Doom: The Dark Ages Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Summary

Kinda Funny Gamescast: Doom: The Dark Ages Review – Detailed Summary

Introduction

In the May 9, 2025 episode of the Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast, hosts Tim Gettys, Greg “GameOverGreggy” Miller, Blessing Adeoye Jr., and Andy Cortez delve deep into their review of Doom: The Dark Ages. Skipping the usual advertisements and introductory banter, the conversation centers on the latest installment in the iconic first-person shooter franchise, exploring its gameplay mechanics, visual and audio design, difficulty settings, and overall impact within the gaming landscape.

Overview of Doom: The Dark Ages

Doom: The Dark Ages serves as a prequel to the critically acclaimed Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal (2020). It reimagines the Doom Slayer in a medieval war against Hell, utilizing the advanced ID Tech 8 engine to deliver an intense, action-packed experience. The game currently boasts an impressive 85 on Metacritic, positioning it as a strong entry in the series.

Hosts' Reviews

• Greg Miller
  Greg praises the game for its "comforting" return to a more grounded Doom Slayer, focusing on heavy combat without the complex parkour elements introduced in Doom Eternal. He appreciates the streamlined systems for health and ammo, stating, "You are able to get health and ammo pretty frequently in this game," which enhances the overall gameplay fluidity (09:00).

• Blessing Adeoye Jr.
  Blessing highlights the game's approachability, noting its balance between depth and accessibility. He mentions, "If you're somebody who's looking for more of that experience, I think it gets the job done in a really good way," giving it an 8.5 out of 10 (10:56). Despite enjoying the gameplay, Blessing criticizes the story, feeling it fails to engage him fully.

• Paris Lily
  Paris offers a slightly higher score of 9, emphasizing the game's visual excellence and replayability. She remarks, "I really liked it... it's a lot of gosh darn fun," appreciating the game's customization options and secret areas that encourage multiple playthroughs (14:08).

• Andy Cortez
  Andy shares his enthusiasm for the game's mechanics and visual fidelity, even though he hasn't completed it yet. He praises the game's support for various difficulty levels and accessibility options, stating, "This is just, let's just give you a sick ass shooter with awesome action," and rates it between 8.5 and 9 (16:35).

Positive Aspects

• Gameplay Mechanics
  The introduction of the shield and parry system is lauded as a significant enhancement, adding strategic depth to combat. Greg notes, "I like the ways in which they're finding ways to make it slightly different," while Blessing appreciates the shield's functionality in enemy management (43:32).

• Visuals and Technology
  The use of ID Tech 8 brings stunning visuals, with advanced lighting and detailed environments. Paris emphasizes the game's visual appeal on PC, especially with high-end setups: "Playing that thing at 4K... it's nuts" (52:35). Greg further compliments the seamless transitions in cutscenes, stating, "This was so flawless from shot to shot" (58:57).

• Weaponry and Upgrades
  Hosts enjoyed the diverse arsenal and the upgrade paths available. Andy highlights the satisfaction of upgrading weapons like the Skull Crusher and plasma guns, enhancing both functionality and fun: "The upgrade I wanted to mention was on the second plasma gun... stunning" (47:54).

Negative Aspects

• Audio Mixing
  A recurring critique is the audio mixing, which several hosts found lacking. Andy expresses frustration, saying, "The audio mixing in this game is real, real bad" (30:01). Both Greg and Blessing agree, noting specific issues with music volume and sound effects overlapping.

• Difficulty Levels
  While Doom: The Dark Ages offers multiple difficulty settings, the hosts feel the default levels are too easy, especially for experienced players. Greg mentions, "On the default difficulty, I'm parrying everything," suggesting that the game may not challenge veterans sufficiently (36:27).

• Story and Narrative
  The narrative depth received mixed reviews. Blessing criticizes the story for being too "in the weeds," making it hard to connect with the game's universe: "It feels like intrusive in some moments" (21:59). Paris echoes this sentiment, finding the story less engaging compared to the core gameplay (21:59).

Comparison to Previous Doom Titles

The hosts draw comparisons to Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal, noting that Doom: The Dark Ages feels like a step back in terms of mobility but succeeds in offering a more tank-like Doom Slayer. Greg reminisces about the "comforting" gameplay of earlier titles, while Andy appreciates the balance between old and new mechanics: "They are still Doom" (24:16).

Weapons and Upgrades

A significant highlight is the game's weapon system, offering various upgrades that cater to different playstyles. Greg praises the Super Shotgun as a "classic" and enjoys experimenting with weapon variants. Blessing and Andy also appreciate the strategic depth provided by weapon upgrades, enhancing combat efficiency and enjoyment (42:07).

Level Design and Map

The level design receives commendation for its intricacy and the inclusion of secret areas that promote exploration. Blessing appreciates the map's improvement over previous titles, allowing for thorough exploration and completion of secrets: "It allows me to upgrade everything and go in there and actually find a lot of secrets" (52:08). However, Greg notes that some segments, like mech and dragon sections, feel overly simplistic compared to the main gameplay (57:31).

Final Ratings and Recommendations

Overall, the hosts recommend Doom: The Dark Ages as a strong addition to the franchise. Paris gives it a 9 out of 10, Blessing an 8.5, Andy between 8.5 and 9, and Greg an 8, collectively acknowledging the game's strengths in gameplay and visuals while addressing areas for improvement in audio and difficulty balancing. They unanimously agree it is an "easy recommendation" for fans of the series and first-person shooters in general.

Future Content and Closing Thoughts

Looking forward, the hosts express excitement for potential post-launch content, such as DLCs and new game modes, drawing parallels to the extensive support Doom Eternal received. They also touch upon the possibility of innovative features like a horde mode, which could further enhance replayability and enjoyment.

Notable Quotes

• Blessing Adeoye Jr. (09:00): "I really, really dug this game. This is probably the best out of the three in terms of the gameplay and the way that it feels."

• Paris Lily (14:08): "I really liked the music in it as well. I think from a visual standpoint it looks fantastic on id take 8."

• Andy Cortez (16:35): "This is just, let's just give you a sick ass shooter with awesome action, with fun mechanics."

• Greg Miller (58:57): "This was so flawless from shot to shot. I was really blown away by the technical level."

Conclusion

The Kinda Funny Gamescast episode provides a comprehensive and insightful review of Doom: The Dark Ages, balancing praise for its engaging gameplay and stunning visuals with constructive criticism on audio mixing and difficulty settings. The hosts' passionate discussions and varied perspectives offer potential players a detailed understanding of what to expect, making it a valuable listen for both longtime fans and newcomers to the Doom series.

Transcript

[Greg Miller]

This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. Not everyone is careful with your personal information, which might explain why there's a victim of Identity theft every five seconds in the U.S. fortunately, there's LifeLock. Lifelock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity. If your identity is stolen, a US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year by visiting lifelock.com podcast terms apply.

[Andy Cortez]

Welcome to the Kind of Funny Games cast for Friday, May 9, 2025. You're probably wondering where Games Daily is.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Whoa, whoa.

[Andy Cortez]

There's not one. There's no news today. I'm Andy Cortez. I'm joined by Blessing Adioia Jr, Roger Perkorny and Paris Lily.

[Greg Miller]

Good day, Andy.

[Andy Cortez]

Good day.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Good day, Andy.

[Greg Miller]

How's it going?

[Andy Cortez]

I'm doing great.

[Paris Lily]

Paris, everyone. I'm good, I'm good. How you doing?

[Andy Cortez]

I'm excited to talk about cool video games with everybody. This is the kind of funny games cast. Each and every weekday we get to talk. Oh. We get together to talk about the biggest reviews, previews and topics in video games live on YouTube, Twitch and podcast services around the globe.

[Greg Miller]

You keep it tight, Andy. Yeah, that's what I like.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Keep it tight, Andy. I mean, I had a whole bit going on. I was excited for it.

[Andy Cortez]

If it's Games Daily, I'll talk to you about volleyball.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, that's true.

[Andy Cortez]

But you know, this is a review. We got important stuff we gotta get to.

[Greg Miller]

Doom the dark Age.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. If you love what we do, support us with a Kind of Funny membership on Patreon, YouTube, Spotify or Apple podcasts to get all of our shows ad free. Watch us record them live and get a daily exclusive show for a chance to be a part of the show. Submit your thoughts and opinions as YouTube super chats as we go. Send in your biggest questions for Doom the dark Ages and we'll try to answer them today. Had the doc wrong. You see that? You see that? Oh, what? No, I'm like, oh, great comment.

[Greg Miller]

I'm like, no, it's a champing mean to Roger. Yeah, there's no reason I'm bet getting all eights and nines and Roger being wrong.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Y' all.

[Greg Miller]

It's funny because usually I'm the butt of that joke.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

No, they now shift blame to me. Now I'm the new guy.

[Greg Miller]

It is always the new guy.

[Andy Cortez]

The roast. The roast, everybody. This is a big, momentous day in Kind of Funny history. Ok? You are about to witness history as Snow Bike Mike, the most athletic person living in his apartment, maybe is embarking on the most daring quest yet with Roger McCorney. Stoneback Mike will be walking a literal marathon step for step with Sam Porter Bridges. A big, big stream today. Roger, do you want to give us a tease at all?

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah. We got a lot of liquids. We got a baby in a jar. We're going to fill it with liquid. We're very excited about this. We're going to be walking again. With every single step that Sam Porter Bridges makes in the game, Snowback Mike will take that same exact step. So we're going to be trying to go the entire weekend.

[Andy Cortez]

How's he doing?

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

So what do you mean? How's he stepping on a treadmill. Got on a treadmill. And we also have, I believe, some type of like climber, like step climber he has. And then also if this treadmill breaks, we will come to your house and take your walking pad at 1am Is.

[Greg Miller]

There a plan for this treadmill after this stream?

