Project leader: Master Garo (with many contributors, check thread)
edit: THIS PROJECT IS IN ALPHA AS OF THIS REVIEW, therefore this review should not be taken as a final judgement of its later releases or of its overall potential.
Screenshot:
[spoiler]
[/spoiler]Tortured Transmission is a new entry in the popular 'Doom but better!' category of modifications that appear on Zdoom and Zandronum. This is a category not without controversy; from the archive locking and dubious claims of originality of the original Super Skulltag to the endless drama surrounding Brutal Doom that we do not need to get into here. Because of this, new entries on this scene are often met with skepticism and bitterness, so mod authors have to be extra careful in fine tuning their modifications to meet standards and distinguish themselves from what some might say is a mod scene that is saturated.
Let's start from the very beginning, the name. I don't understand it, it seems like a lazy attempt to use alliteration in order to create a catchy name, without worrying about whether the name is in any way coherent; I don't know how a transmission can be tortured. I don't see why the name couldn't have been more indicative of its content, perhaps it's just considered unoriginal now to prefix the target game with an adjective describing it like 'Brutal', 'Beautiful' or 'Super'. Of course I cannot judge a mod by its name given the low standards set by the doom scene already, it seems any name is acceptable as long it has some generic dark word like "torture" in it.
edit: I've just been alerted that the name is in fact the name of a Doom 64 song. Unfortunately this doesn't make the name any more coherent, just less original.
Moving on, the title screen. You're presented with an amateurish though I suppose acceptable title pic consisting of a blood stained ensemble of metals and two bullets. Nothing much to say here other than that the titlepic, like the name, continues to sustain the ambiguity of what this mod actually is, giving absolutely no clue to its content. You're also presented with some generic melodic metal in the background, which if you listen for long enough will end very abruptly. I don't really see what is gained from using some random music apparently ripped from bandcamp, especially when it doesn't really fit the theme of doom at all. In fact, I often question using mp3/ogg music at all in doom mods; if your mod consists of complex levels with lots of 3d floors, lighting effects, high res textures and 3d models essentially transforming it into something looking more like a game that came out in the late nineties to early 2000s then by all means use more modern sound formats. If however your mod is still essentially just 'death to sprites', I really do think it's better to use era appropriate sound formats instead. And if you really can't stand midi, Zandronum supports module music which can have a much higher fidelity without becoming era inappropriate.
Starting a new game gives you the option to select from 8 new difficulty levels. A nice touch, and I see nothing wrong with this in principle, unfortunately I really don't have the time to test the balance of each difficulty so I just went down the middle with the "Turn up the heat" difficulty. The game begins with nothing much immediately appearing different, shooting the pistol presents the first obvious change, the animation is now smooth and appears to have recoil giving it more of a punch whilst also allowing you to shoot it at a much quicker rate. The sound is changed too, maybe for the better (this isn't saying much given how much I despise the pistol in vanilla doom anyway). Unfortunately, it requires you to reload it, which means you need to define a reload key in your keyboard no doubt already cluttered with binds, this would be tolerable if it weren't for the fact that the pistol doesn't automatically reload - I cannot think of any justification for this mechanic, it's just annoying.
Progressing through the level I realize quite a bit has changed; there's not just remastered doom weapons but many brand new weapons, as well as new AI behavior, new projectiles, lots of new visual effects, new sounds and new "parkcore" physics. If I attempted to comment on every new resource in this mod we'd be here forever. For this reason and in the interests of brevity, I'm mainly going to comment on the aspects of the mod I dislike or my experience in general. Anything I don't comment on you can assume works fine and is content to be enjoyed if you will. It's impressive the amount of new content in this mod, which all seemingly works (so far at least), but I suspect a good chunk of this is not original work.
The first thing that strikes me as less than desirable is the way the blood pours like red confetti out of you and enemies. I don't like it, it doesn't look realistic at all and just seems totally unnecessary - it's not as if this mod is all about excess in the way Brutal Doom is. When you explode enemies into chunks of gore, this looks far better as the amount of chunks is not excessive - the immersion comes from things like the sound of guts bouncing on the floor. I don't see why this principle couldn't have been applied to blood in finding more innovative ways to create immersion rather than relying on pure excess.
Another feature I find unappealing is what the authors describe as "Shinemapped and Gleaming/Glossy Weapons", apparently in this case 'shinemapping' involves scribbling some grey lines over your weapons. In my opinion, this utterly fails at making the weapons look shiny, instead they're more akin to wrapping your weapons up in clingfilm as Hammerfest pointed out in the project thread.
This wasn't the only change made to the vanilla weapons that, in my opinion, detract rather than improve upon the original. At this point I should share my condolences for the Super Shotgun, which has been unfortunately horribly butchered by this mod. It sounds terrible, a nastily distorted (or clipped?) blast which lacks any of the oomph and bottom end present in the original sound sample, ironic given that this mod claims to have "extended bass frequencies for that extra pow". The bullet recoil spark effects also seems to just make the weapon seem even more wimpy, while such a visual effect is effective for smaller and weaker weapons like the pistol, with the shotgun it just feels like you're very loudly propelling a bunch of fragile sparklers at a wall and far from seeming like anything that could do serious damage.
I should stop here as I'm sure anyone still reading is bored of my moaning. To summarize, what this mod does do is offer a fair showcase of the many modern modding features provided by Zandronum. There is enough content here for a reasonably enjoyable experience for people new to doom mods in general, although certainly nothing impressive enough to woo any veterans of the scene. This project is significantly held back however by some very poor design choices and some poor execution such as the examples identified above. Although they are not game breaking, they spoil the immersion and general flow of gameplay significantly. Furthermore, this mod does very little to distinguish itself from its many competitors in the 'Doom but better!' category of mods and I struggle to find reasons why one should pick this mod over the others. For this reason I cannot give this project a rating higher than:
5/10
[/spoiler]
<----- Dont Pretend
