Received the update for free as I owned previous versions of all the classic Doom content on Steam.

It's all the classic Doom goodness, now with Steam achievements. For me personally, this rerelease was very welcome for one big reason, which I'll get into at the end of storytime! I definitely recommend this release for anyone who hasn't played classic Doom before, and wants to try it out and see one of the original FPS greats.

I remember watching my older brother play the shareware Doom (and Wolfenstein!) on our old Windows PC way back in the 90s when I was a kid. Was probably Windows 93 or 95, but it was launched via DOS. I enjoyed watching him...but whenever I tried to play it or watched him play for too long or straight on (usually I'd sit besides him and watch from an angle), I'd quickly get sick and I now realize as an adult it was because of the view bobbing. But I was still captivated, so it was sad I could never play it for more than a few minutes at a time.

Fast forward to many years later and my adult life. I bought and played Doom 2016, a couple years after its release, and quite enjoyed it - it somewhat resparked my memories of classic Doom. So I bought classic Doom in some old bundle, before even the Unity version was a thing. Sadly, same problem...got motion sick from the bobbing pretty quickly. Uninstalled, as it was still not accessible to me. The Unity version I never touched because it fell out of my brain.

Then eventually, retro handheld emulators and the Steam Deck became a thing. I got my hands on a Miyoo Mini Plus, and while setting it up with OnionOS, I saw the ports option, and that was my introduction to Doom source ports. Since I owned all the content on Steam, I downloaded it and copied over the WADs to my Miyoo's SD card. And lo and behold...I discovered I could turn off the bobbing in that source port (PrBoom through Retroarch). I could finally play classic Doom...but on Miyoo Mini Plus, it was suboptimal. Amazing to run it on such a handheld, but not great to actually play it due to limited controls.

I had gotten a Steam Deck too, so I started looking at options for source ports on Deck, and landed on using Luxtorpeda. And that was my ticket into finally enjoying this classic on my preferred platform, as I could try multiple source ports for different things, and for the most part, source ports would let me turn off the bobbing. However, I got this set up only earlier this year, and the games ended up on my backlog while I played other things and dealt with real-life stuff. But I had played through the first few levels of E1 with 0 issues on a couple different source ports and got further than I ever had before. I don't think I ever launched the Unity release without using Luxtorpeda and a source port in its place.

Then out of nowhere, this rerelease by Nightdive hit my library. While I still have Luxtorpeda set up as an option on my Deck, the reason this rerelease by Nightdive is so welcome to me is because I finally have a simple one-click-launch no-fuss official option to play all classic Doom content (except Sigil II, but it's in the mod browser, so eh) on my preferred platform (Steam Deck) with an easy-to-access toggle to turn off bobbing. Finally, I can easily truly enjoy these classics for what is to me, the first time, in an official capacity. Sure, I have my gripes (most of them with the many shortcomings of the mod browser) but when this hit my library, I had to just try launching it on my Steam Deck. So I did. No fuss, no issues with controls or DosBox, no configuration of anything to get it to launch, it just ran with no issues. I could go right into options, set things how I like (including the wonderful option to disable bobbing) and start playing. Steam achievements are a wonderful bonus. Since then, spent over 40 hours in this game, though some of that time was with browsing and downloading mods and testing various things and playing with other source ports. And all of that time was on my Steam Deck, which is perfect for this game.

To me, the only flaw of this release is the mod browser. If you want to actually search, you have to go to Bethesda's site. The filter options are limited. There's some kind of cap on how many mods you can actually have downloaded, and it seems to delete things weirdly when you go over that cap or unsubscribe from a mod. It returns you to page 1 of the browser whenever you back out of looking at a specific mod. There's little moderation of what gets uploaded, so mods or custom maps that require GZDoom and can't run in this port are all over the place. People can upload content developed by others without giving credit. There are multiple uploads of the same content. Saving your progress for custom map packs seems to be hit or miss. There's no easy way to load in mods/WADs that you already have stored locally. In short, the mod browser and overall mod support is a mess, the one big blemish on this otherwise awesome package. I hope it gets fixed or at least improved over time.

Despite that, I recommend this port as I said at the top, especially for all official classic Doom content. It has the convenience that any other Steam game has, it has Steam achievements, it's Steam cloud compatible for those with multiple devices. It's also reasonably priced for what it provides, even when not on sale. And for the game itself, it offers the right quality of life improvements, modernizations and accessibility options, including the one I needed, while preserving the classic Doom experience as it was, limitations and all. And if you still prefer a source port or need the vertical aim GZDoom provides, you can copy the WADs to use in whatever source port you like, including the WAD for Legacy of Rust. It would be neat to see an option to turn on vertical aim at least in single player, but I can also understand why it's not there, since it seems preservation was the goal. Otherwise, to me this comes about as close to "everybody wins" as it's possible to get.

Edit 10/5/24: Latest patch fixed most of my issues with the mod browser. The one thing I'd still like to see changed is the removal of the downloaded mods cap. I still can't have more than 100 downloaded from my testing. The patch also added the ability to load local mods - just put your local WAD files in the right folder, and they get listed in your list of mods when you go to select one to play. On my Steam Deck, the folder to put them in was the same folder where my Saves folder and downloaded mods folder was located. If you go to the list of mods you have, at the bottom there'll be an option to see the folder for local WADs, and you can see the file path to put your WADs in there.

I started playing around noon . Then realized it was 4 hours later when I closed the game by mistake while I was looking at save files after I realized you could toggle tarr slimes, feral slimes and damage scaling at will whenever you want (a wonderful quality of life improvement from the original).

If you loved the first one, get this, even though as of writing, it's early access - Monomi Park proved they could do early access right with the first Slime Rancher. A lot of the things they added during the first game's development are already here (slime science, difficulty options). There are already multiple explorable areas. Core gameplay loop hasn't changed much, but there are some small quality of life tweaks and new upgrades. Graphically, it's the same overall visual style, but updated and improved with new tech, and it works wonderfully. The game is beautiful. Performance was overall decent for me on my desktop (1080TI and i7-4790K, 1080p upscaled to 4K on my TV, most graphics settings at max) , but I did have some screen tearing and frame drops until I turned on v-sync on my GPU. Generally though it maintained a fairly stable 60 FPS, but some performance improvements in future patches would be pretty great. I'll try it on my Steam Deck at some point (no cloud saves sadly...I hope that gets added in the future!) but I suspect it'll run fine on that with medium or low settings, especially with FSR. Slimes are still cute. The new slimes I've encountered so far are as cute as the old ones, and it seems many of the old ones made a return. Hopefully all of the first game's slimes will return in future patches (or maybe I just haven't discovered them all yet).

Overall, Monomi Park seems on track to for both another hit and doing early access correctly - the first Slime Rancher is my go-to example for early access done right, and I'm glad to see Slime Rancher 2 off to a stellar start with it.

Edit 11/27/22: They’ve now issued some fixes, laid out a timeline for the next big content update, and enabled cloud saves, which I wanted badly as a Steam Deck owner. I can also confirm it runs great on Deck with FSR on highest settings at 40 FPS. Yup, they’re on track to do early access right again.