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

It is le. So it's going right back there. Yeah. You try to take the treadmill.

[Greg Miller]

I don't want to.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

You're trying. No. So it's very exciting and we're, we're very nervous for Snowbike Mike and his body because he did say that he was supposed to be on this, this podcast today, but he's like, no, I got to stretch. That's a lie. He's not going to stretch. There's no, there's no way he's going to stretch.

[Greg Miller]

He's going to stretch for two hours.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah, there's no shot. So pray for him and watch us live all weekend. Hopefully we're going to try to finish this game by hopefully. Kind of funny. Games daily on Monday.

[Greg Miller]

Beautiful.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

We'll see how this goes.

[Andy Cortez]

Can't wait. Can't wait to see the shenanigans. Tune in live on Twitch. Twitch only, Correct.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yes, Twitch.

[Andy Cortez]

Because of the whole YouTube. You know, if you go longer, you have to create a new event. It's annoying. We're in 11 person business. All about live talkers. Go ahead, Bears.

[Paris Lily]

Yeah, I actually have a little bit of housekeeping. Greg's not. Look, Greg's not here. But Blessing, you are twice now in KFGD. I have caught in strays over some Xbox stuff. YouTube mocked me. Don't think I don't see.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I just want to say that.

[Andy Cortez]

You talking about me? I don't.

[Paris Lily]

No, it's Blessing and Greg. Like the other day.

[Greg Miller]

Andy does the Paris voice too. And he does it actually. Well, that's the problem is that me and Greg do a very bad job of it. So it's funny because we're like, oh, this is a terrible Paris impression. Andy.

[Andy Cortez]

I got the range.

[Greg Miller]

Andy has the range. He can actually get deep.

[Andy Cortez]

Point blank period.

[Paris Lily]

Wow.

[Andy Cortez]

Nailed it. I crushed that one.

[Paris Lily]

Yeah, you actually did.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Has he ever said point blank period? Was that a thing?

[Andy Cortez]

I've heard him say it twice and I was like, that's his thing now to me.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Oh, okay.

[Andy Cortez]

It may not be, but to me it is. Say it twice. We're 11 persons business. All about live talk shows after games. Cast is the third episode of our limited series. This is the Elder Scrolls Online show. Tune into that if you care about game development, if you care about game devs talking about the trials, tribulations, successes, everything that goes into making a video game. And this episode especially is what was cut from the Elder Scrolls Online video game, which that's always my favorite thing to ask devs whenever we talk to them. And it's always kind of a dicey thing because you wrist the devs pissing off fans and stuff like that so.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

They go in depth with it. It's really good.

[Andy Cortez]

I try not to get into hot water there. Remember, if you're a kind of funny member, today's Greg way is Roger with a little daily Doom the Dark Ages journal. Just like Blessing did with his death stranding too.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah, back to back.

[Greg Miller]

Stealing my shine.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah, stealing your shine right here. Yeah. So I think it's 50 minutes or something like that. Every single time I've played the game I pull up my camera and I would just talk about it and how my opinion has changed all the way up until this review.

[Greg Miller]

Can I say that's such a good value?

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

You're on Patreon if you're a kind of funny member. Right. Like two back to back days of hourong unique content of. Yeah, Both me doing the death rating two thing, Roger doing the Doom the Dark Ages thing. That's a lot of content.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

That's what happens when Greg's not here.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Come on, come on, come on, come on.

[Andy Cortez]

Today or thank you to our Patreon producers, Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster and Delaney Twining. Today we're brought to you by Imperial Aura Frames and better help. But we'll tell you about that later. For now let's start with topic of the show. Doom the Dark Ages, a prequel to the Critically acclaimed Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal that tells an epic cinematic story of the Doom Slayer's Rage players will step into the blood stained boots of the Doom Slayer in this never before seen dark and sinister medieval war against hell. I mean it just sets the stage right there. This is the. The sequel or the prequel, but a sequel already sitting at 85 on Metacritic right now. Wow. This is the. Obviously Doom Eternal came out in 2020. In 2020. Kevin, can you bring up the video for our first ever piece of pandemic content? Oh yo, what's up? Welcome to.

[Greg Miller]

Audio only.

[Andy Cortez]

Audio.

[Greg Miller]

We didn't have video for this.

[Andy Cortez]

Didn't have video. We didn't think it was gonna last long.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I also pushed that we could do.

[Greg Miller]

Video and everyone was like, no, it's too much.

[Andy Cortez]

We were like, yeah, we don't need to do that. Don't worry about it. I have the technology.

[Greg Miller]

And they're like, no, no, we won't need that technology.

[Andy Cortez]

This was four years. This was March. This was March 2020.

[Greg Miller]

Just listen to the audio quality though. Like the audio quality is good. I feel like once he added video, they're pulling it off of Discord.

[Andy Cortez]

I'll tell you what, three years in the pandemic, I'm like, our audio quality is still better than all of espn. It's ridiculous. ESPN was like took a long time to catch up.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

But yeah, that's a weird little kind of look back at. Holy. We've been doing this for quite some time. Nick Scarpino was on that review with us. Yep. That's when he was like only 48 or something like that time.

[Greg Miller]

Really, really gotten hired like a couple months before that.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, very.

[Greg Miller]

I remember like I think I over yapped during that review and I remember reading comments being like, bless you gotta let other people talk.

[Andy Cortez]

So Doom eternal was a an 89 on open critic. Doom 2016 and 86 on open critic. And this is the more modernized Doom Doom the Dark ages running on ID Tech 8, the brand new engine that they have over there at id. I'd like to get everybody's kind of quick thoughts, you know, quick little. Just give me a couple sentence summary with your review score. If you've beaten it. How long did it take you? I know that this game is very much a chapter by chapter type game. It tells you how many chapters there are. I'd rather not say how many chapters there are for people that don't know because if you're.

[Greg Miller]

It tells you in the game. It's like you're on this chapter of this many.

[Andy Cortez]

It gives you the actual number. Yeah, I didn't realize that yeah, it actually does.

[Paris Lily]

Yeah, it does.

[Andy Cortez]

All right, well, it my idea. I didn't want to be like, well, we're on chapter, you know, 20 and somebody be like, oh man. That means people saying don't say.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

One person said, don't say it.

[Andy Cortez]

Okay, yeah, just don't say it. Just don't say it. But how long did it take you? If you've beaten it, what did you play on and what score would you give it on? The kind of funny score. Roger, I'll start with you.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Hi. I finished the game, so I won't say the chapter thing. I don't know how many hours. It doesn't say. I was looking at like the chapter ending thing and I don't think it says like how many hours I put into it or whatever.

[Andy Cortez]

But what did you play on PS5?

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Base PS5. And I really, really dug this game. I was a big, huge Fan of Doom 2016. It's one of my favorite video games of all time. Doom Eternal. A little bit of a step back for me. Even though it is a step forward in a lot of ways. It just got a little too complicated with the gameplay. I was managing too many systems, dealing with too many, you know, the ammo, shooting off the top of the one enemy, switching weapons. It was just a lot to. To for me to focus on and I just didn't have as much fun. And also the parkouring of it wasn't necessarily my thing. I had some fun elements with it, but it wasn't my jam. So going into Doom the Dark Ages and stripping all of that back and focusing on the on the ground, Doom Slayer running around and just parrying things. And with the shield, it just, it feels heavier, it feels better and it also feels way more streamline. I'm interested to see what the rest of the Doom community is going to think, especially the Doom Eternal people, because it feels like a step back a little bit because there is no double jump, there is no dash. There is a focus on streamlining the systems. Specifically when it comes to your health and your ammo. You know, you are able to get health and ammo pretty frequently in this game. You don't really have to deal with, you know, the chainsaw or different elements. You can just kind of go in there and, and, you know, beat the game and, and feel like you are constantly getting ammo and replenishing and you don't have to worry about the chainsaw or whatever. With all that aside, I really, really dug this game. This is my, probably the best out of the three in terms of, like, the gameplay and the way that it feels. And this is my perfect middle ground. I don't love the story, though. The story is, like, the big negative that is keeping that from an amazing score. But if I were to give a score right now, I would say it's an eight. Five. Really great blessing.

[Andy Cortez]

Are you a junior for this?

[Greg Miller]

I. There's a comparison I want to make that's going to be a little bit wacky, but stick with me, right?

[Andy Cortez]

I'll stick with you, big bum.

[Greg Miller]

You know, if you know me, you know, I grew up in Illinois, and I remember, like, my first time I had deep dish pizza.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, that was gonna be a Michael Jordan reference.

[Greg Miller]

No, I remember when Michael Jordan. No, I remember my first time I had deep dish pizza because my friend, My best friend Abby at the time, right, her mom made it homemade, and I ate it, and I was like, man, this is some of the best. The best food I've ever had in my life. Deep dish pizza is blowing my mind. And for me, that was doom 2016. Doom 2016 was the first time I had deep dish pizza where I was like, oh, y' all have something here. Oh, this is a magical.

[Andy Cortez]

You're onto something.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

You're onto something.

[Greg Miller]

Like, this is a special experience right here, right? Deep dish pizza for me is something that you cannot have all the time. It is something that I have every once in a while, right? And, like, I remember my second time having deep dish was, like, at Giordano's or whatever, right? And, like, I remember coming. I went to Chicago a few months ago for Magicon with Mike, and me and him went to. I think it was Giordano's that we went to. It was either that or the other spot. Chat. Let me know the other spots in Chicago that you go for deep dish. But it was one of those things where the more I have it, the more I'm like, all right, I love this. It's more deep dish pizza. But it's not as special as that first time for me. And that's kind of where I'm at with Doom the Dark Ages, where, you know, it's been every about four, five years that we're getting a new Doom game now.

[Andy Cortez]

And.

