Doomverse #28 - Weaponized Mayhem

Doom is known for many things. Many things have already been said about Doom and Quake, especially on Planet Virtua. What really matters for a lot of people are the weapons. The guns, the chainsaw, the Rune Sword, all of these are the focus for a great deal of the fans. Many of them have been used in multiple games and represented in other games. These titles have affected the gaming world as we know it. The Doomverse weapons roster hasn't just stood the test of time, but modern games are still trying to perfect it. Sure, you can say Halo did it better, but everyone's wrong at some point in their lives.

This is a list of the greatest weapons in the Doomverse, beit Quake 3 Arena or Doom Eternal. Some weapons have an improved version in later editions, some of them are featured once and then basically never again. These are the weapons that thrived under the pressure of being compared to another in the Doom Arsenal. Whether they create more destruction or just iconized Doom as a whole, these rose to the top. 

The Dark Age's Bonecrusher

The newest Doom game, at the time of this writing, had no shortage of cool weapons, but this is one that truly stood out. It certainly wasn't the "BFC". The Bonecrusher in both of its other iterations used this idea to a great degree. The thought of a skull being used to drive shrapnel into your enemies is just such a brutal idea and its upgrades made it quite the demon grinder. The Ravager was probably the best iteration out of any of them and I can only hope that it will be in future titles. Part of me doubts it, but one can hope.

Doom 4's Heavy Assault Rifle

The repeating rifle was not a weapon in the original Doom games, mostly because it didn't need one with the chaingun. Doom 2016 brought this about in probably the most boss way possible. It not only starts like a true Doom weapon, but throughout the game, the upgrades build it up to a legendary status that deserves to be on this list. You can upgrade the bullets to explode after impact, and it even eats through cyber mancubi like hot water through ice. 

 Doom 4's Chaingun

Fully upgraded and able to immediately begin spinning, this chaingun will take down any horde of demons and destroy a boss demon's hit bar. This chaingun gets an upgrade where it sprouts three different turrets which all fire at once. It overheats faster, but it also does more damage than it would in normal fire rates. This is enough damage to take down a fresh Cyber Mancubus. The gun itself is a one-machine barrage.

Quake 3 Arena's Lightning Gun

More deadly than the first Quake's lightning gun, this one reaches far and drains the opponent's HP within seconds. One big problem is that it does run out of ammunition fairly quickly. If you're fortunate enough to get a fully loaded lightning, it can mow down any group of fighters. It doesn't chain lightning enemies, that would be a little overpowered, but it doesn't take away from how the gun turned out. 

Quake 3 Arena's Plasma Gun

The gun that inspired Dark Age's plasma gun. Though it can be argued that it's not quite as powerful as the Doom 1 iteration, it is still such a satisfying gun to use when you start to unleash upon a single or multiple targets. It also has the drawback of not being able to fire up close without massive backfire. It is known as "melting your face". So, pick your poison between the two. They're both A Class Doomverse weapons.

Quake 3 Arena's Railgun

If you want one of the better aspects of Quake 3 Arena, you do a railgun fight. These guns are so easy to use, you just pick one up and put someone in your sights. If you want to be real stylish, you shoot someone with no zoom. That one small second to line up your sights can be the second where you get killed, so you need to be fast and this is the way to one-shot an opponent. It will even kill someone with a near miss and does tons of damage when grazing a target. Quake 3 and Quake 4 did it right.

Quake's Nailgun

If you want a more iconic weapon, it's hard to beat Quake's original nailgun. This is where they proudly declared "Nine Inch Nails did our soundtrack" through the NIN symbols on the ammo boxes. The nailgun and super nailgun will get you through many levels of Quake with glorious nail fire. The problem really is that their nail doesn't last, especially with the super nailgun's fire rate. 

Doom Eternal's Crucible

One of the biggest hype pieces from Doom 2016. This sword was introduced at the very end, and we finally get our own in Doom Eternal. It is an instant-kill weapon with very limited ammo, unless you're fighting the Icon of Sin. This sword will immediately slice huge demons in half, even the mini-bosses. Given this powerful weapon near the end of Doom Eternal was a gigantic help when the going got tough. It was as dependable as the BFG when you needed a quick death between a rock and a hard place.

Doom Eternal's Unmaykr

Introduced in Doom 64 and perfected in Eternal, The Unmaker, or "Unmakyr" in this case, is a weapon on par with the Big Fucking Gun. One good pull will destroy the largest demons within a few seconds. It sends multiple laser blasts all at once, which make any demon crumble under its weight, even the bosses. The feeling of unleashing this enormous barrage all at once is very satisfying. You don't need to upgrade it like you did in 64, it's ridiculously powerful as soon as you unlock it by doing all of the callenge stages. It takes a while to accomplish, but it is a labor of love for a fantastic weapon in your arsenal. 

Doom 4's Chainsaw

What sets this apart from the other chainsaws, is that it is an instant kill weapon that is not wholly required to be used. Yes, it is still made to revamp your ammunition by spawning it from your victim, but it is not a need like it is in Doom Eternal. The death animations you get from this have to be among the greatest glory kills in the entire game. The blood and severed body parts are worth its use alone, you never need to make it required.

Doom 4's Gauss Cannon

A standout weapon for many, many reasons. It's Doom 2016's answer to the railgun. Somehow, though, they turned it into one of the most powerful weapons outside of the normal fair. Two words: "Siege Mode". This mode will turn this fairly decent blaster cannon into a decimating powerhouse of burning terror! One single shot from Siege Mode has the power to take down Barons of Hell and turn them into piles. It is one of the weapons that reminds you how awesome the power fantasy can get. Turn mancubi and cyber mancubi into piles of organs at your leisure and have a ball. It is even better when you're able to move in this mode.

Rocket Launcher

Doom 1 did this right from the start and they rolled with it in each and every iteration. Rocket jumps, blast back, rocket battles against Cyberdemons, everything about this gun has some sort of iconic affect on its game. Quake cashed in on the rocket jump first and it has since become a staple of First Person Shooters as a result. It may be a bad idea to use it on Lost Souls or Pinkies, for obvious reasons but it's just so wonderful to fire one missile into a group to see body parts begin to fly. Rip and Tear, indeed.

