Tomb Raider (Definitive Edition) video game review (2018)

Here's what you need to know; while on the hunt for the fabled lost kingdom of Yamatai in the Pacific, the Endurance is wrecked in a violent storm. Among the survivors is young archaeologist and adventurer Lara Croft, who now finds herself stranded on a secluded, inhospitable island, one that becomes a living hell for Lara and her friends when they encounter its cultish and murderous inhabitants. But the island is not what it appears, and with escape not being an option, Lara must unravel the mystery of the island and defeat the evil that calls it home.
This is another one of those things I've already done, I reviewed this game back in 2015 before the release of Rise of the Tomb Raider, which I never reviewed because I'm inexcusably lazy, but a handful of factors have brought us back to this point. Probably the stupidest is that I'm not all that proud of my older posts, as I've alluded to many, many times, I wasn't a particularly good, or even decent writer then, and it shows because they read like the work of a high schooler. The more pressing reason however is that Shadow of the Tomb Raider hit shelves just the other week, and I've been binging Tomb Raider ever since, having beat Rise of the Tomb Raider in the week, Shadow of the Tomb Raider on Saturday, and fired up Tomb Raider Definitive Edition and blasted through that in the same day. So let's return to chapter one of what could be one of my favourite video game trilogies as of late, Tomb Raider.

Unlike the movie it inspired, Tomb Raider doesn't have any sort of prologue to set the scene, the game instead throws Lara in at the deep end with the Endurance being torn in half and Lara being dragged away by an unseen assailant. What happens next sets the tone rather aptly; with the dark, claustrophobic environment of the cave, the hellish, oppressive nature of the island with the strung-up bodies and Lara tied up on the ceiling, and the violence and brutality as Lara falls and is impaled on a metal spike. Are you not a fan of graphic imagery, Tomb Raider probably isn't for you, are you a feminist with a stick up their arse about muh representation and muh violence against wahmen, Tomb Raider definitely isn't for you, because Lara Croft is put through some seriously grim shit over the course of the game's campaign, stuff that would make even someone as desensitised as me wince. And that's just the shit she survives, some of the death animations look like they were the work of John Kramer.

This is necessary at first as Lara doesn't start out as a tomb raiding, baddie killing hero, rather she's quite the opposite; she's whiney, scared and completely useless. Lara doesn't land on Yamatai with a small army's worth of firepower and the inner strength to use it, it's the island that forces that out of her, making the horrors she endures necessary for her growth and for her growing on the player, as her transition from frightened, defenceless girl to the most dangerous thing on the island feels earned rather than forced. This sense of earning turns Lara into a genuinely likable character as she starts making decisions and said decisions start having real consequences. But to get there the game goes into some downright uncomfortable territory, which is something I alluded to in my review of the movie; the game deserves its 18 rating, not just in its violence, but in the graphic and disturbing nature of some of its scenes; the metal spike, an attempted rape and the incident with the flaming arrow to name a few. These horrors don't exist simply to be horrific, they're there to build Lara's internal armour, to turn her into a survivor. The horror does start to become a bit much though, sure, scenes like Lara's first kill are disturbing, but by the umpteenth river of dead bodies or mass grave, it does lose its impact. But the horror works when it needs to, and Lara becomes more genuine and compelling as a result.

Tomb Raider nails its lead hero then, which is good, because it falters with its line-up of side characters; let's start with Mathias, the Solarii's insane and zealous leader, who's motivations are compelling enough but are squandered by him simply not being at good a character, his motivation to get off the island and obsession with Himiko are the bedrock for a good villain, but he's not in the game much, and when he is, he's just villainous for the sake of villainy, wasting that potential. Then there's Lara's friends; Roth stands out among them through his love for Lara and through Lara seeing him as a father figure, his role in Lara's ark is crucial, and the game does a good job with that, making his eventual sacrifice an impactful moment in the story. Meanwhile the rest of the crew is mostly one note and uninspired; you have Sam, who is basically a glorified McGuffin, Jonah, the gentle giant who gets better in the sequels, and they're the names I remember. A quick trip to the Tomb Raider wiki later and we have Grim, the rugged Scottish bastard, Reyes, the confrontational black woman, Alex, the nerd forever trapped in the friendzone with a girl way out of his league, and Whitman, the slimy, incompetent obstruction. All of them fit a mould and none of them break it, and their role in the story is disappointingly passive, even Jonah, who becomes Lara's sidekick in the sequels doesn't really do anything here.