[Greg Miller]

And the formula, the structure, like, the core ideas of it stay the same. And so as I'm playing Doom the Dark Ages, I'm like, oh, this is fun. This is what I want. In a lot of ways, this is comforting. Like, I'm having a really good time with this game. But at the same time, it's not blowing my mind. Like that first time I jumped into Doom 2016, and I was like, oh, you guys, like, you know, redefined what this is in a way that really made me fall in love with Doom, which is kind of crazy when you think about, like, the legacy of Doom and how far back Doom goes. Doom Eternal, like Roger was talking about, right. Added this mobility to it, added the air dash, added these things that had you, like, you know, moving around the map a bit quicker. Doom, the Dark Ages, the thing that it does different is it grounds you a bit more. It turns you into a tank. I like that. One of the first things that happens when you start off the game is that you get dropped from a tall distance, you land, and, like, all of the enemies fucking die around you. Like, you have, like, this shockwave and. And they keep that through the rest of the game, where if you jump from a tall distance and land, like, all the enemies around, all the fodder enemies around, you will die. Like, they really do a good job of characterizing you as. As a tank, right? You have that. You have the shield that you're using to stand your ground in parry. They don't have a dash in this game. They have, like a. An R3 run, which I believe is new for this game. I don't remember that being in Doom.

[Paris Lily]

Right.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

It was not in Doom Eternal.

[Greg Miller]

Exactly. And so, like, I like the ways in which they're finding ways to make it slightly different. But at the end of the day, I think by the time I finished this game, because I beat this game, I don't know if I said that before. By the time I finished it, I was like, all right. I don't know if I'm going to be thinking about this game that heavily toward end of the year or years from now is, like a monumental experience that I had. But if you're somebody who loves Doom, if you're somebody who's looking for more of that experience, I think it gets the job done in a really good way. If I'm giving it a score, I'll give it an 8 out of 10.

[Andy Cortez]

Paris, Lily, what about you?

[Paris Lily]

So, for me, I wasn't necessarily a big Doom guy back in the day, right. So when 2016 and then eternal came in, you know, I gave him a shot. I honestly felt Eternal got a little overly complicated from. From what? From what I wanted from it. Right. So going into Dark Ages and Blessing and Roger have already touched on this, I feel like they streamlined it a lot more And I think the thing that they've done with this is they've made it more welcoming to a more casual audience, to someone that isn't familiar with Doom it. So you can kind of ease your way in. Because I love how you can customize the difficulty in this depending on what it is that you're trying to do. So I just played this on just a standard difficulty. I didn't. I didn't tweak or modify anything beyond that. Oh. And I played this on PC and I actually have no idea how long it took me. I would guess anywhere between 15 to 17 hours, something like that. I really enjoyed it. I really did. I. I felt this being more grounded and. And like you're saying Doom Slayer is more like a tank now instead of trying to have him flip and fly all through the air and do all this crazy stuff is what I wanted from it. I wanted to get a bunch of cool guns, get that freaking shield and just slay demons. And that's what I got to do in it. I enjoyed the music in it as well. I think from a visual standpoint it looks fantastic on id take 8. They really did their thing when it came. This was a lot of fun. To me. The story was a story. Honestly, I'm just killing stuff. It didn't really matter to me about the story, but I really liked it. I'm. I'm gonna go score a little bit higher than the other two. I'm gonna say a nine because I think this is just a first person campaign shooter and that's all it's trying to be. It's not trying to be anything else beyond beyond that. But it's a lot of gosh darn fun. And I also think there's replayability in this believe it or not. Because there all the secret areas and things that you can go back and try and get. Because when you do get to the end of a chapter it gives you the percentage of everything that you've done in that chapter. So that does compel me to want to go back and see if I can 100 everything. Not to mention all the difficulty stuff. So you can ramp up the difficulty in this. And I'm sure we'll get into that as we talk about this more. But I. I can't even imagine what nightmare difficulties like on this thing. So I definitely want to go back and check that out too.

[Greg Miller]

Andy.

[Andy Cortez]

Thanks guys. I don't know you wanted to know my thoughts so much. I have not beaten it. I'm about 13 and a half or 14 hours in something like that. I'm right kind of near the end though. And I love this game. I love that in an era where a lot of studios and publishers are chasing the games as a service thing still, or what's the best way to monetize. Blah, blah, blah. This is just, let's just give you a sick ass shooter with awesome action, with fun mechanics, random boss fights that kind of pop up out of nowhere. They're kind of like, oh, I'm excited to kind of take this on with a lot of different levels of difficulty and customization and I enjoyed that. Whenever I had an issue with something, there was always an accessibility option that allowed me to tweak things while I'm playing the game. I'm trying to play on one of the harder difficulties. I'm getting my ass whooped. I'm always getting shot from angles I can't see and I'm like, man, like I, I, I know I could be better if I just saw where that was coming from. Maybe I could dodge it, jump over the, the projectile or whatever. And then I looked in the accessibility settings and there's an option to turn on like directional wherever you're getting shot from.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Oh, really?

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Oh, that would have changed my life.

[Andy Cortez]

And it made me enjoy the game so much more to know that I'm dealing with this big and I know there's a lot of smaller dudes kind of trying to catch up to me.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

And I, I don't know how close they are though, but those, you know, the directional things really help out a lot. Another thing that I remember when I previewed it and Blessing was watching, we were all watching the trailer and Blessing, one of blessings criticism was that whenever somebody is parry able, they get outlined in a very, very purple bright outline sort of look. And that's obviously good for people who want the big notification, but sometimes it's a little too much of an outline and it's a little too bright and the option is there to turn that off. And I turned that off. And I enjoyed it a lot more as well because you only see the button prompts pop up to go kind of in for the finisher attack. I think this game just, I think this game is like immaculately paced. I, I'm, I'm so blown away by how quickly you're getting in and out of the action and how they're kind of breaking up any sections that may start to feel monotonous. They, I think they do a really good job of kind of ending levels where you think they should end before they kind of go on a little bit too long. Or if you've seen the previews at all, when you ride the dragon or when you do other sections, they. Everything is like just as long as it needs to be, which is I think, awesome, at least in my opinion. That's how I felt. I never felt like any one section kind of dragged on too long. I enjoyed all the weapons, the like. When I previewed it, I wasn't really blown away visually because I think ID tech has always been amazing and they have always looked so far ahead of their time. And so when I played it at the preview event, I was like, I mean it looks awesome, but it doesn't look like what I thought the next generation of ID tech would be. And I was, I was so wrong. I don't know if maybe I guess we were just playing on another build or something, but I played on like the highest settings possible. And the. I was just blown away by all of the lighting details, by all of the breakable objects that are still casting shadows. And the amount of tech going into this really, really blew me away. I love the visuals, I love the lighting and I love the fun of it. I think it's just a straight up fun ass shooter. If you're looking for something to just like turn your mind off and you kind of will because the story is whatever kind of a bummer because during the preview they were really kind of pumped about. Look, you're not just kind of like experiencing things a little vignettes you're getting. We're giving you narrative, we're giving you.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Finding everything through Codex anymore you're going through here. We're actually new cutscenes that are gonna bookend every chapter. We're gonna make this a big thing.

[Andy Cortez]

And they were awesome to look at. They were hype with the content of them were cool. But I didn't care about what the things were being said or the sort of. The attacking is. Yeah, like I just, I loved seeing what was happening because it looked visually impressive and. And I get pumped up whenever the doomsayer is looking at something and throws his arm out and the shield goes to his arm. Like it's just like. It's just stuff to get stupid hype over. But it was nothing that I ever made me go, oh, I wonder what the antagonist is going to do next.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

It's a weird one, right? Because this is. It's a prequel and it feels like it is trying to capture a new audience or people that haven't played the other Doom games, but the story is so in the weeds. Like, you know what I mean? Like. Like there's no. It doesn't feel like from the beginning of it, it's like, here's what's going on. Here's kind of the vibe of all these characters. Kind of feels like you're in this world now and there's no way to jump on to any of it. I. I don't know. Like, I. It's. It did not feel. It felt like intrusive in some moments. Not too obtrusive, right? Because like two minute cutscenes per chapter, you can easily skip those things. But it just felt like a weird choice with what they're going for when it comes to the gameplay and making this such an easy experience for everybody to have. Like this very in the weeds, whatever story. That's. That's so. I'm sure the. The nerds, the really big dudes are going to love this stuff. But for me, I was waiting for the moment of like, oh, everything's going to change. This is going to connect to this thing. And I was like, no. Just by the ending of it, I was like, it's whatever.

[Andy Cortez]

I even had some moments of surprise and shock in Warhammer Space Marine too, where I'm like, whoa, I didn't expect that plot twist. And here I just like, I haven't gotten there yet. I'm not quite done with the game yet. But I still love the cutscenes because I think everything they're doing tech on a technical level is just so freaking impressive. And we don't talk about ID tech 8 and. Or edtech enough. I know like Decim is always the one we always talk about. EdTech is like so efficient and it runs so well and it looks amazing. Go ahead.

[Greg Miller]

Wait, did you play on PC?

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Okay, so that's. Yeah.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Because I was gonna go where you're gonna go.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Because I. I wasn't actually blown away as much. Paris, were you about to say something?

[Paris Lily]

No, no, I was just. I was gonna echo what Andy said because I played on PC as well. And I mean playing at Ultra, when with ray tracing, all the reflections Global Illuminate. I mean it was stunning. Really, really did so. So it is interesting that you on. On console. It wasn't as impressive because I was blown away by decade. I thought it was fantastic.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

It ran really well on a. On a base PS5.

