Review: Fallout

Quite the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. first attempt

The raging dichotomy on the Internet about video games and their film/television series adaptations can be a horrible place to find yourself at two a.m. on a Friday night, but someone’s gotta do it. The thing is, you won’t have too many dissenters when it comes to the recently released Fallout show on Amazon Prime. Sure, you have some folks grumpy about potential retconning to their favorite entry, Fallout: New Vegas (Obsidian), but overall, fans seem pleased. The first two titles in the game series were developed by Black Isle Studios and Interplay Entertainment, and Bethesda Studios continued with Fallout 3 and 4 (with Obsidian on New Vegas). I never played the first two Fallout games, but I can attest to the rest of them having hefty hundred-plus-hour runtimes (if you like to explore like me). This breadth of content left showmakers with tons of potential inspiration. And boy did they use it. For better or worse.

Let’s get it out of the way: Fallout is a great adaptation of the series. Fans should be excited and generally pleased by the attention to detail paid by Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner, even if not every detail is precise to the world seen in the games. From the choice of soundtrack to costumes and dialogue, everything screams, “I’ve played these games and want to respect the source material.”

There were so many moments throughout the show that made me think, “This is Fallout.” One of my favorites sees a character decapitate another with a ripper (chainsaw sword) to the tune of the Ink Spot’s “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire.” If that isn’t quintessential Fallout, I don't know what is. There were quite a few laugh-out-loud moments that took me by surprise, some at the moment, some after a reflection. Some moments in the show felt like they were left up to the RNG (random number generator) Gods, which was one of the truest reflections of the series. Let me explain. In the games, you’ll frequently come across obstacles in which you can choose an option. Sometimes it’s dialogue, sometimes an action. There’s a percentage of a chance that some of these things will work and quite a bit of a chance that they won’t. While I won’t spoil anything, there were a few moments where I thought something was going to backfire but worked, and something that I thought should work backfired. It pulled me further into the narrative and character predicaments.

The aesthetic of the show is true to its roots, especially the Vaults and its inhabitants. From the Vault-Tec bobbleheads to the political propaganda, from the Nuka-Cola to the Red Rocket gas station, and from the Pip-Boys to the power armor, everything looks fantastic and authentic. Seeing all these things made me want to boot one of the old games back up and return to the wasteland. This applies to the sound effects too. From Codsworth’s line delivery and voiceovers to the sound a stimpak makes, you won’t find yourself wanting for authenticity. Fallout looks and feels just like the games.

Lucy MacLeane, played by Ella Purnell, is your typical do-gooder vault dweller on a mission to save a loved one. She is thrust forth from the safety of Vault 33 and into the dangerous wasteland that was once California. She wears her blue jumper with pride and encounters many obstacles with the naiveté of an ignorant rich person stepping into a slum. The rules are different and she soon learns that, to survive and complete her mission, she has to adapt. Her path repeatedly crosses with two other protagonists throughout her journey, and this is where I had some issues. While the other characters make everything more fun and engaging, their meeting on happenstance is too convenient. One character is in trouble and the other just happens to show up and find them at this particular place in a massive wasteland with no communication beforehand. This happens quite a few times.

There were some slogs in the pacing for me as well. While it seemed true to the games to have nothing going on for a little while, it doesn’t work as well for the show. However, there was a hilarious moment where being bogged down by side quests was referenced. One entire episode (of eight) goes by without showing one of the four major protagonists, which I thought was a poor choice.

One of the four protagonists, Lucy’s brother Norm (Moises Arias), is inside a vault and is trying to discover its secrets. One of the best parts of any Fallout game was discovering what lay inside a vault and what experiment said vault was testing. Watching Norm access terminals and using his intermediate hacking skills was satisfying. It’s unfortunate then that this parallel narrative is left hanging in the balance, despite being one of the most authentic and enjoyable parts of the show. I wanted a more solid conclusion, but they seem to have left it for the next season.

I’ve used the words “authenticity” and “authentic” a few times because I want to reiterate the clear love for the game that I saw throughout much of the show. People in power armor yelling and running for their lives is what I spend half my time in Fallout doing, and they caught that. That armor doesn't make you invincible (but it does help). As a gamer, I loved it.

