You Found a Secret Area!

Month: January 2016

Mods and Maps: Classic Doom for Doom 3, A Combination of Two Classics.
Doom 3 was a pretty cool game for 2004. I replayed it recently since it had been several years and I was initially down on it, but after replaying it, I have some newfound respect for it. While not as groundbreaking as Half-Life 2, it was still a good game. Though it’s hardly a “masterpiece of the art form” as the box quote says.

I still have that PC Gamer issue. They were actually god damn serious with that quote!

Alas, from what I gathered, the Doom 3 modding community was sparse compared to classic Doom, even compared to its competitors like Half-Life 2. But one particular mod stood out, and it’s not surprising it exists considering id Software’s legacy:

It feels like 1993 and 2004 combined into some freakshow.

Classic Doom for Doom 3 was one of those hyped mods in its heyday. Boasting a small team of developers at Flaming Sheep Software, these guys aimed to remake the 1993 classic on a modern engine. Of course, what better way to show off the modding skills of Doom 3‘s engine than with a remake of the original Doom?

So much for doing a UV-Max run…

There’s only four difficulty levels in this one, similar to Doom 3‘s skill levels. Alas no Ultra-Violence, but I’ll play on Hey Not Too Rough, the equivalent of “Normal” difficulty.
A gold star for originality, I guess.
Surprisingly the development team made an intro to explain why you’re going in. It’s so corny, filled with amateur voice acting and really jerky animation. Basically they give a reason for Doomguy to enter Mars and kill demons, eventually fending for yourself. Granted, the intro can be skipped, but it’s fascinating to put a story on why things went to hell. It’s a sight to behold.

Wouldn’t be a re-imagining of classic Doom without the starting area and that iconic music.

Then you’re thrown into E1M1: Hangar, with just a pistol, just like the old days. A remix of At Doom’s Gate starts blasting through your speakers. It’s time to kill some demons!
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January 31, 2016
Invaded by the January 2016 Loot Crate.

Hey, guess how long it’s been since we last had an article about some stuff I got in a box? Precisely one month! And guess what showed up on my doorstep?

Yep, still a black box. Not much else to say, here.

Yep, it’s another one of them Loot Crates! To kick off 2016, the theme they went for is “Invasion,” which means this will likely be full of sci-fi and other assorted goodies. They also seemed to change the shape of the crate again from last month. It makes it more difficult to keep them neat and even with all these inconsistent sizes every month, but as long as they can stack, I’m not bothered.

Let’s open our space rock of a crate and see what’s inside…

The Fifth Element replica multi pass

“Leeloo” is such a dumb name, my god

This is a replica of the ID card from The Fifth Element, complete with a fake ID for Milla Jovovich’s character Leeloo. I’m honestly amazed that name went through without lots of checking, because that sounds less like an important character and more of a bit I’d see in Kung Pow: Enter the Fist. Despite that, this replica item is a nice treat for fans of the movie.

Admittedly, The Fifth Element is another one of those movies I’ve never seen. Maybe it was because it was critically panned upon release, but also because most sci-fi doesn’t do much for me unless it involves time travel. I’ll throw The Fifth Element on the “to watch someday” pile…

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January 25, 2016
Super Mario 3D Fruit Gummies: Holiday Edition!

For regular readers of this blog, you may have noticed a drastic increase in posts about edible video game goodies over 2015. You’re not the only one. I’ve blogged more about fruit snacks and Red Bull tie-ins than actual game stuff, and that’s not counting my yearly Mountain Dew Game Fuel roundup. It’s actually interesting to see more of this stuff than before, this wasn’t much of a thing over the past ten years. Either that, or I wasn’t paying attention back then.

I didn’t think I’d be making another one of these to start 2016 off. But I thank my mom, my #1 fan, for finding these out of the blue. Or in this case, red:

Mario with the best kind of gift: CANDY!

It’s more of those Mario 3-Dees gummies. I wrote about these last year alongside Plants vs. Zombies 2 fruit snacks, and it seems they’ve taken a holiday theme this time around. I probably should’ve written about these before Christmas, but hey, better late than never, right? 😛

This is art. At least, to me.

Like before, Mario, Yoshi, Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong all embrace the packaging, with three distinct flavors: strawberry, cherry and raspberry. Thank god there’s no watermelon gummies, just the good flavors in this one. It’s weird to see no green gummies, but they probably would’ve been less than pleasant flavors. Like watermelon.

When I wrote about these last time, I praised how impressive these looked for gummy candies. I lived in a world where younger me would be lucky to find candy that even remotely resembled the thing it’s based on, and not just be some amorphous blob that kinda resembled the product. But I gotta hand it to Au’some for making them look like the iconic Mario characters, like before.

As for the taste… they taste like the flavors advertised. It’s great, because when it comes to candy, those are three flavors I can always get behind. It’s even better when they’ve been sitting in room temperature for the past two weeks I’ve been putting this post off, as they’re nice and soft.. Though, I am baffled by the ingredients on the back mentioning pear juice as an ingredient.

My apologies for the fairly short post to start the new year proper. I’ll definitely have something a bit more meaty to post in the future. But for now, I’m going to enjoy 2016 the best that I can, and write about more interesting stuff, as I have been for the past four years. Here’s to a wonderful 2016!

January 18, 2016