[Greg Miller]

Right.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I mean it runs 60fps, or at least to my eyes. 60fps. It's super smooth. But this is the first time where I played a Doom game or an ID Tech game where I was like, oh, it felt like the entire industry caught up. You know what I mean? Like, they finally caught up to where they are. And now Doom feels good. It looks great. It looks amazing. But, like, it doesn't feel like a standout in the. In the competitor field of everything that's going on. So it didn't look bad at all. But it wasn't like a standout for me where the other Doom games were a standout every single time.

[Greg Miller]

And I mean to compliment it though, right? Like, I think the thing that did stand out to me in terms of what they're doing with the power of the consoles is how much is going on on screen at any time. Like, the amount of enemies that they're throwing at you. This feels like the most enemies that you have on screen out of any Doom game so far, in fact.

[Andy Cortez]

Massive encounters.

[Greg Miller]

Massive encounters. While playing this game. Halfway through, I was like, I got to boot up doom 2016 to compare and contrast. And it was funny because I. I looked it up on my PlayStation and I was like, fuck, I own this game. Physically. Do I still own this game? Like, do I still have the disc? And I went and I dug out my doom 2016 disc, put it in, and like, yeah, it's crazy, the jump in terms of, like, how massive the battles feel this time around versus previous Dooms, which I think really enhances it. And also the level of destruction that you're having on enemies because they. I think they introduced this quite a bit in Doom Eternal as far as how degradation. Yeah. How enemies will degrade as you're shooting them down. And here it's the same thing. One of my favorite enemies was. I forget the name of it, but it was an enemy that would ride around on, like, their mount.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

And I love killing that motherfucker.

[Greg Miller]

You had to take out the guy for, like, you would get essentially two, like, glory kill prompts. Right? One for the guy that's on the mount. Like, halfway through killing him, you would take him out and then it's okay, now you're just fighting the beast and then you have to take out the beast. Like, that type of shit is where this game exceeds, right? And like, I think for me, that's where I come. I come around on, man. For me, this is such good comfort food and it's such good, like, just pure mindless fun.

[Andy Cortez]

I was just smiling, like, the whole time. I just had a great time with it. I don't know if I would give it a score yet. I'd probably like It'd be between 8, 5 and 9 for me because I'm I'm still so blown away by, by the, the fact that I think Roger makes a great point that the industry caught up and that's something that I was always kind of worried about, man. It's been, there have been so many amazing indie games that have come out that look fantastic and play amazing Witchfire. Dude, Witchfire. Even, you know, this Void Breaker demo that I can't freaking wait to come out when Early Access hits. There's so many awesome stuff that indie game, indie devs or you know, I guess still indie devs, but people from certain studios that break off and make their own thing. There's a lot of amazing video games out there and how can this powerhouse still kind of prove to us that no, well we're still doom? Like don't, don't get it mistaken, you know. And I think that they did that and I had so much fun with my time. Yeah, it'd be, it'd be between an 8, 5 and a 9 for now. I, I, once I beat the game, I'll have a better decision there. But I'd love to keep talking about this game a little bit more right after a word from our sponsors.

[Greg Miller]

This episode is brought to you by Imperial. We've told you all how important it is to developers to wishlist games that you're interested in. So if this sounds cool to you, make sure you wishlist it. Imperial is a complex feature rich action RPG where you'll be sent to a planet in a far off corner of the galaxy to explore an imposing monolith. As an elite mercenary, you'll join the expedition tasked with unearthing the secrets of the Monolith and face off against the deadly automatons within. In Imperial, you'll explore four vastly different quadrants of the monolith, accessible only by using mysterious artifacts known as cardigrams. Each cardigram affects which enemies, boss fights and loot will appear when you enter the monolith, so no two excursions will be the same. Find even more cardigrams to explore by looting defeated enemies or buy them from other players online at the Trading Post. Imperial Flag features three weapon archetypes. The fast paced Acrobatic Glaive, the defense focused Mace and Shield, or the devastating Cannon. With a range of customizable skills and abilities that can make short work of the awaiting automatons, your weapons and abilities can be changed before any excursion into a cartogram. So if a loadout isn't working for you, you can mix things up to create the perfect playstyle, help the members of the expedition in deep branching quests, and aid other players in asynchronous multiplayer. Get ready Mercenaries the Monolith Awaits. Imperial is available May 8 on PC Xbox Series X and S and PS5. Wish list now. It helps so much. Wishlist Imperial this episode is brought to.

[Roger McCorney]

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[Andy Cortez]

And we're back to get into the nitty gritty. And there's a lot of things that we can kind of go into right now. And the first thing I want to touch on because I would like to get some of the more negatives out of the way whenever it happens all the time with the gamescast. Man, I love this game. This is an eight. Man, I love this game. This is the n. Easiest recommend, easiest recommendation I can make this year for.

[Greg Miller]

An hour and then we expedition.

[Andy Cortez]

And then we. We sort of on it for a while.

[Greg Miller]

Because on expedition.

[Andy Cortez]

But it comes from love.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

It was just the map. We're talking about the map.

[Greg Miller]

Well, that's. Yeah, you guys.

[Andy Cortez]

It comes from a place of love. You know what I mean? It's like, man, this game could have been perfect if this.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

But also this game is like such. It is such an iterative game, right, that it feels like it is like the, the negatives like pop out because the game is so good. We've talked about it for so much that the negatives pop up. But yes, we should get the negatives out before we start talking about the all positives.

[Andy Cortez]

And you know, I'm kind of worried about even talking about this negative negative because I know that it will really kind of start fires for a lot of people because we know that Mick Gordon and Doom Eternal and that whole issue and him, you know, a lot of drama, a lot of bad stuff, right? And the, the audio in this game and the music in this game. First off, the music kicks ass. I think the audio mixing in this game is real, real bad. And it took every other level. I'm lowering up. I'm raising the volume of the music because it's way too quiet. And, and, and then some of the shooting is like getting cla. It's clashy with each other. It's kind of like, oh, that doesn't sound very good. Like there was a lot of moments where I, I have issues with the audio and, and it again, it feels like I'm trying to start drama. Like, oh, Mick left and now look at the audio.

[Greg Miller]

Like, no, like, I think that's a legitimate critique because I also was missing some of those needle drop moments that you've had out of previous Dooms where I can, I can call out names of songs. Right. BFD BFG division from Doom 2016 is one that I still have on repeat at times. And I don't think I had any moment of, of that from Doom the Dark Ages. In fact, like probably about halfway through or so I was like, fuck it, I'm just gonna put on my own music. Like I'm gonna rock out to my own stuff while playing this game.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. I recommend people, unless patches go through or anything like that, who knows what the, the Day one patches could be. Because I got to assume that they, if you, they have to be aware that it isn't as good as it can be. So I would recommend 100 volume on the music and maybe like 75 or 80 on the sound effects.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I even did that and I just didn't feel like the music was loud enough. Like, and I thought, I thought it was like a revisionist history thing. Right. Because like we think about the music so heavily with Doom. So I went back and I played Doom Eternal. I'm like, no, this is way better. Like the mixing in that game is, is substantially better than in do Dark Ages. So I couldn't find a good middle ground. I played with really nice headphones. I played on my tv, I switched my settings and I just, I couldn't figure it out. Yeah, I, I also don't think the, the music is totally fine.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

But I don't think it has like that replayability as blessing saying like I, I will never listen to this on Spotify when it comes out and that sucks.

[Andy Cortez]

I, I think it could have been. I, I still think the music is awesome though. It's very metal, it's different tempo type. I, I, I loved it and I think it would have been more impactful had it been implemented in a, in a better way. Paris, you, you music. Did you feel at moments like I felt where because they hit you with sort of open roam moments, the natural sort of fading out and fading in of the music when you're starting. Encounters didn't feel so natural in the way that Spider man does it when you're about to start swinging this. It felt kind of lacking for me. What are your thoughts on the audio, Paris?

[Paris Lily]

Yeah, I mean, to that point, I think you're correct. I just think overall I thought the music was fine, I guess, I guess I never looked at it from Roger's point of view. I was like, do I want to replay this on the Spotify playlist? I never thought about that. But I thought in the moment as, as I'm going through the Game. Some of the beats really kept me engaged, you know, as I'm in these battles. But the transition from that, you know, to quieter moments. I think you're kind of spot on about that. That could have been a little better. And it is funny that you say as far as the audio mix goes, because I, because I played with these exact headphones on and I'm like, do.

[Roger McCorney]

I have this pitch too high?

[Paris Lily]

It's like what? You know. So I was kind of messing with that a little bit as well. So maybe to your point after, you know, there might be a day one patch or something might come out later that addresses some of that. But I think people should go in expecting for, for the audio mix to be a little, little pitchy, in my opinion.

[Andy Cortez]

I thought the same thing when I did the preview. Whenever you see a bunch of enemies on the distance and a cool mechanic in this game is obviously you have your sick ass shield. And we'll get into all the mechanics here in a bit. When you heat when you shoot an enemy shield with bullet projectiles and eventually with laser guns, that happens to it. It just happens faster with bullet projectiles. You'll see the heat, the shield start to heat up, turn a really, really bright yellow color. You throw your shield, boom, it pops, it breaks everybody else's shield and you get a lot of armor coming to you. And I wish I could just take the armor sound and lower that down a bit, dude. Because yes, it hits you and chunks like.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I think it's, it's a, it's a console specific issue because if you play on console by default it comes out controller. So I, I interest because I played.

[Greg Miller]

With my pulse headphones so it wasn't coming out of my controller, it was coming out my headphones. And yeah, that sounded.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah. So they need to figure out a slider there because yeah, when I turn it on for the controller, I was like, wow, this is loud. As I need to, I need to put on my headphones.

[Andy Cortez]

I thought those sound effects were a bit overwhelming at moments and I, I hope that they can figure out a better mix because there's a lot of awesome accessibility issues or accessibility settings with gameplay and visuals and all sorts of things like that. And I would love for the audio to have as you know, customize customizable options as you can.

