That was the year it was: 2020

And so we come to the end of another year. And so Game Tumour will go into hibernation, only to emerge in the new year (unless of course there are some last minute surprises between now and the new year). 

It should be noted that this year has seen some milestones for this blog. Not only has it seen a full decade of existence - which, let's be honest, is a millennium in internet terms - but it should be noted that this post is the one thousandth post in this blog! 
Yeah I don't know how I did that either but this is major achievement: Granted this may be a dying medium but to come so far, even when other blogs tend to have a limited lifespan (or at least the one's I have seen) and are written by people who's interest and commitment tends to die off rather quickly, is something to be proud of. 

So to everyone who has seen this blog, who has been following it and who kept coming back to it, through periods of activity, stretches of nothing happening, through posts of both insightful observations and just utter nonsense, I want to say Thank You.
From the bottom of my heart Thank You.

As for 2020, it's become something of a cliché to deride 2020 as a seemingly never-ending year of disaster, where it seemed a challenge to say how things could get progressively worse. 
But it has seen something of a boom time for gaming. Because, after all, when Lockdown has you stuck inside your house, what else are you going to do? Well, personally I completed Borderlands 2, Rakuen and Wolfenstein 3d (at last!). I have upgraded both my gaming chair and the Retropie to the Raspberry Pi 4. I have said goodbye to ESO, was traumatised by Phasmophobia, and viewed the Space Australia that was the Borderlands Pre-Sequel. 
And I swear I have spent more time waiting for games to download than actually playing them. 

So where do we go from here? 

Well the way I see it, there are still plenty of more adventures to be had in this wonderful world that is gaming. So whilst my interest in this hobby and this blog may have quietened down in recent years, I am not prepared to give either up just yet. 

And with that, Game Tumour bows out for 2020.
Thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope to speak to you all again on the other side of 2021...

Out Came the Wolves

Happy new year! Happy new decade and the rest.
And what better way to start the new year than to announce another removal from my Hall of Shame:
Say goodbye Wolfenstein 3d!

 Original image located here. Accessed 15th January 2020

To view this game from the distance of nearly three decades presents an interesting case. It may be the grand-daddy of all first person shooters but there have been both countless of innovations to the genre and just as many technological advancements. So how does this game hold up?

Surprisingly well.

Sure there's not much to the game. Sure the 3d effect is all scaling trickery. Sure there is no narrative, only three guns and a level design that is completely bonkers. But ultimately, this game still maintains interest on several fronts:

• The level design may be insane but the mazes are compelling - enough to have me looking around every corner, wary of any baddies in hiding.
• The game is kind of tough - especially on hardest difficulty where health items are scarce and you find yourself wading through ammo clips.....
• I mentioned previously that Doom presents many an opportunity to go full desperado (ie you versus a room full of baddies) - unlike many of it's successors. But now, I think Wolf 3d does it even better than it's younger brother. 
• Its always impressive to use the gatling gun on a room full of baddies. However, now that I think about it, it does burn through ammo quickly - considering there are so many countless ammo clips around, was I being encouraged to use that particular gun?
• Some of the bosses are really tough. And fighting them becomes a tense affair. Which is quite the achievement for a game made in 1992. 

So in the end the original Wolf 3d, somehow, still holds up.
Who would've thunk it?

Good Dog

Here's something I came across: A Mod of Wolf3d where you pat the German Shepards.

Obviously it's someone having a bit of a laugh, but I have to wonder: Is this an attempt to try and silence the Jack Thompsons of the world in having a First Person Shooter without any violence?
It may not be an effective one but it's an attempt...

Doomed to Obscurity

Here's something I've been pondering on recently: Has anyone actually played Doom 2 all the way through?

The reason why I'm asking is that my experiences with Doom 2, at the height of it's mid-nineties popularity, is that everyone plays the first three levels before jumping straight into the death match. Whilst there was no denying death matches were fun - they are, after all, what sold Doom 1 and 2 - it does raise the question as to whether or not anyone did play the rest of the game all the way through.
Indeed, I played Doom 2 all the way through recently and saw many things that I did not recall originally - some of which I did not recall from my PS1 playthrough. Why is this so? Is there only so many Doom levels one can take before they all start looking the same? Did we all play the game for five seconds before entering in the cheat codes? Did we get sick of the bizarre level design that we resorted to a rage quit? Or did we just use the level skip just to get to that one Wolfenstein level with the Cyberdemon? (seriously, until recently I never knew there were two Wolfenstein levels).

Most likely it was the deathmatches that had such a powerful sway over gamers that it pretty much destroyed the rest of the game - still it wasn't called a revolution for nothing.

Wolfborn

Let me tell your a story children: In 1981 there was a game released called Castle Wolfenstein. The brainchild of a chap called Silas Warner, the player controlled a character trapped in a Nazi fortress and had to both obtain plans for a major operation and find his way out.
In retrospect, Castle Wolfenstein is a pioneer for the stealth genre featuring picking locking chests for gear, encouraging players to avoid patrols and frisking guards for ammo. It also featured randomly generated castles that may change with difficulty depending on the player's rank and past successes.

Castle Wolfenstein may not be as well known as other pioneering games of the era (but then again who does acknowledge such titles?) but it did have it's fans: Some of them being from a team called id Software who were inspired by Castle Wolfenstein to make their own game - even to the point where they contacted Warner and asked to use the title of Wolfenstein.

 The reason I'm talking about this is that I'd like to see a stealth game set in World War II. We pretty much have the stealth genre perfected so may make for an interesting concept to see a stealth game set in a different setting (y'know somewhere between Thief and Metal Gear Solid). Sure MGS3 did go for a World War 2 setting but I'd certainly like to see one where involves breaking into enemy buildings and avoiding detection.
In short I'd like to see a remake of Castle Wolfenstein - because the presence of another shooter, as the trailer for the new Wolfenstein New Order game indicates, is just downright depressing.

Hungry like the wolf

This weekend I’ve been playing Wolfenstein 3d. Yep, the original and still the best. True the shooter genre may have had major changes in the wake of Half Life and Deus Ex but honestly? There still exists and want to just switch one’s mind off, garb the biggest gun you can think of and mow down anything dumb enough to stand in your way. And that’s a need Wolf3d fulfills nicely. It may be twenty one years old but it’s appeal still stands strong.

Okay sure it’s odd to walk about the most incoherently designed stronghold(s) imaginable, sure there are enough soldiers to invade an entire country and there’s a stupidly large amount of gold stashed in the bases, but I don’t care. I’m willing to tolerate the dated graphics and the whole cheesy dialogue (“Spion!”,”Mein leben!”). If anything, there is a certain charm to the graphics as it’s hilarious to see the body count of an intense bout of shooting:

If anything, get past the realism and the hyper-serious nature of shooters and all is left is the desire just to shoot so many dudes with a chain gun. I could say they don’t make ’em like they used to but you know what? They don’t