Brutal Doom v21.
The first Doom in “classic” mode (that is with the original arsenal with only a few tweaks here and there) is fun, in Doom 2 however I missed the ability to shoot one barrel at a time for the super shotgun so I reverted to the normal Brutal Doom settings.
It has become much more customizable since the last time I played, there is even a separate option menu to tweak all the additions.
Other than that in the last few months I did some backlog clearing:
Saints Row: Gat out of Hell (PC)
It's a bit barebones in the story department but as a standalone DLC it's actually not bad, you get a new open world with its own share of wacky weapons and abilities and it's still pretty fun.
The lack of radio is a bit disappointing, I sort of miss having The Touch playing in the background while doing wacky superpowered hijinks.
Still, as with Saints Row IV I did all single player achievements, a problem of not having much story is that all the challenges are de facto relegated to the post-endgame instead of being able to be more distributed during the main story gameplay.
I tried Serious Sam 2 but it’s kind of meh and a bug damaged my save at a certain point so I just uninstalled it.
The gunplay felt a bit flat compared to First and Second Encounter and the art style is a weird mishmash of cartoony and uncanny valley.
The First Encounter and The Second Encounter in Serious Sam Fusion however are a completely different matter, the graphics may have new fancy effects and physics but the feel is still there.
I've also for the first time played and finished (always using Fusion) Serious Sam 3: BFE.
It has some odd stylistic choices at the start, if you just looked at screenshots you'd be forgiven if you thought this was another drab military shooter because it very much looks like it rundown middle eastern setting included. But then you hear Sam quip after tearing a Gnaar eyeball with his bare hands and you notice that the movement speed is not nerfed like in SS2. They somehow decided to introduce weapon reloading and some weapons are inexplicably missing or changed, I miss the charm of the retrofitted Tommy gun and the .45 revolver, now substituted by a pastiche of modern military rifles and a pastiche of various magazine fed semiauto guns. There is the option of iron sights for a couple of weapons but it's really not necessary and the unlimited sprint function given the unaltered movement speed from the first two games is more useful to go back and forth through the huge levels without losing too much time than a central mechanic like in modern military shooters. Even most of the silliness now seems confined to Sam quipping, there seem to be next to none of those slapstick secrets and enemy encounters of TFE and TSE (save for a secret in the first level of Jewel of The Nile that also reintroduces the laser rifle and the sniper rifle).
Fortunately at least after the Standard Middle Eastern Urban Battlefield(TM) of the first levels we get something more in line with the classic games though this time it's broken up by often puzzle-centric subterrenean sections.
I like that instead of making you inexplicably take damage when you get too far into the desert now you just have a humoungous alien sandworm eating you, you can even see the things hominously jumping out of the sands in the background.
For some reason NETRICSA now requires you to sit through an animation to read all the info on weapons, enemies and levels.
It looks like some weird experiment in introducing some more stereotypically modern elements into the mix but overall works better than SS2.
Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams (PC)
Fine in the first levels but after that my complete incompetence at straight platformers made the game a bit too much of a chore. I wanted at least to complete it but the game docks you points if you die too often and you need the "stars" to unlock the bosses to proceed to the next block of levels so it's probably out of my league.
Dust: An Elysian Tail (PC)
I played it for four hours without noticing and this including the way too difficult first boss encounter, afterward with a few levels and gear the game become much more manageable.
The graphics are gorgeous (I'm a sucker for 2D animated games) but given the particular style used the term "furryvania" keeps popping into my head.