The sequels shrinking their supporting line-up and focusing more on Jonah and the people Lara meets on her adventures was a smart move, but going back to the first game, it shows just how smart a move it was, because even when they started dying, usually horrifically and tragically, I didn't have much reason to care. But you could easily overlook how weak Lara's friends are because the story isn't about them, it's about Lara, and they get Lara so right that it falls into the background, like them, incidentally. The story Tomb Raider tells is also gripping and has a fantastic sense of escalation; starting small with a focus on Lara and her learning to survive on Yamatai, before swelling in scope as Lara starts to understand the mystery of the island and becomes aware of the apocalyptic threat living on it. I'm not going to go into the details, because why would I spoil that shit, but Tomb Raider's story is very well told and blends its dark and disturbing reality with the magical in a surprisingly effective way. The line between truth and myth becomes a core aspect of the series' storytelling, and it's very well established in this game, as creepy as that truth is once Lara learns it, again, no spoilers, but the concepts at play in this game's magical aspects have a habit of playing on the mind, it's unnerving.

Tomb Raider's gameplay is considerably different to the games that came before it; taking a far more involved and cinematic approach to its combat and puzzle solving, as opposed to the good old adventuring of a game like Legend or Underworld. In fact, as someone who grew up playing Tomb Raider Anniversary on his PSP, this doesn't feel like Tomb Raider at all, or at least it didn't in 2013, the comparison has been made many times, a few times by me even, but it feels a lot like Uncharted, which is only a bad thing if you dislike Uncharted, and fortunately, I'm not in that boat. Its combat has removed the acrobatics of the older games and replaced them with cover objects which are necessary because even in the later stages of the game after a good amount of levelling up, Lara's still about as resistant to gunfire as a sheet of tin foil. This has its obvious downsides, even playing on normal difficulty I would sometimes drop dead from enemy gunfire after popping out of cover for a second, literally a second, which feels cheap, especially when it happens repeatedly. The gunplay on offer is decent however, especially when you get enough salvage and start unlocking some of the available weapon upgrades, getting things like special ammo types and alt fire modes, as well as the usual increased damage, reload speed, etc.

But the best weapon in the game by far is the bow, since this game came out around the time that every shooter on the market needed to have a bow. The bow also allows for a bit of sneaking, but only a bit as the stealth system is very rudimentary, not as intricate and in depth as a stealth game like Splinter Cell or even something like Far Cry. For example, there is no indication of your visibility, just an "Enemy Spotted!" followed by a hail of bullets. But while you light up like a road flare once spotted, you can sneak up on a pair of enemies standing right next to each other and stealth kill one of them without the other even noticing, the game is inconsistent like that, with half of the game's enemies apparently having hawk eyes and the other half apparently being blind, it makes the stealth feel broken at times. The game also can't seem to make up its mind about how distraction works, try to distract an enemy or group of enemies and they can respond in up to three ways; ignore it, fall for it, or instantly know where you are and attack, so while it's nice that the option is there, it usually ends in a gunfight simply because shooting the shit out of them in a battle of attrition is almost always the more palatable option.

In addition to having the bow, Tomb Raider also hopped on the wagon of incorporating basic RPG elements, with killing enemies and finding secrets netting you experience that you can spend on skills to improve your character. The skills are nothing special; the usual stuff like more health, better looting, greater weapon proficiency etc. Probably the most useful skills in the game are a chain of skills that let you counter attack melee enemies, a set of skills that make Lara practically unstoppable at close range as she can instantly kill anyone that takes a swing at her. Skills that let you reuse arrows and loot more ammo from enemies seem useful at first, but ammo is in such abundance for the entire game that it's never really an issue, and the same is true of salvage, though the better upgrades on offer are usually crazy expensive, so that one's more useful. Some of the most rewarding things you can do in the game include the hidden tombs scattered around Yamatai, tiny self-contained puzzles that yield rewards of experience and salvage upon being solved. These little puzzles are a lot of fun to do as they break up the game's nonstop pace and let you solve them in your own time, and most of them are deviously engineered, making solving them very gratifying.

These tombs are a nice addition as puzzle solving clearly wasn't the focus of this game's development, though some puzzles in the game aren't optional; navigating the game's massive levels and progressing at certain points in the story do require a bit of problem solving to pass. But the puzzles are no harder than any of the tombs and navigating simply becomes a matter of recognising features of the environment for Lara to climb up or shoot rope arrows at. Both tasks are also made ridiculously easy by the game's survival instincts which turn the world black and white and turn interactive objects and surfaces an obnoxious yellow, though you could simply not use it. An issue I had on a handful of occasions with the climbing was moments of inconsistency; Lara not grabbing a ledge for instance or jumping left or right when she's supposed to go up, an issue that happened a few too many times for me to think it's just user error, though it entirely could have been, there's no way of knowing, either way it's infrequent enough that it doesn't ruin the game. Those massive levels are also crammed full of stuff; the optional tombs and challenges as well as hidden documents left behind by the islands previous residents, all of which voice acted of course. The levels are also dotted with camp fires that Lara can use to purchase skills and weapon upgrades as well as fast travel to over camp fires, an almost pointless feature if you ask me.

