iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

Been using Ecosia search with Firefox browser for years and haven’t missed google at all

Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

I beat the Master Levels! There’s some really good fun levels in there. It’s cool that id took the time to make an official collection of fan created content. But, and im sorry, all the levels made by Cranium are some of the worst things I’ve ever played

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

I'm thankfully done with Marathon 2 😭 Now it's time for Master Levels for Doom II (1995)

Cover art for Master Levels for Doom 2 featuring a black and white stretched image of screaming skulls fused together

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

Unfortunately it does not seem to have improved anything from the first one, this is gonna be a slog to get through 😞

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

Playing Marathon 2: Durandal (1995)

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

Don’t worry everyone, it’s only the most fundamental parts of our game that will be completely unoriginal and uninspired!

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

It's a lot of fun playing these games in release order because I get genuinely excited when they do something new. It was so cool seeing an ice cavern in this game shake and have the floor collapsing and jutting all at once when really its just a bunch of platforms moving up and down

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

The levels are formed by 'hubs' which have portals to sub levels. Each hub is sort of similar to a zelda dungeon in the way you explore in search of keys to open up new areas

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

I've been loving this game, it carves a pretty fresh approach to shooters for the time which is surprising considering how much it's predecessor was just a simple doom clone. This game is the first fps to feature actual cutscenes, it has 3 classes to choose from, and non linear level design

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

and I caught up on posting about the fps games Ive been playing! so now I'm currently playing: Hexen: Beyond Heretic (1995)

Cover art for Hexen featuring a shadowy figure standing in an arched stone doorway. Red eyes peer out from beneath a dark cowl, the figure holds an emanating green orb. Fire fills the background.

Screenshot of a cutscene from Hexen featuring a low angle shot of a busy medieval plaza during a dark evening. Figures bustle around by torchlight in front of a grand cathedral.

Screenshot of Hexen featuring a first person view of a wielded mace and some stone columns

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

Oh and the head of Raven said he would like the studio to reboot the series! Would be so cool to see it come back like Wolfenstein and Doom did

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

It was a lot of fun but I’m obsessed with its spin-off sequel, Hexen, the 3 classes and fresh take on level design is so good

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Reposted by Snort

Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

Next was Heretic (1994)

Cover art for Heretic featuring a masculine cloaked elven wielding a magical staff and facing off against several reanimated skeleton soldiers

A screenshot of Heretic featuring a first person view of two flying imps in a large stone room with square wooden columns

A screenshot of Heretic featuring a first person view of a dark and gloomy stone room lit by burning braziers of demonic figures holding up bronze bowls.

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

Not too much to say about this game, its basically a reskin of doom with some fresh levels, I enjoy seeing them bring the map back between levels, its a small thing but I love it. I actually like it more than doom, I think the weapons and enemies are a bit more fun and the maps a bit cooler

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

Looked at past commits and couldn’t figure out what I changed that would cause this so I branched from my last working commit and manually made the changes again and now it works 🫠

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

My C++ project broke inexplicably moved a file and renamed some mundane stuff, suddenly giving 600 errors in a static library that my project uses 🙃

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

the only redeeming factor is the somewhat interesting story. I really hope Marathon 2 and 3 make massive improvements because as this one stands I'm dreading playing the sequels

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

also will activate themselves randomly, so you have to pull and try to identify what it did a few seconds later while these 6 levers are also pulling themselves randomly. This game with its winding maps full of wrong turns and awful lever puzzles was the closest I came to DNF so far on this list

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

and the resulting event can happen pretty much anywhere on the map, and then it might take a few more seconds for the action to fail so you can know you did the wrong thing. And then they make puzzles involving multiple levers, the worst one I can think of right now had 6. And then these levers...

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

and the lever puzzles in this game were abhorrent, some of the most mind boggling obtuse things Ive ever seen, and to be clear I love puzzles in games, these were atrocious. This game loved to have levers that when activated take a few seconds to do anything...