Then I considered it as a TV viewer. Still good, but there are some awkward dialogue choices that don’t feel natural. The romance doesn't feel great, and some of the things that the characters come across seem even more farfetched than the world would seemingly allow. But then someone gets impaled from a shot to the chest, and the camera pans down to see a baby doll’s leg sticking out. That’s what I’m talking about. That's Fallout.

The dirty word that was once “adaptation” seems to be slipping away into the darkness. With The Super Mario Bros. Movie, The Last of Us, and Castlevania among others, Fallout helps solidify the argument for using video games as a source material. While this initial season leaves a bit to be desired after the climax, it did have me yearning for more. I found that, despite some dragging segments, and that no one was called “smoothskin,” I was happy to watch multiple episodes in a row. When a derivative piece of work rekindles fond memories of your original experience with its source, you’ve done a good job. Now I just have to pretend that the Fallout games don’t exist so I can focus on my backlog.

The Math

Objective Assessment: 7.5/10

Bonus: +1 for authenticity, +1 for gruesome over-the-top violence that the series is known for; +0.5 for the soundtrack.

Penalties: −1 for some pacing issues, −1 for convenient hero happenstance.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

Posted by: Joe DelFranco - Fiction writer and lover of most things video games. On most days you can find him writing at his favorite spot in the little state of Rhode Island.

Microreview [video game]: Wolfenstein: Youngblood by Machine Games and Arkane Studios (developers)

Anemic

Let’s make a recipe to describe Wolfenstein: Youngblood:

Take Wolfenstein: The New Colossus

Chop it in half

Move it along from the 1970’s to the 1980’s

Triple the collectibles

Give it to the people who made Dishonored

Add an extensive weapon mod system

Add two player coop

Add microtransactions

And take out the story

There. That’s about right.

Youngblood is a new non-sequel in the Wolfenstein series, much like The Old Blood wasn’t a sequel to The New Order. It’s smaller in scope, taking only about 10 hours to complete. It’s meant to be played in coop but I played almost the entire game solo. It wasn’t terribly burdensome, though, of course, the AI wasn’t quite as useful as a human player.

It plays an awful lot like how I remember The New Colossus playing. Stealth is an option and sneaking around to silently murder Nazis is extremely satisfying. But, more often than not, you’re going to get caught and have to shoot your way out of an area. All of the weapons have that signature Machine Games look and feel. They sound great, they look great, and they’re very effective! Except that Youngblood added a layer of armor to almost every enemy. Some armor is broken with the shotgun and submachine gun (squishier targets), but most armor is broken with heavier stuff, the assault rifle and pistol. At first, I was annoyed by this system, and it never quite felt great against big enemies, but it does force you to use different weapons in different situations. My biggest problem with it is that there are more weapons for squishy targets than armored targets, but there seemed to be more armored enemies than squishy, so I didn’t get to have as much fun with every weapon.

The structure of the game is very reminiscent of Dishonored. There are a small handful of mission areas, and the bulk of the early game is visiting these areas repeatedly to complete short-ish tasks. For example, you’ll go in to one area, make your way to the mechanic’s garage, find an item or kill a particular enemy, and then you can either pick a new mission in that area and do it, or go back to the hub safe area. The result is that a bulk of the game is doing small missions in the same areas repeatedly. There were four major assaults on Nazi strongholds, and those were the big missions. Still not a whole lot of narrative to them, and once I completed them, I was handed another small mission to go back to them. Even the big mission areas get reused. The New Colossus did this too (sending you back to maps you’ve already finished to get more XP or currency), but it was a much bigger game.

The two places where the game fails is in the narrative and failing to exploit the setting. There’s a lengthy cutscene at the start, a lengthy cutscene after you finish three of the five major missions, and a short cutscene after you beat the boss. That’s it. In between, there isn’t a whole lot of motivating narrative to the little missions you’re doing before taking on Nazi strongholds. This is a fairly sharp contrast to The New Order and The New Colossus, both of which were rather competent in their storytelling. It’s particularly painful to have such an uncompelling and absentee antagonist when those prior games had great (well-written but awful) antagonists.

It’s also nominally in the 80’s. I don’t expect it to be all shopping malls and aerobics and new wave, but you can’t just throw around some 3D glasses, VHS tapes, and cassettes as collectibles to make it 80’s enough. The 1980’s in Nazi-occupied Paris should be absolutely fascinating, but instead it’s indistinguishable from any other game depicting a fascist occupation. Rubble, concrete, big Nazi robots. There’s not even radios playing the fascist pop music they made for this game. You only get to listen to it by finding the cassette collectibles and listening to them in a menu. This doesn’t fly for a coop game. Give me a Walkman!