Then there's the game epic sequences, you know the kind; when you have to run for your life as the world literally falls apart around you, as the ground heaves and the walls crumble and shit's exploding for no real reason. There as several of these set pieces throughout the game, including the plane scene that ended up being adapted into the film but is significantly better in the game, unsurprisingly. These moments aren't as special as they really should be however because of this game's competition; Uncharted's been doing these epic set pieces long before Tomb Raider adopted them, and while the games are very different in tone, its these sequences that feel the most like Uncharted. Don't get me wrong, it's cool when Lara's tumbling uncontrollably down a muddy slope as the flaming wreckage of a crashed plane tails dangerously close behind, these sequences are very epic and exciting, a misunderstanding here would be that just because Uncharted did it first means it's not good here which isn't the case. The comparison has merit for sure, but that doesn't negate or delegitimise this game's positive attributes, nor does it consider that while they're similar from a gameplay standpoint, their respective tones couldn't be more different; one is an adventure about killing baddies and hunting treasure with a wise cracking action hero, the other is a story of survival, self-discovery and sacrifice.

What these sequences, and the whole game for that matter have on their side is presentation which is top notch across the board; the Island's maps are stunning, character models and animations look good, music, sound and voice acting is all on point, and little things like the game's stellar particle effects, little things that you wouldn't otherwise notice, really add a sense of grit to the world of the game, one that draws you in and makes you immersed, the game is beautiful, even at its ugliest, which is both the biggest strength of the rerelease and my personal biggest issue with it. My biggest issue with the presentation is that I prefer the way Lara looks in the original release, it's probably the smallest thing I've ever taken issue with in anything ever, I imagine most people probably wouldn't even notice, but it honestly is my biggest issue with the game's presentation and with the rerelease. But going back to what matters, probably the most important thing that Tomb Raider and Uncharted have in common is their epicness; both games feel less like games and more like summer blockbusters, which really casts a shadow on the recent Tomb Raider movie as despite literally being a movie, the game it was based on feels more cinematic and epic, and obviously, as good as Alicia Vikander is as Lara Croft, it'll never beat the game, the game just does it better, does it all better.

There are no heroes here, only survivors
Tomb Raider's transformation from adventure-platformer to epic, intense, frightening blockbuster turned out far better than it had any right to, and the result, ignoring the sequels for a second, is my favourite in the series without a doubt. The game's puzzle solving and combat are a lot of fun and it's a beauty to behold from a visual, audio and design standpoint, but what stands out to me the most is its excellent storytelling and unforgettable hero, Lara's journey in this game is its strongest aspect, she's weak and scared and has to become the hero, has to find it within herself, and its gripping. It never stops moving, but still balances the breakneck action with quieter moments of character growth, discovery and the occasional brain teaser. My biggest issues include its weak side characters, the odd cheap death or ignored button press, and minor things like tweaks made to the definitive Edition's presentation, but I can overlook them for everything the game gets right. Tomb Raider is part one in one of my favourite video game trilogies to date, and it starts it off with a beautiful bang, I couldn't recommend it enough and it's definitely worth playing.

DOOM video game review

Here's what you need to know; All hell has broken loose, literally, as the UAC's Argent facility on Mars is left in ruins by a Demonic invasion, with all the facility's personnel either dead or zombified, only one thing now stands in the way of the horde, a being older and more feared than even the Demons themselves, the Doom Slayer, who has been released from his eternal prison to finish the job and unleash death and carnage upon the Demon horde once more.
Who's up for a story; way back in the early days of this blog, back when it was filled with even more spelling errors and sloppy writing, I wrote about the Doom E3 demo, and it was bad, as you'd expect. The demo however was amazing, and I was very right to be excited to get my hands on Doom, just as I'm now very excited to get my hands on Doom Eternal. But my love of Doom goes back a long way, back to my early high school years when I would play the original Doom from 1993 on the school computers, I would also play Doom 3 on the original Xbox after I got one, and then I'd play it some more when it was released on the Xbox 360. I could talk a load of platitudes and foot notes about the significance of Doom to the gaming industry, but I figured that expressing my personal history with it would be more authentic, because since I was about thirteen, I've loved the Doom series, and I've wanted a fourth instalment. Fast forward to 2016, and that Forth instalment arrived, Doom, a game that promised to recapture the awesome not just of Doom, but of a kind of video game that, in 2016, had long since died, with the mission of giving what the shooter genre had become the middle finger at every chance it got and mercilessly kicking the Call of Duty Kids' arses. And with the sequel probably about two years away still, I sat myself down and went for a second round on Doom, and now I feel like an idiot for not playing it in two years because I want to play it forever. Also, I'll only be talking about the campaign here, because I haven't even touched the multiplayer and haven't played enough snapmap to really form a solid opinion on it, but that's fine with me because the campaign's all I need, cough cough Trash Ops.

