Let’s delve into Doom first. A major new feature in the game is a large shield for the Doom Slayer, which can be employed to deflect projectiles and fend off enemy strikes. The game conveniently highlights anything capable of being parried in a vivid neon green, ensuring it’s noticeable as you’re busy annihilating waves of demons.

When a green missile or an enemy’s green attack approaches, you can hit the parry button at the precise moment to repel the threat with a tremendous echo from your shield, complemented by a cinematic slowdown effect. As with most of the adrenaline-fueled action in modern Doom, it is visually and audibly gratifying. Moreover, executing parries is vital for battles, as they provide a chance to retaliate with a punch or unleash a barrage from whatever formidable weapon you’re holding.

In intense battles, I’m always hunting for green glints to find things to parry to potentially gain an advantage. When an enemy shoots a spread of bullets with some green interspersed, I’ll even run toward the danger to get in a good deflection. Some weapon upgrades have perks tied to parries, too, giving you many incentives to stay keen for something green.

Doom, very helpfully, has a setting that lets you change the timing for the parry window whenever you want. I have no shame in admitting that I’ve occasionally made the parry window as wide as the game allows; yes, it lowers the difficulty, but I like parrying every chance I can.

Expedition 33’s parrying system is just as thrilling and impactful, but shifts from fast-paced action to turn-based battles. When it’s an enemy’s turn in a battle, they’ll often wind up their giant swords, axes, or fists for flashy, multistep attack combos, and you can parry each hit if you time things right.

Every successful parry regains one AP, which you’ll spend during your turn to use skills. More powerful skills typically have higher AP costs, so the more blows you parry, the better equipped you’ll be on your next turn. Parry all of an enemy’s attacks on their turn and you’ll do a counter (which also has an action-movie-like slow-motion effect) that can be a very helpful way to chip away at a health bar.

That’s not easy, though: Expedition 33’s gives you a very tight window to press the parry button in time to block a hit, and if you miss the window, you’ll take some damage. Missing multiple parries on a single turn might drain your health bar from full to empty, and given how tricky the game’s enemies can get with staggering their hits or faking you out, that will probably happen often.

The game lets you dodge enemy attacks, which has a much wider timing window, but you don’t gain AP and you won’t get a chance to counter. I found myself leaning toward parries far more than dodges: despite the risks, landing a successful series of parries, especially in a high-stakes battle, was usually worth the trial and error because of how cool it looked and how much it helped in a fight.

I do wish Expedition 33 had a setting to adjust the parrying windows just slightly (and if you’re on PC, there’s a mod that can help with that). But I also get why the timing is so tough: the rewards are high, but so are the costs.

Parrying can be a divisive mechanic, especially when it’s challenging. That’s why people bounce off of games like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Nine Sols. But Doom and Expedition 33 both offer new and interesting takes on the idea that show just how rewarding a good parry can be.