was reasonably safe. I even tried pulling out a torch, thinking it might scare the smaller spiders as in DS2, but nope. It took a fair bit of effort to bring that thing down, but I managed somehow.

I then got teleported to the Unseen Village. This area was very irksome due to the fact that most enemies would respawn indefinitely until their summoners were killed. And those were often hidden from view, so I could hear them, but had to actively search for them. Didn't like that at all. The area boss was kinda meh. I summoned an NPC for distraction, then sprinted upstairs to get rid of the "cheerleaders" who were healing it. After that, I just poked that thing until it dropped. Pretty underwhelming.

Since I got the key to the Upper Cathedral in the previous area, I decided to go there next. This was a relatively small place, but it surprisingly housed two bosses. The Celestial Emissary was another one with a bunch of regular enemies guarding it, but it was a pretty easy fight. The Daughter of Cosmos was tougher, but still not that difficult for my build. I will say that I don't enjoy these "beast" type fights in Bloodborne as much as the humanoid bosses from DS3 (e.g. Pontiff Sulyvahn, Ornstein, Nameless King). Mechanically, it's somehow less satisfying. But I guess DS3 is hard to top in terms of boss quality.

I decided to finally get a new (gaming) laptop after 5-6 years of sticking with my previous one. That laptop was truly a workhorse... it was top-of-the-line when I got it, and its 1050ti graphics card managed to run most games at 1080p with mostly high graphics settings without a hitch.

However, the system really started to show its age over the last year or so. I really don't care about AAA games, but it was really starting to struggle with some games I really wanted to play (Tainted Grail and Cyberpunk 2077 come to mind). It was also starting to have some trouble with some websites, and I noticed the fans kicking in more and more often. Finally, although I did extend support for Win10, I eventually will need to switch to Win11 for work due to customer requirements. And of course there are the crazy prices we've seen lately for RAM and storage, and these prices are likely to just continue to rise over the next year or two, so it seemed like it was the right time to upgrade.

ANYWAY, I spent an enjoyable weekend getting everything set up (including debloating Win11; it actually runs quite nice with all the garbage turned off)... and of course playing lots of games!

AMID EVIL
This is my favorite of the "boomer shooter" renaissance games. It's most comparable to Heretic, though it has its own look and feel. The game had been updated to support ray tracing and is comparatively small, so this was my test game for the new system. To be honest, I don't think the ray tracing makes much of a difference in this one, though it does look good.

Cyberpunk 2077
I had played through the (lengthy) prologue on my previous system, but had been forced to use dynamic resolution at 30 fps just to make the game playable... so I decided to just restart from the beginning. This game sure does look good. There's a new "overdrive" ray tracing mode that everyone seems to love, but I couldn't stand it; it relies on both dynamic resolution and frame generation, and the latter just ruined the experience for me. I ended up switching to a mix of low/medium ray tracing, and thought the game looked much better.
I ended up getting through the entire prologue over a few days, and I'm not yet sure what to think about this one. I love the setting, and I like how you can hack stuff in real time during combat. I found the combat, however, to be somewhat annoying with bullet-sponge enemies all over the place (it's ridiculous to require 3-4 headshots to kill some random thug). I was also annoyed at the LONG barely interactive part at the end of the prologue, where you are basically just holding forward and watching the game playing itself.
Anyway, now I'm a the point where the game sort of opens up, so I'm looking forward to it!

Necromunda: Hired Gun
This is another game that my previous laptop really struggled with. It's a first-person shooter but has some RPG elements (leveling up, sidequests). It's a surprisingly frantic shooter that feels like the classic FPS games, but you have some really fun mobility options like running on walls and sliding. Likeable.

Wolfenstein: The New Order
This actually ran perfectly fine on my old laptop, but I never finished the game, and it was sitting there in my Steam library. This game is a lot better than I remember, with some great weapons and overall a nice feel. It's definitely a game of its time, with plenty of cinematic set pieces where you basically just hold forward and occasionally press E to interact with something to transition to the next set piece, but there is some fun combat in between. So far, so good.