Last week, Bethesda released a remastered edition of Doom and Doom II on Steam, with lots of extra episodes and improvements. One of these new features is a built-in browser for mods, and support for many existing mods that previously required a different version of the game. Basically, lots of good fan-made mods are now playable on the Steam version of ye olde Doom. That's neat! Ah, but there is some demon excrement on the health pack, so to speak. The mod browser lacks moderation and lets people upload the work of others with their own name pinned as the author. That's prompted one level designer to call it "a massive breach of trust and violation of norms the Doom community has done its best to hold to for those 30 years."
]]>There are as many Doom mods as there are stars in the sky: jillions of accursed celestial bodies orbiting the supermassive black hole that is id Software, each infested with its own local flavours of cacodemons and keycards and shotguns. I've played just a handful - certainly, far from enough to pronounce myself any kind of expert - but I do feel like I've played one of the best in the shape of Siren, a Doom II total conversion from Dithered Output, the first episode of which can be downloaded free from Itch.io.
The mod's overall vibe is encapsulated, I think, by the sentient vending machine you meet a short way in, just round the corner from a rec room that contains a disembodied head on tentacles, and down the corridor from a tiered canteen full of ghouls and unsympathetic men with shotguns. You ask the machine if it has any clue what's going on. It tells you that its job is to keep its mouth shut and dispense soda. Can I have a soda, then? "No."
]]>Video game openings have always been a source of fascination for me. As a player, you're excited by the prospect of the game to come - the sights you'll see, the challenges you'll face - and first impressions can make or break your entire perception of what a game is versus the one you had stored in your head before switching it on. For video game creators, however, a new beginning is often racked with questions. What, exactly, do you choose to show players first? How will you introduce them to something they've never seen before? And if that game is successful, how do you keep reinventing that first impression across what could be several decades?
In revisiting every mainline Doom game to celebrate its 30th anniversary this month, it's clear that even id's iconic shooter has wrestled with how to answer these question, and the ways it's tried to reinvent itself over the years paints a captivating portrait of a series trying to move with the times. Nowhere is this more apparent than in its opening levels. Played in close succession, crushing 30 years into not even quite three hours, what emerges isn't just the evolution of one of the all-time great PC games, but also a potted history of the FPS. So join me as we chart Doom's rise, fall and rebirth through the lens of its first stages.
]]>Last time, you decided that ricochet attacks are better than blue shadows on dodges and dashes. I expected this outcome but am still glad to see a good quarter of you favoured cool essence over cool effort. We continue. This week, in honour of Doom's 30th birthday (we've already written about John Romero's memories, motion sickness, and inviting monsters to a birthday party, with more to come), I ask perhaps an impossible question. How could anyone ask you to pick between two iconic tools of ultraviolence. What kind of monster would. Yet we must. What's better: Doom's shotgun or Doom 2's super shotgun?
]]>The party poppers are out, the finger food is ready and waiting to be served, and the guest list for Doom's 30th birthday party is well and truly set. Well, it would be if Doomguy ever lowered the drawbridge to his flying space castle high above the Earth's orbit. I did try and get a radio signal out earlier, but the grumpy sod never responded. Probably too busy organising his trophy case in his man cave, to be honest. But let's face it. Doomguy wouldn't be much fun at a birthday party anyway. He'd be too busy ripping and tearing into his presents to give anyone the time of day, let alone a polite thank you, and then he'd be working on ripping and tearing apart said presents in a display of strength and machismo.
So Doom's hellspawn have got together to throw their own party for the occasion, and let me tell you, they're having a riotous good time all by themselves. Well, most of them are, anyway, as there are some demons here that wouldn't know how to have fun even if was seared across their skulls with the beam of a BFG9000. Here's every classic Doom enemy ranked on a scale of the most miserable wallflowers to the life and (undead) soul of the party.
]]>Doom co-creator John Romero has marked the seminal FPS’ 30th anniversary by releasing his second unofficial campaign for the hell-shooter. Sigil 2 follows on from Romero’s previous expansion for the Doom engine - released in 2019 for its quarter-century celebrations - by adding nine new levels that you can go and grab for free right now.
