Brutal DooM

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

Like alot of kids, I was a huge fan of Doom and its numerous knock-offs and spin-offs back in the day. Yeah, it's completely plotless. Yes, it's violence is beyond gratuitous. But goddamit, it was fun. Gorey, visceral, high-octane fun.

Well, now I've gotten sucked back into the Church of Doom thanks to a certain highly popular mod: Brutal Doom.

This mod reveals that, with a few tweaks, this game that is over 20 years old is still very solid and fun to play. Those tweaks include:

-Cleaning up certain textures
-Enabling mouse aiming
-Adding the ability to aim down the sights of your weapon
-Replacing the old pistol with a super-effective assault rifle
-Increasing the gore factor quite a bit (yeah, now the blood gets fucking everywhere)
-Adding new animations, including melee executions and new individualized death animations
-Adding new difficulty levels
-Extensive customization for controls, audio, etc.

It's amazing what a few little tweaks and polishes can do to an old game like this. It feels like I'm a kid again, blowing away zombie soldiers and hellspawn for the very first time. Only now, it has all of the polish of a modern FPS.

I just hope the guys over at Id Software are paying attention while they make Doom 4.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Brutal Doom is fucking awesome and gets two thumbs-up from me.

To run it you need:

1. The Doom or Doom 2 WAD files.

2. GZDoom (http://www.osnanet.de/c.oelckers/gzdoom/index.html), a source port to run the game on modern computers with mod support.

3. Brutal Doom (http://www.moddb.com/mods/brutal-doom/downloads/brutal-doom-version-19)!

Optional extras include:

4. The Doom Metal Soundtrack Vol 4 (http://www.moddb.com/mods/brutal-doom/downloads/doom-metal-soundtrack-mod-volume-4) - replaces the original MIDI music with MP3-quality cover versions.

5. The Ultimate Brutal Arsenal (http://www.moddb.com/mods/brutal-doom/news/ultimate-brutal-arsenal-expansion-pack-first-beta-november-30th) expands the mod with 50 weapons including a large variety of machineguns, shotguns, assault rifles, rocket launchers, energy weapons, explosives, flamethrowers, BFGs, and melee weapons.

Once you've installed GZDoom, place the Doom/Doom 2 WADs in the program's main folder. To play, just select and drag the Brutal Doom, Doom Metal and Brutal Arsenal PK3 files onto the GZDoom icon and it should start up!


This mod reveals that, with a few tweaks, this game that is over 20 years old is still very solid and fun to play. Those tweaks include:

-Cleaning up certain textures
-Enabling mouse aiming
-Adding the ability to aim down the sights of your weapon
-Replacing the old pistol with a super-effective assault rifle
-Increasing the gore factor quite a bit (yeah, now the blood gets fucking everywhere)
-Adding new animations, including melee executions and new individualized death animations
-Adding new difficulty levels
-Extensive customization for controls, audio, etc.

The bolded features are due to the source port (e.g. GZDoom) rather than Brutal Doom itself.

[Creative Destruction]

thought this was going to be about brutal doom music. :(

2Opk05Wx7E8

[Deep Sea]

DoomRL was pretty good, though I preferred the ASCII to the tiles.