The beginning of this game is amazing. It all starts with a compelling intro, followed by the discovery of several Darksheer comic books which do an excellent job of introducing the characters and setting. And then the story gets off to a great start. You'll be dazzled by beautiful pixel art backgrounds accompanied by some great music. The game seems so full of promise and potential. But by the end of the game, you will likely be very frustrated. All that beautiful setup with no payoff! The game is really quite short, it feels like half the game it should be. Fascinating characters are introduced, but never given time to develop. In particular, many of the villains simply seem to just show up, utter a few lines and vanish! And the central mystery of this game is also resolved in the worst possible way. The ending just doesn't make sense and is a total letdown. The gameplay is fine, standard adventure game stuff. Most puzzles are very easy but there are a few that are very difficult and counter-intuitive unless you happen to stumble upon the solution by chance. Unfortunately there were only one or two really fun puzzles of a more moderate difficulty. One thing I really liked was the witty, humorous, and well-written text descriptions for even the least important items and actions in the game. This is one area the developers clearly invested a lot of time and effort into. But since there's only one or two important objects on most screens, and there are a lot of timed sections that discourage exploration, you may not get to fully appreciate this aspect. The much-hyped nudity and violence are nothing special, don't buy the game for these elements or you'll be disappointed. And don't buy it for the superhero elements either: Darksheer has some cool abilities but they are almost never used in game. Basically, awesome start, with great graphics and music, but short length, poorly fleshed out story and characters, and awful ending make this hard to recommend.
I had hoped that Doom 2 would fix many of the problems I had with Doom 1. I had heard the sequel really fleshed out the bestiary with amazing new enemies. And since it was set on Earth, I expected that the artwork and locations would become more realistic, and feature more attention to detail. However, after playing the game through I found it a major disappointment. It's hard to tell from any of the levels that it's set on Earth, there are virtually no new "Earth-like" textures or objects, and the level design is as random as ever. The monsters are a different story. There are a good number of new enemies, however half of them are just slight modifications to previous enemies (e.g. a weaker Baron or chaingun zombie). That said, it does introduce two really impressive new enemies: The Mancubus and the Arch-vile. The Mancubus is a big brute who shoots shoots massive fireballs, and the Arch-vile has an awesome look and one of the most unique features ever: it can resurrect enemies by standing near their corpses. While these monsters sound great on paper, the game does its best to suck the fun out of them. Specifically, the Mancubus would be really fun to fight in an enclosed space with poor weaponry, but you always face him in wide-open areas after just being stocked up on rockets. But the biggest disappointment in Doom 2 is you will almost never see the Arch-vile resurrect an enemy. This is because (a) The designers threw all notions of balance aside and gave him the most powerful weapon in the game, so after looking at him for one second he kills you, and (b) the level designers almost always placed him in isolated sections far away from any potential dead bodies. So the game largely wastes it's new additions and drags on and on, with nothing new after the first 10 levels despite it being a 30 level game. I really had to force myself to keep playing to the end, and my reward? A slapped-together, poorly done and extremely unfair final boss.
