A tribute to Quake, Quake mods, Brazil, and Brazilian bootleg games, BRAZILIAN DRUG DEALER 3: I OPENED A PORTAL TO HELL IN THE FAVELA TRYING TO REVIVE MIT AIA I NEED TO CLOSE IT is one of the most delightful boomer shooters in recent memory.

BDD3 has plenty of what you want from a boomer shooter (shotguns and satan), but the bonkers Brazilian bootleg aesthetic elevates it to another level. I don’t have the words to describe the aesthetic in a way that would make sense to either of us so check out a clip I recorded:

So yeah, that’s the vibe (the soundtrack is perfect too).

BDD3 uses the original Quake engine and plays a whole lot like id’s 1996 masterpiece. The game is full of gags that, even if I didn’t totally understand the cultural context (which was, uh, most of the time), I could still infer and enjoy.

You probably know whether this game is something you would want to play by reading its title and looking at a single screenshot. I’m just here to tell you that it delivers on the premise and is hella fun to play (it’s literally Quake).

Viva o Brazil!

Viva o BRAZILIAN DRUG DEALER 3: I OPENED A PORTAL TO HELL IN THE FAVELA TRYING TO REVIVE MIT AIA I NEED TO CLOSE IT!

Thanks to the wonderful site Vintage Apple, I was able to check out a scan of the first issue of Macworld. It’s a fascinating magazine; part promotional tool, part behind the scenes, part user guide.

Here are some of the highlights for me:

Early in the magazine is a Microsoft ad:

Guide to Desktop Accessories:

Three page guide to using a mouse:

Motherboard:

About the floppy disk drive (top of the line 3.5″ disks!)

Interview with Bill Gates:

Cooler than Bill Gates, Susan Kare. I love this “about the Mac team” section:

Steve:

All in all, this was a fascinating read; an incredible time capsule from an almost unfathomable era of personal computing.

Playing the Leon sections of Resident Evil Requiem in first-person perspective felt a bit like Doom 3 to me, and once I finished it, I was in the mood for some Doom. I played a couple of Doom games and realized I have a lot of opinions about Doom. That’s what this post is.

First of all, I think Doom (1993) is a perfect video game. Probably my favorite of all time, maybe the greatest. The action, visuals, level design, multiplayer, official and unofficial port culture, the modding community… just incredible. It would be impossible for any sequel or expansion to match its impact, but there have been some damn good ports, mods, and follow-ups.

Post-Requiem I decided to finally give The Dark Ages a shot. I had picked up a Steam key for nineteen bucks from GMG a few weeks ago, but had been reluctant to actually start it up, despite hearing pretty positive things. I liked Doom (2016) well enough, but couldn’t get into Eternal at all. I just don’t love the ridiculous amount of mechanics and generally sweatiness about it.

What I want out of a Doom game is:

1. Cool, creative levels with lots of secrets
2. Demons, blood, and guts
3. Metal
4. Minimal story
5. Intuitive and satisfying gameplay

The modern Doom games have the first three to varying degrees, but 4 and 5, not so much.

An hour into The Dark Ages and the game was still introducing mechanics via tedious tutorials (a good chunk of that time was also cutscenes). So I bailed. Maybe I’ll go back to it at some point, but it definitely wasn’t what I was looking for right now.

Instead, I fired up a messy, divisive, old favorite: Doom 3 (BFG Edition). On my PC the game runs at a sick 360 fps and looks gorgeous on my OLED monitor. The shadows and lighting are still honestly kind of breathtaking. And the game itself? It rocks. I love the horror focus, the monster closets, the weird characters, all of it. Nothing else quite feels exactly like Doom 3.

Controversial, but I think the way both versions of the game handle the flashlight is good. Swapping in the original release creates a more methodical and tense experience, while switching it on and off in the BFG edition still requires some management, but gives the game a faster-paced feel that’s closer to the originals. Either way, Doom 3 is still a blast and I loved the hour or so I spent revisiting it.

