Brutal Doom v18: Reviewed by Legion
Posted: Sun Oct 06, 2013 1:53 am
Brutal Doom v18 by Sergeant_Mark_IV
Reviewed By: Legion
Download
When first playing Brutal Doom, it was more than a year ago near it's first releases. Now that it has matured into something that really hasn't changed in the past year, I feel the need to write down some of my thoughts on it. Considering there are many weapon/gameplay replacement mods that exist, Brutal Doom is not entirely unique among its counterparts. Not a good start.
The first thing one notices is the obnoxious amount of new options that you can choose.
http://i.imgur.com/6LhMqAQ.png
I tested each of them out and they provided me no useful purpose, except to actually wake up enemy demons and attract them to your position. I don't know if that will actually come in handy for someone. Oh, and there's a reload function.
The entire gimmick of the wad is to edit gameplay itself to be, as the title suggests, more BRUTAL. While it does indeed paint a lot more ketchup on my screen, it just doesn't FEEL brutal. It's more along the lines of a cartoon rather than being truly brutal.
For example, the fatalities, not unlike what Mortal Kombat pioneered over 20 years ago, are stiff 2D animations which cuts out all immersion you might have had within the game and show the player pummeling a various non-boss creature, covering your screen with blood and covering my face with an unimpressed expression.
Gameplay consists of what Doom is, running and gunning, but with a few added things.
The fists are a normal rabbit punch with an altfire extra strength punch. Starts in smash mode (damage to enemies) but has an extra mode when you pick up a berserk pack (or demon strength rune dropped by a random enemy) called Rip and Tear! which apparently pays homage to the doom comic. In that mode, you can perform fatalities to all non-boss characters. These fatalities have been the major selling point for Brutal Doom, but they end up being far too risky to pull off in any dangerous setting.
Pistol has been replaced by an assault rifle. It has a 30 round clip. There is nothing more you need to know about this gun.
Shotgun is an 8 round max limit before reloading.
SSG shoots 2 shots at the same time.
The chaingun has been replaced with the minigun, which is not unlike the zandronum minigun.
Rocket launcher has a 6 round magazine before you reload. It feels more powerful than the original doom counterpart, but that is about it.
Plasma has a 50 round magazine before you need to reload. It also has an altfire that shoots a shotgun like spread. A powerful attack.
The bfg9000 shoots a powerful rocket-like projectile (It has some splash to it, so don't fire it right next to yourself), but other than that, nothing has changed.
So aside from the fists, the weapons just received the CoD makeover and little else. While this can functionally be a good theme to keep to, it is boring and average, and has been done to death.
The sprites are well done, if anything. But the voice acting that comes with it is really cringe-worthy. Seriously, you should listen to it. It's got a guy literally screaming into my headphones while melting in slime. I'm guessing it was meant to sound gritty but it just ends up being ludicrous/annoying.
This entire game gives me the thought that the creator is attempting to evoke what doom itself was attempting to do: a gory, first person shooter with brutality and no story. Here, there is no story, and it is certainly something, but brutal it is not. It is really stiff and unintuitive. As far as gameplay/weapon replacers go, BURL TUMD did it better, Hard Doom did it better. For something to feel BRUTAL there needs to be a different tact than "slapping me in the face with the disembodied limb of an imp." It just comes off as trying too hard.
Visuals: 5/10
Gameplay: 6/10 (not including fatalities)
Overall: 5/10
This could have been improved with a different way of doing fatalities, more varied weapons that weren't regurgitated by Call of Duty, better voice acting, and perhaps some custom maps released for it. If you want something that is really brutal feeling, go check out Russian Overkill. No seriously, go check it out.
Reviewed By: Legion
Download
When first playing Brutal Doom, it was more than a year ago near it's first releases. Now that it has matured into something that really hasn't changed in the past year, I feel the need to write down some of my thoughts on it. Considering there are many weapon/gameplay replacement mods that exist, Brutal Doom is not entirely unique among its counterparts. Not a good start.
The first thing one notices is the obnoxious amount of new options that you can choose.
http://i.imgur.com/6LhMqAQ.png
I tested each of them out and they provided me no useful purpose, except to actually wake up enemy demons and attract them to your position. I don't know if that will actually come in handy for someone. Oh, and there's a reload function.
The entire gimmick of the wad is to edit gameplay itself to be, as the title suggests, more BRUTAL. While it does indeed paint a lot more ketchup on my screen, it just doesn't FEEL brutal. It's more along the lines of a cartoon rather than being truly brutal.
For example, the fatalities, not unlike what Mortal Kombat pioneered over 20 years ago, are stiff 2D animations which cuts out all immersion you might have had within the game and show the player pummeling a various non-boss creature, covering your screen with blood and covering my face with an unimpressed expression.
Gameplay consists of what Doom is, running and gunning, but with a few added things.
The fists are a normal rabbit punch with an altfire extra strength punch. Starts in smash mode (damage to enemies) but has an extra mode when you pick up a berserk pack (or demon strength rune dropped by a random enemy) called Rip and Tear! which apparently pays homage to the doom comic. In that mode, you can perform fatalities to all non-boss characters. These fatalities have been the major selling point for Brutal Doom, but they end up being far too risky to pull off in any dangerous setting.
Pistol has been replaced by an assault rifle. It has a 30 round clip. There is nothing more you need to know about this gun.
Shotgun is an 8 round max limit before reloading.
SSG shoots 2 shots at the same time.
The chaingun has been replaced with the minigun, which is not unlike the zandronum minigun.
Rocket launcher has a 6 round magazine before you reload. It feels more powerful than the original doom counterpart, but that is about it.
Plasma has a 50 round magazine before you need to reload. It also has an altfire that shoots a shotgun like spread. A powerful attack.
The bfg9000 shoots a powerful rocket-like projectile (It has some splash to it, so don't fire it right next to yourself), but other than that, nothing has changed.
So aside from the fists, the weapons just received the CoD makeover and little else. While this can functionally be a good theme to keep to, it is boring and average, and has been done to death.
The sprites are well done, if anything. But the voice acting that comes with it is really cringe-worthy. Seriously, you should listen to it. It's got a guy literally screaming into my headphones while melting in slime. I'm guessing it was meant to sound gritty but it just ends up being ludicrous/annoying.
This entire game gives me the thought that the creator is attempting to evoke what doom itself was attempting to do: a gory, first person shooter with brutality and no story. Here, there is no story, and it is certainly something, but brutal it is not. It is really stiff and unintuitive. As far as gameplay/weapon replacers go, BURL TUMD did it better, Hard Doom did it better. For something to feel BRUTAL there needs to be a different tact than "slapping me in the face with the disembodied limb of an imp." It just comes off as trying too hard.
Visuals: 5/10
Gameplay: 6/10 (not including fatalities)
Overall: 5/10
This could have been improved with a different way of doing fatalities, more varied weapons that weren't regurgitated by Call of Duty, better voice acting, and perhaps some custom maps released for it. If you want something that is really brutal feeling, go check out Russian Overkill. No seriously, go check it out.