]]>“When people read anything, no matter the source, they will believe it.” So says Doom designer John Romero on the subject of his relationship with John Carmack. Together, the pair built id Software and the FPS genre as we know it - before the cracks started to show during the difficult development of Quake, ending their professional partnership.
Yet any lasting acrimony has now dissipated. That became apparent when Romero’s new autobiography, ‘Doom Guy: Life In First Person’, showed up on shelves with a glowing back cover quote from Carmack. The latter praised Romero’s “remarkable memory”, and waxed wistfully about their shared impact on the gaming medium. “For years, I thought that I had been born too late and missed out on participating in the heroic eras of computing,” Carmack wrote. “Only much later did I realise that Romero and I were at the nexus of a new era - the 3D game hackers.”
]]>Last time, you decided that seeing your outfit in cutscenes is better than telefragging. I understand the yearning for fashion, absolutely I do, but I'm not convinced you fully thought it through. I will point you to a comment by reader 'moderately sized grundus', who asked, "What could be more cosmetic than wearing the literal skin of your very recently slain enemies?" A strong question. But we move on. This week, I ask you to pick between explosive reaction and emotive composition. What's better: chain explosions or Diablo's Tristram theme?
]]>During the noughties, developer ID Software adapted some of their iconic shooters into curious mobile spin-offs with Doom RPG, Doom 2 RPG, and Wolfenstein RPG. These mixed Doom with old-school dungeon-crawler design, letting you shoot monsters at a considerably slower pace. Over a decade after their initial releases, developer GEC.inc unofficially ported Doom RPG onto PCs and now the team is back with a port for the sequel.
]]>A few weeks ago, I talked about a number of new features coming to RPS in 2023, and here we are with our very first edition of Ask RPS! This is a new mailbag feature where RPS supporters get to pose questions to the RPS Treehouse team (mostly video games-related, though not necessarily always), and we then answer those questions in public posts for everyone to get involved with. Easy peasy.
To kick us off, our first question comes courtesy of Old_Man_Gaming, who asked: "What was the first game that really grabbed you and dominated your life?"
Come and find out which games had us trapped in the throes of childhood mania below, and why not tell us about your own gaming obsessions in the comments? You might just find a surprise kindred spirit.
]]>Ex-Labour Party head and leader of the UK parliamentary opposition Jeremy Corbyn was spotted engaging in some quality gaming time over the weekend, taking on the Iron Lady in Doom 2 mod Thatcher’s Techbase. The left-winger and lifelong reader of Rail magazine got his thumbs a-twiddlin’ for a special arcade version of the mod while at The World Transformed, a festival being held in Liverpool that celebrates radical politics, art, and culture. This is what he’s doing instead of singing God Save The King at the party conference then.
]]>Kicking demons off Earth with a generous application of bullets is swell, sure. A bit impersonal though, right? Thanks to this new Doom II mod, the Doomslayerguy can turn hell's residents into pools of blood with his own two fists. Doom Fighters turns yon classic FPS into a third-person brawler where you can uppercut and chuck baddies all over the place. You can snag it right now or just appreciate the excellent biff baffing demon slapping in this trailer.
]]>Following a short delay caused by Tennent's Lager (actual true story), Margaret Thatcher has returned from Hell to menace us once more. Thankfully, one doomed space marine will stand up and venture into the tenth circle of Hell (aka the UK) to put the reviled British prime minister down for good. Thatcher's Techbase is its name, and Doom 2 is the game you'll need to play this free mod now it's out. It is quite the thing, and even has a custom soundtrack from Paradise Killer's composer.
]]>Next week, reviled former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher will rise from her grave to bring Hell back to Earth, and only one space marine can stop her. Announced today, Thatcher's Techbase is an upcoming mod for classic Doom which ventures in the tenth circle of Hell (aka the United Kingdom) to battle the demonic forces of the Iron Lady. Modding politicians into games is a vintage jape but Thatcher's Techbase makes a real effort with custom art, its own campaign, music from Paradise Killer's composer, and apparently even the voice behind Demeter and Persephone in Hades. Watch this trailer.