I don’t know what the future of Doom is; the current direction of the mainline games isn’t for me. But the 30+ year old original continues to get incredible .wads like My House, Sigil 1&2, and Legacy of Rust, which further extends its replayability.

Wait, I’ve got it: MachineGames should do a new Doom 3 episode. The world needs this.

P.S. “Doomguy” > “Doom Slayer”

All screenshots captured on my PC (32 GB RAM, AMD Ryzen 7800X3D 8-Core Processor, GeForce RTX 4080 Super 16 GB).

I’ve been playing Resident Evil since the PS1 days (1997’s Director’s Cut was my first) and honestly, the RE Engine era has been my favorite. This remains the case after finishing Requiem, another banger in a decade full of them.

Spoilers below.

A common critique I’ve heard about Requiem is that it tries to be everything to everyone. Fair; but I don’t necessarily believe that’s a bad thing. The game combines new characters with three decades of lore and goes from tense horror sequences to ridiculous action set pieces. Resident Evil is a long-running series with many identities, experiments, and evolutionary dead ends. Personal preferences don’t make other aspects of the series less valid, or less “Resident Evil.”

OK, with that out of the way, here’s why I absolutely loved Requiem.

First of all, the game looks and runs amazing on my PC (32 GB RAM, AMD Ryzen 7800X3D 8-Core Processor, GeForce RTX 4080 Super 16 GB). It was a little dodgy at launch (I actually tabled the game for a week or so to focus on the new WoW expansion while NVIDIA got their life together), but once updates and drivers were working, the RE Engine impressed once again. I was averaging 180-220 fps on max settings at 1440p with ray tracing on high, and a bit over 120 fps with path tracing on (which I eventually turned off because it made the fan on my GPU absolutely scream). Regardless, the game looks incredible, with great art and environment design throughout (well, mostly- we’ll get to that later).

After experimenting with the different perspective and control methods, I settled on first-person with keyboard and mouse. This made Grace’s sections feel a bit like Outlast and Leon’s a bit like Doom 3 (but both still very Resident Evil).

I thought the pacing was near-perfect throughout; just as I would start to get a bit exhausted with one style of gameplay, it would be time to switch. This may be the best the series has ever been at balancing horror and action.

One area where I feel like the game is definitely front-loaded are the environments. The Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center is a gorgeous locale that reveals layer after layer in a way that’s among the series’ best. On the other end of the spectrum, the ruins of Raccoon City are visually dull and at times tedious to traverse. Easily my least favorite section of the game (despite some fun combat scenarios).

I generally enjoy the overall Resident Evil story and lore, as messy as it is. I think Resident Evil storytelling is at its best when it’s mysterious and ambiguous, and at its worst when it goes too far in explaining things or becomes too referential. Requiem’s story is a bit of all of this. It was eventually satisfying, but came dangerously close to the problem Star Wars often has, which is a tendency to return to well-trodden territory again and again, whether out of fear or appeasement. Skywalkers and Spencers, Tatooine and RPD. Thankfully, Requiem does enough in the last hour or so to make it feel like the story is actually moving forward, while honoring what came before.

I can’t confidently say where exactly Requiem falls in my RE-rankings (I’ll need a couple of replays first), but I definitely enjoyed it. Yeah, Requiem may try to be everything to everyone, but unlike the disastrous Resident Evil 6 (which I still kinda like), the quality remains consistently high throughout. Bring on the updates and DLC (but please do not make me go back to the Raccoon City Police Department building again).

All screenshots captured by me via Steam.

I’ve been really into mid-2000s Apple lately and have been buying some ridiculous stuff on eBay. In a recent purchase the seller (bless them!) included these Apple door hangers. I’m assuming they were promotional items given out at Apple Stores or on college campuses. Each hanger is adorned with some manner of cringey college cliche that I can’t help but find charming.

The cover feature is a wargame blowout, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of D-Day. This is from a time when “tank sim” was a genre that could end up on the cover of a mainstream gaming magazine. None of that really interests me, but there is still plenty to love in this issue (specifically the CD-ROM drive feature).

