jdodson1

Joined 01/23/2012

I'm an Engineer and built the video game community Cheerful Ghost and text based mini-MMO Tale of the White Wyvern.

2739 Posts



"Castles is the spiritual successor to Fallout Shelter, the popular vault-building mobile game that puts you in the role of an Overseer. In Castles, you’ll take on the role of the right hand of the king (or queen) and manage your kingdom. You’ll build the castle of your dreams, rule over your subjects, and make critical decisions about your kingdom’s future as you build your dynasty.  "

I love Fallout Shelter so a new free to play game from Bethesda sounds incredible. Fallout Shelter started on phones and eventually was ported to everything including PC so I hope the same thing happens here. Also.... Fallout Shelter 2? This may be the next best thing.


In 2019 iD Software re-released Doom to nearly all the modern systems. It was a solid release, yet didn't have LAN or online multiplayer and it wasn't as configurable as it could be. During this years 2024 Quakecon iD Software partnering with the incredible team at Nightdive Studios released the definitive remake of Doom in Doom + Doom II. What does this re-remaster include? A whole lot and by default includes all the levels from Doom + Doom II as well as Master Levels for DOOM II, TNT: Evilution, The Plutonia Experiment, No Rest for the Living, Sigil & Legacy of Rust (a new episode created in collaboration by individuals from id Software, Nightdive Studios and MachineGames).

DOOM FINALLY INCLUDES ONLINE MULTIPLAYER and an all new Deathmatch map pack featuring 25 maps! I've spent quite a bit of time playing Deathmatch online and it's a really fast paced wild cacophony of shootery goodness. Right now, it's not hard to jump in and play with people so jump in while you can and enjoy the 90's deathmatch glory. I also appreciate that it's VERY easy to play with anyone on any platform. While I don't pay for online for the Switch or XBox, when I'm Deathmatching on Steam it's neat to see Switch & Playstation people Dooming alongside me.

Oh and, they've released a WHOLE NEW OFFICIAL DOOM CAMPAIGN! I've wanted this for quite a while as I consider Doom to be one of the, if not the greatest game of all time that deserves new regular releases. I know there is a vibrant community of incredible maps and mods created, but I hope with this release we see iD Software making an effort to release a new official campaign from time to time.

"Created in collaboration by individuals from id Software, Nightdive Studios, and MachineGames, Legacy of Rust is the newest episode for DOOM, and the first official episode since DOOM II to feature new demons and weapons."

Like many of these iD + Nightdive re-releases if you previously owned Doom on any platform this is available for free. So if you bought it on Switch, you can search for it and download the new version which is side-by-side with the old iD version.

Coming back to Doom with this new release I have a new goal and I don't care how long it takes me to achieve. For quite some time I've wanted to play all of the official Doom + Doom II levels and now I will be. I consider all of the content added in this new Doom + Doom II release to be official and I'll be going through it all. Not really focused on completing it in any particular order, just going through all of the hellish Doom goodness! So far, I've started with Doom II and have been having a great time going through it on my Steam Deck & PC.

If you want to dig in to all what's included in the Doom + Doom II release check out the official notes below or watch the Quakecon stream on YouTube where they go over it and show off the new campaign Legacy of Rust and Multiplayer.

https://slayersclub.bethesda.net/en-US/article/doom-doomii-release-notes
Quakecon Day 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThQd_UJaTys&list=WL&index=46
Quakecon Day 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o58IzkTV144&list=WL&index=50

Even though this release is as close to perfect as it gets, one suggestion is for a feature to DISABLE weapon switching on pickup. It's not the worst but annoying in multiplayer. Also, bots. Bots would be lovely for when there aren't as many people to frag with you online as we'd like.


Recently I was retro game thrifting with one of my friends Will and I spotted Jeopardy! on NES for $4 on a discount shelf. Young Jon Dodson would never have picked up Jeopardy! and would have always preferred Zelda, Metal Gear, Mario or nearly anything else to a classic game show game. Not to say I haven't enjoyed game show video games, I have very fond memories of Wheel of Fortune on DOS, I just wasn't a big Jeopardy fan when I was young. Times change and as luck would have it I've been watching a fair amount of Jeopardy on Pluto.tv. I've also really enjoyed watching Jeopardy with my girlfriend. As we watch we try and answer the questions and the good news is we both can answer a fair amount, but she nearly always gets more answers than I do. Date smarter people folks, it's not a bad strategy! With that, between us were a fair trivia pair and because of this when I saw NES Jeopardy! on the discount shelf, I bought it.

NES Jeopardy! came out in 1988 and contains questions forever frozen in time from that area. Good news is my girlfriend and I do know quite a bit about that time or earlier, so we're not too bad as a pair up against the computers. I think my only negative thought on Jeopardy! for NES is that because of the limited way you can enter data into the NES at times you have to hunt and peck to type in the answer and that can take quite a bit of time. The good news is they give you A LONG time to answer the question, but answering questions on a d-pad when it's long is annoying. Still, it's not too bad and the game is very quick and the character graphics are charmingly campy.