The BFG 9000

They tried to make a BFG 10,000 more than once. One was a strange iteration from Quake 3 Arena, the other was a planet destroying beam in Doom Eternal that blows a hole into Mars. They were nice but nothing will replace the Big Fucking Gun 9000. One pull of the trigger kills entire hordes and does incomparable damage to mini-bosses if it doesn't finish them outright. Doom films have never gotten this weapon right, but it is thankfully handled very well in every other sequel. We're not going to go into the crossbow from The Dark Ages, there's only one super powered laser cannon that we want. We want the one they used to name an alcoholic drink mix. You know, the one that three clips a Cyberdemon. We want that one!

The Super Shotgun

At first glance, in Doom 2, this may just look like a normal double barrel shotgun. Well, not only does it take 2 shells in each shot, but it also has the capacity to kill multiple demons in one pull. There's no blowback, though, and hearing that meaty sound as you fire and reload is hard to top. Doom 4 brought it back in all its wondrous glory and outshined even the Quake iterations as a result. With uranium shells and the ability to double shot, Doom 2016 brought the super shotgun to a newfound glory through some of the most awesome upgrades imaginable. Eternal's super shotgun had a hook for chain jumping and that may have been an interesting novelty, but it ultimately did very little for the super shotty all around. One upclose shot from this gun should be sending demon parts scattering across the screen. If not, you're doing it wrong.

There are a lot more weapons to be considered, but these are a good start. Next time, we'll take a look at the weapons of Wolfenstein, as those are a list all their own. Doom has no shortage of metal that grinds demons into dust, and Quake drives some pretty hard nails into the coffin. They are often duplicated by others, but they will always be judged by the best.

Doomverse #27 - ID May Be Doomed

Unfortunately, thanks to a lot of terrible crashing in the gaming industry, a very large amount of employees in ID Software have been laid off. The layoffs came as Microsoft are continuing to lose support for the Xbox. Pretty much, after the Revelations DLC was released for Doom The Dark Ages, the ID Software studios are now down to less than half of their former numbers. This was in the wake of new Quake installment rumors floating around, even going so far as to tease a new project in future plans that are now heavily in question. 

Xbox announced that it was going to just keep chugging along with the layoffs, as ID Software is far from the only one affected by all of this. The gaming crash continues to destroy more and more studios. Developers and publishers are now finding out why they need their customer base. This is especially hard, considering ID Software was the one that consistently delivered amazing games. Doom 2016, Doom Eternal and Doom The Dark Ages brought players what they wanted. While TDA didn't perform quite as well as they hoped, they still took out a ton of game developing experience! They threw the baby out with the bath water, seeing has how ID Software was ready to keep going with what they were doing. 

Bethesda also had their big toy, Fallout taken away from them and handed off to Fallout New Vegas team, Obsidian. Judging by how well The Outer Worlds 2 turned out, I'm still not holding out hope. Xbox has been making so many consistent wrong decisions that it's basically too late to save it. To think that they could make a New Vegas sequel or Fallout Spinoff of any kind is rather laughable at this point. 

Sadly, this could also mean it will be a very long time before we get a proper Doom or Quake sequel, if ever. Other gaming franchises have gone ice cold over the decades and it's hard to believe that they would ever put Doom back into the freezer, but that has been the case for a lot of our favorites. The worst thing you can do is panic over this. In the end, it is not worth losing yourself over. Doom is legendary for a reason, as it is ageless. It is one of those fandoms that will always survive because it was made for the fans by true gaming geniuses that loved and respected their base of loyal subjects. However, this is not the time for giving up on it.

The game crash is hitting us where it hurts, but we still have our own libraries full of endless classic Doom levels, Doom 4 levels from the map makers, all of the games we've been collecting over the years are still within our fingertips and we do not need to give them up for anything because they're ours. Remember to keep Deathmatching, playing the single players and keeping the Doomverse alive through pure fandom. It may be a long road for the gaming industry to recover, but now it's time to hunker down and help each other like true gamers should. Either way, keep ripping and tearing, and get some old Doom ports. Then you'll Virtua Shred!!! 

Virtua Fighter 3tb - Punch Your Problems Away

When you come off of such a high point as Virtua Fighter 2 on the Sega Saturn, once you harken in a new console with a new numbered sequel to such a prestigious franchise, you need to bring your absolute A game. You need to batten down the hatches and make sure that this sequel is going to be the next great thing. Did they succeed? In a word, yes. When I said that Virtua Fighter 3tb for the Sega Dreamcast was the worst Virtua Fighter game, that was more of a joke. It was also, believe it or not, an absolute compliment. The truth of the matter is, I disliked Virtua Fighter Remix the worst of any of them. The first Virtua Fighter is objectively worse than VF3tb. 

This game gives you so much fighting, you begin to burst. You put in one mode of the game, whether it be single player or 2nd player mode, you are going to drown in combat. There are more characters, more levels, and more rounds than ever. The combat is still silky smooth and you can find your own character fighting style. Jackie specializes in kicks and has speedy attack style. Jeffry is much more tankish, slow, but he also has hard grappling moves and slams. Now they have brought in some of the newer characters, including the sumo wrestler, Taka-Arashi. 

This is, no joke, a lot of combat to go through just for some arcade modes. Sometimes, five or six matches is all it takes, but no, these matches kept going and going. Great combat, that much is certain, but sometimes, it is better just to give the people a small match roster. This is accentuated in the Team Battle, which this game was titled after. 

However, if this is a full on tournament mode situation when you have a party to go through, Virtua Fighter 3 is your baby. You want enough fighting and bashing skulls to satiate an entire party, you get Smash Brothers and you get VF3tb, and you will make the best experience to come. This will test people to their breaking point and there may be friendships lost as you find either the cheapest or the most effective techniques to beat the snot out of one another. 

If you wanted more fighting and more Virtua Fighter, this is the one you go to, especially if you have a lot of time on your hands. It has the controls, the characters and the awesome looking backgrounds. One place where this version falls short, however, is the uncanny valley happening with their characters in this awkward stage in style. Virtua Fighter 2 is probably where they caught the beautiful classic style the best. Virtua Fighrer 3 should have probably stuck closer to the older graphical settings. 

