Project Warlock

What can i say about this game, it sets out to be a complete spiritual succesor to Doom and Heretic and the 90s FPS we love so much and succeds, the game is a blast to play, is frantic, quick and to the point, the weapons are fun and there are a variety of them. The game is quite long, i clocked at 25+hours. The bestiary is insane and probably the best thing this game has going for. Some of the weapon pixel art models and reloaded animations could have been better. And the magic system and powerups where nothing spectacular. Just like Doom, thereps a bit of a story but i does not get in the way. Give this game a go if you wish to shoot stuff up and relieve some stress, and if you loved Doom you would love this.

+Graphic +Sound +Gameplay -Weapon scrolling: Scrolling through your available weapons with the mouse wheel will always skip weapons (how does one mess up weapon scrolling?). Using the corresponding numbered keys is a must

... as far as games go, This is supposed to be a throwback game, right? Old-school FPS. Who is _most_ likely to play it? Currently 14 year olds who are used to bad staples of contemporary game design? No. People who can be "thrown back" because they knew the old games back in the day. I.e. people who likely have a job, maybe family, maybe even other hobbies! And on top of that, people who have seen a lot of this kind of stuff. And you know what people like that don't need at all? To play whole levels of a game over and over because they were slightly inattentive for a microsecond, while acing the gameplay the rest of the time even on hard difficulty (and easy setting would be too boring most of the time). Not to mention that, in old games we wish to be thrown back to, SAVEGAMES WERE A STANDARD FEATURE. ANd not even just a few slots, actually, unliminted savegames were more common especially in the early days of FPS. We don't care whether anyone considers it "cheating". It is a method of not playing stuff yuo've already seen over and over, as opposed to just the part that you actually failed at. Checkpoints, or whole levels to be played over, are a DUMB idea and none of us has time for this nonsense. Which means after half an hour of playtime and a couple levels until death of the player character, this thing gets uninstalled from the laptop and I get to see 1/10 or worse of what I bought for no really good reason. That's not acceptable.

While the core gameplay is fun, there are many small issues that work together to annoy you at every step. To begin with, scrollwheel input is FUBAR and you should rebind the weapon switch keys to something else: I've even tested the game with a spare mouse to make sure it wasn't a hardware problem, the game sometimes doesn't register scrolls and sometimes doubles them. Then, the secrets: at the beginning they are usually hidden behind reasonably distinct walls, but later on the wall textures get too samey and the bullet decals too plentiful so you're better off wall humping and spamming the interaction key. Lighting is another problem: the game is far too dark by default, the light spell is a trap (can't attack when using it, in a game where you could walk into an ambush at every corner), and one of the best spells in the game (the shield) puts an obnoxious dark blue overlay on top of the action. Encounter design is also questionable: far too many times the game teleports enemies in right outside your line of sight to try and create ambushes, bosses are just big damage sponges while the smaller enemies helping them are the real threat, and many late-game enemies with rocket launchers will explode themselves when trying to shoot you. Finally, hit detection is meh: you'll hit enemies waiting underground by shooting above them, and a lot of destructible props look thin but have deceptively large hitboxes.

Fantastic fun.