]]>I imagine the first thing most level designers do when firing up a new tool is to try and recreate their own homes. After all, it's a pretty immediate, familiar space to try and get to grips with. But in what's sure to already be knowledge to some folk, it seems Doom II shipped with a fairly accurate rendition of developer Sandy Peterson's home, with the venerable designer this week taking us on a tour through both the real-world and "Hell On Earth" versions of his abode.
]]>If you're anything like me, you're currently going through some intense Animal Crossing: New Horizons FOMO. These sort of lifestyle sims aren't for me, but I'll admit - watching my mutuals posting their island adventures non-stop has me a little jealous. Where's my Tanuki landlord? Why can't I have a best friend who is also a dog? For the Doom marine, the latter is only a download away, thanks to a new mod for Doom II that lets Animal Crossing's Isabelle join you for some righteous bloodshed against the legions of hell.
]]>There's only a few weeks left in 2019, and we're fast approaching this year's Cacowards, Doomworld's annual community awards, so it feels only right to see what's been going on in the classic Doom modding scene these past few months.
I'm beating the Cacowards to the punch, really, and giving you a handful of choice picks to get your teeth into early. We've got Doom 4 for DOS, eldritch weirdness, shareware era nostalgia, a crossover with Blood, and an all-you-can-eat buffet of around 2700 levels for the Doomer who can never have too much.
]]>One of the last of the Id Software old guard is parting company with the studio soon. Tim Willits wasn't part of the original team of founders, but was there early enough to be credited as level designer on 1995's Ultimate Doom and have a credit in almost everything since. After working as a designer and creative director on the likes of Quake, Doom 3 and Rage, and acting as studio director through the release of Rage 2, he's left a mark on the FPS genre as we know it. After QuakeCon next week he'll say his goodbyes and announce his plans for the future.
]]>Time to pencil in another week of sick days and sleepless nights, as the competitors and games for this year's Summer Games Done Quick have been announced, broadcasting from Bloomington, Minneapolis. The charity speedrunning marathon kicks off on 5pm BST on June 23rd, demolishing games at record pace around the clock until June 30th. As with their other summer events, they'll be raising fat sacks of money for Médecins Sans Frontières. While there's still time for last-minute changes, the show schedule is here, automatically adjusted to your local timezone.
]]>Here is a riddle for you. When is Doom not Doom? Why, when its open-source code has gone through countless iterations and become a modern development platform in its own right!
Sometimes a Doom mod outgrows its old home and breaks away as a completely standalone game. This week I'm bringing you an all-you-can-eat buffet of free, full games (and some demos) that are the best to have flown Doom's nest. The list includes platformers, horror, racing, deathmatch and plenty of old-school FPS fun. Some of them have even settled down to raise their own mod scenes and their own spin-off games. Isn't that sweet?
]]>Doom 2 is more than just Doom these days. Some modern levels for the 90s classic FPS feature thousands of enemies, fiendish traps and difficulty beyond anything Id Software dreamt of. Eviternity, released yesterday, runs the gamut. It's a 32-level campaign split up into six five-map episodes, each with a fresh look and some new monsters. You'll start out in gloomy gothic tunnels, plinking away at zombies with a pistol. By the end, you'll be screaming through the vast halls of heaven itself, cutting through ungodly-huge swarms of demons with BFG in hand. It's rather brill.
]]>Hocus Pocus Doom a dangerously potent cocktail of nostalgia. Doom 2 modder "Ravage" has been working on this since 2014, adapting an old 2D DOS game into a GZDoom-based (but kid-friendly) FPS. If you grew up playing DOS games in the 90s, you may remember Hocus Pocus, or at least the shareware version. Honestly, it wasn't the greatest - a simple platformer published by Apogee. Hocus Pocus Doom, on the other hand, is an enormous, polished game and (as of a new release yesterday) finished, in need of only the gentlest of polishing up before being considered 'done'. Grab it here.
]]>Doom turned 25 last month, so it can do whatever it wants over the holidays - that includes turning into a golf game or converting the hazy memories of robot vacuum cleaners into hellish arenas. While I was away from my news-desk, programmer Rich Whitehouse cobbled together DOOMBA, a system for exporting the memories of your house's layout from a Roomba and filling it with demons. An impressive bit of weird Doom one-upmanship over modder TerminusEst13, who just one day prior released Hellshots Golf - a multiplayer golf conversion set across eighteen holes of hellish relaxation. Give both a look below.