It's still awesome fighting from an awesome fighting game. If you want fighting and you want nostalgia, you go to Virtua Fighter and you start stomping face. Whoever your favorite character is, they have a great selection here. Even Lyon and Shun return from their introduction in Virtua Fighter 2. Play this game enough and you'll find your rhythm, especially once you find the character that matches your style. It's all here, get ready to Mash Virtua Skulls! 

Resident Evil The Final Chapter - Alice Ends

It is very sad to say that Resident Evil live action iterations never improved. All of them, up until the writing of this article, have never surpassed the decency of the first Resident Evil film directed by Anderson. The animated movies have a far better track record, but those are considered niche Resident Evil fan viewings. If you have any interest in the games, the animated movie series is far more worth your time. These live action films, even as stand-alone movies, only show the viewer how nonsensical and repetitive they become by the end. 

If you have been paying attention, you'll understand that Alice is the prime example of a Mary Sue. She literally is never seriously injured more than being knocked out, beyond a strategic loss of some fingers. Any screw ups she has are all minimalistic and survived with hardly a scratch. Her stunts are extremely unrealistic as a result. She becomes the cornerstone of this entire story, even when she only played a very tiny part in the beginning. She was in the Hive in order to infiltrate it and prove that they were doing illegal experiments. Beyond living on top of it in a strange undercover marriage story that makes no sense, Alice's role was basically meeting a contact and exchanging data. 

Now, in this story, she is everything and anything that is or ever will be important. They shoe-horn her into this horrific plot like she was everything that matters with whatever is happening. They even go so far as to [SPOILER ALERT] make her out to be the CLONE of a top share-holder of the Umbrella Corporation. She is now, suddenly, the daughter of one of the head scientists who was cloned in order to... live her better life because she has a rapidly aging disease that caused her to become sick and need to freeze hersel--- Okay, seriously, this whole thing just flew directly off of the rails. 

All of the sudden, Wesker's double-cross in the last movie was retconned. Not only was it retconned, but the powers he gave back to Alice are now fake and she's still a "normal human" who can do death defying stunts without fail and kill anyone and everyone. You know, just normal human things. Wesker's part in this is, once again, minimalistic. Why they even bothered to bring him back after he seemingly died in the fourth movie is an answer lost in time. He barely even matters in the entire film after being one of its most continuous villains, only to be killed by a door chopping his leg off. He seriously bleeds to death and that's it. 

They bring back the scientist from the third film who died and say that he was actually a clone. This one is for real, just trust us. He basically takes Wesker's role in this film and still does a very bad job of it. Alice continuously bests him in comically stupid ways and he keeps proving why they should have never cloned him or given him any sort of authority. Dr. Isaacs just has the cure for the T-Virus in his jacket pocket and it somehow can be broken outside and spread across the entire world, curing everyone and killing the zombies or something like that. However, if it's broken inside it will not go anywhere and be useless. The logic behind all of this is so flawed, it really makes the head spin. 

Anderson thought that if we just put a mindless time limit on how long the human race can survive, it would bring up the tension. Somehow, in X amount of hours, the human race is going to be killed by... zombies or the T-Virus or something. Anything to make the plot keep moving to some sort of goal. Then he thought that he could just retcon everything we know about Alice and say she is a clone now. Like, she's also got amnesia because she can't remember anything about her past, guy, just, like, deal with it or something. That's not a joke. Dr. Isaacs literally comes out and tells her that she can't remember anything about her past. This comes out of left field and has never been delved into. In the original movie, she was a double agent working to bring down Umbrella, now she has a super badass action hero past of not knowing who she is or where she came from because she was cloned from blah blah blah. 

For the sake of losing myself in a story, editing is not even something I try to pay attention to when watching movies. The plot and characters normally take the forefront. That is, if there aren't enormous, glaring issues. The editing will give you a headache with how quick and choppy it can get. When getting images for this review, locking onto a single shot was an absolute hair-pulling experience. There are flashing lights in dark spaces, especially if a gun is being fired and it is absolute migraine fuel. The acting has not been good for a few movies now, if it was ever considered good to begin with. However, that is the very least of its problems by this point.

This was a chore to get through. Paul Anderson said that he was going to have Alice die at the end, but ended up not doing it because he... said he did things to make the ending so emotional. Emotional. Paul needs a dictionary or something with very detailed descriptions of vocabulary words. There is literally nothing emotional about any of this. I barely even remembered that Claire Redfield somehow wandered her way aimlessly into this movie. To be honest, I don't even remember if it was Jill or Claire. They're both so superfluous to everything going on because Alice takes up the screen with no room for other characters. Her emotionless journey, coasting through the world on stunt wires, culminates to nothing more than a very long and pointless search for a cure that apparently doesn't work immediately. That's right, she breaks the vial outside so it can travel across the world "but there's still so much to do!" Well, that's nice. I hope it reaches the people before they are savagely ripped apart by undead things or mutations of a horrific nature. 

There was nothing about this movie that even came close to entertainment. You are far too transfixed by the nonsensical plot, eye-gouging editing, Mila's lifeless portrayal of a wooden Mary Sue, hordes of easily avoided zombies and pointless plot devices showing up on the screen before being discarded for more wackiness. This isn't a chore to get through, it's downright brain torture. This entire series lost the plot and just decided it was cool with that, because it did it again and again and again. It's really no wonder that both Mila Jovovich and Paul W.S. Anderson fell far out of favor in the film industry after this travesty of a series. Monster Hunter did not turn out any better because Anderson decided to put his wife front and center, again, and ignore everything he didn't like about the games, which was everything, apparently. We may have gotten one good film in the beginning, but this whole decade of trash movies and storytelling was not really worth it. Thankfully, the series is Virtua Dead. 

And Then it Crashed...

Well, we should have seen this coming for a while, which we did, but it still isn't fun news. Playstation and Xbox have both decided to stop selling physical copies of games, basically destroying the market for used games, which is half of the market. What this means is a lot of suffering customers and suffering sales. The worst part about it is what it will do to physical outlets like Gamestop and Game XChange, along with many other stores that rely on used games for most of their profit margin. 

It's time like this that I hate when I'm right. I've pushed hard to physical copies and this is the very reason. Without physical discs, that leaves customers vulnerable with their collections being 100% digital from here on. This means that there will be no used games or new games for outlets even like Walmart or Target. All of it will be on their home stores and that is basically putting all of their eggs in one basket. Not only can they inflate prices however they want, they can also delete the games from digital accounts if they so wanted to, which they have made abundantly clear. 