Doom 3 saw a change in the series when it hit the scene in 2004, one that almost certainly came about because of the climate in which it was developed and released, coming not far behind shooters like Halo and Half Life, and horrors like Resident Evil and Silent Hill. It opted to ditch the loose storytelling and huge, chaotic and open battle arenas of Doom and Doom 2 in favour of a much greater focus on storytelling, a tighter and more compelling narrative, and slower, more atmospheric and claustrophobic combat. This transition into horror made Doom 3 a vastly different game to its predecessors and made the direction the series would go from there much more interesting, because Doom 4 never came, instead remaining in development for years before being scrapped entirely and turned into the Doom we now have. Doom saw a return of the old Doom's approach to matters like storytelling and combat, which is to say that the story here is light, very light.

The game's characters are minimal and simplistic, there are no cutscenes, and while the game does sometimes force you to stand still and listen to Samuel Hayden as he tells you what's going on, it's rare and it never outstays its welcome. Storytelling very clearly took a back seat to gameplay in the game's development, but it never felt like an afterthought thanks to the game's long, long catalogue of data logs, which provide hours of reading material for those willing to sniff them all out and go through them. This works massively in the game's favour, as it gives you the choice to either ignore the story all together and get on the ripping and tearing or browse the logs for backstory and information on pretty much everything; characters, locations, weapons, demons and relics. Beneath the surface of this story light shooter is a very rich and very well thought out world that's right there, waiting for anyone willing to take the time and look. I also love the spin this game puts on the character of Doomguy by basically turning him into a superhero; an ancient warrior driven purely by rage and bloodlust, gifted with magic armour and superhuman strength and speed. Despite him never saying a word, the game's exploration into his history through data logs and the Slayer's Testament is gripping and badass, and essentially turns him into the ultimate power fantasy, a man who literally cannot be stopped.

This becomes important in the gameplay, because fundamentally, Doom has one task, a task far harder to pull off than it sounds, Doom's job is to make you, the player, feel like the biggest badass in existence. This is quite the task, especially now because a character must have weaknesses in order to be compelling or interesting, and we now have all kind of social norms that you can't depict a character breaking lest you wish to taste the wrath of Twitter. But the Doom Slayer doesn't give shit about that, the game doesn't care about stupid concepts like toxic masculinity or male power fantasy, The Doom Slayer exists to empower the player, to make you feel like a god, and every aspect of him, from his backstory to his abilities to the physical copy's alternative box art serves that goal. You are the Doom Slayer, the most fearing creature in the universe, and you are unstoppable.

Not that the game needs any of this to make you feel awesome because all it really needs is its responsive, intense arena combat, but the more the merrier, and it even goes further than the gameplay and story, it also includes the music. Doom's soundtrack composed by Mick Gordan is a work of genius, and I didn't even like metal, until Doom, but never has a soundtrack better fitted a game; it's a loud, intense, energetic, pulse pounding assault on the senses, already a perfect match for the gameplay, but it gets even better because the music is dynamic. It can and will respond to the player's actions in gameplay, cause a big enough explosion or go in for a glory kill and the music will notice, switching up its choruses, verses and build-ups on the fly as you play, this makes every action you do exhilarating; the glory kills never get old, even as you do the same animation for the hundredth time because each and every one becomes a dopamine rush thanks to the soundtrack, think when a movie or game trailer has music that's in sync with the visuals, and then times that by about a million and make it last ten hours, also make sure you have a good supply of kleenex because it'll get messy.

Mick Gordan's metal soundtrack perfectly accompanies the visuals and design of the game, since Doom is basically what would happen if you turned a metal album cover into a game. Doom will take you to hell and back, literally, through the labs and halls of the UAC facility to the barren Martian landscape, down to the deepest pits of hell and everywhere in between. And along this journey you will be encountering some nasty bastards, from the flimsy and abundant Imps to the disgusting Mancubus and all the way up to the imposing and heavy hitting Barons of Hell. It's all suitably hellish in its presentation. The UAC facility is dark and ominous like Doom 3, with a very neglected utilitarian feel to it, yet its arenas are huge, open areas that allow for a lot of movement and climbing unlike Doom 3. Hell is a similar story; it still looks very hellish with plenty of satanic imagery and architecture, blood and human bones strewn about the floors and walls and complete ignorance of the laws of physics, but again its areas allow for a lot of movement in combat and its presentation on the whole is less dark and creepy than Doom 3, though the Hell levels still have an atmosphere unique to them that you don't feel on Mars.