[Greg Miller]

One more talking about it, right? Like this might be a very specific, my setup kind of thing, but I was playing on PS5 with my pulse headphones and when I tell you the intro, like sound stuff for the game like when you first boot up, the game sounds so crunchy in that way. And I don't know if that's a patch. I don't know if that's a. Oh, you just can't listen to it at the volume level that I'm at. But I could see like a lot of this stuff maybe getting fixed.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, I really, really hope so. So that's. Yeah. My biggest issue with this game is the audio. And that's a bummer because it's so important to the Doom experience having that.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

That cutscene start with a. And also anybody all think that the intro music kind of. Did you get the Cyberpunk 2077 vibes? I always kept on expecting to get done.

[Greg Miller]

Welcome to Night City.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, I always kept on waiting for that to pop in. I'd love to talk about weapons and. And how some of them are kind of not necessarily throwbacks, but some of them are more medieval.

[Greg Miller]

Because that's gonna be a positive conversation.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, sure.

[Greg Miller]

One more thing I want to. I want to talk about, which I think might be a little bit mixed to positive is the difficulty. Because, like, I remember in.

[Paris Lily]

Oh, I got some.

[Greg Miller]

I remember in talking about Doom Eternal during our review. One of my bigger critiques was it felt like Doom eternal. The normal difficulty, which I believe has always hurt me plenty, was tuned on the way difficult side. And I remember getting frustrated toward the end being like, I gotta lower this shit down. Like, this game is fucking kicking my ass in the last few levels. I remember that one enemy that just wouldn't die. The fucking. I forget his name.

[Andy Cortez]

But like, we were like, I need.

[Greg Miller]

A parry for you.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

I was like, this guy's all over the place.

[Andy Cortez]

And they were like, we agree.

[Greg Miller]

They were like, we gotta get this guy outta here.

[Andy Cortez]

Let's make a whole game of parries.

[Greg Miller]

Doom, the Dark Ages feels tuned on the opposite direction where for every Doom game I always play on Hurt Me Plenty because I look at that as the default normal difficulty. I was breezing through this game and like, when we talk about the new mechanics being added, right. The big new thing is the Perry and the Shield and stuff. When I tell you the default parry window feels so generous and you can tweak it. They have like a very specific, like, oh, you can go in here and make it smaller. If you play on this higher difficulty, it'll make it smaller, all that stuff. But I found that fascinating that on the default difficulty, that, dude, I'm parrying everything.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I'm knocking everything back for the first Time in my life I played a game on hard. Like I played most of this game, I think from chapter eight to the ending on hard. And I had a great time because of that. Because the first eight chapters I played on regular and I was just man, this is way too easy. I actually went in there and I made the Perry window to the smallest possible. And I still felt it was too easy really. Like I think there is some patch, they even patch the, the version that we're playing with. Because there was some issues with the Harry window. Even after that patch, I was still, I still felt it was too easy. So I think there's going to be some, especially with the audio mixing with this that they're going to start tweaking afterwards to make it right. But the Perry window just never felt perfect. I mean here's the issue. We just finished. I just finished Expedition, right? So Expedition has such a perfect parry window that I'm like, maybe it's just that I don't know.

[Greg Miller]

I also think it's the fact that it's a first person shooter that they're trying to do like a parry with and I think that it was them figuring it out it out a bit. I think overall it's been a, it's. It's a success in the game. Like I grew to really like the parry, especially with how they do it with the different types of projectiles where whenever you see a green projectile or a green melee move from an enemy, those are the ones that you can parry. I think it felt additive to the experience. But yeah, I never felt tuned to like when you're playing a third person action game and the parries feel perfect.

[Andy Cortez]

I think a lot of that has to do with the first person. The perspective of you not exactly knowing in a third person game, you know where that swing is about to hit you. First person might throw off your. Your viewpoint. Paris, what were your thoughts on the diffic difficulty?

[Paris Lily]

Yeah, I definitely want to jump in on that because I, I like I said before I left it all default. I didn't change anything. So I essentially played it on the, the normal difficulty that they wanted you to play on. And to your point, Roger, it was extremely easy until about chapter 12. Yeah, I felt that it got a little more challenging at that point. And then when you get to the end I reflecting and going man, I should have played this on hard. So to that point I do want to go back and start it from the beginning and play it on a harder difficulty. And I am to your with the Pairing. I didn't tweak any of that. I wanted to play it just as it was. That patch did come in. I didn't think it really did anything beyond what I was already doing. So that would be a suggestion I would have for anyone that is a veteran to. To first person shooters. Don't play it on the default difficulty. Ramp it up if you want more of a challenge because you essentially will breeze through about, I don't know, probably three quarters of this game on that difficulty. Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Breeze through the entire game, honestly.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah. And you won't. It won't even be like more of a challenge. I think you'll have a lot more fun, honestly, because then you'll be able to experiment with all the weapons. Because at least for me, those first eight chapters, I was just using one gun and I could have just finished the entire game with that one gun. That's how easy I was using the plasma rifle the entire time.

[Greg Miller]

I mean, there's a lot to talk about, I'm sure, because we can get to the nitty gritty of the combat.

[Andy Cortez]

Now, where weapons are fantastic.

[Greg Miller]

The weapons are fantastic.

[Andy Cortez]

Real quick. I just want to say I played on. I played on Nightmare difficulty, which is the. It seems like there's seven difficulties or eight. I don't know how many.

[Paris Lily]

Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy.

[Andy Cortez]

I'm on because there's Aspiring Slayer. There's hurt me plenty. There's Ultra Violence and then there's Nightmare. I've been playing on Nightmare and it's really challenging and it gets like. And I've been. I've been dying a decent amount ever. Like, I've been using my. My life relics, which is like your kind of immediate resurrection power, which is awesome. Not a power. I just kind of ask you if you want to use them or whatever. But, like, it is a great amount of challenge. And I turned it down to Ultra Violence because I was like, oh, I want to try to beat it before the review. And, you know, there's a lot of moments where I'm right there close to beating a massive boss and you kind of like, do the gamer lean and you kind of get up close, you're like, I'm gonna get your ass. Like, it's. I think it's a. A really. An amazing amount of fun difficulty as opposed to like a frustrating type of difficulty.

[Greg Miller]

I will say I still had plenty of fun playing it on the default difficulty because it was kind of. That turned my brain off. I am taking down everything and this time around, exactly this time around, on default difficulty, they're very generous with resources. I remember in previous Doom games running out of ammo and like, being down to my last couple of guns and being like, all right, like, I have to use this thing right here. To the point of Roger talking about using. Using one gun for most of it. In this time around, I'm late game. I'm just going back and forth between two guns. I got the. Oh, what's the one that crushes the skulls? Is it the Ravager or whatever?

[Andy Cortez]

It's the Skull Crusher, but there's one really awesome thing about this game is there's a lot of weapons and some of the weapons have two variants.

[Greg Miller]

Yes.

[Andy Cortez]

And they switch up. Either this one has less bullet spread, but it does less damage or whatever. Like, they give you kind of two variations and.

[Paris Lily]

And don't forget the upgrades.

[Andy Cortez]

What's up?

[Greg Miller]

Don't forget.

[Paris Lily]

And you can upgrade.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Paris Lily]

And you can. You can do weapons in the shield and all in the melee as well.

[Andy Cortez]

Upgrading the weapons is fantastic. And I've been using the upgraded version of the Skull Crusher that you were talking about, Blessing, because it's a bit of a. A tighter shot window. It isn't as spread out, you know.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. So for me, it was that in the Super Shotgun. And then occasionally I would switch to other weapons just to like, you know, have some fun or I added one upgrade to the rocket launcher that gave it a certain benefit and I wanted to try that out, but for the most part, I'm sticking to those two weapons and I'm having. I mean, Super Shotgun for Doom is such a classic.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Sure.

[Greg Miller]

It's like my old reliable kind of thing.

[Andy Cortez]

And honestly, did you upgrade it to the faster shots?

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Oh, of course.

[Greg Miller]

No. I upgraded that thing all the way as soon as I could, but I'm doing that. I'm like, the. The melee this time around is what gets you ammo from enemies, and it's way more generous than in previous games. Or chainsawing, but, like, you can chainsaw once and it's like a limited resource and so you have to pick and choose when you do that. Here you have three, depending on the melee weapon that you have. You have a certain amount of melees that you can do, but that replenishes fairly generously depending on which one you use. Depending on which one you use. Yeah. And like, I was just getting. I was getting ammo back. Like, I had a rotation of shotgun in the face, melee you one more shotgun, end you with a glory and Then.

[Andy Cortez]

And then shield bash and then throw.

[Greg Miller]

My shield at you. That thing gets stuck in you and like your chest.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

We gotta talk about the shield because. Because to me this is if Mario Odyssey I. That was like my first 3D Mario game that I really got into and I loved and I fell in love with Cappy. I love Cappy so much. Is my favorite game mechanic. I go back and I'm like, I wish I had Cappy. That's what I feel like is gonna happen with Doom. If we take away the shield, I'm gonna be pissed because I can't live. I can't play Doom without this shield. I played a little bit of Doom Eternal. After I finished this game, I was like, man, I just need the shield because it, it changes the way you play this entire game. As. As Blessing alluded to, you can take this shield, you can throw it at an enemy and it stuns them for a very generous amount of time where. So then you can focus in on that. Now you don't have a shield. So now you're, you're. You're vulnerable to a lot of things. But you can go around, you can end that enemy. You can. You can really do a lot of great strategic stuff with it. And it's just fucking badass, dude. It's so cool.

[Paris Lily]

Honestly, it's the Captain America fantasy.