Keeping used games in circulation is more important now than ever before. There's really no telling how long this whole scorched Earth tactic will go on. It could be done and done for, or there is always the chance that backlash and falling sales could change their minds. Either way, this means very bad things for the gaming industry. 

The article I released today was supposed to be released later this month, but instead I released it today because what I was writing about came very true. Again, this is a time to vote with your wallets and make sure that if you want physical media to come back, it's time to stop buying the digital stuff or at least cut down on the spending as a whole. If you're down with physical media going the way of the beeper, that's your little red wagon, but I am all for them stopping this horrible posturing like now they have all of the cards and are ready to deal them on the buying customer whenever they so please. Without the need to create discs and cases, they'll save millions within the first few months alone on game costs. Will we be seeing a duck in prices as well? Oh, I wouldn't hold my breath on that one just yet, Virtua Bro. 

Judging by the discourse against this blatant anti-consumerism that we've been seeing for years, it has reached a boiling point, and a lot of people are waking up to the fact that gaming industries really don't have their best interests or fun factor in mind. All they really have been after was your wallets and purses from the very start. While this was obvious, they at least went to some lengths to fulfill the customer's order. At this point, the industry is basically expressing nothing but contempt for their own audience, convinced that they are overly hard to please simply for having an opinion that their games shouldn't be glitching so bad as to make you fall through the Earth pixels every time you press right on the joystick.

Hopefully, you have some good games to fall back on in what will be coming. This dry spell is going to suck, but that's just the order of things at this point. Much like the crash of the 80's, this one is going to run its course for as long as it takes. Be friendly and be productive. If you don't play your old machines, sell them to a good home or sell them to someone who will give them one. Be thankful for what we are given but reject the things you don't want. As always, they need to earn their paychecks if they want to see their games stop flopping and until then, enjoy some old games. Looks like it's time to make a Virtua Return to the consoles that birthed this site. Keeping it mixed up, but mixing in some classics, as always. Help each other and we'll be fine. Virtua Peace. 

AAA vs Indie #1 - The State of the Gaming Industry Today

Well, it's looking kinda dark for the video game industry, but it's also nothing we haven't seen before. Obviously, priorities got crossed somewhere along the way and now the big AAA industry has proven that it has lost its way. Indie games, on the other hand, have continuously given us surprises and challenges that we are enjoying. Not only are they more fun and inventive than the corporate garbage being pumped into the silo, but they are cheaper and more care has been given in considering the customer. How the industry has taken such a nosedive isn't really a huge mystery. Now that social media is more readily available and individuals have more access to communications with the general public, it has become something of a first grader's view on how to handle that freedom. 

The point of Public Relations is to hype up the game and sell it to the player. That's it! There should be no other reason to talk to the buying audience than to show off what the game can do and what their experience will be like playing it. It is not a platform to berate and chastise the public for not wanting to buy your game. Once the buyer has decided that they don't want to spend the money, you have lost. Rubbing salt in your own wound and blaming the customer should never be on the agenda. Why do they allow these devs and publishers to speak on their behalf, with their name in their profiles as a constributor to that business? They are literally calling the public names and preaching at them like children, and it is only driving their own name into the ground.

Reputation is not just "who can look the coolest?" It is the way your viewing public perceives you. If you use your business to try and scam your players into purchasing your game, you are showing that you do not have our best interests in mind. You can have the most amazing game with every feature under the sun, but if you start throwing in microtransactions, modern politics and extremely horrific characters both in design and personality, it really should come as no mystery why no one bought the game. If no one cares about the game or likes how it looks, doubling down and speaking against the audience  is not going to make anything better. 

Well, it has already reached a boiling point. Customers are looking at indie games and buying them by the truck loads. When you have a game that is only 20 or 30 spacebucks, you're more apt to open up. When a more graphically appealing but mediocre looking game comes at 70 or 80 virtua clams, it's going to be a much harder sell. Their wallets speak for themselves and nothing will change that. 

The indie developers comment very little on a personal level, besides taking jabs at the industry. They are getting lukewarm reviews by so-called "gaming journalists" but it's obviously because they don't have bribe money. Oh, don't think it's not obvious that gaming websites have been dealing under the table with their reviews. They will obviously prop up the most atrocious trash because they lined their pockets, while games that stand on their own get 5's and 6's. 

Gaming Awards are some of the biggest jokes still left from the old days. They actually meant something at one point, but now someone can just plant a game that agrees with their political views and they're the ones in the running. They continuously snub games that don't go along with their narrative, but the joke is that those are the games that are actually selling. Numbers do not lie and neither does Steam when it comes to the player counts and overall sales of a game. The mere fact that this angers the AAA industry goes to show how trustworthy they are. This whole "Oh, it sold gangbusters, trust me bro" got old and outdated years ago. 

Honesty is in short supply with the gaming industry. So, now if a developer or publisher shows some humility in both pricing and game development, they are drawing the crowd. Not all indie games are even real indie games and the public is snooping out their lies as they comes. It really goes to show how insulting the public's intelligence does not bear fruit. With games taking 5 to 8 years to come out, they are missing extremely glaring problems in their development as the companies rarely keep an eye on public interest. So, when the game comes out and the hundreds of millions of dollars are already spent, the game will often not meet any sales figures and the development team usually goes with it. 

With this very puzzling industry standard, it's obvious that they will start weeding out the teams that are not meeting sales. The development teams will go under and the team will split into more development teams. At some point, this should get the less productive team members to find other types of work, but that is a much longer process than it really should be. Still, the more money they spend on flops, the more we will begin to see the tides changing. How hard will it crash in the meantime? That's really hard to tell, but it's going to come down one way or the other. Everything has a natural order and these dry periods are only going to get worse before they get better. The great thing about indie developers is that they don't quite play by the same schedule, so we may see some games from them sooner rather than later as the AAA corporations either die or wake up to reality. Only time will tell.

