It should almost go without saying now that Doom 2 is all things to all people, in the most literal sense. Thanks to 25 years of evolution in modding tools, it’s Donkey Kong, Resident Evil and even Heroes of Might & Magic now, among other things.

The latest game to be swallowed by the all-consuming vortex of creativity that is the GZDoom-powered mod scene is Quake Champions. The arena FPS reboot may still be in public testing, but it’s already been systematically disassembled, stripped for parts, and launched today as Quake Champions: Doom Edition (or QC:DE for short), a mod for possibly the most enduring game in PC history.

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We’ve previously covered Quake mega-mod Arcane Dimensions, which has become a cornerstone of modern Quake mapping thanks to its slew of new gameplay features, enemy types and weapons going a long way to refresh the formula of Id’s cyber-gothic classic without diluting its breakneck pacing and drum-tight combat loops.

Xmas Jam: 1024^3 is the latest group project to come from the quietly industrious func_msgboard mapping community. Built using Arcane Dimensions’ bag of tricks, it offers 11 new levels from 11 different creators, all adhering to a single restriction: the level must fit (roughly) within a tiny space, 1024 Quake map units cubed, approximately three seconds travel time across.

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Sitting at the intersection of several of my interests is Ghosts I-IV for Quake, a new mod which turns id Software’s gibtastic first-person shooter into a quiet walking simulator and couples it with a calmer soundtrack. While Quake’s original 1996 soundtrack is an industrial dirge by the popular beat combo Trent Reznor & The Nine Inchnails, this mod replaces it with tunes from their chilled-out 2008 album Ghosts I-IV – which is legally fine to include, thanks to its Creative Commons licensing. The mod is organised by JP LeBreton, a designer and level designer who worked on the first two BioShock games and has developed quite an interest in peacefully exploring seminal FPSs. (more…)

There are more wonderful games being released on PC each month than ever before. In such a time of plenty, it’s important that you spend your time as wisely as possible. Thankfully, we’re here to help. What follows are our picks for the best PC games ever made. (more…)

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

I wrote about this stonkingly beautiful and enormous mega-mod for the original Quake last year, recommending that y’all should play it, but it didn’t quite turn out as planned when fans and creators alike (politely) argued that the screenshots I’d used did not suitably sell the game. So, here are some screenshots of Arcane Dimension which hopefully will> convince you to give it a try. You really should, because it’s the next best (or maybe even better?) thing to getting a whole new Quake.

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My wishlist for first-person shooters is simple:

• A pump-action shotgun
• A revolver that’s longer than my forearm and chunkier than a fridge
• A slow but deadly and ch-chank-chik bolt-action rifle
• Skillful movement
• A grappling hook
• A slide move (ideally with a kick)

Well, campers, I’m delighted to see that last one in Quake with new mod Qore [official site]. It’s still early days for Qore, which is trying to bring Brutal Doom-style over-the-top megamurder to Quake, but the point is: I slidekicked soldiers and demons in Quake this morning and I’m delighted. (more…)

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

I went to the games shop and stared at the box several times a week for the best part of a year. It was the 90s, I read X-Men comics and watched the X-Men Saturday morning cartoon and> there was a PC in my house. An X-Men FPS was beyond my wildest imaginings. Yet I could not play X-Men: Ravages Of Apocalypse. In fact, I have never> played X-Men: Ravages Of Apocalypse, and because of that it still remains, in my mind, The Greatest Videogame There Ever Was. (more…)

Here they are then – the best games to play in virtual reality…and those games are “watching football,” “drinking”, “a nice cup of tea”, “fleeting emotional connection to another human being” and all those other everyday activities you believe to be real, as opposed than a simulation you have been experiencing since you first plugged your frail, mollusc-like form into a headset 19 years ago. SPOOKS!

But, should you persist in maintaining this fantasy, let’s go one level deeper and talk about the entertaining, satisfying or otherwise nifty games available for what is the current VR state-of-the-art in your imagined world: the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. The rival headsets are getting on for a couple of years old now, and in that time there’s been what can feel like a ceaseless storm of new games for them. How to choose, how to choose? Well, start here. These are not the only> good’uns, please understand – but they are our favourite virtual realities right now.

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Strafe [official site] is steeped in love for Quake 1 & 2 (and to a lesser extent the original Doom), there’s no question about that. But it’s also saddled with a desperate desire to evoke retro-cool no matter the cost, clad as it is in ironic faux-’90s videogame advertising terminology, lascivious talk of gore and a widdly-widdly-woo soundtrack. Strafe tries far too hard, and it backfires. Strafe is a deeply> dorky videogame. I quite like it anyway. … [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.

… [visit site to read more]