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

I'm eagerly awaiting these games to finally understand that its not fun to wander around aimlessly trying to figure out where to go. It was upsetting going from System Shock which got that to this.

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

pretty much everything about this game was a disappointment. the guns were boring, the enemies were boring, the level design was awful, featuring tons of dead ends just to make you get lost for no reason.

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

next up was Marathon (1994)

Screenshot of Marathon featuring a fps view into a gray metallic hangar of a spaceship with the expanse of space beyond.

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Reposted by Snort

Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

Next was System Shock (1994) This game was incredibly innovative and influenced many games that followed. I was blown away playing this. If you're curious how important this game was you should read the Legacy section on its wiki page

A screenshot of System Shock featuring a first person view of a dimly lit retro-future hallways with long bunker windows giving glimpses of outer space

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

It also was the first fps to feature a rich unfolding narrative that raises the stakes for the player, often in the form of piecing together what happened through audio logs. I really could not get enough of this game, whenever I wasnt playing all I could think about was getting back to playing it

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

And the level design is a breath of fresh air. During a time where every other fps thought peak level design is just making a dense maze for the player to get lost in, System Shock creates complex levels that are fun to explore and reward you for your time while gently leading you to your goal

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

System Shock was the first fps to have vertical aiming, but it also has crouching, proning, leaning, reloading, jumping, multiple ammo types per weapon, damage types, looting, hacking, various tools. And they shockingly managed to jam so much more than any other fps at the time into a coherent whole

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

System's Shocks manual is 40 pages of explanations for game mechanics and systems and reading it is pretty much essential for playing the game, but its extremely worth it. Equipped with a much better understanding, I jumped back in and had an absolute blast

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

System Shock had a rough start for me, its very complicated with 1000 key binds for different toggles and menus and actions and basically none of it is explained in game. Thankfully, I was reminded on an old reddit thread that games used to come with manuals...

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

I hope they consider Nightreign cuz I really want a Duchess skin in Overwatch

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

I’ll spend embarrassing amounts of money on Elden Ring and Frieren collabs 😭

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

I really wish the visual studio debugger would make it more obvious when the compiler has changed my code Spent so long trying to figure out why my move assignment operator wasn’t being used 😭

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Got 13 games for $50 on the steam sale Helps that they’re mostly old games so they went for really cheap

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Fr penumbra and Amnesia are also really good

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

I’m so excited for ONTOS! SOMA is one of my favorite games

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Don’t worry that’s on my list! I’ll definitely play it!

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

It’s insane how much worse it makes Oblivion look, it washes out the lighting so bad

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Yay my Oblivion Remastered is working again after the recent graphic drivers update, I love this game :D

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

It's not worse than the first Doom and its still really fun but it serves more as a level pack than what we would expect from a proper sequel these days

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

I also feel like level design went back to their old strategy of just trying to make the player get lost in complex mazes but its not nearly as bad as Wolfenstein 3D.

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

The super shotgun serves as a band-aid on the monotony of the shotgun problem I mentioned in the first game. I think the lighting system got some upgrades but that's the only noticeable visual difference.

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

With how large the leap between Wolfenstein 3D and Doom was, I was disappointed to see no such improvements between Doom and Doom II. It's essentially just more levels of the same stuff. It does add a few new enemies but I found them all to be more annoying than fun.

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Next was Doom II (1994), released just shy of a year after its predecessor

Image of Doom 2 showing a view of a large dark room with 2 large columns and a lit up doorway on the far side.

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

Having the headshot mechanic missing from these old games really makes me appreciate just how fun aiming for the head is

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

Also to note for those that don’t know, these first two games have no vertical aiming, it’s all horizontal and as long as your aim is lined up, your shot will land no matter the height difference Additionally, theres no such thing as headshots, a hit is a hit and location doesn’t affect anything

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Snort @acousticsnort.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

On the downside, your main gun ends up being the shotgun since that’s what you end up consistently having ammo for, which tends to get old since the otherwise fast paced fun is constantly broken up by the pump action

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