Now let’s get to the ugly. Microtransactions. There are two currencies in game: silver coins, and gold bars. You can find silver coins all over the place in small quantities. You get silver coins for finishing missions. You have to purchase gold bars for cash. Silver coins are what you use to upgrade and modify your weapons, but all the cosmetics in the game (weapon and player skins) can also be purchased for silver coins or gold bars. There’s no lack of silver coins in the game, but for practical purposes, you’re going to spend those on your weapons, not looking good. I know this is a coop game and you can show off your good looks for strangers, but I really don’t understand why they jammed in this second currency. It’s not loot boxes, but it’s greedy and needless.

If I sound down on Youngblood, it’s because I kind of am. It’s the daughters of BJ Blazkowicz fighting Nazis in Paris in the 1980’s, and it’s just okay. This is a concept that could’ve been a full Wolfenstein game rather than a half-step before the next full sequel. I liked it but didn’t love it because I want it to be more than it is.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 the excellent gameplay loop you expect from Machine Games

Penalties: -1 doesn't do anything cool or notable with it's notably cool premise

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10 (an enjoyable experience, but not without its flaws)

***

Reference: Machine Games and Arkane Studios Wolfenstein: Youngblood (Bethesda Softworks, 2019)

POSTED BY: brian, sci-fi/fantasy/video game dork and contributor since 2014

Microreview(?) [video game]: The Elder Scrolls Online by ZeniMax Online Studios (developer)

Endless Boredom

MMORPGs are largely unreviewable. They're designed to endlessly consume your time so they're functionally massive and it's almost impossible for your average game reviewer to experience everything (or even most things) an MMORPG has to offer in a reasonable amount of time. But this is going to be a review because I've seen enough.

In the year 2018, what is an MMORPG? I struggle to call what The Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) is a roleplaying game. While I play a character with a spreadsheet full of statistics and character-defining numbers of my own choosing, I'm not really roleplaying in the traditional sense. The roleplaying I'm doing in ESO is the role I would fit in for some endgame boss fights: tank, healer, or dps. But none of my actions in this game world amount to much. They can't. Everyone's doing the same quests, fighting the same world-threatening evil. Everyone is the only person who can save this world. There's no reasonable narrative explanation for this. I'm saving the world and so is every other person playing this game.

Since I'm not roleplaying, what am I doing? Fighting monsters, crafting, or fishing. That's kind of it. None of them are particularly rewarding or well done either. Combat is hitting my combat skills and waiting until the cooldown is done before I hit them again. To craft, I have to scour the world for materials, then I go to a work bench and hit the "craft item" button a few times and it spits out a thing. Fishing is fishing. It's as simple as tossing your line into some prearranged fishing spots and waiting until something bites.

If I don't sound enthusiastic about any of this, it's because I'm not. Looking back at the time spent, ~40 hours, none of it stands out. I ended up wasting so much time playing ESO because this was a long winter and seasonal depression hit hard. It was sort of comforting to get into ESO and kill an evening doing very little actual gaming. In retrospect, it wasn't a good way to spend my time, but it was all I wanted to do for the month of April. If that’s something you’re looking for, a game to carry you through a seasonal funk, the I guess ESO is one you can count on.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 6/10

Bonuses: +1 it's got a whole lot of opportunities to do what this game offers

Penalties: -2 nothing is all that fun and nothing you do in this game matters

Nerd Coefficient: 5/10 (problematic, but has redeeming qualities)

***

POSTED BY: brian, sci-fi/fantasy/video game dork and contributor since 2014

Reference: ZeniMax Online Studios (developer). The Elder Scrolls Online [Bethesda Softworks, 2014]

Microreview [video game]: Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus by Machine Games (developer)

Let Freedom Ring

Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus is not Wolfenstein: The New Order. That much should be obvious from the title, but I want to make it perfectly clear. If you go into The New Colossus expecting more of the tone or content of The New Order, you will be disappointed. I know this because for the first half of the game, I was disappointed.

