Brutal DOOM is good!

[Ed Oscuro]

Playing DOOM on a console is an awful idea unless you're a DOOM archaeologist who likes looking at the hacked-up console versions of some maps, and the few exclusive levels; you can just get Chocolate DOOM instead if you want the feel of playing on a '90s system.

Fair enough. Come to think of it, modded Xbox might be the way to go for those who don't feel like playing on a computer.

For what it's worth, the Xbox exclusive DOOM maps (by The Castle et. al) have been hacked out and one of them received a much-needed fix.

[Obiwanshinobi]

I know right; Wii could use more first person shooters ported or remade for it. Somebody out there, make it happen.

DOOM and Wolf3D's were always fully analogue - you can get much finer turning control in the latter with a mouse than keys, but it's kind of a moot point since Wolf3D's engine is so primitive. I can't quite recall if there was a mouse sensitivity slider. DOOM had one from the beginning.

Naruhodo. It was Duke Nukem 3D, then, that brought things to the new level with looking UP and DOWN (well, you can look down in Geograph Seal, but it's not saying much).
I'd recommend Spectre Supreme (if I was sure it's aged well) as a very nifty take on mouse & keyboard controls. Technically everything mouse does there arrow keys do as well, but keeping my right hand on the mouse just felt better, comfier (all very Mac) and helped me endure long runs that game is all about. Wonder why it didn't spawn a genre...

[BIL]

Heretic. ;]

edit: actually, that was keys-only. Apparently Raven's CyClones (also 1994) let you use the mouse to aim, but it's not modern mouselook.

And oh god, why did I check the Doomworld forums just now...

[drauch]

^Awesome game! Just recently bought Heretic II but have yet to play it. Kinda worried about the transition to 3D, yet it still seems like a pretty solid game.

[BIL]

I was super hyped on PC gaming in the late 90s when Heretic II was in development, but by the time it came out I'd migrated back to consoles. Never did get to try it out, will have to take a look sometime.

Hexen II is pretty cool - progression is dependent on finding secret passages and the like, with all legitimately hinted at (no need to run about humping the walls, in fact the manual discouraged this). Some great level designs in there.

[Udderdude]

Heretic II and Hexen II were kind of dissapointing to me. The former because of the 3rd person perspective and the latter because the puzzles got even more annoying and obscure to solve, plus the combat didn't improve much if at all.

[Casper<3]

cant wait for doom BFG edition. i already love playing DOOM 3 on 360, but with the updated graphics and extra bonuses will be top notch.

[Ed Oscuro]

Hexen II is pretty cool - progression is dependent on finding secret passages and the like, with all legitimately hinted at (no need to run about humping the walls, in fact the manual discouraged this). Some great level designs in there.

Assassin's weaponset makes me die inside. also wtf lowest intelligence, lol

and yeah the puzzles were bad, I'm with Udderdude on this but I would put it more strongly - it's a game that only appeals to (tough) nuts like us. That said, I don't think I had all that much trouble with most of the missions on my most recent play (earlier this year), except dear god that Egyptian mission, especially the time disc. The boss fights are unrelentingly bad, too. It does have its points though. I think the mission pack, Portal of Praevus, makes good on Hexen II's promise.

Heretic started out well, but then begins one long slide towards badness. Dwemble (I don't remember what those little hobbit fuckers are called) mines, and especially the endgame - why, WHY? Yep, Corvus's story should end with some guy we don't care about flying away into the clouds to right all the wrongs. Whoopee! It should have ended with him sullenly sitting on a throne of bones and blood while yet another chessmaster we haven't been introduced to before grins evilly. Actually, there's a good question - the original Heretic seemed rather explicit about the fact that you were the last surviving member of your race, a good reason to take you through increasingly abstract and surreal levels if there ever was one. But suddenly, Heretic II arrives and tries to give you a complete topology of the world as well as all kinds of races that weren't obvious from the earlier game. No Iron Liches in sight, either. Still not a terrible game; the staff wasn't really entertaining to use (any game that encourages you to poke at things slowly with a stick isn't following Heretic's formula) but it was a change of pace, and the ranged weapons were mostly better.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Heretic II is a game of good character animations and pretty lights. Quake II engine powered some classy (if not always great) games (most notably Anachronox; boy, that one still looks and sounds phenomenal).