]]>It's Doom's 25th birthday, and Id's classic FPS has grown up along with me. While I've enjoyed modern iterations such as 2016's reboot, the original's ever-mutating open source foundation and lively mod scene just won't let me go. When John Romero announced he was releasing a nine-level Doom episode built to 1993 spec, I shrugged, because that pales in comparison to what the Doom community have built this year. Let's dig into the winners of the 2018 Cacowards, Doomworld's annual mod ceremony, including some standalone, freeware games - no Doom mod experience needed.
]]>We're just shy of Halloween here and the stars are aligning, allowing unholy powers to warp Doom into strange, near-unrecognisable forms through the powerfully dark act of modding. Out tonight is Total Chaos, a survival horror mod so grand in its ambition that it leaves almost nothing recognisable as 'Doom', with detailed 3D environments and modern horror style. More traditional but still impressive is an early demo of The Crimson Deed, a vampire-themed dungeon crawl. Check out trailers for both below, plus some Quake-related surprises from 3D Realms.
]]>October is Skeleton Appreciation Month, and few people appreciate skeletons quite as much as Doom modder Marphy Black. Through his mastery of Agitating Skeletons, he has posed deep philosophical problems, made us contemplate infinity and sometimes just punch a whole lot of skellingtons. His latest is the most fiendish by far - he's probably going to make some poor Twitch streamer hate Doom, because this is basically Desert Bus, but more evil. You probably shouldn't play Revenant Bus, but you're not going to listen to me, are you? Below, a warning in trailer form.
]]>Leather-clad raiders with neon green mohawks roam irradiated monuments to capitalism, their acid-spitting lizard-dogs in tow. Ashes 2063, by modder Vostyok is about as 80s an apocalypse can get, even after filtering it through a 2018 iteration of a 90s game engine. It's a free post-apocalyptic FPS (or total conversion mod, if you're old-school) built on the ever-popular GZDoom engine. Its first episode launched yesterday.
While 98% new, Ashes 2063 still requires some manner of Doom data file to fill the gaps. Fortunately, the (free) Freedoom will suffice, if you don't own Doom 2. Below, a launch trailer.
]]>John Romero has just congratulated Doom guru Zero Master on discovering the last hidden secret of Doom II, some 24 years after it was released. A secret that had previously been thought impossible to actually find.
]]>When it comes to mods for old games, I love seeing just how far their structure can be pushed with modern engines, but there's still some wisdom in the old ways. Viking-themed Doom mod Rekkr takes it all the way to the old school and back again, uphill both ways in freezing snow.
Built to authentic retro specs (making it compatible with even the original DOS version, should you so wish), there's no vertical aim, crouching or jumping here, just 25+ levels of weird techno-magical viking violence, with new enemies, weapons and art.
]]>Doom 2 mega-mod Doom: The Golden Souls 2 is the sugary treat we all deserve today. Take one part Doom, one part Super Mario World, put them in a blender until smooth and brightly coloured then garnish with fresh gibs and candy sprinkles. It's a full game in its own right, with lots of bouncy platforming across dozens of levels with new weapons and enemies from prolific modder Andrea 'Batandy' Gori, who previously brought us the excellent Castlevania: Simon's Destiny.
]]>Quake Champions: So nice, they made it twice. We all know about Bethesda/Id's revival of the arena shooter franchise, but don't go overlooking the Doom community's impressive QC:DE project, adapting the formula of the game to a more old-school engine with its own fresh collection of playable characters. This week, both got significant updates.
On Bethesda's side of the fence, the game now lets you be a Strogg Infiltrator from Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and wield the classic Quake 3 Plasma Gun, plus hop around a new map. On the Doom mod's side: For the first time in any kind of playable/voiced incarnation, it's evil AI Durandal from Marathon, plus a new set of expendable monsters for him to chew through offline. Within, character trailers and gameplay footage of both in action.
]]>It should almost go without saying now that Doom 2 is all things to all people, in the most literal sense. Thanks to 25 years of evolution in modding tools, it's Donkey Kong, Resident Evil and even Heroes of Might & Magic now, among other things.