The New Colossus picks up immediately after the events of The New Order. You’ve dealt the Nazis a defeat, but not a killing blow, and they’re still in charge. But instead of liberating Europe, you’re moving on to free America. America surrendered after the Nazis dropped an atomic bomb on New York City, so you and your team of misfits are going to start a new American revolution.

I think maybe I have rose-tinted glasses when thinking back to The New Order, because I recall handily beating that game on “I am Death Incarnate” difficulty (the highest you can start with) and loving it. I started The New Colossus the same way and immediately died over and over until I realized that this isn’t fun and dialed the difficulty down to their version of “medium”. Even with the difficulty turned down, the game is still very challenging because you die very quickly if you don’t have armor. Even when you do have armor, there isn’t much indicating you’re being shot or where you’re being shot from until that armor has evaporated, and then you’re essentially done for.

However, the shooting and action does feel great. Enemies visibly react to being shot, weapons all have an appropriate punch to them, and heavy weapons can make you feel invincible. When you’re not sneaking around (which is still an option), you can run, dodge, shoot from cover, and melee, all of the options you want from an solid action game.

Thematically, The New Colossus is about revolution, and not the dour, grim game that The New Order frequently was. It rapidly switches from Nazi oppression and fascism on display to humor and humanity. It’s more rollercoaster than whiplash though, handled in a manner that few games can pull off. It’s a game that will shock you sometimes, but the shocks aren’t meaningless. They serve a purpose.

I’ve heard plenty of other people say that anyone wanting to play Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus should turn the difficulty down to easy and run through it, which I don’t particularly agree with. The action is fun and worth engaging with, even though it does suffer from lack of feedback. And running through the levels to get to the next cutscene neglects the wealth of background information in the well-done collectibles as well as the beautifully designed levels themselves. Maybe take one approach or the other, but play it. It doesn’t quite live up to The New Order, but it’s still an excellent addition to the series.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 If you thought The New Order did some wild stuff, you're in for more surprises.

Penalties: -1 Difficulty spikes and lack of feedback when you're being shot.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10 (well worth your time and attention)

***

POSTED BY: brian, sci-fi/fantasy/video game dork and contributor since 2014

Reference: Machine Games (developer). Wolfenstein 2: The New Colosssus [Bethesda Softworks, 2017]

DYSTOPIAN VISIONS: Dishonored

Dossier: Arkane Studios. Dishonored. [Bethesda Softworks, 2012]

Filetype: Video Game

File Under: Statist Dystopia

Executive Summary: You are Corvo Attano, royal protector, and you've just witnessed your empress murdered by assassins and the heiress kidnapped. You're arrested for her murder and locked in Coldridge Prison. During your interrogation, the Lord Regent reveals that he's framed you for the murder and orchestrated the assassination to further his own agenda. However, before you're execution, you're visted by The Outsider, a mystical being who brands you and grants supernatural powers. Using these powers, and with the support of Loyalists to the heiress, you escape Coldridge Prison and start unraveling the conspiracy and rooting out the corruption the infects the city of Dunwall. Or you can get bloody revenge and murder every single person who ever wronged you, contributing to the rivers of blood that drive an infectious disease that's ravaging the poorer parts of the city.

Dystopian Visions: The world of Dishonored, specifically the city of Dunwall, is a city divided deeply by class. The poor are being wiped out by disease, while the upper classes plot against each other. It's also an industrial world, where whale oil powers everything. This morbid cycle of finding great living things, and literally flaying them alive for the oil that powers everything in the city contributes to the atmosphere of death and decay throughout Dunwall.

Utopian Undercurrents: Dunwall is a city past its prime. The technological advances of the alternate industrial age it exists in are still there, but they're used to suppress underclasses. Parts of the city still reflect the opulence of the peak, and the upper classes are still enjoying the benefits.

Level of Hell: Sixth. You can heal your injuries with a drink if you can afford it, but you'll need those health elixirs whether you're part of the elite or working for one of the many gangs that control the slums.

Legacy: Dishonored took the stealth gameplay of Thief and combined it with the open-ended level design of Deus Ex to create something great. It generally skews towards stealth, no-kill playthroughs or violent, murder-everything playthroughs because it has two endings based on how much murderin' you do, but the gameplay is extremely flexible. It's both an excellent stealth game that nails all of the tools you could want to be sneaky, and a robust action game that gives you dozens of options for killing.