The Demon designs are also very cool, which each design being visually distinct and reflective of the Demon's abilities, and most of them are a huge amount of fun to fight. Imps are speedy little gremlins who either charge and claw at you or throw fireballs from a distance, they also like to Spiderman their way up walls and ledges, but they are weak and the Doom Slayer makes short work of them at close range, which they make up for using numbers and accompanying bigger, more dangerous Demons. This is discernible from their clever design, with them being small and lanky with creepy little grins on their faces, they're cannon fodder, not a challenge but an annoyance, and that is presented though both the Imp's attacks and its design. This aspect of the game's design carries over to most of them; the Mancubus is a fat fuck with huge guns, reflecting its slow movement and ability to deal massive damage, the Hell Knights are huge, ripped Demons with powerful looking arms and legs, reflecting its high mobility and powerful melee attack, and this also applies to the Barons of Hell, which are like Hell Knights but bigger, and very visually distinct from them with their fiery red skin and huge horns. Demons like the Summoner and Lost Soul are more annoying however with the former's constant teleporting and the latter's kamikaze attack, but the majority of the game's Demons are wonderfully designed and a lot of fun to kill.

So the Demons are very well designed, but does the game give you fun toys to dispatch them with, yes it does. With the exception of the pistol, none of Doom's guns feel weak or useless, every gun has heavy, powerful sound effects and causes blood to spurt everywhere on impact. Initially all the guns are familiar in their function; the Combat Shotgun and Super Shotgun cause all kinds of chaos at close range, while the Machine Gun and Chaingun are better suited to medium and long range, the Plasma Rifle can bring the pain with a high rate of fire and the rocket launcher makes things go boom. Where things get spicy however is in the mods, because why not turn your shotgun into a grenade launcher or give your plasma rifle the ability to send out a devastating close-range heat blast. Every weapon has two available mods which you obtain by violently assaulting field drones scattered around the levels and swapping between mods is done with the push of a button. Every weapon and mod is also upgradable, and you upgrade them with tokens you are awarded based on your performance in combat, finding secrets and completing level specific challenges. Though you can only upgrade with the tokens so far before having to complete a challenge in order to max out the weapon, but these challenges don't take the piss, it's stuff like kill two enemies with one heat blast twenty times, or get twenty direct hits with the shotgun grenade, things that happen on their own as you rip and tear, keeping the mods simple and easy, so as to not bog down and over complicate the gameplay.

It actually makes me feel a bit dumb now when I look back on my Doom Eternal gameplay post, a lot of the weapon mods from that demo are similar to mods in this game like the shotgun's full auto mod and this game's shotgun's burst fire mod, or the machine gun's scope attachment, it would seem my memory of this Doom was less clear than I'd thought. The Doom Slayer's magic armour is also upgradable with tokens that are hidden around the levels, and your max health, armour and ammo can all be permanently upgraded using Argent Cells, slowly and surely making you even more unstoppable as you play. Then there's the Runes, which give the Doom Slayer perks to, for example, have unlimited ammo if he has over one hundred armour, or causes Demons to drop armour when Glory Killed, very useful perks for sure, though unlike the weapon and armour upgrades, the game makes you work for them, you must complete very demanding time trials in order to obtain them, stuff like blow up thirty barrels before the time expires, starting with six seconds on the clock and two extra seconds per barrel. This makes them stand out amongst the rest of the game's progression systems simply because of how specific and demanding they are, almost always coming down to trial and error, and leaving no wiggle room whatsoever, removing your ability to experiment and make mistakes, and in a game where literally everything else the campaign offers is fun, they're the weakest link. The game does also have some less frustrating distractions in the form of the many little Doomguys hidden around the levels, which unlock character and weapon models that can be accessed from the game's menu when found, and these little guys are adorable, I want one, in real life, I want one.

Doom isn't your typical first-person shooter, I mean this in the sense that if you're a Call of Duty player who's going into Doom thinking that it's just a shooter and you'll kick arse, you won't, Doom will be doing the arse kicking, and you'd better adapt. I said in my post about the Doom Eternal gameplay reveal and Astrid Johnson's ridiculous article about it that this Doom was the antithesis of the modern FPS genre. I can now go into detail and explain that. I said in that post that games have undeniably been getting easier; your average noob could probably set the difficulty to easy and blast through a Call of Duty or Halo game in three hours or less, and like I said in my post about Trash Ops 4, recent Call of Duty games have been trying to phase out any sort of skill gap in gameplay by rewarding the skilled players and the noobs in equal measure, which fails to disincentive and thus perpetuates mediocrity; why bother gitting gud when you and that guy who's going 40/0 on kills will both be getting participation ribbons. Yet when it comes to noobs, Doom's campaign doesn't give a fuck, it throws you in at the deep end from the first mission all the way up to the final boss, and it will force you to git gud because if you don't, it'll destroy you.