The latest game to be swallowed by the all-consuming vortex of creativity that is the GZDoom-powered mod scene is Quake Champions. The arena FPS reboot may still be in public testing, but it's already been systematically disassembled, stripped for parts, and launched today as Quake Champions: Doom Edition (or QC:DE for short), a mod for possibly the most enduring game in PC history.
]]>Well done, everyone. Between the festival of catharsis that was Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus and Call Of Duty's return to World War 2, we've officially put shooting virtual fascists back on the menu. Jolly good show.
Still hungry to grind some more into kibble? Here's a couple of free treats to keep you going until Wolfenstein 3. Granted, the goose-stepping villains in Doom mod Shadow of The Wool Ball and its sequel Rise Of The Wool Ball are cats, but they're pretty villainous, and unless you're happy with the Planet Of The Adorable Hedgehogs being ground up into kitty litter, you're going to have to shoot a few.
]]>A classic Doom 2 combat scenario: A Revenant (its chaotic nature making it one of the most agitating skeletal foes in gaming history) runs headlong down a track. If it reaches its destination, it will inadvertently kill five Imps. If you choose to divert it, it will only kill one. What do you decide?
Okay, it's not much of a question - more Imp-murder is always good - but this and several dozen increasingly complex philosophical conundrums (plus a few surprises) await a baffled Doomguy in The Revenant Problem, a very silly Doom mod to cap off the venerable FPS's 24th year.
]]>One of the best things about Doom is that there's a version of it for everybody. If you like your weapons a little more old-school and your Westerns thoroughly Weird, then High Noon Drifter might just be what you're looking for in a retro FPS.
It's High Noon (or was when I was writing this), so dust off your hat and slip into the well-worn cowboy boots of ghostly drifter Corzo for your regularly scheduled fix of demon-slaughter across a thousand worlds with an arsenal of chunky revolvers, lever-action shotguns and a vicious whip.
]]>Skeleton Appreciation Month has been, gone and shuffled back off to its grave, but I figure we can afford to extend the spooky festivities just a little while longer, especially with gems like this having snuck out in the final hours of October.
Castlevania: Simon's Destiny was released on Halloween day, and is a genuinely impressive fan-game, remaking the entirety of the original NES game in first-person perspective, all built on the open-source (and increasingly flexible) GZDoom engine. Well worth a play, if you feel you could do with a little more Dracula in your life.
]]>Brutal Doom in a nutshell: Doom 2's familiar (iconic?) Icon Of Sin battle re-purposed into the very image of heavy metal excess; No longer just a wall texture, the monster bobs and sways, protruding out from a wall of giant intestines surrounded by torrents of blood pouring into the arena, all whilst the player gracefully extends a middle finger on each hand.
It's been nearly two years since this juggernaut of Doom modding saw a major release, with its creator taking some time off to remake Doom 64 in the interim. Missing Halloween by just one day, this week saw the release of version 21 (albeit in beta form) and it feels like a milestone in its transformation into something almost entirely new, and distinct from both Doom of 1993, and Doom of 2016.
]]>This is Doom. You know this. The rhythms have been burnt into your DNA by this point: Gun, demons, maze, exit. Now add a ticking time limit forcing careful target prioritisation and precise movement and a level full of floating tokens which require collection (most of them, at least) before the exit will reveal itself. This is Skulldash: Expanded Edition, a massive mod re-released for the GZDoom engine today, and it's really quite brilliant so long as you don't mind being a little hurried.
]]>The thrills of gibbing demons and sitting still watching numbers go up combine in Idle Doom, a mod turning id Software's seminal face-paced FPS into an idle game where you watch a machine kill monsters so you can upgrade to a bigger monster-killing machine. It is exactly what it sounds like: a Doom idle game. It's just the ticket for people who want to feel like they still strafe rough and frag hard but, really, they're quite tired so it would be grand if they could put their feet up with a cuppa and let someone else handle things for a bit and oh please turn the light off on your way out, ta.