In Retrospect: Dishonored got two pieces of downloadable content that expanded upon the story, which showed the point of view of the Empress's assassins. It also got a recent sequel that received a generally positive if mixed reception. But Dishonored is a fantastic game for all of its world-building. It's beautifully realized in a dark way, and utterly filled with little stories and characters that give it life.

Analytics

For its time: 4/5
Read today: 4/5.
Oppressometer Readout: 8/10.

Holiday Gift Guide: Games (of all types!)

Winter is the perfect time for gaming. It's cold and wet outside. You've got time off for the holidays. Friends and family are around. So get together and enjoy some games of all types! We've got some of the very best here in our Games gift guide. Check them all out, and share the love!


Mike: for the battling wizard in your life

Harry Potter: Battle of Hogwarts
USAOpoly

I had a chance to watch other people play this title at Gen Con this year and it immediately jumped to the top of my most wanted games.  One thing my family enjoys greatly is playing cooperative games.  It is easier for the kids to lose together and it is extremely satisfying to win a game together.  My kids (ages 9 and 6) just finished the fourth book so this game is timely for us. Having said that, I wanted to make sure that I didn't spoil anything for them playing this game.  One thing that is brilliant about this game, is that it is divided up into 7 games, with the cards from those games lining up with the corresponding book. This system also allows the players to decide on what difficulty level to choose.  Much like the books, the game starts off simple and then really ramps up after he who must not be named comes to power.  The game is a deck builder, and games 1-3 almost serve as a tutorial for those who may not be familiar with this style.  More experienced players will want to start at least in game 3, but the way the game is organized it is easy to revert to any previous game depending on who you are playing with.  The components for this game are phenomenal (my son mimics the motions on the spell casting cards) and this is a must buy game for the whole family.

brian: for the demon slayer in your life

Doom
Bethesda Softworks

Doom was my favorite game this year. There were plenty of opportunities for it to go wrong, but it succeeded magnificently in making a new game with respect for the original's legacy. This may be a new game with new mechanics but it's still fast paced action focused on movement and utter demon destruction. The gameplay loop of shooting and executing demons to get health promotes the kind of in-your-face action that was so prevalent in the first two games and has since been discarded by much of the FPS genre. There is no cover in Doom. You will not wait for your health to recharge. You will not pop and stop. You will kill demons. You will make them fear you. You're going to fight like hell.

Shana: for the nostalgic gamer in your life

The Oregon Trail Card Game
Pressman Toy

Okay, full disclosure, I don't actually own The Oregon Trail Card Game but a friend of mine received it for his secret santa and has been sharing how much he is loving it. Now I'm obsessed with getting it for myself and thought others might like to know about it as well. It is for 2-6 players and a full play through will take about 30-45 minutes, allowing for multiple attempts to blaze The Oregon Trail successfully in an evening. I adored this game in the computer lab of yesteryear, and I can't wait to enjoy it once again!

Joe: for the person in your life who wants to stab everything

Dishonored 2

Bethesda Softworks

I'll be upfront with this: I neither have played Dishonored 2 nor do I own a PS4. So, why recommend the game for this gift guide? Simply put, playing the original Dishonored earlier this year was one of the most sublime gaming experiences I have had in some time and finding out there was a sequel was almost enough to cause me to buy the next Playstation just to play Dishonored 2. The original is nearly perfect, offering multiple ways to achieve your objectives and I highly recommend you play that, too, but Dishonored offers so much promise and is so good that regardless of whether or not you choose to play the original, Dishonored 2 is an essential game. 

Mike: for the competitive stargazer in your life

Starfall

IDW/Pandasaurus Games

This game had quite a bit of buzz leading up to its release and I am happy to report that the early praise was well deserved.  The mechanics of Starfall are very simple and easy to learn, but the decision making process each turn will hurt your brain in a good way.  Players assume to role of astronomers who are competing over who can identify the most elaborate formations in the night sky.  On your turn you have three options.  You can either add a new sky tile to the board (if there is room), bump the price of a sky tile down, or purchase a sky tile to add to your collection.  You earn various multipliers depending on what is on your sky tile, so it becomes a difficult choice in terms of when to buy.  Players have a fixed amount of money in which to spend and once it is gone it is gone. One of the players who I played with at a launch event described the game as "elegant" and I couldn't agree more.  Easily one of the more mechanically sound games I have ever played and one that is sure to spend a lot of time at the table at my house.