[Andy Cortez]

Yes. I was going to say shout out to Roguelites for I think helping out with a lot of not helping out but just I think getting game developers and creatives more creative with what abilities, how abilities can upgrade and how things can get better and continue to progress. Because I love so much the weapons that I mained were. I mean I come. I'm kind of using a lot but for a while I was like super shoddy all the way. Of course for short for close range type. But then I ended up using the normal shotgun again because I upgraded it to have the three round and then it lies. Lights people on fire while it's doing that. And then the second upgrade for the plasma laser weapon or whatever, the first one you get little. A weaker but a much faster shooting type of Uzi. Just very, very, very fast rapid fire thing. But then you get an upgrade that's a bit more of a medium range. It shoots a little bit slower. But upgrading that one and the lightning or the. The electricity sort of stunning enemies. And then chain lightning to other people was such a freaking blast.

[Greg Miller]

Chain lightning ever get old?

[Andy Cortez]

No, never. It's always the best thing in a game. Yeah.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

What do you think about this game is all the coolest in the world. Chain lightning and has a shield. It has parrying. Like this is just the coolest game ever, dude.

[Andy Cortez]

And then. And then the, the standard like assault rifle, just the. The spike sort of shot thing was just so fun the way it feels. So one thing I loved was whenever there's a large enemy and kind of. I think this game is just like a beautiful symphony of violence because there's so many things you could do together to just have fun. And that's a back of the box quote, right?

[Paris Lily]

Yes, it is.

[Andy Cortez]

I would throw. I would throw my shield at one of the large enemies. And the shield, when it's embedded in an enemy, like Roger was mentioning earlier, they get stunned and they kind of like wait there, right? But then I upgraded my ar. The. I call the ar, but I. I upgraded the AR to. Then when I'm shooting the enemy, it spreads bullets to other enemies around it. And so other enemies are getting hit by the bullets that are also hurting the main dude. And then you could obviously recall the shield. Shield bash. The other weapon I was using quite a bit was the, the.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

The.

[Andy Cortez]

The medium skull crusher one which I was mentioning earlier. That's another like absolute fun weapon that I had a lot of. A lot of fun with. Especially with the larger enemies when there's so much real estate to hit these enemies in and these crush projectiles, you see them kind of perfectly covering the size of the enemy and it's just shredding them down. You're seeing the body parts disfigure. It's amazing.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I love the upgrade on that one because you can upgrade it. So once you're at full like. Because it ramps up like, like a turret, right? So once you get to that full ramp up, then you do extra damage and with like, with then getting the glory kill, then you just get unlimited ammo pretty much. And you're just going. And you just constantly have that right trigger going. It is, is. It is so cool once you can figure out that type of gameplay.

[Andy Cortez]

The upgrade I wanted to mention was on the. The second plasma gun that I really loved. The slower one. Yeah, I love that weapon because of the stunning. Because of everything. But then the highest. I think one of the highest upgrades you get on it. And you find these upgrades either through finding money throughout the world or secret areas where you get these rubies the ruby size of a tangerine. I have to say that every time, every time I get a ruby.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Where's that from?

[Andy Cortez]

Michael Kane? But like what movies? Dark Knight, he found a ruby.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Come on. Jesus.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

You don't know. He just didn't know.

[Greg Miller]

I mean, I love the dark. Where was the ruby?

[Andy Cortez]

Where you find the ruby.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I saw that too. I saw that moment of him being like, yeah, yeah. Like, I don't want to trust him.

[Andy Cortez]

You know, he's not gonna lie to me. He's not gonna lie.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

There's the monologue about. About the crazy. What was it?

[Paris Lily]

The.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, the little kid. The village burned down.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

The whole village or whatever.

[Andy Cortez]

Little joker.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

He did actual ruby in the movie.

[Andy Cortez]

He did it again.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

There was never a ruby.

[Greg Miller]

Dark Knight, was that not right? Was that Rises?

[Andy Cortez]

It was Dark Knight. Yeah. He talk about the Joker, Essentially about the Joker, how, like, this one guy was stealing. He was stealing from everybody and never to use it just because of chaos. And he was just like, some people.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Want to watch the world.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, yeah, okay.

[Greg Miller]

I remember that one.

[Andy Cortez]

Just want to watch the welfare the other. So I upgraded that one all the way. And as you're shooting people, it shoots faster, gets stronger, and then it starts dropping health.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Oh, yes.

[Andy Cortez]

And it was called, like, the vampiric whatever. And that's like, I love vampiric type shit in ability, in games, whenever you're leeching life off of people. So that ability felt so much freaking fun. Paris, what were the weapons that you felt yourself kind of?

[Paris Lily]

I. I was leaning towards the plasma like you were, but I love the super shotgun and I love the shredder. Those were probably my go to's that I was constantly going to. Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Was that the shredder's the ar. Right. Huh?

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Okay, gotcha.

[Paris Lily]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

And then.

[Paris Lily]

Yeah, actually, I think that's exactly what you talked about as far as the upgrade, because you have that upgrade where it will spread. Spread out the. The bullets to other ones. And then the plasma had one where it. I think that was. Yeah, it was a plasma where it would take out everyone's shield immediately.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yes.

[Paris Lily]

When you hit an enemy. Yeah. So, I mean. Yeah, I freaking loved it. It absolutely loved it.

[Andy Cortez]

Also, the shield has its own upgrade path that you kind of unlock later on. And really cool stuff there that I'm not sure what I'd love to find out what the numbers are, the numbers differences as far as what damage they do to actual things. And you know what the best min max is or whatever. But I kind of just went for whatever shield upgrade I thought looked the coolest same. And one of them that you eventually unlock if you parry a projectile, your little shoulder turret yeah. Pops up and just starts.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Oh, I didn't like that one. Just because I felt like it was just like tickling them. Like, you know what I mean? I didn't feel like I was doing anything. Well, that's like, I'm not doing this well.

[Andy Cortez]

And that's not the one I used. I used the one with like the.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

The spirit birds or whatever, the. Yeah. Like these magical sort of things. Paris, how did you upgrade your shield?

[Paris Lily]

What did I do exactly?

[Andy Cortez]

Because one of them. One of them, when you parry, you kind of set a trail of fire on the ground.

[Greg Miller]

All the runes.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah, Yeah.

[Paris Lily]

I don't remember you. I don't remember.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Oh, my God.

[Paris Lily]

I don't remember.

[Andy Cortez]

He was just so interested. I don't remember because I was. Because.

[Paris Lily]

Well, no, because part of. With the upgrades I kept putting into the weapons. Yeah, more so than. Than the shield. I was trying to think. I did it twice with the shield. Shit. I can't remember. Can I fire it up right now and tell you?

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Well, we should talk about the upgrades in terms of how it is presented to you. Right. In eternal, you're just kind of finding these things and you can upgrade a certain weapon. In this one, it is based on exploring the levels and finding coins, finding rubies, finding. What was it the other one, the.

[Andy Cortez]

Weird purple crystal sapphire Wrath gem or something like that.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

And they have like so gold you can find anywhere. And then the rubies and then the Wrath Gem that is based on finding.

[Andy Cortez]

Puzzles a lot more secretive.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

A lot more secretive stuff. I was negative on that at first because I was like, I just want to fucking upgrade my gun. I want to fucking go from here to here. I don't want to do this. But then I open up the map and I was like, oh, they just show me where all this is. Which I did not tell Blessing about that. He's like, there's a map. Because I've never opened a map in a Doom game. I just go from one place to another, just fucking end it. But for here I was, I was 100 percenting levels. Like, I was actually going in there. Actually, no 98 percenting levels because I would always forget one fucking gold piece. And they count that towards that. But whatever.

[Andy Cortez]

The. The. The map way more improved this time around.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Way more improved.

[Andy Cortez]

It's not just really hard to look at hologram thing where you're like, what. What floor am I on? Like, you know, in. In it. I forget if it was eternal or the first or doom 2016 that used that sort of hologram look, which aesthetically looked awesome. But it was really hard to tell what, like the maps would.

[Paris Lily]

The.

[Andy Cortez]

The floors would be kind of overlaid on each other, and it was really kind of hard to. To grasp what the hell was going on. But they made it a bit. It easier with kind of opaque floors and letting you know.

[Greg Miller]

I did think it was flat level design this time around.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Well, yeah, because there's no verticality.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. Yeah. I did think it was kind of weird, though, that they showed you where the secrets were. Yes. I don't love that it's a little weird.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

But for me, I was. I was cool with it because then it allows me to upgrade everything and go in there and actually find a lot of secrets that I wouldn't have found otherwise. And really cool stuff, like, really cool secrets here. Really cool level design, especially towards the ending of the game when there's this one, which I'm not gonna spoil where it is or how it happens, but there's this one where it's like. Because usually you go to find a secret level and it's just one ruby or whatever, Right? There's this one that kind of follows the entire map and it's like four to five different secrets all in one. It feels like a huge chunk of the game. Like, it feels like it's like a main path, but it's not. It's one long, secret path. Really cool stuff, the way they ramp it up.

[Greg Miller]

The one that I liked and I wasn't expecting was there was like a ruby that was behind a wall that I could see, and I just had to, like, go around and get it. And I went around and, like, looked for it. I'm like, oh, where'd it go? I thought it was in this room. And I come out of this room and like, they do like a trippy thing of, oh, you're not where you thought you were. Now it's a combat challenge.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

We're throwing 100 enemies and they do awesome. They also do a fun one where you throw a shield at certain things where, like the shield, like, almost like Kratos when he throws it at, like the. The ice thing where it, like, locks the door. You have to throw it there and it opens up a gate. But you can't take back the shield because then it'll close the gate. So you throw it there and then you go around the corner. Oh, there's a million enemies now. You got to fight them without the shield. I wish they did a little bit more of that because that would have been like A nice way to like actually in the main game, switch it up, but that like, things like that add to the experience. So I'm, I'm actually very happy they did upgrades like this because this game is a very short game in the grand scheme of things, like 13, 12 to 13 hours. I feel like you can mainline this.

