Recent reviews by Uncle Oval

I'm surprised that this game isn't talked about more. Playing Painkiller for the first time in 2025, I noticed how much of its DNA is in the new wave of fast-paced shooters: the level structure and challenge system for power-ups came back in Doom 2016, the simplified bunny-hopping for speed came back in Dusk, the system for collecting enemy souls to activate a special mode where you're overpowered came back in Amid Evil...

This is a super fun game that has aged remarkably well. Coming out in 2004 it may have been overshadowed at the time by Half-Life 2, when people started becoming more interested in "mature" fps with integrated story-telling, but Painkiller represents an equally valid alternate path toward optimizing fast-paced 3D fps action the PVE games didn't pick up on until over 10 years later.

Awesome find; I'm excited to play all of the DLC. Hopefully the new installment coming later this year can maintain the irreverant and arcadey spirit of the original.

pretty cool

An immensely impressive port. Coming from someone who has played Doom and its numerous fan games off and on for 30 years, I can say that I'm very satisfied with the NightDive port. It was clearly made with the intention of making access to the vast output of the Doom community as easy as possible for newcomers.

Although I don't trust Bethesda or Microsoft in the long term, for now it feels impossibly generous for them to acknowledge the vast body of work in the medium of Doom and NOT try to monetize it to Hell and back. I could easily see a port like this being as predatory as Roblox, another game where the overwhelming majority of existing content was made by users.

Tim Rogers said in his Cyberpunk 2077 review that CDPR would have made a better send-up of its subject matter if they used modern hardware to faithfully render the environments from the 80s movies the IP is based on. RoboCop: Rogue City has taken that advice to heart.

The game itself loses steam after the first few hours; as an FPS it's incredibly easy, and as a story-based RPG it's very light, but I appreciate that mid-tier games like this are being made with so much obvious attention to the aesthetic of the source material.

It fun, you shoot.

Not terribly innovative as either an RPG, a shooter, or an open-world game, but the world is realized well enough that I found myself enjoying my time in it regardless.

A ludicrous over-achiever of a port. Finally I can re-live my childhood memories of playing that weird shareware game that looked kind of like Doom but was way more confusing and strange. Good stuff!

Incredibly fun. The best of the build engine ethos. Nails the perfect feel of bouncy movement and crunchy combat that games of this style aspire to.

Incredible. The best Resident Evil game in current existence. It makes a perfect compromise between survival horror and third-person shooting.

Manages to be both a parody of late 90s early 2000s teenage juvenilia as well as a completely sincere and nostalgic celebration of it.