brian: for the adult you want to introduce to games in your life

INSIDE

Playdead

If Doom is the game you get for adults who used to play action-y video games, INSIDE is the game you get for adults who've never played video games. INSIDE's simple controls allow the player to pay attention to the beautifully crafted game world. It's a grim game, but it's impossible to put down once you've started. INSIDE makes one of the best cases for games as art. It tells a story without uttering a single word, and does so in a way that wouldn't have worked as well as a simple movie. What makes it work is that you're a part of it. It's a short experience, but it's powerful and grim and should be played by everyone.

***

POSTED BY: brian, sci-fi/fantasy/video game dork and contributor since 2014

Microreview [video game]: Doom by id Software

Hella Good

It's a little funny that this is the fourth canonical Doom game, yet the second to bear the simple name of Doom. Doom has been in the works as far back as 2008, though it reportedly was scrapped at least once and remade from scratch. Id also lost one of its principal founders, John Carmack, during Doom's development, along with several other key team members. Another warning sign was that there was a poorly received multiplayer beta, and review copies of the game were not made available until the release date. These types of circumstances often lead to Duke Nukem Forever levels of bad video game, so I was absolutely skeptical of Doom. My skepticism was for nothing. Doom is fantastic.

Mars and Hell look pretty good.

Believe it or not, Doom has a story, and it's exactly enough story and of an appropriate tone for a Doom game in 2016. You are Doom Marine (yes, that's one of your names), and you wake up chained to a table in research base on Mars and surrounded by zombie-like monsters. After you bust out of your restraints and kill the demons, you find your armor looking like it's been excavated out of a block of stone. You then learn that Mars is suffering from a demonic invasion and you're the only solution. Kill the forces of Hell and stop the invasion. 

There's a lot conveyed in the first 10 minutes of Doom that set the pace and tone of the entire game. Doom 3 started with upwards of 30 minutes of tension building and place setting. In Doom, you're immediately surrounded by enemies, handed a pistol, and forced to fight. Before the talking head finishes telling you about the demonic invasion, Doom Marine violently shoves the LCD monitor away, breaking it. Then you fight a handful of demons in an enclosed area where you learn about Glory Kills. Glory Kills let you execute a weakened enemy to regain health. You ten find the shotgun, the talking head tells you that everything leading up to the demonic invasion was for the good of humanity while you look down on a mutilated corpse, and then title screen hits. 

Even in 2016, there is no lack of Satanic imagery in Doom.

Like the classic Doom games, Doom is about skilled movement and aggressive action. It is not Call of Duty. Doom Marine can take a lot of punishment and easily dodge around enemy fire. If you're low on health, hiding in a corner will do you no good; there are no regenerating health mechanics. You have to get back in the fight, and violently murder demons with Glory Kills to regain health in combat. Doom also gives a good reason to use the chainsaw in combat. Killing enemies with the chainsaw causes them to pop like a pinata full of ammunition. This is a core gameplay loop of Doom; kill demons to reduce their numbers, Glory Kill them to refill health, chainsaw them to refill ammo. 

It's a little blurry, but yes, I am punching the jaw off of this imp.

It's not perfect, but the problems are fixable. It has bugs. I've experienced more than a couple of crashes to desktop. If you're playing with keyboard and mouse (as you should on PC), you'll find that some of the really good flavor text is unreadable because there's no way to scroll through it. The scroll wheel, which you'd expect to do that, doesn't. It has a multiplayer mode that's fast and fun enough, even if it isn't particularly interesting.

As a single player game though, Doom is incredible. It does what may have seemed impossible; it takes the classic games and gives them a 2016 upgrade. It's undeniably Doom from beginning to end. Where Wolfenstein: The New Order was great for reimagining what Wolfenstein could be in 2014, Doom largely keeps the original's formula and adds some smart modern improvements without harming what made the original games great to begin with. 

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 9/10

Bonuses: +1 fast, brutal action like few games can pull off

Penalties: -1 some minor bugs mar an otherwise great experience

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10 (very high quality/standout in its category)

***

POSTED BY: brian, sci-fi/fantasy/video game dork and contributor since 2014

Reference: id Software. Doom [Bethesda Softworks, 2016]