]]>Would you like a $3,000 copy of Doom 2? Sure, that’s a little bit more expensive than the £5.99/$4.99 Steam version, but you’d be getting five whole floppy disks! When the world ends, that plastic might be valuable. Still not convinced? Well then, I guess John Romero will have to sell his copy to someone else.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
I change my mind whenever anyone asks me (important: no-one ever asks me) whether Doom or Doom II is the best Doom game, but one thing that was always certain was that Doom II was the best Doom sequel. Nowadays, I'm not so sure.
]]>I adore mods which give new life to mundane objects. Every crate in the crate-filled warehouse of CrateDM is potentially a player waiting to frag you. Prop Hunt modes put us in the mindset of level designers placing rocks and buckets. In Run For It!, a new mod for old Doom, objects which didn't have legs do now have legs. Ammo packs, lamps, trees, barrels, weapons, corpses and goodness knows what else have sprouted arms and legs to run around. Yup, it's as daft as it sounds. Watch this trailer, which comes complete with Doomy Yakety Sax:
]]>Ben Mansell has never released a Doom level before, but his first effort took 300 hours to build, spread across an entire year. Originating as a doodle back in 2003, Foursite is an enormous structure, divided into four parts, each with its own theme and boss battle. Mansell reckons it took a friend three hours to complete on their first attempt and required some tinkering with "advanced processes" to fit the standard file format given its size. You'll need Doom II to try it out and there's a full dev playthrough below.
]]>Back in 2010, a chap named Paul Schneider brought Doom II fans an exciting mod in the form of Unloved. A traipse through the classic shooter several shades darker (way more than fifty shades) than fans were used to, it was an exercise in serving up entrails as floors and chunks of flesh scattered throughout each level.
Most importantly, it was good. It could have become its own game, honestly. Oh, wait. It looks like it has! Unloved has broken out on its own as a fully-fledged horror shooter after escaping the confines of Steam's Early Access. It's available in full now, in fact, and looks like it's well worth trying.
]]>After two decades, Doom still has a vibrant modding community. Now game designer JP LeBreton has opted to draft his autobiography, Autobiographical Architecture [official site], as a Doom II mod, deeming the game a perfect medium for the multi-volume telling of his life. Doom has been a huge influence on LeBreton. He started out making his own Doom levels in his bedroom, later finding a career including working on BioShock, becoming lead level designer for its sequel, and being a designer at Double Fine Productions, before going solo. Here's a trailer showing a little of the mod:
]]>Do you remember a time when Wolfenstein hero B.J. Blazkowicz was a grinning, bum-chinned sprite with shiny blue twinklers rather than a morose sad-eyed man in a broken world? I've enjoyed several versions of Wolfenstein over the years, and perhaps none more so than The New Order, but I'm still fond of the first 3d title in the series. And I fucking love Doom. What a pleasure it is, then, to find Blade of Agony [official site], a GZDoom-based mod/sequel following the continuing adventures of Blazkowicz. It looks spectacular.
]]>Of all the genres I would choose if someone held a gun to my head and forced me to make a Seinfeld video game, I can't say a first person shooter would be high on my list. But hey, that didn't stop Doug Keener from trying that very thing using Doom II, and dammit he has done a fine job.
]]>I realise the new hotness in demonic dismemberment is Doom Notfour but this weekend I popped back to Doom II to check out a new(ish) player-made level. One of you lovely readers recommended dead.wire by 'Xaser' to Adam because our lad's into spooky stuff, then he shared it with me because I like fraggy stuff. Sure enough, dead.wire is both spooky and fraggy, travelling inside a strange facility where the sky burns with white noise, bits of the level appear from nowhere, and... oh no, where are the monsters?
]]>Brutal Doom [official site] isn't your grandfather's Doom II, is the sort of thing I'd say if I wrote for a games magazine in the '90s. Its reworked weapons, enemies, and combat do change Doom an awful lot, making it an ultraviolent new game with a friendly old look. Now Brutal Doom has its very own story campaign, blasting through a Mars base, down to Earth and across Los Angeles, then into Hell. Skipping through a few maps, I larked about in toxic waste, lead an AI squad through demon-infested city streets, fought the biggest dang Cyberdemon I've ever seen, and generally had a gay old time.