Doom is projectile based arena combat; it's running around at very high speeds, dodging enemy attacks and thinking on your feet. Doom has no sprint, because the Doom Slayer's default walking speed is sprint, there are no iron sights like Call of Duty or Halo 5 and weapons don't need to be reloaded, and you don't just regenerate health when hurt, you need to heal up or a Demon will come along and rip you apart, literally. The game is very fast paced because standing still for longer than a few seconds will get you killed, enemy attacks are vicious, but are almost always avoidable, meaning that even in areas where I died multiple times, I was never pissed off because the game never felt unfair, I didn't die because the game was cheap, I died because I failed to minimise my damage taken or because I misjudged the demonic threat, and I would subsequently change my strategy for the next attempt, and it only made that moment when I beat a particularly challenging arena all the more gratifying. And this game will challenge you, even its easy mode is hard if you don't know what you're doing, but its heavy reliance on player skill and attack dodging also makes even its hardest modes accessible provided you're up to the task, which speaks volumes to the amount of polish this game has. And once you've beat the game, you can replay all the missions with all your end game gear, making replaying the missions and hunting down the remaining secrets and challenges feel like less of a chore.

The game also throws in powerups that you can pick up in some areas, which give you invulnerability or super-duper speed for a short time which is useful in the more chaotic arenas, though quad damage and berserk are easily the most useful, because one quadruples your damage output and the other lets you insta-kill every enemy you touch for as long as the powerup lasts. Which brings us to the Glory Kills, which look on the surface like a gimmick but are useful in combat. When an enemy is low on health, you can go in for an intensely gruesome finishing move; snapping their necks, crushing their heads, ripping off various body parts and then killing the demons with their own body parts, which is perverse yet immensely satisfying. And for the glory kill, you are rewarded a dopamine hit by the soundtrack as well as little health and ammo drops to top you up, making them very useful to keep the bullets flying.

This also involves the chainsaw, which you can use to insta-kill demons, provided you have enough fuel to kill the demon in question, which then explodes into a fountain of ammo drops, making the chainsaw not just very gory and fun to use, but a strategic move. Though you don't get ammo drops for the chainsaw or BFG9000 which, like the chainsaw, has limited ammo but is incredibly powerful, able to kill every demon in the room in a single shot. The game's projectile based arena combat still holds very true in the game's boss fights of which there are three, each one naturally harder than the last as you take on the behemoth Cyberdemon and the scuttling bastard Spider Mastermind, who are both incredibly ugly, it's kind of strange that the only new boss, the Hell Guard, is comparatively tame in appearance, but each boss, like all the normal enemies, has learnable attack patterns and dodgeable attacks, making learning how to beat and then subsequently beating them very enjoyable, and finishing them off with a glory kill is amazing, and like every other glory kill in the game, it's earned, and what is more badass than taking a BFG9000, shoving it down a building sized Demon's throat and blowing their body apart with it.

Rip and Tear Until it is Done
Doom is, in many ways, a giant middle finger to what gaming and gaming culture has become over the years; it's hard, unforgiving, unapologetic, and badass at practically everything it does. Doom somehow pulls off simultaneously being a genuinely hard game and making the player feel like an unstoppable god, its arena combat is fast, frantic and addictively enjoyable and the challenge never comes at the expense of the fun because the game never cheats, even the most insurmountable task is perfectly doable provided you're manly enough. The game's hero is a physical embodiment of rage and power and being in his shoes is enough to put hair on even the most meekly of chests, and turns entering a room full of demons from a moment of fear to a moment of sadistic anticipation, so much ripping and tearing to be done. The game is also beautifully designed and has very certainly the most effective and well incorporated soundtrack I've ever heard in a game. Going in for the last secrets with all the end game gear is also a lot of fun, but it's a shame that the Runes have a habit of taking the piss. But in the end, when you're standing victorious over the mangled corpse of the final boss, having violently dispatched thousands of demons, there's only one thing you're left wanting; more. Doom is one of the most exhilarating games I've played in years, and it's absolutely a must play.

The Predator movie review

Here's what you need to know; even in his dangerous and surprise filled life as an Army Ranger, Quinn McKenna has never encountered a foe like this one as a mission is interrupted by a run in with a Predator. But the Predator isn't the only thing out for blood, as McKenna finds himself in the sights of merciless Government agents and a beast even the Predator stands little chance against, another Predator.

At least it wasn't twenty years between sequels like last time, assuming I or anyone was ever really interested in a Predator 4. That's a bit of a sweeping statement, just as I'm really pumped for the thirty-fifth Godzilla film, I'm sure someone out there was really looking forward to the fourth instalment in this classic franchise, written and directed by Shane Black, whose previous directorial efforts included a buddy cop comedy and a Marvel movie, which really should have been a red flag for the people now complaining that the film is too comedic. What this does for the film is something we'll get to, but as we'll also get to, this film's problems run a little deeper than a few out of place gags.

