ah, thanks for letting me know here. i already had the Sprinter perk (it basically always feels good to go fast in videogames) so i bought Ghost as well.
as someone who likes Egyptian/desert themed things in general, the 3rd episode was pretty disappointing. just a bunch of damage sponges i could easily hack down in corridors. i’m sure i could play on hardcore with a different build, but that wouldn’t make the levels more fun. i do like this game’s Wolfenstein 3D style commitment to having a lot of secrets and areas that you don’t necessarily need to go to in a level, but a lot of them look the same.
the 4th episode’s definitely had a difficulty spike, and is a lot more visually interesting. i like the game’s commitment to keeping the action/movement flat but making things more visually interesting around it:
but this city setting especially just really reminded me that in spite of enjoying the visual style of this game a lot, i’ve still had a lot more fun playing some Doom WADs than i’ve had with this game. which is how i’m starting to feel about a lot of these retro fps games in general tbh. it feels like a miracle to me that DUSK and AMID EVIL were able to mostly escape that.
anyway Project Warlock feels like the definition of a 7/10 game. not a waste of time and good enough for what it is… but not going to blow you away. and it’d probably be like a 5/10 or 6/10 game for me without the distinctive visual style and a few of the more novel features.