As with my post about the first issue of PCG, the scan here is curtesy of the amazing RetroMags.

Last week I purchased this 1440p Alienware OLED monitor. On paper, it was a downgrade from the 4K Samsung monitor I had been using. In reality, it was the best decision I had made in a long time.

First, to address the elephant in the room: the resolution downgrade. It’s negligible. This isn’t copium; I honestly can’t perceive the difference on the desktop, in web browsing, or games. I had been using a 4K monitor on the same desk, at the same distance away from me for years, and I truly don’t feel like I’ve lost anything in the downgrade. Look, I’m not Digital Foundry or anything so don’t hold me to this; YMMV. But whatever, all of the screenshots in this post are 1440p, so you can judge for yourself.

With that out of the way, here’s what rocks about this monitor: everything.

First, no “Smart” shit. You don’t have to navigate slow ass menus full of shitty streaming TV shows with a remote just to change your picture settings. This nearly broke me on the Samsung, but is definitely not the case on the Alienware. You just flick a little knob on the bottom of the monitor and quickly jump between settings, the way god intended.

As expected, dropping the resolution has increased the performance of my games, allowing for higher frame rates at max (or close) settings on my last gen () PC specs (32 GB RAM, AMD Ryzen 7800X3D 8-Core Processor, GeForce RTX 4080 Super 16GB). My PC is connected to the monitor via DisplayPort cable.

Here’s how the two games I played the most last week performed.

Resident Evil Requiem

I have most settings maxed out (most notable drop is ray tracing at normal vs path tracing- the juice isn’t worth the squeeze with my setup, imo).

With these settings I was averaging between 180 – 220 fps in the hospital and basement. The game feels absurdly smooth and responsive throughout. And it looks great too!

World of Warcraft

This is a game I’ve been playing for over 20 years, on more hardware configurations than I can count. I can say without a doubt that on this monitor, this is the best the game has ever looked and ran for me.

I have settings (mostly) maxed out and the game runs consistently above 100 fps, but varies wildly by context. In a delve my fps pushes 250, but while flying above the overworld it’s closer to 120. Despite the wild fluctuations, the game feels ridiculously smooth throughout and I never felt the variance, thanks to VRR.

WoW is a colorful game and man those colors pop on an OLED display.

Bonus: WoW Classic:

Max settings, 320+ FPS. This is the future I dreamt of in 2004.

Not sure what else to say about the the display itself. Colors pop and blacks are deep. Regardless of resolution, OLED screens are just incredible.

The HDR on the monitor isn’t great, but PC HDR implementation is so messy and inconsistent I stopped using it years ago. Nits did not factor into my purchase at all.

I still have plenty more testing to do (once I stop playing Requiem and WoW: Midnight, which probably won’t be anytime soon), but as of right now I am beyond pleased with this monitor. OLED (and Alienware) forever.

When I went away to college in the mid-2000s, the iMac G5 was the computer I wanted. I imagined myself using it in the dorm, looking cool and sophisticated as I typed away while listening to The Shins or something. This was the college reinvention I needed, a massive change from the cobbled together gaming PCs and ska CDs of my past.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t afford an iMac so it was my old beige Compaq with a GeForce 2 that came with me to college, solidifying my lameness from the get go.

20+ years later I’m still lame, but I was able to finally pick up a boxed, working, iMac G5 for a cool hundred bucks. After spending a bit of time with it, I gotta say it’s better late than never- this is a wonderful computer.

The packaging is quintessentially mid-2000s Apple: classy and functional. It’s no wonder this set the aesthetic for electronics manufacturers like Nintendo in this era.

The excellent packaging design extends to what you pull out of the box. The iMac G5 is one of the best-looking computers of all time, from every angle.

After plugging in the keyboard, mouse, and speakers (and funneling them through the hole in the stand), I was ready to start some standard issue computing.

I plugged in an Ethernet cable and to my delight I was able to connect to Apple’s servers and download updates.