So we don't end on a downer note, though, I am happy to announce an idea that came back to the surface. I had an idea for a series a long time ago called AAA vs Indie and I made three articles about it. These articles ended up becoming their own singular entities when I loaded them to this website, but the Sonic Spectrum article, Survival Horror article, and Mighty Number Nein were all part of this series. It's going to pit interesting tidbits and events of the industry fighting between the two ends of the spectrum and see who comes out on top. It's not really a level playing field, but that's never stopped some developers from dominating as the underdog. So, let's take a nice little journey as I introduce yet another series because I feel like it. Virtua Boss.

Doomverse #26 - Music En Memorium

Sadly, on June 16th, 2026, we said goodbye to one of the front runners of Doom history. The man they came to for rocking tunes for their games has passed on. Bobby Prince was to thank for an entire laundrey list of original game soundtracks, especially in the 80's and 90's. They came to him when they were at a loss of what to do with both music and sound effects. Bobby showed them techniques that they continuously used from then on. He allowed them to use his equipment and experiment with his computer programs to distort their voices and make beautiful sound effects that we still remember and love today. 

Thanks to Bobby, we have the rocking metal knockoffs of Doom. Was he supposed to basically copy their melodies almost 1 for 1? No, honestly, they could have gotten into legal trouble. Still, it seems they were cool with it because Doom is awesome. Bobby represented game soundtracks through both ID and Apogee, as he also worked closely on the Rise of the Triad and Duke Nukem II & 3D. His fingerprints can be heard throughout the gaming world as people still play all of these games to this day. These games are timeless, and Bobby Prince helped make that happen. 

Commander Keen was one of his earliest works in the industry and he stuck with it throughout the series. This led to his companionship with ID Software through Apogee's founder, Scott Miller. While it may seem like he has a bit of a light library of work, what work he did made an impression on PC gaming as a whole. If anyone deserves a mantle spot in the creation of Doom and Doom II, Bobby Prince deserves a spot of real respect right beside John Romero, John Carmack, Sandy Petersen and Adrian Carmack. 

To Bobby's family and friends, our hearts go out to you. We will remember Bobby for all of his great achievements, but he is also a life lost to the real world. May he rest in power and bring more music to the heavens. Goodbye, Friend.

Quake 2 (PS1) - When Stroggs Bash Control

There comes a time when you want to tell developers that the left and right joysticks were always good with FPS controls, they just needed to implement them correctly. It's very hard to get why people were so against it when it was introduced on the PS1 Alien Resurrection game. This title would have benefitted greatly from that, because the controls are one of the biggest factors that stand out. Is this title terrible? Not by a long shot, but it is tainted with some of the worst controls for a semi-fast action shooter. The graphics are one thing that redeems it, though. 

It is possible to get used to these controls, but there is always the problem with that. You get used to those controls, you go back to other controls for a while and think "boy, I sure want to try Quake 2 on the PS1 again!" Now, why you would do this is up to you, but good luck trying to get back into this game. You will need to take some shots as you learn the controls, but then you start to feel yourself reacting faster to the strangely beautiful 90's polygonal Strogg character. 

As said before, the N64 port of this game is far superior. The PS1 devs could have thought about a similar tactic, if we're being honest. The graphics are worn down from the PC counterpart, but if you really find a good emulator or even the real disc of this game, that grainy graphic heaven is quire alluring. It feels like a time capsule where graphics evolving turned into a genre all its own. Parasite Eve had a similar effect, but Quake 2 did receive a nice PS1 makeover. It's not choppy or overly difficult to play, for the most part, but it does come with the pitfalls of Quake 2 itself.

Levels are obviously pretty drawn out in this game, and it still lacks in the number of enemies. This gives it less of a speed factor. Sometimes, you'll get a good few enemies here and there, but it really seems to lack the meat. To be honest, the game kind of looks better with lower graphics than the PC version. Giving it less of a sheen harkens a little more back to Quake 1, which perfected 3D graphics in its first attempt. It's fairly obvious that making Quake 2 was no easier than making Quake 1, as they lost good names from the team, like Sandy Petersen and American Mcgee. 

Still, even at their worst, ID was better than a lot of garbage factories that pass as game developers now days. Quake 2 can be seen as a low point, but that still ranks it higher than a number of games that are said to be "trendy" or just manufactured. This is not a high grade Quake experience, but it certainly will give you what you came for. Give yourself a moment to get used to the controls and you'll get your Quake fix. Aside from that, there's not much more to say that hasn't already been said. If you love Quake, you'll get some enjoyment out of this port of the sequel. If Quake 2 isn't your cup of tea, this does not compare to the PC and you will not find it any more endearing. There are better ways to kill the Strogg, but kill them you must. 
 

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Wii) - And the Half-Baked Game

Hey, kids?! Remember all of the excitement and drama that goes on throughout Harry Potter's later series? Remember how some of it was alright while the rest of it was meh? Yeah, well, you really couldn't have picked a worse subject for a fast-paced video game. If any of you have read the sixth book, you'll know that it doesn't exactly lend itself to a game like this in any capacity. The ending scene had some excitement, but beyond that, it was Harry being stupid about Malfoy, some shallow plot around horcruxes with Professor Slughorn and Dumbledore having a sore hand before going for a tumble. It's understandable that this would be rough to make a game out of, but even under those limitations, it seems like someone could have thought of something better.

So, unlike The Order of the Phoenix, I went ahead played the Wii version of this one. While it did do better with the motion controls, it did not make this game anymore interesting or longer. That's right, this game lasts around three, maybe four hours. The mechanics are as simple as they could make them and not in a good way. All you do in this game is duel with wands, mix potions and fly on a broom through rings. That's right, someone didn't think that flying through rings on Superman 64 was lame enough, they needed to give it to Harry Potter for broom practice and Quidditch because, why not? 

This game is also very boring. Half-Blood Prince wasn't known for its exciting scenes and even the fighting is nonsensical within the book and the movie. The motion controls add a little bit of novelty to this game, but certainly not enough to make me want to play it anymore. Some people love potion simulators and honestly, I can see the charm in it. If this were called Harry Potter's Potion Class, with both timed and regular rounds, it could have been a cool little minigame for your phone or something. In a full release game, though, this just feels like a cheap knockoff to an actual title. 

If this were part of a larger game, it could have been thought of as a good bit of filler. As it stands, though, there just really isn't that much to talk about. The graphics are what you'd expect from the time: Slightly uncanny valley movie characters who look like puppets of the actors. The Wii era really knew how to make humans look wishy washy either way. The voice work isn't bad... but it isn't very good either. They sound like the actors who forgot how to talk properly and come off as stilted and lifeless. 