[BIL]

That said, I don't think I had all that much trouble with most of the missions on my most recent play (earlier this year), except dear god that Egyptian mission, especially the time disc.

The Egyptian stage is my favourite. Followed closely by the medieval Europe one. I'm a sucker for digging about in dusty, cobwebbed ruins and the like. Throw in a secret passage behind a smashable stained-glass window = sold!

[mesh control]

HEY

[BIL]

I repeat:

[Moniker]

Brutal Doom v18 is out.

Lots of new stuff. New difficulty settings and much improved enemy AI being the biggies. Lots of new death animations and all that too.

[BIL]

Well, that's my Friday night set. Thanks for the heads-up!

TBH the only bug I really noticed in my time with 017 was Barons sometimes freezing when attempting to retaliate against hitscan enemies - hope that's gone, nothing says "space age DOOMin' " like a zombie's torso whizzing past your head and splattering on the wall in the middle of a firefight.

[ST Dragon]

Ahahah!! I love the ala Kratos finishing moves from God of War!

[Moniker]

Just watched a fellow marine get eaten alive by a cacodemon.

By the by, when did they add recoil to the chaingun? Thing's nigh useless now.

[BIL]

^yes - the minigun has pretty much been ruined by 018. :/ In 017, which I've been playing the hell out of and may go back to, regular fire has some spinup delay but is quite accurate. Alternate fire (spinup) has no delay but can't be relied on for precision shots past midrange - it's for hosing down big targets or crowds of medium ones, and also nice to have when exploring and paranoid. But it's always controllable. 018's bucks and jumps around so much in both modes, it's effectively a chainsaw that uses bullets. Fucking thing sucks!



There is some neat stuff in here though, like friendly Marines being able to perform fatalities. I like the Imps' new double fireball shot, too. But overall I'll probably stick to 017 for now, the weapon balance is perfect there, as is the sense of playing vanilla DOOM on horse steroids. And the few bugs I've noticed there are in 018 too, not that I see them much anyway.

I saw a friendly devoured by a Caco on my very first BDOOM session, with a horrible guttural scream as his legs thrashed in its maw. Shit was traumatising yet horribly addictive.

[Moniker]

Anyone have experience with Doom 3 mods?

I've been trying out the Perfected Mod v6, which seems like a rough equivalent of Brutal Doom 3 (although it focuses more on precision- than rampage-gameplay). The latest version lags like hell, though, so I'm going to try going to v5.

Any others worth checking out?

[BIL]

Hell fucking yes... hey Moniker, if you want to swap out the useless 018 minigun for the godly 017 one, just open the BDOOM 018 pk3 archive in WinRAR, remove the "minigun" file and replace it with the one from 017. Just did this myself, seems to work perfectly. Now I can actually enjoy the new version without one of my favourite weapons handling like a hummingbird with jumper cables on his balls.

[Moniker]

Awesome. Thanks for the tip!

[BIL]

OI CUNT! You got your BLOOD in my DOOM! Finally.

FLAMECANNON RUN of E1 on Black Metal is cool! Attacking head-on with its wafty shots is suicide, stay on the sidelines and wait for those flamers to cause all sorts of trouble before moving in. Very different and quite a good challenge! I've had to take entirely new approaches to Knee Deep In The Dead's maps to avoid a giant and quickly fatal fiery clusterfuck. The flamers' AI is impressively unpredictable, too. Just wait until you have one run into an elevator with you, goddamn. Employing screaming, madly sprinting zombies as a main plank of one's offense leads to some very unforecasted situations, some amusing and some quite terrifying!

0. "Black Metal: Y or N?" Y MOTHERFUCKER Y
1. In console, use "give backpack"
2. Next "give flamecannon" until ammo maxed
3. finish stage using only FLAMECANNON's sixty shots and your fists / feet / chainsaw. And watch out for them flamin' zombies y'hear?
4. IDDQD twice and repeat for next stage!

5. addendum: be STRATEGIC when causing fires!
-a running, screaming, burning zombie annoying his pals, setting them on fire and attracting their chafing wrath is a marine's best friend! A monster preoccupied with a flamer is ripe for an ammo-conserving sucker punch, a spine-shattering boot, or a chainsaw up the ass!
-flamers make good meat shields in a pinch!
-use the KICK FLAME COMBO for EZ flaming! Boot a target to the floor and douse him in the devil's burning napalmic jizz, he'll be up and running quick style!
-other monsters you've set on fire can make flamers too! Let's try for the CHAIN REACTION.