[Greg Miller]

Game 12, 13 hours.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I feel like if you're playing on easy or whatever, like, or, or regular, I feel like you can mainline this game without doing any secrets in a very short amount of time. So forcing you to kind of go outside the boundaries and find the secrets is very important for the length of this game and really understanding the whole depth of it.

[Andy Cortez]

Chad, I'd love to y' all for y' all to prep your super chats while we ask Paris what, what were we asking first about the shield?

[Paris Lily]

I recorded all, I recorded all my gameplay. So I was like, let me go.

[Andy Cortez]

Back and find that's right where I.

[Paris Lily]

Was actually doing upgrade. So the last upgrade I did on the shield was the power surge where you throw the shield and it'll cause it to bounce around and hit a bunch of different enemies. That was the last one I did. Everything else I was putting into weapons.

[Andy Cortez]

Captain America vibes right there I love.

[Greg Miller]

Again because of the amount of enemies they throw into a lot of the combat encounters. I love the ways in which they let you take care of a lot of them at once. Like, I mean talking about the shield, we might have mentioned this before, but I know we mentioned the plasma thing of if you have enemies with plasma shields, there's plasma weapons that'll overload the shields and those will explode in their faces. They also for the metal shields, if you do enough damage to them, they'll then blink red and if you throw your shield at them like fucking explodes everybody.

[Andy Cortez]

That's where you get the loud ass armor.

[Greg Miller]

And that was always satisfying to me.

[Andy Cortez]

Always great. The also the shield Bash, which is if you're playing on PC, if you're black blocking with your right click then you left click and you just very, you just auto zip towards somebody and then that causes a massive sort of, you know, big sort of area of effect blast killing a lot of the fodder enemies. And those are essentially your reloads to get more armor, more ammo, more health, you know.

[Greg Miller]

And I, I, there are times while playing this game that I missed the dash, like the air dash from Doom Eternal, except for when I was reminded that I could do that. The shield Bash kind of functions at that as that a Little bit. Like, if you just see an enemy from far away and you want to get to them fast, like, it works from quite a bit of distance of L2 to lock onto them. R2, and then you shield bash right towards them. I thought that was a really great mechanic.

[Andy Cortez]

I do wish there was some sort of just dodge, especially with the parries.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Like, yes, I need a little. Because, like, there's some moments where you're. You're dot. You're doing one Perry, and then the other parry is over there, and you have to kind of run to it. It just. I want just a little bit of a side dash.

[Andy Cortez]

It felt like I'm kind of with. With how some of the projectiles work. Enemies will shoot out, you know, three red blasts with one green in the middle. Right. But sometimes. But sometimes they are connected by a red gate of damage that will hurt you if you hit it. So you can't just stand in between these shots. So sometimes the green one will be on the very far right.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

With a big gate. And then you parry that one, and then the next wave, it'll be on the far left.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

And it feels. It did feel cool to, like, start to sprint to get over there. And I think the window is large enough and generous enough to where you can parry it just. I would have felt mechanically cooler to be like, dodge left.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I think that's why the pair.

[Paris Lily]

Now, remember. Yeah, you can dodge when you're on the dragon.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

We got to talk about that.

[Greg Miller]

The dragon segments and the mech segments. For me, left more to be desired.

[Andy Cortez]

Sure.

[Greg Miller]

I was not looking forward to it. Yeah. When I. Whenever those segments start, I'm like, all right, I guess I gotta get in the mech. The mech felt like I was, like, playing. I want to say it felt like playing punch out, even though mechanically it's not right. Like, it just felt like I was this heavy. All right. R2, R2. R2 or. Yeah, Dodge. R2, R2, R2. All right, now he's down. Now on to the next one kind of thing.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

It is a very overly simplistic game design. Right. Especially with the. With the dragon and the. The mech. And it's. It's very weird because they're trying to break up the gameplay. Right. They don't want it to be boring. But I honestly, I want all doom stuff. Like, I just want to play as the Doom. The Doom Slayer, the Doom guy running around, shooting things because there is so much depth to that gameplay. And then when you take me out of it, you're like, okay, here's a cool moment where you're in a mech. Okay, that's awesome. But then the gameplay is literally just right trigger, right trigger, right trigger, dodge. It really stands out in comparison to the main game, which is. Has so much depth, has so much fun there when you're just doing the most baseline stuff. But. But I will say it's. There's not much of it, though. Yeah, there's not much of it in this game.

[Andy Cortez]

That's where I'm at. I think that they are. I think that they are short segment. I think the segments are short enough to where the. Yeah, the gameplay is kind of basic, but for me it's more of the. It's more of the scale of stuff that's happening. I'm kind of more into the visuals and what's being pulled off technically because I just loved seeing the little tiny tanks down there and then these big enemies that are being. Take that.

[Greg Miller]

I've.

[Andy Cortez]

That I've seen from the ground level.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Out fighting in the distance. Which is always cool as whenever they. You're just kind of running through these open levels. But then you see a gigantic mech and a gigantic demon fighting each other. It's some of the coolest visuals you'll ever see. Yeah. Yeah. Visually incredible. One thing I wanted to bring up, and I think it's one. I think it's an easy thing to miss, but once you'll. Once you notice it, I think you will have a really great appreciation for it. Especially if I don't know how the experience is on console. But on PC, when you're playing the game and then the cutscene happens, the tech is so. The. The technical team there. They were so fucking flawless with going from shot to shot without the load in or pop in. And that almost never happens in video games. When you're watching a cutscene and Doomsday is walking and then it cuts to somebody else yelling at him. When that cut happens, you always see hair load in or people load. You know, like there's always some sort of visual judder that you just kind of expect from modern game engines. This was so flawless from shot to shot. I was. And you could tell it was like a big point of, like that they wanted to nail that because they really did. And I thought I was just always blown away by. Man, that's so cool. Because you just kind of expect that with games nowadays that cuts to the next shot and, you know, the dress will kind of like fall down because of the. The. The Physics. Have to load in or whatever. I don't. I was just really blown away by that on technical level. Like to read some super chats and then we can also talk about some other stuff after that. We're running a little bit long, but we got a. I guess there's really only bosses and stuff. There's not a whole lot else we can really go into, but I'll read some super chats for the time being. We have a super chat from IC Wiener.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, oh.

[Andy Cortez]

Two dollar super chat. Ask. Can we get a quick soundbike mic review? You got the tweeter in blue sky.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

He was streaming for 72 hours.

[Greg Miller]

He did finish the game.

[Andy Cortez]

Shinobi 3000.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Something to point out.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. Yesterday he was like, andy, can you take the hosting spot spot for me tomorrow? I was like, okay.

[Greg Miller]

I looked at him, I was like, mike, you beat the game though, right?

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I got a stretch. I gotta stretch.

[Greg Miller]

You're the first one of us to beat the game.

[Andy Cortez]

Shinobi3005 with a $2 super chat says, let IDSOFT take a crack at a Halo game. Oh, God damn.

[Greg Miller]

I was thinking about this. Not this specifically, but just how good Doom is from a quality perspective of just like moving around in the world and feeling like, man, there's no other shooter that's like this. Like, there's something about, like, how grounded and how, like, there's a feel to Doom that. That has been replicated as well. And like, I would be fascinated to see how they interpret. How they interpret Halo crossover game.

[Paris Lily]

You know, it's. It's funny to bring up Halo because they've already committed to Unreal 5, but it almost seems like Halo would be great in. In this ID tech engine. But I guess. I guess we'll never know with all.

[Andy Cortez]

The physics and all the breakable things, like, ah, it'd be a freaking blast. We also have a super chat from Justin Madison who says ITsoft should work with Meshuggah on music and audio. Meshuga's a metal band. I thought the music was, again, awesome. It just wasn't implemented in a way that made it super memorable for me.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Sure. Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Cody bishop with a $2 super chat says Quake next time for Action Space Sci Fi.

[Greg Miller]

That was another thing I was thinking about is like, what is the feature for ID software? Do you get another Doom? I. I think they've done a good job of like, doing those incremental. All right, this is what we're doing. This is the direction we're taking this. All right. Doom The Dark Ages is going to be a bit more tanky and not as mobile as the previous one. I wonder if it's time for either. All right, let's take a break for one game and do a quake or do something else or do a new IP or if it's time to like redefine Doom. One of the conversations I was having back in the. In the office with Mike the other day was like. Like could you find a new either not genre but I guess a new format. Like I think Roger was talking about like, like doing the S Rank type stuff with the action and I was talking to Mike about like what if they went returnal with it and like made more of a bullet hole, like Roguelite style Doom thing. Obviously these are dreams and hopes. Like I don't know if they'll actually do that kind of thing, but could be an interesting.

[Andy Cortez]

That would be incredible.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, it could be interesting.

[Andy Cortez]

Lane Blessed. Did you play on PS5 Pro?

[Greg Miller]

No, I don't have a PS5 Pro. I just played. Played on bass.

[Paris Lily]

Yeah, I was going to answer that.

[Andy Cortez]

That was a question from Mark. Two dollar Super Chat. We have a two dollar super chat from Demon Hacker says this not competing with Blueprint. It was. It says BP. I was like Black Panther, Xbox 33 and. And Death Stranding 2 for goatee. No, but it, you know, it might be a contender. Might hit my top 10. I think this year is just so strong. We'll see.

[Paris Lily]

Yeah, I was thinking about this because I was talking with Danny about this yesterday. I don't. This year is already so stacked with Game of the Year candidates. I don't think this would make the list. But to your point, maybe the back end of the top 10 just as a standalone campaign, you know, shooter experience. But yeah, this. This is just a crazy year for Game of the Year. So it's going to be tough.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I. I think if they update this with some type of like horde mode because I know that they added a horde mode in Eternal. If they do that here, I could see that being a little bit higher in my top 10.