The worst parts came in the form of the Quidditch controls. You need to point the wand at the screen and move it around in the direction you want them to fly on their broom. This is a little harder than it sounds, especially with such small targets to fly through. As a novelty, this can come as a cool mini-game, much like the potions class, but the controls for it can get very frustrating as the broom sometimes decides not to do as you instruct. 

The game is improved if you decide to play its intended format. This may improve the 5th game's score if it wasn't played on the PS2, but that's really not saying much in terms of an actual game. This is still comparable to a series of Mario Party mini-games that does not lend itself well at all to a full retail Wii game. The Wii is rather infamous for these types of titles, and there are worse examples. It's really just a shame that they went with the trendy, easier titles to make after such a peak as the Goblet of Fire game. For some reason, they went less mature in the later series for their subject material. With such a shallow game, it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of people were disappointed in this game. It wasn't within their power to create a Hogwarts Legacy type game yet, so we can't give them too much grief on that, but they could have come up with something better than this. It doesn't really bode well for the Deathly Hallows games, but we'll see how that goes. Virtua Flobberworms.

Resident Evil Retribution - It is Time to Stop!

At this point, it was more than obvious that Paul W.S. Anderson had no idea what he was doing with this franchise. He handed the project over to others, retconned massive plot points, erased characters with little to no explanation and gave Alice every single superpower under the sun. Whatever the plot ran into, either make Alice more powerful or cause something lucky to happen. Retribution was supposed to take place right after the battle on the ship, but everything that happened on the ship is hereby gone. Yeah, the Redfield siblings are not present anymore, nor is K-Mart. At this point, they are putting whatever they think is clever or conveniant into the plot and rolling with that. 

For some reason, everyone just changes factions and serves the enemy for this one single movie. This is the only movie where Wesker is seemingly on Alice's side and for some reason, the Red Queen is trying to kill her along with the human race. Now, we see the simulations that they alluded to before to see that they're all filled with clones. Yes, we're going back to clones and we're bringing back old characters who died in previous entries. Michelle Rodriguez actually has a starring role, but as two different clones, one of them being evil. 

For one reason or another, Alice is captured in another Umbrella facility, mostly naked blah blah blah. We've seen this so many times, it's not even funny anymore. She runs into Ada Wong, who is actually rather decently portrayed. She's almost kinda like her video game character, so that's something. In fact, we have a lot of characters from the video games in this film. We actually have Leon, and even Barry makes a small appearance. Jill is here, but she's mostly a villain being mind controlled to hunt Alice with a bunch of Umbrella Corp guys. 

Alice has no powers in this movie because Wesker shut them off with a syringe. Half of the things she does in this movie is superhuman, but she's supposed to be a normal human being like she was in the first movie. She does not act like a human being in any conceivable way throughout this entire film. She finds a clone daughter in the simulation. Yes, Alice has a daughter between her clone and a clone of Carlos from the second and third movies. This little girl follows her through half of this movie, but is never seen after the credits roll. Yes, she is yet another deleted character. Pour one out. 

The Red Queen is one of the worst aspects of this entire film, as odd as that sounds. She represents everything wrong with this movie, as compared to the first installment. Like I said in that previous entry, I actually liked it to some degree. The Red Queen's CGI was very dated and looked awful, even for back then, but it looks a ton better than how she turns out here. Here, she just looks more realistic, but also more fake at the same time. The affects are completely changed for this, almost making it seem like it's a different character entirely. That would have made much more sense than trying to tell the audience that this is the same character we met then. Not only does she act differently, but she also changes the meaning of her catchphrase "You're all going to die down here", and effectively killed that catchphrase from this point on. The delivery was off, and brought in at the most awkward times and they treat it like some clever callback, which it isn't. Now, she is out to kill the human race, where she tried to save it in the first movie by cutting off all of the zombies from getting out of the facility. Whoever wrote her part in this movie needs a nice hard demotion and a lesson in writing dialogue.

More nonsensical action sequences and army zombies firing weapons happen while half of the Umbrella Corp characters come to save Alice from the simulation. Again, Wesker is helping her through the facility to escape because he needs her to fight against the Red Queen.... again, for some reason. None of this has any build up, there is no point to this plot and it's all apparently just poising the characters for a double-cross that never comes. It's all just to facilitate a bunch of giant zombies bombarding streets of pointless simulations because Umbrella is bored and can apparently piss billions of dollars a day on seeing what happens when clone civilizations get the T-Virus. Surprise surprise, they all start dying and panicking. 

Most of the characters die, and even if they don't, many of them are never seen again in the final film. Anderson and Jovovich kept hyping all of this up like it comes to some awesome conclusion, but anyone who has been paying attention to this "movie series" can easily see that these were all aimless, mindless action movies that have little to nothing to do with one another. How can there be an awesome conclusion when nothing about them coincides with the other or builds to any sort of endgame? It still baffles me that Anderson had the gall to say "Since the beginning, I knew that the movies would end with the Hive". Paul, no you didn't. You had no clue where this whole thing was going to end, you just kind of thought that going to the main facility from the beginning would be like "poetry because it rhymes". Trying to pass off any of this like it had some sort of plan or story structure is laughable at best, pathetic at worst. The movie has some decent effects and a few cool, effective action sequences. Beyond that, it's mindless gibberish that thinks it's a real story, but it's Virtua Sadness.

Rise of the Triad - Doom DNA Added

 

When Doom was being created, unfortunately, it spelled the end of their peak team dynamic. While John Romero and Carmack were coming up with brand new ideas and killing demons in new and exciting ways, Tom Hall was picking up some pieces of what he wanted to be the next Commander Keen game. The problem was that the rest of the team were a little burnt out on Keen, wanting to move on and explore new depths with the engine they perfected since Wolfenstein 3D's launch. Tom Hall was demanded to resign and he did so with a heavy heart, but he found work at Apogee. 

With a new team and a new goal, they made a game that... defies many counts of gaming logic. They went full force into weird mode with it and somehow Rise of the Triad became a bit of an oddity in the gaming space of the 90's. Believe it or not, I played the shareware version. My brother found the disk at a local software store and the clerk looked the other way because he would get in trouble for giving it to a minor. We were serious gamers and they knew our dad. 