The buggers can even open doors. Can't handle stairs very well though, it usually ends very poorly and very hilariously for them. "Smack!" Woe betide he who's in the stumbling goof's path however, man or demon!

Starting a fire in a small room then standing outside and forcing the door shut while the atmosphere inside grows audibly testy =



edit: ohhh man. Once you fix the minigun this version is god. So smooth. Various bits:

-Cyberdemon can now be shot in the head for much faster kills. CD's head goes flying when he goes kaboom.
-Chainsaw = DECAPITATION MACHINE. Aim it at humanoids' heads and sweep through crowds like the wind in teh barley. Wait until gunners reload then pop out and shazam! Head be rollin'.
-Black Metal difficulty is awesome. Riflemen snipes now a serious threat when you're in bad shape.
-New AR scope feels awkward at first but it works a treat with the full-auto sniping.
-turbo-booting crawling zombies in they frickin' mout for a shower of teeth and +1 healths is PEZ dispenser fun!
-haven't seen gunners dodge much, but it does happen (blithely launched a rocket at a shotgunner to have him roll out of its way). gunners will slide around corners to blast at you. way more aggressive seekout AI overall. Although... gunners still don't feel as lethally agile as the redone SS guards from BDOOM II, with their nasty circle-strafing ability. WANT THAT.
-Doomguy now moves at the quicker vanilla speed; actually took some re-adjusting to, but now I love it. It's like taking off a weighted vest, pirouetting and headshotting like a massive angry bee.

What I want for the next release, if anything (I've been happy as a clam with all to date, including this one) is for enemies to no longer take the shortest route to the player regardless of obstacles. So if you're in parallel corridors, they'd follow theirs around a corner to get you, instead of banging their heads against the wall like you're a pair of magnets either side of paper.

Really never cared for the fatalities / gore / DOOM comic aspect as much as the practical mechanical enhancements and amplified sense of impact (something I love in any game), so I couldn't care less about more taunts / OTT stuff like kicking Barons in the balls. I play with taunts disabled, but if you like you can piss off the Cyberdemon by flipping him the bird.

[BIL]

Bumping with an upload of Brutal DOOM v017's "MINIGUN" file, so it'll always be around. Recently reinstalled BDOOM v018 without my various customisations (like 1337 double tap SSG/Chainsaw select instead of having to first cycle through the single-barrel and fists like a chump, PLUS ditching the "found a secret" sound - what is this, ZERUDA NO DENSETSU?). Of course I got the v018 MG right in my face. Ugh! Bust open the v018 .pk3 with WinRAR or some such, delete its shitty "MINIGUN" file and insert the 017 equivalent from this RAR:

http://www.mediafire.com/?138vo72q8d2y8dk

Voila! Now your minigun can hit the broad side of a barn, once again!

New version incoming soon, apparently! We shall see... I hope Mark IV hasn't gone overboard with Storyline Bullshit™ as that trailer hints, I just want to continue stylishly creating the scenes of unspeakable gore my twelve y/o self once pined for! Cock the hammer it's time for action! You motherfuckers!

[Ed Oscuro]

CD-i Link would've loved the flamecannon, definitely. Regrettably I must admit I will probably finish Wand of Gamelon before touching this again (which isn't to say it's too far off) and I do appreciate the good work to keep our machines of death in respectable order, BIL!

[Moniker]

@ BIL,

Apparently Win7 throws up some barriers to fixing the minigun and various other BS (like controller support and ZDL). I'll set aside an afternoon sometime this week and hopefully come up with a cure.

Before this I was playing Black Ops 2 and BF3. It's really amazing how Doom 1 still blows all the competition out of the water.

[TJB]

Lately I've been trying to complete Speed of Doom (not in order) using Brutal Doom and to be honest I don't think I can do some of these maps.

But I'll be damned if I'm not going to have a great time trying~

[Edmond Dantes]

Fuck Zelda anyway. I'm probably more of a Nazo no Murasame-jo guy anyway.

We all know that Soulblazer, Landstalker and Crusader of Centy were far better than Zelda ever was.

I need to download Brutal Doom. Personally I always liked good ol' vanilla Doom but I'm up for a few good mods and some ultraviolence that would put Mortal Kombat to shame...

