The series returns to its roots. That time tested classic Carmageddon gameplay is back and as polished as the graphics! The same rules apply here: You can win the race by puttering around the track(Boring!), or you can turn your opponents' cars into flaming metal coffins! For an even more challenging victory, you can try to mow down all the pedestrians. This is everything I loved about the original game, but streamlined and modernized to take advantage of modern hardware.
Sometimes you just need a game where you can just shut your brain off and go on an unholy rampage. If you love the movie Death Race 2000, this is an unofficial tie-in of sorts, to a Death Race sequel that never materialized. Even though this is a "racing" game, making it to the finish line isn't the only way to win. You can wreck your opponents cars, or run over all the pedestrians, and boy do they make a gooey mess when you do! While the graphics look very dated, due to being from that early 3D era, its still a very solid game, with lots of great stages and satisfying action.
A YouTuber once called this the Call of Juarez equivalent of Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, and that's honestly spot on. The mainline games in the series are outshone by this shorter budget title: Better presentation, tighter gameplay and a likeable protagonist.
This isn't a port of the 3DO game, but rather a remake. Some of the charm is lost in translation. The enemies and weapons are now CGI renders, instead of digitized sprites, and the ghostly entities that serve as in-game story progression are very blocky, and ill-defined. That said there are a number of improvements, areas are larger and more complex, and the frame rate is smooth. The controls are spot on. If you can play Old school Doom with it's default controls, you'll have no problem with this game, as it controls identically. One of the more novel aspects of this game, is that it's an open world FPS. An unheard of thing back when it was first released. Aside from a few engine quirks, like momentarily getting stuck on a piece of scenery, and a useless jump feature. There's very little to complain about here.
This game is a love letter to fans of Kaiju films, from the set pieces to the music. Even the monsters themselves are knock-offs of well known guys in rubber suits. Rather than a straight up 1v1 fighting game, King of the Monsters plays more like a wrestling game. To win, you have to wear your opponent down and pin them. There's an electrified arena border that snaps you back towards the center. Points are awarded on how much damage to the city you do, and there are a lot of cities to damage. You can also throw objects at your opponent and unleash a charged power move. This is a must play.
To put in plainly, there's no aspect that this sequel did as well as the first game. The gameplay doesn't feel the same, the branching paths seem to be gone, there aren't as many characters, and the graphics are chunky pre-rendered sprites. Its obvious that this one was farmed out to one of SNK's B-teams.
Serious Sam is just what the doctor ordered, if your tired of narrative, cinematic driven shooters. No questions asked. Here's a gun, go kill something. The graphics have aged very well in this one, as has the aforementioned gameplay. This is a great game to turn your brain off, and just get lost in.
If you've ever wondered what Metal Slug would be like, if it was top-down like Commando or Ikari Warriors, well here you go. Several unique characters to choose from, branching paths, lots of fast-paced arcade action and SNK's signature pixel art make this one a winner.
There are decent FMV-based games, there are okay FMV-based games, and then there are legitimately great FMV-based games. Megarace 1+2 fit into that third category. The host, Lance Boyle feels like he was ripped straight out of the world of those cheesy TV shows seen on the first Robocop film. He gives these games their personality. The gameplay itself is combat racing. You win by greasing your opponents. Its face-paced arcade fun. The tracks themselves are actually looping FMVs, This is a bit less obvious in the first game, because the cars are also pre-rendered, where as in Megarace 2, the cars are textured polygonal models. They're both great fun, but the first one has that really good old-school MS-DOS charm to it.
Doom is as fun and easy to pick up and play as it was when it came out in 1993. The Ultimate Doom gives you the original shareware episode and the two order-by-mail registered episodes, as well as a fourth episode that was created as an incentive to get people to buy Doom as a retail release. "Thy Flesh Consumed" is for Doom pros, because even on the lower difficulty levels it is unrelenting, with levels designed to be brutal. Are you up to the challenge? Or would going back to playing that wimpy little Battle Royale game be more your speed?
