Apex Veiko

Blood splatters being properly colored for cacos and barons, the status bar showing that you have berserk active, and disabling the melee weapons pulling you into an enemy when you're using them. The latter two are in Nugget Doom, which is why it's my go-to for anything not needing gzdoom.

I do love Blood, but I will admit the enemy roster is pretty much carried by the cultists, which are not only some of the best aspects of the combat, but also some of the worst. Best because they're the only enemies in the game that actually pose a threat to the player, chucking dynamite into your spot and in general keeping you on your toes. However once you start cranking the difficulty up from lightly broiled, the fun factor with them begins to slightly diminish. Now, I don't have an issue with hitscanners in games, methods to make them feel fair to the player do exist such as giving them a wind up, or in the case of the ones with machine guns, fire in short bursts to allow more leeway for you to get behind cover. The HECU soldiers from Half-Life are a good example for these practices. The issue with the cultists on higher difficulties is that they have zero wind up, and start firing at you the moment they're alerted to your presence. Fanatics are the most egregious, since their tommy gun can effortlessly riddle away your health before you even have a moment to retreat. They can be stunned when they get hit, yes, but not much can save you from their instantaneous attacks aside from memorizing their locations and attacking pre-emptively. As for the rest of the monsters, most of them boil down to either being trivial, or just flat out obnoxious. Gargoyles and Phantasm for example aren't difficult to deal with at all, but they have a habit of staying up in the air for a varied amount of time while constantly screaming at you. Butchers, as well as most enemies with projectiles, can barely, if not at all, hit you when you're crouching. They are still fun to fight with, just not that difficult compared to the cultists. Despite all this, I still love the game. And while Duke 3D is probably my favorite build engine game overall, Blood does eclipse it with its atmosphere and weapon roster. But I think Duke 3D and Shadow Warrior's enemy roster is better than Blood's, but really they all have their own flaws.

Having the weapon positioned onto the left or right side of the screen just feels the most natural.

Yes. Although it might be because I'm more of a build/quake engine person than I am a Doom one. I'm not saying it's a bad game, far from it. But some of the megawads I've played turn into a slog at their endgame because some of it consists of dealing with an absurd amount of monsters while exclusively using the rocket launcher, plasma gun, and bfg. Pistol starting, smaller map packs, and megawads which use an episodic format such as Valiant, do help alot with the repetition. Since instead of going through 30+ maps and amassing the game's entire arsenal when you're only 1/3 the way into it, you'll eventually have your inventory restarted from scratch and have to build it up again, which helps to keep the game feeling fresh and interesting.

It's at the very least enjoyable, that is if you're playing it with the EGwhaven patch through dosbox. The enemies that were made with claymation look good, it has a decent atmosphere, and being leveled up to the point where you can one-hit low tier enemies with your bare fists is also fun. It's not great on its own, but when held against the rest of Capstone's catalog, it's a masterpiece. It's not a boring slog like Corridor 7, and you can actually look at it and not vomit from how terrible it looks like Operation Body Count. I've never played the second game but I heard it was worse in every conceivable way. So there's that. Also its cover art is badass, it could easily be album art for a hard rock band.

What do you consider the worst universes to live in from a video game? Some of my picks are Dark Souls, Resident Evil, and probably Half Life 2.

It's disgusting.

Nightdive has really stepped up their game when it comes to remasters. Can't wait to play Turok 3 without developing a migraine from the frame rate.