To say we were perplexed is putting it mildly. This game had so many mechanics you would never think would be in a game in the first place. As a child, obviously I had no idea one of the creators of Doom made this. Nor did I have any idea that this was supposed to be Wolfenstein's official sequel. Why they didn't have the rights to do so is confusing, seems how they published the first game. 

The layout was completely different in so many ways. All of the enemies were just guys wearing hats shooting guns, for the most part. You actually platform in this game with trampolines. The weapons range from dual pistols that don't run out of ammo, to a missile launcher that makes fire tunnel through the air in multiple directions. Apparently, this was made due to a mistake that was made in the coding, and they decided to keep it as its own weapon. God bless them for it. 

There's food called priest's porridge and you can shoot a missile near it, heating it up to give you more health. God mode gives you the power to just fire energy from your hand while making weird slow motion deep voice sounds like you're otherworldly. It's just a strange little game with mechanics that you would never think would be in a game. When you shoot enemies, they can hold up their hands and beg for their lives. If you don't kill them, they will go for their gun and try to kill you. There's even men who are lying on the ground, acting dead like you've been through there before. They will wait until you get close and pop up to shoot you. 

This game is challenging for a number of reasons. One of the main ones is the idea of complicated platforming in an early FPS shooter. Using the trampolines to go across moving platforms and robot drones flying around your head shooting you, it gets rather stressful. This is abundantly used in ROTT Extreme and is one of the reasons it's so infamous. The levels in either versions of the game are already vast and hard to navigate. 

Okay, so when I say the game isn't like Doom, that's not entirely true. On the surface, it looks like a very different game, but looking close at the wall and floor textures, you'll see some of Doom's influence. Yes, the fact that it's an FPS is inherently Wolfenstein and Doom, but then there are the blood puddles and the red skies in levels. The more you get into it, the more it has a Doom aura while being its own very unique game. The human and robot enemies have more of a realistic quality, but the science fiction theme keeps it grounded in a more fantastic universe. This is especially true when you start in on the magic. 

Yes, magic is in the game. You get a magic wand which you'll need to fight the mages. Yes, there are mages and even a magic user boss battle at the end. This is clearly Tom Hall's influence, among other things. It really just goes to show that Doom could have been plenty entertaining if they followed Hall's design. While his themes didn't click with Doom, they certainly brought about something that still lives to this day. This game gained a cult following, and even spawned some sequels and a remake. This game can get very unforgiving, but it's nothing compared to the Extreme Version. Will I review ROTT Extreme? No, honestly, I think I can beat maybe 5 levels and that's from using level cheats to get through a few very infuriating obstacles. It's a fun experiment but only to dabble with. If you consider yourself hard enough, go forth and get Extreme. Virtua Extreme! 

Mortal Kombat II (2026) - Bloody Victory

 I really wanted to like Mortal Kombat from 2022. The problem was that they took too many liberties and left the meat out of the story. They, instead, replaced it with wheat flakes. In this sequel, they fixed nearly everything! This was what we wanted! A coherent story with Mortal Kombat as a tournament, while giving us a bit of pandering. You can see the care and the fandom in mind as you watch. This movie isn't perfect, but is it the greatest MK film to date? VIRTUA KOMBAT TIME SPOILER WARNING!

This film uses and slightly misuses certain elements from the video games. If you hadn't noticed through the more recent games, there is a lot of coming to and from the land of the dead. If a character is killed, it apparently just takes some Netherrealm magic to bring them back and ready to fight. While they do the right thing and resurrect Kano, they also made it very clear that they are going to use and abuse this in a planned Mortal Kombat 3. Will that happen? Well, that's up to the Elder Gods of the failed box office. 

One of this movie's biggest miscasts is Jade. Do I want a constant reminder of Naughty Dog's biggest oncoming garbage? No, not really. It's not in my nature to like people who flip off the audience they are supposed to be entertaining. Then they went and tipped the entire spectrum up-side-down and cast Karl Urban as Johnny Cage... okay, you know what? We'll call it a draw. The fact that Cage is the main focus of the story is a point in this film's favor. In fact, the fact that they brought back Kano, actor and all, is yet another huge strike in this movie's favor. 

Then there are the massive deaths and loose ends. Jax is back, and he gives the same great performance as last time. Then he gets stabbed by the end of Shaokhan's hammer. Going to be honest, that was not expected and I didn't like it a lot. He and Sonya were great as a duo, and I can only imagine he is one of the ones they'll bring back if they get the chance. A death that was broadcasted like a UHF station very early on was Cole Young. Yeah, no one liked him from the first movie and they gave him a proper sendoff. The fact that Khan drops his tonfa into the acid pit with him was a much welcome added bonus.

Kitana was a definite plus to bring back into the Mortal Kombat lore. They played her story nearly flawlessly, other than her bodyguard. Her journey from a scared little girl to a warrior who is dedicated to avenging her family is actually rather heartfelt. In fact, this movie does the heartfelt seens rather well, especially when Liu Kang and an undead Kung Lao fight and he is forced to kill his former brother. All of these story elements don't get in each other's way because it goes with the flow of the tournament and we see how they serve the overall film. Instead of exposition and endless spoken lore, we leap from the first movie. We've seen these two were the best of friends and we feel their loss as it happens in real time. 

Then there are the comedic elements, which are pulled right off without taking away from the main plot's gravity. There are sweet and sour elements that add to the flavor, especially when we see Johnny Cage's movie from the 80's. Then we see that he fell on hard times since then as he sits at a convention and no one is in line to see him. We don't need someone telling him what happened or grind in our faces that he's washed up. We see it and we see his attitude as it is affected. This is filmmaking 101 and it is so refreshing to see. This is especially true when we see him go out for a drink and is served a shot and a beer by Bartender, Ed Boon. 

The two A and B plots collide in the tournament and the serious mixes with the humor right in front of us. Johnny is a loveable idiot but he's not completely inept. He just needs some time to start taking things seriously. Somehow, they even improved on Raiden's part of the story! He was insufferable in the first film and yet here we are actually seeing how he can help when he puts his mind to it. 

