… [visit site to read more]

There are few constants in videogames quite like the original Doom (or Doom 2, if we re being picky) – a grand leap forward in FPS design that has somehow remained timeless and enduring even in the face of countless successors. Quake, Call of Duty, sequels and even full reboots have come and gone, but the original 90s Doom still stands strong, scaleable, adaptable and eternally self-reinventing.

Between countless engine upgrades thanks to Id generously releasing the source code and a seemingly endless stream of mod and level releases thanks in part to continually updated tools, the original Doom (and its engine-sharing derivatives) still boast one of the most active mod scenes out there, and one mod in particular has risen to such ubiquity that it has spawned a whole parallel mod scene of its own; the splatteriffic Brutal Doom. … [visit site to read more]

Alec is away this week. I fear that if he can’t find a wifi signal on his travels he might resort to haruspicy to try and find the truths contained within the weekly Steam charts. These round-ups of the ten games with the most cumulative sales over the past week are his obsession and his curse.

This week: while the cat’s away…

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ZeniMax Media have bought Escalation Studios, the texan mob who most recently chipped in on the cracking new Doom. Escalation join a lineup which includes, among others, the Elder Scrolls and Fallout mob of Bethesda, the Dishonored devs Arkane, the Doomlords and Quakers at id Software, nu-Wolfenstein gang MachineGames, Evil Within devs crew Tango Gameworks, and- strewth, that’s quite a stable! ZeniMax don’t mention any particular projects but coo, I wonder what they’re up to. … [visit site to read more]

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

Much of last year s FPS love may have gone to capslocked DOOM but spare a thought for the try-hard, clich -fueled darkness binge that was Doom 3. In 2016 the franchise had become self-aware enough to indulge its overblown past, yet back in 2004 the bad penny still hadn t dropped. There were experiments gone wrong, there were zombies, there were messages on the walls written in blood. I have mixed feelings about it all. … [visit site to read more]

So often the bleeding edge of games tech, yet so often fundamentally the same underneath: there’s a reason we can’t get enough of pretend shooting pretend people in their pretend faces. It is a pure test of skill and reflex, a game about movement at least as much as it is about violence, and done right it is absolutely delightful>. And hey, sometimes you get a decent gimmick or story thrown into the mix.

These are our favourite 50 first-person shooters on PC, from 1993-2017. Your favourite is at number 51.

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Out with the old, in with the new. By which I mean ‘and our weekly Steam Charts, showing the ten games which sold best over the previous week, returns – replete with most of the same names as last year.’

SHOULD AULD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT AND NEVER BROUGHT TO MIND?

Welcome back. … [visit site to read more]

The third and final multiplayer DLC for D44m [official site], one of our favourite games of 2016, is now out. The ‘Bloodfall’ DLC adds the usual assortment of new equipment, a new playable demon, and new maps including one which looks awesomely like a world of ribs, guts, teeth and pus. Publishers Bethesda are still keeping mum about potential singleplayer add-ons, which does leave me hopeful that some sort of standalone expansion may be brewing, or at least that id Software won’t go twelve years between Dooms again. Anyway, more about Bloodfall! … [visit site to read more]

SKULLS AND CHAINSAWS AND SHOTGUNS AND HELLFIRE. Day thirteen of The RPS Advent Calendar, which highlights our favourite games of the year, brings…

It’s the year’s second-best Hell, DOOM [official site]!

… [visit site to read more]

DOOM, Skyrim and Fallout have been recreated as Pinball FX2 [official site] tables. Because nobody else at RPS has the flippin’ guts to take on such a massive task, I’ve spent a couple of hours with each, and have now judged them. Short version, I like them about as much as I like the games they’re based on, which means one is great, and the other two are a bit of a ballache. To find out precisely what I mean by that, join me below.

… [visit site to read more]