]]>Ask me "Alice! You like Doom and player-made stuff and player-made Doom stuff - what's this year's best?" and I'll sheepishly reply "Ah, heck, I don't play nearly enough to know. The selfie mod was funny, wasn't it? With the selfie stick? Right? Jokes? Oh, hey, did you see the Doom Mixtape? Look I need to..." Don't ask me that.
Some people who do play an awful lot of Doom, mind, are the Doomworld lot. Every year on December 10th - Doom's birthday, it's now 22 years old - they hand out gleaming Cacowards to their favourite new Doomy creations, which are often a handy pointer towards good and fun new things. This year's results are in, so go a-Dooming!
]]>Many things can be improved by boshing them into Doom, and that goes for games criticism too. Liz Ryerson, a musician, Doom enthusiast, and the developer of Problem Attic, has written some of my favourite games criticism of recent times, and in March started recording the Doom Mixtape. It's a video series where she plays through favourite and curious player-made Doom levels, picking over what makes them interesting and spiralling out to talk about all sorts of things connected to games creation, culture, communities, and commercialism. It's pretty great. Plus, Doom.
]]>Brutal Doom [official site] may be the best evidence yet that our entire world is inside the mind of a child in 1995 in bed hallucinating gore, fatalities, mutilation, gore, guns, gore, and swear words, their Global Hypercolor t-shirt turning a lurid shade of turquoise around the neck and armpits to indicate a terrible fever.
Creator Sergeant Mark IV this weekend released version 20 of the Doom mod after 18 months of work. V20 brings new gore, new dual-wielding weapons, new gore, better stealth mechanics (no, really), new gore, fancier graphics, bullet penetration, more gore, and more. And more gore.
]]>I've been trying to change my use of 'awesome' from the '90s exclamation of bodaciousness to the more reverent and terrified connotations it once had. But no, the mod Brutal Doom [Mod DB page] is totally awesome, not to mention tubular, radical, excellent, gnarly, wikkid, sikk, righteous, and wikkid sikk. It's the gory fever dreams of a child of '90s excess after a hard day's fragging.
The long-delayed version 20.0 finally has a release date - June 5th - and a new trailer shows off so many ridiculous things that I had to laugh. A Baron of Hell picks up and tosses an explosive barrel, monsters lose limbs and keep on coming, you dual-wield big guns, and Doom Guy punches and kicks and rips and tears, and everyone explodes into bloody little bits. Awesome!
]]>I think of the ultra-bloody mod Brutal Doom as how Doom is to the imagination of an ten-year-old, with all the guts and the gore and the ripping and the tearing. Ian MacLarty's Doomdream [official site] is a very different imagined take on Doom.
Doomdream's a curious free little game that MacLarty calls "An impression of my dreams after I've been playing Doom all day." It's an abstract explore 'em up that doesn't look like Doom, yet still feels a lot like it. Have a look.
]]>I feel a bit guilty for mostly posting Doom mods that are a bit wacky when so many fab mods and levels are still coming out. Well. Here, I'll tell you to play the excellent Demonsteele and then I'll feel less guilty posting about a Doom mod which adds a selfie stick and Instagram colour filters.
The first version of InstaDoom launched over the weekend, and I'm sure you'll be rushing into hell to start snapping away, so here, I have a video with a few tips for you:
]]>Do you remember that impressive Half-Life 2 mod where a chap replaced all the sounds with new versions he'd made himself with his mouth, lips, tongue, saliva, and perhaps other parts of his gastrointestinal tract? What a silly sausage! Now someone has done the same for Doom. Shotguns, rockets, growls, elevators: you name it, they've recreated it with their mouth. What could be more Doom-y than an offering of flesh and spittle?
]]>John Romero celebrated Doom's 21st birthday last week by sharing a load of neat-o unseen art and photographs from his personal archive, but in my gushing I missed a big Doom birthday tradition. For 11 years now, the Doomworld community have marked the day with the Cacowards, a celebration of the Doom mapping and modding community's best from the past year. They're still going strong! If you're out of touch with recent Doom developments but fancy playing something new, the 2014 Cacowards winners are a fine place to start.
]]>"HAPPY 21ST BIRTHDAY, DOOM!" John Romero tweeted yesterday. "In honor of this legal drinking age birthday, I'm about to release some never-before-seen DOOM game art!"