I did a few rounds of updates and it got me curious about what other online services I could still connect to. Safari was a no-go, but I put a CD in and sure enough iTunes pulled the artist information.

I then imported some other era-appropriate CDs I had lying around (like AFI’s Sing the Sorrow). But when I put in a CD from 2026 (the new Joyce Manor album), I got an error message.

I experienced more issues when I tried installing games. I don’t have a ton of Mac software, but I own physical copies of most Blizzard games, which often included both PC and Mac versions.

The first games I tried were Diablo I & II, both of which gave me this error message:

I did a little research and this is fixable by downloading and burning an OS 9 install CD, but I’m not totally sure if it would be worth the effort. Although playing the original 1.0 version of Diablo on this computer is weirdly compelling…

I had better luck with the Battlechest version of Warcraft III, which felt made for the iMac.

Warcraft III installed flawlessly and from a brief test, seemed to look and run great. Might be a fun excuse for a replay.

The final test for the iMac was the DVD player. I have a ton of DVDs, but obviously they don’t look great on modern screens. Turns out the smaller, lower resolution, widescreen display of the iMac is perfect for DVD viewing.

All in all, this iMac has been one of my favorite retro tech purchases in recent memory. I’m definitely going to keep it hooked up as a DVD player and continue to mess around with it, all the while thinking about how cool it would have been to be using one back in 2004. Maybe I’ll even pick up a Decemberists CD and import it to iTunes.

Blood Elves are my favorite race in World of Warcraft (wait, is it problematic to prefer certain races in fiction??). Nearly all of my WoW characters are sin’dorei, some of which date back to the original release of The Burning Crusade. Needless to say, I’ve been thrilled with Blizzard’s choice to remake Eversong Woods / Silvermoon City.

Alongside the main story are side quests that give insight into blood elf culture, and how they are reacting to the changes happening around them. Maybe I’m biased, but these quests are among Blizzard’s best, and I’m finding them much more compelling than the majority of the War Within side stories.

I won’t spoil anything, but in addition to the excellent writing and world-building, there are some clever quest designs as well.

I’ve been working on the Eversong Woods achievements, and the treasures in particular have been really enjoyable. The Triple-Locked Safebox quest is obtuse in a way WoW rarely is these days, and will require a lot of wandering if you don’t look up a guide.

I’ve been appreciating all the “new” in Midnight on an intellectual level, but the nostalgia has been affecting me in an emotional way I didn’t fully expect.

Having spent so much time on Sunstrider Isle creating new blood elf characters, I should have expected some sort of reaction returning there. I was not expecting chills and vivid flashbacks. Revisiting a remodeled place that you spent so much time in nearly 20 years ago is a fascinating experience, even if it is a virtual space.

The last thing I really appreciate about Midnight’s questing / levelling experience is that it’s surprisingly slow. I know some players just see leveling as an annoyance to get through as quickly as possible to arrive at the endgame, and for a while, it felt a bit like that’s how Blizzard saw it as well. But I have a fondness for the early days of WoW when levels took a hot minute, and the sense of accomplishment that went with achieving a level up. Midnight isn’t exactly WoW Classic, but it does pump the brakes enough to make the average player’s leveling experience feel a bit more like a journey again. I’ve been playing the character I created a few days before Midnight launched and enjoying the slow progression and far off endgame.

I cannot overstate how pleased I am with Midnight so far. Everything I praised in this post is on top of everything I adore from Dragonflight and The War Within (follower dungeons, delves, skyriding, single-button assist, Xal’atath). World of Warcraft in 2026 is a confident mix of old and new, and quite possibly the best the game has ever been.

Spoiler warning! Screenshots from two hours or so into the game.

I downloaded the new GeForce Driver tonight (after NVIDIA took it down the first time the other day) and gave RE9 a spin on my PC.

Specs: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU, 32GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 Super, 1440p resolution.

Settings: almost everything set to maximum, switching between path tracing on and off.

Managed to stay above 120 fps the entire time (though having path tracing on sent the fans on my PC into overdrive). RE Engine is absolutely incredible. Man, Capgods.