This is probably the first time we have ever seen Baraka as an anti-hero. That is one thing I never expected but it is actually nice to see him in a different, more constructive role. He doesn't play a large role, but it was entertaining and quite memorable because his antics with Johnny Cage are gold! They even made the Tarkatans actual tangible characters. The wonders that this movie pulled off is still too many to count. Characters that normally hinder and distract from the plot are suddenly well implimented element into the film that carries it well on. 

One mysterious element that never really concluded was: What happened to Liu Kang? He got stabbed in a fight with Shaokhan, vowed that he would return, and then disappeared into a puff of vapor. Whether he died is kind of up in the air, but it seemed more like... no, honestly I have no idea. That was a strange element. The violence in the film is kicked up a notch, which echoes what happened with the original games. 

For the first time, we see Noob Saibot in live action where he doesn't really suck. This was actually a very well done sequence when both Kano and Cage work together to get an amulet that holds Raiden's immortality and powers within Shaokhan. This runs parallel with Kitana's final battle against her father's pretender. Her fight with Khan is very well put together, along with a gnarly, in every meaning of the word, ending. 

From beginning to end, we finally get a coherent, perfectly violent Mortal Kombat film. The answer is, yes, this is the greatest Mortal Kombat film. It has all of the fights you could ever want. Scorpion vs Noob Saibot, Raiden vs Shang Tsung, and Shaokhan vs Cole Young as we see him get trampled, along with his plot armor. It's wonderfully gory and fast moving, while also knowing when to take a small breather. The pace is even, if not brisk. With just a few nitpicks, this film brings much more to the table than we've ever had with this franchise. Hopefully, it dodged the box office bullet. Only time will tell. Until then, this film exists in Virtua Legend.

Virtuamehameha #6 - Dragon Ball Super: The No Star Dragon Ball

 Let's get one thing straight off the bat, this is where my journey ended with Dragon Ball as a whole. After starting with Dragon Ball Z on its first run through America back in 92, it has been a very long and arduous journey through years of changed studios, long waits for the series after cancellation, and rises to heights that will never be seen again. Dragon Ball had its hayday all the way through the late 90's to the mid 2000's. It had one of the highest numbers of websites on the internet and has become something of a staple of both Japanese and American culture. There is nary a soul that has not at least heard about this series or at least knows its primary character, Son Goku. 

After the extremely long hiatus after GT ended, Dragon Ball Super was a welcome continuation of the series as if GT did not exist. At first, with the release of Battle of the God's it really seemed like they were off on the right foot. There were some animation glitches, but it was still a charming movie. Then, however, the cracks began to show early, because it turned out that there was an even worse version of this movie, and it was coming out in the actual series. They would do so yet again with the new and "improved" Freeza Saga. 

This series decided it not only needed to borrow nearly everything from Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, but it needed to redo or revamp every single one of its previous arcs. The Black Goku Saga was just a "continuation" of the Future Trunks story, which should have ended with Z. If it's not stealing from the previous series, it is doing a tournament. Every single time they come up with new and improved idiotic characters like Hit or Female Broly knockoff. They kept saying that Akira Toriyama, God rest him, signed off on all of these ideas, but the thought of bringing Broly back in any capacity didn't seem like something he'd do. Anytime he was asked anything about Broly, he outright stated that he did not create him, nor owns up to the character in any way. 

The series had gotten to the point where a new form had to be reached in order to defeat the big bad guy and Goku was as strong or as weak as the plot needed him to be. Dragon Ball Super had become all about spectacle with good moments and cool fight scenes. Sometimes, they would show character growth with Vegeta or Goku but it would quickly be washed away with yet another obnoxious new character. Powerlevels and statuses got so abstract and meant nothing, so the powerscale went out the window. Any idea that there could be a number to any of them is now officially absurd. Soon, it all became about how many levels of Super Saiyan could be reached and the idea that it was hard or at all straining to turn your hair bright yellow was laughable. A brand new saiyan character who had barely even begun to fight could just turn Super Saiyan without problems.

Then comes the first female Super Saiyan, which was, again, reached without consequence. This was a very large deal for the community, as the idea of a female SSJ turning up in the series was long awaited. Now that it's come to fruition, it happened... Yeah, it just happened, party popper. Dragon Ball fans' dreams came true over and over again as we saw fanservice come at no cost to the series as a whole. We would get answers and retcons out the wazoo as if it was discounted and sold in bulk. It got to the point where there was almost at least three or four callbacks to the original series per episode. From Captain Ginyu having a brief and meaningless cameo, to Yamcha performing his death pose on a baseball field, this series had no shame.

The worst part about all of it, was the filler episodes. I love Dr. Slump as much as the next guy who knows that it exists, but Arales's return to the series was dipped into one of these. Yes, this may be where she belongs in the series, but the return was as lackluster as the rest of the content that was being put into Dragon Ball Super. There are some good gags here and there, but it's ultimately forgettable. Everything was being done for the purpose of hype and climbing the ladder in power with more and more new forms coming in seemingly every arc. Their hair turned from red to blue with Black Goku going pink, finishing the entire spectrum of Power Ranger colors for all of the memers. 

Harkening back to the filler, it got so bad that there was an entire episode dedicated to King Kai finally asking Goku to wish him back with the Dragon Balls. This is a concept so old, it could drink, but they're just now bringing it up after King Kai has been dead since the Cell Games. The entire episode is Goku having all seven dragon balls and trying to make the wish, but then getting interrupted because other people want things. This was the episode that made me officially stop taking this series seriously. Goku is about to do something selfless and something he probably should have done ages ago, but Master Roshi needs to get off. You know, because he's a dirty old man who likes ladies. Get the joke? Me neither. They brush this off with Bulma calling someone and having everything immediately delivered because money. The episode ends with Goku having taken too long and the dragon disappearing because haha funny. Dragon Ball has never reached this type of low and now it is the bar that keeps lowering. 

It's become trendy to keep latching new continuations onto the series. Even the concept of revamping Gohan back into a fighter or turning Broly into a new anti-hero has become mundane and tapped out. The only good thing to come out of this whole thing is the cool merch and occasional awesome game, but the anime has become another cash-grab that takes the soul from the series. Toriyama-san deserves a lot better. It should have ended like he wanted back in the Cell Saga. The Buu Saga was bad enough and it only spiraled downward. It is a bit of a shame but at least we have the original series and that will not be going away anytime soon.