Herald of Havoc (2023)

another played at the insistence of mr icarus, and hot dang is this addictively good. there's nothing shockingly remarkable about it: it breaks no new ground, establishes no new trends, has no thematic or narrative substance. it's just a tight-as-shit little shooter you can play all of in an afternoon, but godDAMN if it doesn't kick ass at that very thing. makes me wish grouvee did half-stars, because this is a 4.5/5 game.

it's just one of the tightest arsenals I've ever experienced. yes, my starting pistol should have infinite ammo and set people on fire with the alt. yes, my shotgun should also be my sniping weapon (borrowed quake's "oddly accurate shotgun" I see). yes, my double-barreled should take out 8 guys at once and have a charged attack that can take out 15. yes I should have a chaingun but more importantly I should also have a chain shotgun, and sometimes you should give me a huge challenge worthy of a devastating chainweapon but you should also sometimes give me a horde of weak enemies to mow down with said chainweapon. and, yes, the chaingun should fire grenades, and the rocket launcher should also fire charged flaming shrapnel grenades, and the lightning gun should electrify water and its alt should summon the power of zeus himself, and the machine gun should also fire grenades, and now and then I should get to punch people so hard they fly out of the map. why didn't anyone tell me I deserved so much?

I'd call it 50% quake, 20% serious sam, 10% goldeneye, 10% doom, 5% unreal tournament, and 5% dusk, placing it in the top left of the boomer shooter alignment chart, aka horde-quake, and it is very obviously an aries.

Down to the last four levels of this one, been jumping back to do some completionist objectives. The super secret of E1M6 would have been much more obvious if I'd ever needed to do a blood sacrifice prior to that point.

It feels like we've gotten to the point where the boomer shooter market is crowded enough that it becomes hard to recommend new games, even well made ones. I enjoyed this, but there's a dozen different games I'd suggest prioritizing over it. Compared to the New Blood and 3D Realms cohort it's a touch basic, although they sure came up with some interesting weapons. I enjoyed the novel decision to start each level with only a pistol, limiting the player's arsenal options leads to some clever level design choices, but overall this is a very middle of the road shooter.