izigame.me

Code Brown

Canonical sequel to Final Doom but released for Nintendo 64. Don't you just love it when they fracture franchises over multiple platforms. Anyway the Demons are back and you need to get your ass back to Mars.
I always looked at console ports of popular titles as quick cash grabs, especially when the screenshot don't do them any justice, so it wasn't exactly hard for me to simply ignore its existence until now. But then Romero released Sigil II for Doom so I figured what better time to cross it off the list once and for all.
First impression was surprisingly strong, pretty large and complex opening level, with hybrid tech/goth atmosphere as seen in Doom and Quake. Monsters do look like cheap plastic figurines though, as if created for generic tabletop board game, but since gunplay is identical it doesn't matter too much. Shooting and killing is fun, more so when setting up infighting.
Enemies have forgiving precision, can be staggered, are relatively slow, movement and pickups are same, etc. Everything that worked before still works today. Game uses Doom II bestiary but not all are present due to system's memory constraints: Chaingunner, Revenant and Arch-Vile are gone (and not missed by me).
Levels are choke-full of usually well telegraphed secrets and finding them is still the most fun for me in these old titles.
Others changes relate to weapon sprites and sounds which are remade from scratch but mechanically identical. Same damage and fire rates, ammo capacity and scarcity, hierarchy, etc. Took no time to adjust and I valued that. Outstanding improvement is the new Chainsaw which far outclasses the original and became my favorite toy here.
* * *
There are some rough edges (literary) that need pointing out. For starters, first secret level is hidden behind the most obtuse secret ever designed. Perhaps because it is as bullshit as they come so they tried to hide it in the last minute. It'll make you second-guess yourself about playing this as it's over the top unfair.
Good portion of the early levels are just plain variation of the first, bunch of Quake-esque brown colored rectangles of different sizes and arrangements. Right angle brown palette walls everywhere you look. Got boring pretty fast. It takes a while but redemption from the brink of failure comes in the second half when it picks up, especially in bonus Lost Levels exclusively created for this port.
Some liberties were taken with Cacodemon and Pain Elemental which only serve to demonstrate if it ain't broken don't fix it principle should have been followed to the letter. Hard to imagine how these two passed id's supervision. Add to that Lost Souls which are just over the top fuckery.
Pinkies (Brownies...) and Lost Souls (probably of killed Chaingunners) suffer from excessive aggro audio when you're not in their view and it's hard to distinguish them from regular Zombieman. I can still hear them...
Some secrets are actual items you must to pick up to register unlike simple sectors before. For example with full ammo you won't be able to trigger a weapon secret by picking it up. Same with MegaArmor only more annoying when you have to damage yourself to collect it. Have fun humping walls until figuring out which secret is which... My secret hunting hobby ruined I barely put my feet on the Red Planet. There are handful of fake wall types too that just boil down to giant trial-and-error fuckaroo.
* * *
Port itself is technically perfect with everything working outside of the box. If it doesn't you need only change the renderer (DX/OpenGL/Vulkan). Key rebinding menu has annoying flashes with unbindable secondaries which have to be removed by purging the controller/joystick binds from the config file.
Irritating stuff comes from what Bethesda made Nightdive shove down our throats. No less than 5 intro logos which I presume will only lead to educating even more players about Steam launch parameters, and general presence of Bethesda UI which just gets in the way. Brought out suppressed trauma of Microsoft Live service, a path I see Bethesda stoically treads nowadays.
It's hard to recommend to people outside the community who are nostalgia driven and can take a hit standing tall. A collector's item for die-hard Doom collectors if you will. Everyone else should skip this and look directly at the classic and it's many MODs/TCs. For my fellow marines it's just good enough for a recommendation just prep yourself for some jank.