[Ed Oscuro]

Eh, Soulblazer doesn't have the feeling of a real world that Legend of Zelda games have.

A topical comment from the Brutal Doom 0.17 trailer linked above:

juaneco26779 2 hours ago

I do not understand I have the game but this pixelated as I do to have that resolution as seen in this video?

the pixels are there so you can wade through them all and not get lost

[Edmond Dantes]

gonna leave the Zelda discussion by linking to this review I wrote months back.

Yeah... need to play Doom again. Got sidetracked lately.

[Ed Oscuro]

Some of the criticisms are on-point, but others are completely mad, and here's the major reason why:

Players are constantly reminded that they're shackled to a mechanistic land. There is no illusion of freedom because the gears that keep the player and Hyrule in lockstep are imminently legible.

Oh no! A game is programmatic at its core! Somebody call an expert on future contingents, we gotta get this shit sorted out with some postmodern value ambivalence. Wait, not sorted out. We want it more tangly and confusing.

Calling one game "exploration based" and then calling another, well, whatever you did in that blog post, really isn't showing me a difference in their respective types. Rather I believe you have a disagreement with the degree of apparent determinism in the design.

Do we seriously believe of Oblivion, Red Dead Redemption, and all the other sludge bundles heaved onto store shelves since the early Zelda games, that simply giving people a few more ways (all still easy) to approach every situation does not improve the gameplay? Did anybody think that games targeting video gaming novices with literally the brains of children would continue to be interesting in twenty years? (Ocarina of Time is 15 this year.)

I know it's very easy - we've all done it - to sit on the sidelines and think these thoughts, and there is a lot of truth to it: The LoZ franchise is often too simple, with the simple "lock + key" metaphor appearing repeatedly and never broken, as the Kotaku writer points out. You don't need a hookshot to grab that low-hanging fruit. However, it's not just a simple binary relationship, consisting of only two states where the lock is locked or unlocked by the key. You have to figure it out, and of course many "keys" respond to multiple situations. That's pretty much how each item in almost every game works. Bullets in shooting games: Keys for -20 health! Waiting behind cover in Gears of War: The key for +2 health every sixtieth of a second, after 10 seconds waiting! Blocking in fighting games: The key to not taking cheap shots to the jaw! Think seriously about how complicated the tools in any given video game tend to be, and you find that often what's different about the "fun" ones are that they are wacky or otherwise unfamiliar, but not that they do few things. Of course, some people are happy to bash everything with a crowbar or something. (A man chooses, a slave obeys - As an aside, it is downright hilarious the Kotaku writer doesn't note the rather distressing influence the "hit the random walls" aspect the original Zelda had across the industry, or at least how distressing that aspect of the gameplay can be. Case in point that's back on the original thread topic: Who can seriously say their fondest moments in DOOM were wandering through cleared levels, pressing the "use" key on random walls to try to find more secrets?)

So exactly what should Nintendo do about Zelda? Is the problem rigid skeuomorphic design gone too far (i.e., "virtual things should look like real things," the metaphors that have floppy disk icons for saving documents, or leather texture on Apple applications that cost as much as real leather)? This guy thinks so, but prior experience seems to indicate as long as you have people, you'll see digital versions of bookshelves and folders on computers (as we have been seeing them for 20 years now). You'll continue to see virtual versions of ships, rifles, and swords in video games, because we can't come to grips with something totally different. I don't think the argument should shift towards the items of the Zelda series needing to be less like their functions. People still get excited thinking about the various kinds of arrows in the Thief franchise, but even the first game has a voice tutorial. Use the MacGuffin Arrow to make the reactor go critical! These games were always cult classics, amazing but not quite system-sellers in general popularity.

Should there be a new depth to the gameplay? The more "depth" you try to add to a system, the more likely it is you'll get the balancing wrong, make it top-heavy with rules, or find some other novel way to cock it up. Even Tom Francis, tireless promoter of orange drink shortages in vending machines, found the latest Deus Ex didn't respond to his plans in exactly the desired cinematic fashion. And that's widely considered a good game.