So far we've played Jeopardy! a handful of times and haven't gotten any duplicate categories yet, but at some point I expect to. Because we've had so much fun playing Jeopardy! I plan on buying out the rest of the series on the NES through Super Nintendo. These games don't seem to be any kind of rare so if you wanted to play it on retro hardware it's only going to cost a few dollars.


Nintendo released World Championships NES Edition on Switch July 18th. Because I'm a pretty consistent mark for classic Nintendo games remixed in a new way, some months ago I pre-ordered the Physical Edition that came with a few fun extras along with the Switch game cart. After playing it a few times with friends on the couch I can say that this game is a nearly perfect game to play with friends. I've seen some reviews say that it's light on content and that's a fair consideration, however I believe there is a lot of game here and that this is a game that I will keep coming back to and playing with my friends for many years to come, if not... forever?

People talk about "forever games" like Fortnite, Minecraft or others that have a ton of online players and games that one can play all day for years at a time. As I'm a bit older and some could say ancient I don't sit down and play games for 8-10 hours a day. Typically I play games with my young son or friends and it's a handful of hours per week. Still, I have games I'd consider "forever games" that I'll come back to over and over through the years like Link's Awakening or Secret of Mana and I'm always looking for other games to add to that the "forever list." I think Nintendo World Championship: NES Edition may be a forever game in that it mashes up some of the best NES games in a way that makes it really fun to compete with your friends.

World Championships is so good I think I agree with other reviewers in that a bit more to it would make it even better. I'm not sure it would take a lot and I'd appreciate more long form races through games like Zelda like a category where you raced through the whole game or started the game through a few dungeons or race through a hard dungeon with minimal items.

As a fan of the 3DS Remix game I'm happy Nintendo carried the series over to World Championships. Hopefully there are free updates that come later that adds more, I'd love one update that turns off the crowd cheering, it's really distracting and I'd prefer the normal audio anyway. Also, if Nintendo is reading this and they are absolutely not I'd totally buy a Super Nintendo World Championship game so... you know, make that one too.


In a follow up to the incredible Link's Awakening Remake of 2019, Nintendo is back with The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom! Looks like the game starts where the Zelda games typically end with a big boss fight with Gannon, but this time Link is taken out of the picture and Zelda is the one that needs to save the day. The graphics and gameplay look similar to the Link's Awakening Remake, which I am very happy to see. Will Nintendo release a new top down Zelda Adventure every handful of years? I hope so.

The Switch Link's Awakening Remake is such a classic in my house that my son and I are playing through it right now. Will Echoes of Wisdom be as good? I hope so.

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom will release on Nintendo Switch this September 26th!

https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Games/Nintendo-Switch-games/The-Legend-of-Zelda-Echoes-of-Wisdom-2590490.html


Lazy Game Reviews (LGR) is one of the better retro video game and PC oddware YouTube channels I watch. Clint often releases retrospectives on older PC titles and his latest on Unreal Tournament 2004 is one of his best. Like many olds I started with Unreal Tournament and played that a lot until Unreal Tournament 2003 and then 2004 unseated them all for my shooter of choice. I played it quite a bit at University and with friends and Onslaught is still on of my favorite shooter game modes. I've hoped that Epic Games would come back to Unreal Tournament and polish up the remake they launched years ago but they have stopped focusing on that in favor of Fortnite. Focusing on Fortnite makes sense, I just would love a little attention to Unreal. (Unreal Tournament and Ut2004 HD remasters please!)

"Revisiting UT2004 two decades later! This sequel to UT99 (er, UT2003?) from Epic Games and Digital Extremes was a staple of PC gaming in the 2000s, with the bombastic Onslaught mode being added to the classics of deathmatch, capture the flag, and so on. So let's review this classic FPS and dive into its predecessor, its gameplay, multiplayer, mods and more!"


Microsoft is finally capping off it's turn based strategy remakes with Age of Mythology: Retold which looks to remake the old game with an entirely new engine. Microsoft has given this treatment to Age of Empires, Age of Empires II, III and now ending with Age of Mythology. I always enjoyed playing Age of Mythology with my friends because it contained much of the core gameplay of Age of Empires with the added benefit of massive Titan Gods that would awesomely lay waste to everything. Age of Mythology: Retold looks to be coming to PC and XBox in 2024!


"Celebrating the 30th anniversary of SimCity 2000 with an LGR retrospective review! The sequel to the classic Maxis city builder was a true game changer in 1993, improving nearly every part of the game and adding so many things that would become staples of the genre. So let's take a look at the MS-DOS version, the many ports and releases, and its legacy decades later!"

When I'm thinking of my favorite SimCity games SimCity 2000 on Mac tops my list with SimCity on Super Nintendo coming in a distant second. SimCity on Super Nintendo is much more accessable but SimCity 2000 really ratchets up the gameplay making SimCity a much deeper game.