I know what you're thinking - "21 years old! The US drinking age is barbaric." Then you pause and realise "Wait, never-before-seen Doom art? Ooh!" And yes, it is splendid. Since then, the id co-founder has shared treasures including scans of the clay models id turned into monster sprites, and all sorts of abilities, textures, and gore that never made it into Doom. It's a joyous Doomdump.
]]>Earlier this week I wrote about DayZ mod for Doom which you can play right now, but here's another, potentially more ambitious still survival remix of id's finest hour. Total Chaos for Doom II is a massively-modified ( to the point of being unrecognisable) singleplayer open world survival horror mod, which uses GZDoom (engine) and Zandronum (multiplayer infrastructure) and - GASP! - features no guns.
But... but... is this not like curry without beer, a Florida vacation without Disney World, or the Velvet Underground without feedback?
]]>Doom Reborn is a mega-mod, with the sole aim of proving that the shotgun sound effect in Doom is more exciting than the entirety of Doom 3*. To achieve this goal, a team of modders (currently consisting of the contrarily named duo, GameHacKeR and Brent) are reconstructing Doom and Doom 2 in the idTech4 engine. I think they might be on to something. During the hour of footage below, edit: the shotgun can be heard punctuating the action with its signature 'BOOM CH-CHCK' the shotgun sound hasn't been replaced at all**. Some would argue that the shotgun sound was outdone by its own sequel, Doom 2's super shotgun, which went 'BOOOM CA-KLUNK-CA'. If memory serves, the Doom 3 shotgun went 'PFFFFFFFFT' and the pistol simply uttered quiet apologies whenever the trigger was pulled.
Doom Reborn is pre-beta is available now.
]]>"Imagine a world where Doom II was never released, and the levels never saw the light of day. The only bit of information that ever saw the light of day were the titles of the 32 maps, cryptic as can be. What kind of map would 'The Crusher' be, or 'O of Destruction,' who knows?"
That beautiful thought from Liz Ryerson (who Cara recently embedded with) sparked Doom 2 In Name Only, a community project where members of the Doomworld forums reimagined Doom II's campaign based purely on its level names. D2INO was released in June, 666 days after starting. It's worth waiting for a number like that to roll around when dabbling in Doom ('cos Satans etc).
]]>I like to think myself a discerning games player. I explore the far reaches of video games in search of fascinating systems, profound experiences, and deep truths. Also, I cannot stop beaming at Doom II imps dressed up as pirates whose hats drift lazily down to the ground after you blow them away with a flintlock. That's Pirate Doom, a mod giving everything a piratical makeover with twenty-odd new levels, pirate hats, rum, beer, beards, peg legs, cannons, and ripped Monkey Island music.
]]>Remember Doom II? Remember how it came out in 1994? I'm going to go ahead and assume the creators of Total Chaos don't, because otherwise they would understand what they're doing is impossible, and it would immediately poof into non-existence. Oh, and it gets better: the mod's biggest inspiration is apparently STALKER, which has my gamerly Geiger counter crackling with thunderous glee. Or maybe that's my regular Geiger counter. I should probably check on that. In the meantime, there's a very impressive trailer below.
]]>I do believe I promised something a bit more action-packed this week, although now that I think about it Mount And Blade has plenty of action. But I meant monsters jumping out of shadows and guns firing a staccato of panicked percussion. There are almost a million games that could scratch that particular itch, the one on your trigger fingers, but with the age of Rage almost upon us, I’ve decided to take a look at some mods for Doom. Or should that be Dooms? To the past, gentlemen and ladies, to the past.
]]>Are you a German teenager? Then do we have some good news for you! After a short seventeen year-long wait, you are now legally allowed to buy a copy of Doom. And, indeed, Doom can now be stocked in normal shops, not just ones ominously deemed 'adults-only' - which was basically putting the game right up there with porn.
As of yesterday, Germany's Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons (Bundesprufstelle) has removed Doom - and Doom II - from its list of 'controlled' games, following an appeal by id's owners Bethesda. Their reasoning? Because the Bundesprufstelle thinks Doom is 'now only of artistic and scientific interest and will not appeal to youngsters', according to the BBC.
WHAT.
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