How about gameplay hooks? Well, these elements tend to come and go in popularity, like the often-derided QTE. I think part of the problem for the series is that there are incentives to make it more complicated - to accommodate Nintendo's latest plastic cracker jack prize in controller design - but there is also a strong incentive towards minimalism to keep it simple. You can't blame Nintendo for trying to mix in the same guts of the formula when they've just gone and implemented a motion controller; there is some point at which you can't keep making things complicated. The further they push the series towards the cutting edge, the more they run the risk that fewer people will want or even be able to follow them there. Now, perhaps this is looking at the situation totally backwards, and maybe there are somewhere hiding a group of "hardcore gamers" who would buy into Nintendo's limited platform if only they had a deeper, edgier Legend of Zelda. Somehow I doubt that.

I can't help but see this as just a rather poorly thought-out attempt to voice criticism against what really has been the defining element of the series - intuitive mechanics which wrap seemingly insurmountable obstacles in a thin layer of puzzle. Lack of replayability and lasting appeal in gameplay has been confused with the grace of simplicity. Saying that the execution is too flat and fails to reward or provide alternative possible solutions is fine as far as it goes (however, I like how people assume that duplicating paths that most people will never see is going to fix things). But saying that you have to "ferret around" seems to betray that either you resent being taunted by the simple solutions under your noses, since the games have typically been very good about making it clear what you can and can't accomplish with what you have at any situation, and if you're screwing around in the wrong place you're hopefully looking for sequence breaks - that, or that you just want to complain that the game doesn't spoil you with all the upgrades at the start, as your blog's Kakariko Village well anecdote also suggests. How is THAT going to help the gameplay?

At its core, the Legend of Zelda franchise is not a From Software franchise. It's also unashamedly targeting the plebs of limited skill with arresting and emotive scenes. It's never been about complicated routines, and the universal acclaim for Red Dead Redemption - a flat and mechanically featureless game if there ever was one! - shows that the only thing Red Dead Redemption has that Legend of Zelda lacks are the shackles of close familiarity. Nintendo may try to find its way back to mainstream relevance, but they have been most successful when they have kept things very simple - and this is a trend that continues today, as all that changes for mainstream gaming is how "edgy" the game's politics and gore are, and how much they can distract you from the shoddy nature of their linear content by constantly asking you to hoof it here and there and hoping you will find the random encounters entertaining enough.

Anyway, them's my thoughts. I don't pretend to say that the entire criticism is misguided - certainly the franchise has sometimes failed to motivate players (rupee-grinding is a joke so universal that people routinely use the trope of Link as doing anything for rupees in their naughty online artworks; it's picking the short fruit trees again to point that one out, but certainly a quibble) but I think some players need to recognize that the gameplay (at least since Ocarina of Time) is based on the idea that the game is supposed to be about those exhilarating moments when you figure it out and then when you pull it off. If any adult is still running around in a fog they must be quite daft, at least with any game in the series newer than Legend of Zelda which is obscure on purpose. To be fair I do think that there isn't much of an exhilarating moment when bouncing switches between red and blue; the 2D games tended not to pull me in that much.

Question of the moment: Are the Okami games also terrible? If not, what are they doing fundamentally differently than the Zelda games - or is it actually just a matter of degree of difference in most respects?

Also, with no disrespect meant, I now see more clearly than ever the futility of writing gaming posts on a blog. Who ever reads them? Sorry buddy, even if I had time I'd be off reading about more fun things like Bayes' Theorem.

[Edmond Dantes]

It was Duke Nukem 3D, then, that brought things to the new level with looking UP and DOWN (well, you can look down in Geograph Seal, but it's not saying much).

... Someone is forgetting about Heretic and Hexen, ain't they?

I was super hyped on PC gaming in the late 90s when Heretic II was in development, but by the time it came out I'd migrated back to consoles. Never did get to try it out, will have to take a look sometime.

I was actually thinking of doing a Let's Play of Heretic II to celebrate the building of Mazinkaiser [note: that's the pet name I give to my classic gaming PC]. I'm only afraid thay my commentary might be boring and people might not like me using a webcam (which I'd pretty much have to for a Windows 98 PC game).

Hexen II is pretty cool - progression is dependent on finding secret passages and the like, with all legitimately hinted at (no need to run about humping the walls, in fact the manual discouraged this). Some great level designs in there.

Yes, Hexen II is awesome. Pretty much the thing that made Quake worthwhile (since the engine had to exist for Hexen II to use it).

Only problem both Hexens had was sometimes all that backtracking can get dull.