The Predator doesn't bog down its opening minutes with any kind of exposition, as we are literally dropped into it as the Predator falls to Earth, and people start dying not long after as McKenna and his squad come across the ship's escape pod and McKenna narrowly escapes its hinge headed occupant. So far, so good, we've had some cool alien shit and some gruesome death, how can this go south, easily, you through in an autistic kid. McKenna's son Rory adds practically nothing to this film that isn't mandated by its convoluted plot; he's a lonely autistic kid who's bullied at school and struggles with home life but he's really smart, he's exactly the kind of character you'd think he is and he does everything you think he'd do, even if that thing is so stupid that you'd never dream of the film stooping that low, like, for instance, this Autistic middle schooler accidentally activating Predator tech, learning how it works and even learning how to read and translate the Predator language. How the film establishes his autism is at least fairly affective, if a bit exaggerated, but the issue I have isn't that, it's how the film goes on to portray Autism.

 I'm not some sappy snowflake who's here to whine about racial insensitivity like a humourless cunt, so I'll keep this short for now, but the film openly infers that Autism has the potential to be the next step in human evolution, which is absurd to anyone who is or has experience with Autism; like Rory in this very film, people with Autism are smart but socially impaired, they have issues with communication and expression and have a harder time handling more stressful situations, I know this because I've lived this. To suggest that this condition that makes a person less equipped and therefore less efficient in social interaction and development is somehow the next step for humanity is absurd, which would be silly enough on its own, but then the film very unwisely deploys Chekov's gun and makes this inference a crucial aspect of the film's final act by tying it into the Predator's mission on Earth, which is another issue entirely and one I don't care about spoiling. The film isn't afraid to go near serious stuff and make some spicy jokes about them, and not even Autism escapes that; I particularly found Nettles' remark about Rory being retarded hilarious, but it's not that that insults me, it's in fact when the film tries to play it sincerely that it becomes hard for someone who actually knows what it's like to call bullshit.

Fortunately his dad's a bit easier to get behind, when he's not swallowing potentially dangerous alien technology that is, but like a lot of the characters in the film, there's very little in the way of development or surprises; he's a gruff, highly trained soldier who gets shit done, and while he fails miserably at being a decent dad, he's do anything to keep his son out of danger, like Rory, he is and does exactly what you think he'd be and do. But despite being played by the villain from Logan, he's a surprisingly likable guy, no doubt because of his positive archetypal traits and spicy banter. The same applies to his ragtag gaggle of comrades; Nebraska, Coyle, Nettles, Lynch and Baxley, whose names I got from IMDb because I didn't remember a single one of them. Like McKenna, these guys aren't much of a surprise, but they were a decent enough collection of supporting characters, two of them shared a subplot about having PTSD that was a little on the sweet side, and the lot of them bring the chuckles with their endless banter, that being said, I still had to IMDb their names, which is never a good thing.

I also had to look up Casey Bracket's name who, in a shocking twist, isn't the romantic interest of the film. Like the soldiers she joins in their mission to stop the Predator, there's not really a lot to her, frankly, I spent the entire film wondering how this Biologist is so good with a rifle, given that she isn't a soldier and the film never establishes or even implies prior firearms training. But there she is in the finale of the film, shooting a machine gun alongside the trained soldiers with the same proficiency, likely the result of the convoluted plot mandating that she's good with guns, it's weird, but at least she's useful I guess. Which just leaves us with the final name I looked up; Traeger, the dickbag Government guy on McKenna's tail, who's probably the most surprising character in the film purely because I didn't expect him to be such a slimy dickbag. The head of the agency tracking down and studying the Predator, he's also out to tie up loose ends, which of course means killing McKenna and his friends, hey, that rhymed. He also has funny moments, and moments of blinding stupidity, perhaps more so than anyone else, and the film goes out of its way at times to make him look extra slimy, but like the good guys, there's no real reason to invest in him besides the banter. It really is like the film uses banter to mask that its characters are boring, that it uses comedy as a substitute for giving the audience anything to really care about, which makes the film funny, yes, but at the cost of me having to look up everyone's names because they weren't memorable.

The comedy also gives The Predator issues with tone. The comedy is funny, but it comes at the expense of any worthwhile emotional depth and kills any sense of suspense, which makes this Predator film not feel like a Predator film. In the finale of the film when everyone has to take up arms against the Predator, it should be nail biting but it's not, partly because there's no real sense of danger for all the jokes, and because the Predator in this film is indestructible, and the film giving the two main parties of this fight this much plot armour makes the fight itself painfully predictable and completely lacking in tension or stakes. The deaths are gory but there's no real impact from them because of the film's muddled tone and the lack of audience investment, so even when McKenna's friends start getting picked off and the film wants you to feel it, you just don't.

