Shadowcaster

31-Jul-25

Issue 1, PCG. December 1993. 90% from Gary Whitta. "This is a game that gives Origin's own standard-setting Ultima Underworld games a serious run for their money". Time would tell that Mr Whitta was wrong. No-one remembers this. Everyone remembers Ultima Underworld. Also, in fairness, they are not really the same genre even. This is really more of an action game, with some vague nods in the direction of RPG-land. It is by Raven. Yes, Raven. Of Heretic and Return to Castle Wolfenstein fame. This was their first of many games using iD's technology. It is a modified and improved Wolfenstein 3D engine, put together by John Carmack while he was bored waiting for the lads to move onto designing Doom, or something. So, that is interesting. To me. You may find it dull as anything. I couldn't speculate.

But how is it? Um, well, a bit naff? Smacking things repeatedly with a sword is just not as much fun as shooting them with a shotgun, and it is difficult to get away from that. The RPG stuff (which basically means some very fiddly inventory management) is annoying. Really, they just needed to streamline it a bit and add in some more ranged weaponry. So they did, when they designed Heretic the following year. Wahey! I love Heretic. I also love pizza. You?

Ecco the Dolphin

10-Mar-25

Welcome, my son - welcome to the machine. How could Pink Floyd have predicted, all the way back in 1975, that a dolphin would end up journeying to Atlantis, travelling back in time to the Jurassic period, something something magic glowing orb, then travelling to the planet Vortex to fight the alien queen? Eerie, real eerie. Much like this game, wherein you play as Ecco, a time-travelling dolphin who has to face off against the evil aliens from the planet Vortex and rescue his pod. Imagine basing a Mega Drive game on your drug-addled interpretation of a Pink Floyd song. Go on. DO IT! Don't be tempted by flesh.

Doom 3

17-Jan-25

I played this on my Mac Mini M2 (the ultimate* gaming machine). But how? While it did originally have a native Mac release, that 32-bit version won’t work on modern Macs. In any event, GoG only sell the Windows version. Luckily, the superb dhewm3 source port came to the rescue. Using this, it should be a doddle to set up on just about any OS you can think of (even FreeBSD, apparently).

Note that dhwem3 recreates the original 2004 edition (yes, this game is over 20 years old), not the later BFG release. Which is just as well, because if you ask me, the BFG version kinda missed the point. Doom 3 is a horror game, using John Carmack’s fancy id Tech 4 to great effect. You know, dark dark dark OH MY GOD A MONSTER dark dark dark. Paranoid glimpses of unknown horrors in the eerie shadows and dark corners. That sort of thing. Here come’s the science part: “The key advance of the id Tech 4 graphics engine developed for Doom 3 is the unified lighting and shadowing. Rather than computing or rendering lightmaps during map creation and saving that information in the map data, most light sources are computed in real-time” (thanks, Wikipedia).

In BFG not only can you can attach your torch to your gun (rather than having to put the torch away when aiming your gun), lighting everything in front of you up perfectly, but they actually upped the base brightness of the entire game, rendering the whole thing about 50-75% less scary. Without the jump scares, it just becomes a bit of a bland shooter. But anyway, why am I moaning about that? I played the original version! The verdict? Scary fun, although it does outstay its welcome a bit. Probably could have been about two thirds of the length, as it does get a tad repetitive. Most of the levels look basically the same (claustrophobic industrial interiors). Quite a stark contrast to the openness and variety of Half Life 2, which, amazingly, came out later the same year. But yes, Doom 3 was nonetheless fun to revisit. It reawakened happy memories of playing it in the summer holidays at the end of my first year at university. What a time that was. What a time to be alive.

This game also serves as a reminder of just how fast tech moved on back in those days. As I said, this game is now over 20 years old, but still looks pretty good (fine, it won’t pass for a 2025 game, but come on), whereas Doom 2 was only just about to hit its 10th anniversary when this came out. Crazy. Crazy, I tell you.

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