[Andy Cortez]

I can't read that name. I don't know what it says, but a five dollar Super Chat says one of the handful of people who played 2016 internal on Switch. I loved it. Praying for Switch 2 port with mouse controls and gyro. Oh, I mean that sounds like it can happen for sure. I was always kind of shocked that Doom Dark Ages wasn't announced at the Switch two thing with all the other. Yeah, third party, you know, the little Third party. What's the word? Yeah, No, I was gonna say collage. Oh, montage. Is it one of those odds?

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Hollow Knight was there.

[Andy Cortez]

Hollow Knight was.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

You could do anything, though. Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

The Gamage.

[Andy Cortez]

The Gamage Demon. Hacker asked how the performance was on console, and Blessing and Rogers said they loved it. Yeah, it was awesome.

[Greg Miller]

I mean, it sound. I have to, like. I need you to boot the game up for me on PC so I can look at how it looks.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, my God.

[Greg Miller]

It sounds like it might look better than it does.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Of course.

[Greg Miller]

I mean, of course.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, my gosh.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

I saw Mike playing in X Me. It looked really, really good.

[Andy Cortez]

I played it on. It's also funny, Paris. We were laughing earlier about the difficulty levels that they have and how there's, like, seven of them and they're all kind of named weird things. The same thing for the visuals. I think high is the third of, like, seven or eight visual options. You go, like, low, medium, high, and then, like, horny. And I don't know. Like, it gets. It gets, like. It gets, like, violent. Ultra violent. I forgot what it was, but I had my visual settings on Ultraviolet Violence. It looked freaking incredible. And, yeah, I'm stoked to see how it continues to improve because it wasn't even the most most recent driver. Were you having that issue, Paris, whenever you booted up the game?

[Paris Lily]

I got the latest driver from Nvidia.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, this. Oh, my God.

[Paris Lily]

So. But. But it's funny. When I first started playing, I didn't it. And then when I got the new driver, I did see it. It definitely helped. It definitely improved performance on there. But, yeah, dude, playing that thing at 4K. I mean, I guess I can talk about this now. I was playing RTX 5090 and DLSS4 on balance mode, I guess, but they suggest you play on performance mode. But I was still averaging like, 280 to 300 frames per second. Everything maxed out. Yeah, it's. It's nuts.

[Andy Cortez]

What's up, Les?

[Greg Miller]

I mean, Kevin's out there right now working on my computer, adding in a new gpu. I forget which one, he said, but it's one of the good ones.

[Andy Cortez]

It's one of the good ones.

[Greg Miller]

It's one of the good ones. And so, like, I don't know, my PS5 might be.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

You didn't know how many fans your computer had. I forgot that it overheated. It was incredible.

[Andy Cortez]

All right.

[Greg Miller]

I just. I need somebody to do it for me so I can take it home. Like, I'm not. I'm not Full Greg Miller. But I do have some Greg Miller genes in me when it comes to the PC.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, you definitely do. I remember when we wanted to get you a new process and you're like. But like, I don't use my. I don't lose my info if that happens, right? No, it's on your hard drive.

[Greg Miller]

I'm not going to like lose everything on my computer. You know, like, I got, I got stuff on there, but.

[Andy Cortez]

Any last thoughts on Doom the Dark Ages?

[Paris Lily]

Suggest. I suggest everyone give it a shot. Check it out, play it. I think, I think you have a great time with it. Had a lot of fun.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, it's an easy recommendation, easy pickup.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Had a great time with it. I'm excited to see what they do post launch because Eternal was supported a ton after launch. I know that was the pandemic, but we got two pieces of dlc, we got a bunch of modes. I'm excited to see what that looks like for Doom the Dark Ages.

[Greg Miller]

They did it again. Also, I want to bring in another super chat from Rain and Bishop real quick, who says, do you miss Glory Kills? Do you like the new execution system also? What's up, Paris? Real quick. I think I do miss the Glory Kills. I. That was one of the things that I. When we first saw the trailers, right? It was like the. You kind of go in and melee them to death as opposed to like go in, snap their neck, right? Like take their arm. Fucking shame into the thing. I like Doom 2016 and I had to like double check this because I booted up again, like most of the kills, even for the fodder enemies were like, they had animations to them and I kind of miss those animations. I kind of get why they take them out because there's just a lot more enemies to kill this time around. I think there's a lot more going.

[Andy Cortez]

On, but I think it would break up the combat a lot. So I don't mind them being gone. But I did like that, that if you, if you jump up in the air, a different animation will happen. And that is. I. I think that made. That was enough variety for me because I think early on I had the same thought of like, oh man, those, you know, the Glory Kills got really violent and kind of cool and creative. But then I think after about four hours, like, I'm just seeing the same ones all over again. It is kind of like breaking up the momentum.

[Greg Miller]

I want to see a happy medium because they do have him. When you are facing off against like, like a powered up Enemy like that. Like, if you kill this enemy, your maximum ammo gets increased.

[Andy Cortez]

Those are cool.

[Greg Miller]

And usually those.

[Andy Cortez]

I wish those were like a nemesis system.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Oh, my God.

[Andy Cortez]

That's the call I kept on thinking about. Because they were named enemies. They were the ones on the map that. All right, this is like a special. They're called like leader enemies. They're the leader of this whole crew. You have to kill all of the sort of mini bosses to then be able to face that leader while it's still attacking you. You can't attack after you kill all the mini bosses.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

More mini bosses spawn and you have to kill that person. It's crazy easy.

[Andy Cortez]

And when you do that, you.

[Greg Miller]

You like reach into their chest and grab their heart and then, yeah, they're looking.

[Andy Cortez]

So I kept on wanting him to eat it. I kept on wanting him take a bite. Take a bite of the heart. Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

But I wish there was a bit more. A bit more animations. I understand why there's not an animation for every enemy because I. I think that does get a bit repetitive. But in booting up doom 2016, I was surprised by how quick the glory kills are. Like, it's not like they're five seconds for each of them. Like it is. Go in, snap next neck. Go in, snap neck.

[Andy Cortez]

Right.

[Greg Miller]

Like, they are fairly quick. I would have liked to see just a little bit more.

[Andy Cortez]

I have another super chat from Ghostly Icon who says X cast baby. Off topic. They should really remake Skyrim. Release it a year before Elder Scroll 6 and. No, Andy, I'm not doing mobs. I have no time for that. I need a real release. Mobs.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Andy, stop talking about the mobs.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah. Mafia.

[Andy Cortez]

The old country mods maybe. Oh, like to mod Skyrim maybe because they spelled it mobs.

[Greg Miller]

No, we know, we know they're after you. We know you pissed off.

[Andy Cortez]

I mean. I know what you mean. Yeah. Mods can be a pain in the ass. Whenever I see Skyrim looking amazing, they're like, we have 4, 000 mods in here. Like, ugh. No thank you. Yeah. My final thoughts are the game is easy recommendation. So much freaking fun. Go. I mean, get game pass. Obviously. Massive.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Holy, man. That's insane.

[Paris Lily]

Yeah, it's.

[Andy Cortez]

And I. I just also wanted to shout out the art team because every. Every detail and corner of this world is just so perfectly art directed. There's so many little things that you will see for two seconds. It reminds me of like watching a. A. A studio Ghibli movie.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Where the Most insane painting you've seen is on the screen for two seconds and it's gone forever after that. And there's so many awesome props and like, not, I guess, art designed, but also for like level design purposes. There's a really awesome moment where you're. You're in your big atlin mech and the mech puts his hand on a cliff and suddenly you're out of the mech as the doom guy again and you're running on the arm and it's just like, ah, this looks so good. The. The art team just really, really popped off and yeah, I think this game rocks. Play it if you have time. Play it if you have money. Play it if you have game pass. Easy recommendation. Oh yeah. Everybody, thank you for joining me on this episode of the gamecast. Paris. Where can people find you?

[Paris Lily]

You can find me at Gamertag Radio. You can find me every now and again here right at Kind of funny. And you can find me on my YouTube channel. Don't ask me URL. Because I never remember it's my name. Just look up my name.

[Andy Cortez]

Just look it up. You'll find it. Remember, we talk about the biggest review, reviews, previews and topics of video games live on YouTube, Twitch and podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, please support us with the kind of funny membership on Patreon or YouTube to get all of our shows ad free, watch us record them live and get a daily exclusive show. You can catch the gamescast after this, which is another awesome deep dive into the Elder Scrolls online. Talking about the stuff that they cut from the game, which is going to be super interesting. And then after that, the big death stranding stream where Snowbike Mike and Roger screen cast. After that.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

And. Or. Oh my. Barrett was talking to me about andor last night. Dude, I have no time for this show that I really, really want to watch.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, marathon it.

[Blessing Adioye Jr.]

Dude.

[Greg Miller]

Now that. Now that I'm done with Doom, the darkies. Oh, because I was Gonna finish Expedition 33.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, you should finish. Oh, God, there's too many good things.

[Greg Miller]

A glut of good content out there right now.

[Paris Lily]

Can I make an admission before. Before we leave? I'll say this publicly.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, no, I've.

[Paris Lily]

I've not played Expedition 30.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, no. And the podcast end it.

[Andy Cortez]

I beat it last night for the second time. I was like, God, a. This might be a 10. Actually, I was. I was probably wrong.

[Greg Miller]

Would you give it.

[Andy Cortez]

It is insane to everyone.

[Paris Lily]

Everyone is universally loving this game and I've not played it yet, so I. I gotta find time.

[Andy Cortez]

Thank you so much for watching everybody. We love you all. Take care of yourself, take care of each other and we'll see you on the next Gamescast. And then again, big death stranding stream today where Snow Mike. Mike will be on a marathon walking for however long it takes. 72 hours. Hopefully we'll see you next time gamers, goodbye.