Review Day: Doom: Eternal

I bought DOOM: Eternal in a Steam sale a few weeks back (just in time for the first weekend that Maia spent away from us in over a year) and dove right now. I found it better than its predecessor but suffering from many of the same flaws. I considered DOOM (2016) to be flawed but fun: it was enjoyable to run around killing things in the game and a good fan service from the original 90s series. However, I never actually finished that game because I'm a completionist: I hated missing secrets and having to replay levels to get them, or continuously try the minigame challenges over and over without success.

This new iteration feels a little less like the mindless fun of the originals, as careful resource management is required during a run to balance health, armor, and ammo. It also features an overwhelming number of weapons, weapon mods, and upgrades, all of which are thrown at you in the course of a single level near the beginning of the game. After being interrupted by the 20th screen describing a new technique I was supposed to learn, I almost stopped playing.

However, soldiering through that point is worth it -- I ended up focusing on a few of my favourite weapons and upgrades and ignoring the rest and had a great time all the way to the end. The game is at its best in the chaotic monster arenas where you get into a ballet-like flow of dancing around and blowing things up. The load times are also insanely fast (at least on an SSD) making deaths tolerable, and the framerate on the excellent graphics is rock solid at high detail levels.

Less positive are the numerous jumping puzzles that are interwoven through the arenas -- they're not hard, just tedious. The game also has a new defensive monster, the Marauder, who's easy to beat when following a pattern but breaks the hypnotic, kinetic "flow" so badly that the game is actually less fun when it's around. The story and cutscenes are unnecessary -- I skipped all of them after the first couple of levels.

Overall, this is a great single-player shooter that will give you a solid 20 hours of fun. I liked it enough on normal difficulty that I'll play it again on a harder level, at least until new children reduce my game time back to 0 again.

Final Grade: B

Release Day

Introducing the Official Website of Don Maitz!

Don Maitz is a Hugo-winning artist whose artwork has appeared in hundreds of classic fantasy and science-fiction books, including books by Stephen King, Raymond E. Feist, Gene Wolfe, and Michael Moorcock. He is also married to Janny Wurts, whose website I rewrote last summer.

With this makeover, all of my pandemic website projects come to a successful close, just in time for other kinds of new releases at the end of the month!

Chad Darnell's 12 of 12

12 pictures of your day on the 12th of every month

6:06 AM: Showered and ready for work.

6:31 AM: Bagel for breakfast.

7:38 AM: Working.

8:59 AM: Distractions.

9:53 AM: Baking a cake.

11:44 AM: This might be heresy, but Giant substituted Kraft for Velveeta Shells and Cheese in our grocery order and it's cheaper, better, and has fewer calories.

1:20 PM: First mow of the year.

2:44 PM: Jumping so high.

3:30 PM: Playing DOOM: Eternal.

5:12 PM: "Look at me now. I'm makin' bunnies."

5:40 PM: Leftover ramen for dinner on the screen porch.

6:18 PM: Inspecting the circle trail we're building in the common area.

Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

OK Orchestra by AJR:
AJR's latest release is pretty solid -- well-sampled beats with introspective lyrics about peoples' awkward younger years. BANG! is a good example.

Final Grade: B+

Utopia, Season One (UK):
We started this dark conspiracy show (the UK version not the more violent US remake) amidst a dearth of other TV options. It's fine when nothing else is on but not spectacular. Lots of exposition dumps slow down the pace and the characters aren't particularly interesting in their own right. We've been stalled on Episode 4 of 6 for weeks now and haven't had much incentive to pick it back up.

Final Grade: Not Rated

The Attractions of Youth by Barns Courtney:
I first heard of Barns Courtney through Glitter and Gold. This album is full of similar, catchy tunes.

Final Grade: B+

On to Something by Von Smith:
I picked up this solo album based on Von Smith's collaborations with Postmodern Jukebox. There are a lot of cool ideas in these songs yet none of them really "radio-ready" pop songs. Changing tempos and contrasting styles (within the same song) abound. Carnival of Life is a good example.

Final Grade: B

Shot Day

I received my first dose of Pfizer through the county yesterday morning.

I registered in early March and got pinged to make an appointment this past Sunday, even though I'm not in a specific priority group. There must have been doses to spare -- western Loudoun vaccine hesitancy?

The whole process took place in the old Nordstroms at Dulles Town Center. The parking lot was packed to capacity, the operation sprawled across both floors of the Nordstroms, and the center was overflowing with helpful volunteers. I had a 20 minute wait in a constantly-moving line and one of the volunteers mentioned that they expected to do over four thousand shots that day. Soreness in my arm is comparable to a typical flu shot.

All in all, I'm a satisfied customer as long as I get the gift of flight, or maybe telekinesis, after the second dose.