Earlier in the film there's also a showdown between McKenna and company and a pair of big arse alien dogs, and again there's no suspense in the sequence, moreover there's stupidity as one character simply walks up to one of them and shoots it in the head it a bolt gun. Where he got a bolt gun I don't know, why he just walked up to this supposedly dangerous alien while everyone else was shooting at it I don't know, how the bolt gun managed to debilitate it when bullets did literally nothing I don't know. This sequence as well as the finale make so little sense while you're watching them that it's hard to tell what's going on, not because of shaky cam or anything like that, but because these sequences are so spontaneous, so riddled with stupidity, and weirdly, so poorly cut together, that they end up nearly incomprehensible. I'm a bit more of a stickler for editing and cinematography than most, but even my normie friends noticed how bad some of the editing was in this film; jarring camera zooms, crappy slow mo, bad transitions between scenes or even between shots, the action is a bit of a headache to watch, which is downright unacceptable. But it is all these niggles, the wonky editing, the laundry list of plot contrivances and the slithers of utter stupidity that drag this film down to mediocrity, but even ignoring the plot contrivances, how a film this sloppily put together came from the director of The Nice Guys I will never know.

Spoilers

But those contrivances though. Well there are the ones I've already blathered about; Rory and the film's portrayal of Autism, the poor character development, the biologist turned weapons expert, the RV that's apparently the mystery box from Call of Duty Zombies, etc, but then there's what they did to the Predator. Apparently, the Predators don't just hunt the galaxy's most dangerous animals for sport, they now also assimilate said animals' most dangerous traits through genetic manipulation to perfect themselves. This sounded like an excuse to have a common threat when I first heard it, but the humans and the Predator never team up in this film, so what purpose did it serve exactly. I'll tell you what, and I will be spoiling the film's finale here, you've been warned, but remember how Autism is supposedly the next step in human evolution, yeah, the Predators now want to assimilate Autism, what the Christ is wrong with this film. As I said earlier, Autism makes people smarter, but it causes trouble with social interaction and expression, so for a Predator, a creature supposedly out to make itself more efficient and deadlier than it already is, wanting to assimilate a trait that makes you less efficient is downright retarded. And it's not like Rory does anything that the Predator can't already do; the Predator can pilot a space ship, it can translate alien languages and use another species' technology, so exactly what trait does it want from Rory that it doesn't already have, an aversion to loud noises? This mission of assimilation and perfection is retconning at its finest, and it's Autistic brain fart makes it downright insulting, especially after I paid more attention on my second viewing, yes, I saw it twice, and specifically picked up that the Predator calls Rory a "warrior," Rory, the autistic school kid, warrior, I give up, I give up.

And to top it all off, the film's final scene has a stinger for Predator 5, because of course it does. In the stinger we are treated to a new suit of Predator armour designed for humans, one that builds itself around the wearer from nanoparts and has about five auto targeting shoulder cannons on each shoulder, mounted to giant railgun looking things. I honestly can't conceive of the mind of someone who'd think up anything like this, it's the kind of thing a six year old would dream up; a super duper mega predator with nineteen million guns and a jetpack, but this film did already have a genetic super Predator that wanted to become an Aspie and his retarded space dog so I really don't know at this point. I might as well rattle off the remaining points of interest and wrap this up; the film's visual effects are great, the CG is top notch and the practical effects are refreshing and brilliant, the film's use of the original Predator's soundtrack was a nice touch, but it contributes to the film's already confused tone. As bad as the story is, as flat as the heroes are, at least the comedy is good most of the time, the banter is gold at times and the situational humour also hits more often than not, but it further confuses this film's identity and actively contributes to the entire film's absence of tension, as well as being used as a crutch for its sloppy characters. It's lipstick on a pig, it doesn't fix the problems, just dolls them up.

Do I get a cookie now

How The Predator turned out like this is a mystery people much smarter than me will have to solve instead, because it's beyond me. The film has good visual effects and funny comedy, yet even with the banter my list of issues just gets longer and longer. The film's editing is bizarrely poor, making the action a chore to watch, and it can't really seem to tell what kind of film it is, it being a Predator film that's devoid of suspense. But The Predator's greatest sins come from its nonsensical story, forgettable heroes and villains, retconning of the worst kind, an ending stinger that's laughable, and worst of all, its handling of autism, which might have actually hurt my feelings were I not so stunned by how headache inducingly stupid it is. I'm not losing sleep over this because I'm not a cry baby, but I am genuinely stunned that The Predator took this path, tried to become a philosophical debate on mental illness while literally weaponizing said illness. This has taken over my thinking about The Predator now so I'm wrapping up. The Predator is an underwhelming follow up to the original film in every way, it's a sloppy, ridiculous, insulting mess and were it not for the banter, I'd honestly rather watch Pacific Rim: Uprising, I wouldn't recommend this film.