Brutal Doom v19 (mod for Doom and Doom 2)

This is going to bloody, fast.

It's an odd thing to do but I felt that rather than review a game, I'd review a modification for a game. Modifications are an interesting subset of gaming, taking the whole game and deciding "Yes, I like this game but I feel that it needs this..." and then going and changing the game in some manner from things like adding in new sound effects, replacing the enemies with large pictures of dicks or going above and beyond to the point of effectively re-designing the WHOLE game with just the core engine being the only thing that is recognisable in the first place. (Even then... it's hard to see it at times).

This is one of the latter modifications. Brutal Doom (v19, for those wondering what's the issue).

You just made a VERY big mistake...

As a comparison, I ran this mod over Doom 2. Let's get straight that right now the things that don't change are the levels themselves and the textures used in those levels and the music of the game. Everything is changed, modified, improved or different. (Yes I'm generalising and there's going to be a few things similar like the BFG sprite is still the same so let's not get pedantic, people).

Brutal doom, is often spoken about as being the game that turns doom into the game we would LIKE to remember. Ramp up the violence, the blood, the gore and the action and this is about as chaotic and gorefesty (yes it's now a word) as one could possibly imagine a game to be without having someone stood beside you and opening an artery over your face every few seconds.

Before chaos...

...after chaos

Let's start with the weapons. ALL the weapons barring the BFG are different. Your fists for a start can punch, rip, fatality and slaughter enemies if you have the right power up or sneak up on them for a stealth kill. Your pistol is now an assault rifle where you can aim down the iron-sights for headshots and pick off body parts, your shotgun can do the same. The double barrel shotgun is stronger and can fire off individual barrels. The minigun is now more like a minigun and can be set spinning for a faster rate of fire (with more judder from the recoil), rockets are kept in 6-pack drums and need reloading but they're faster and hit harder. The plasma gun can be reloaded and used to spray flames around while the BFG just paints the town red... still.

A wealth of fatailities just for you.

They also give you back health and you're untouchable while doing them.

The enemies, whoo! there's a list and a half. You can blow off limbs and they'll keep coming, you can watch them attack each other with multiple animations, some will assault you with others, some will animated differently, almost ALL of them will animated a fatality if they kill you in hand-to-hand combat (See the cacodemon for half-filling meal while it chomps your torso off and leaves the legs behind, or the Baron of Hell RIPPING YOU IN HALF down the middle of your chest). Some will crawl screaming along the ground or just stop there and try to attack.

The enemies aren't the only ones capable of being killed creatively.

Even here, large floating tomato monsters need feeding.

On top of this, you can take the rockets off the Revenants and the cannons off the Mancubus and use their weapons against themselves, kill the enemy with explosives or use a chainsaw on the corpse and you'll be able to steal and use it for yourself. The SpiderMastermind now has an explosive ammo chaingun and a LOT more health while the Cyberdemon now sports multi directional firing spread (no more easy sidesteps) and can stomp you if you get too close for comfort. He also doesn't appreciate being told to go "fuck yourself"... Seriously, don't do it.

10 seconds in and it's going to get far more bloody.

For many, the fun will be found in spraying body parts all over the place and the exploration in the melee fatalities if you have the berserker pack. Or just seeing how over the top one can go with this level of chaos and explosions. Coupled with the notion that everything can be ripped apart, players will end up experimenting to try and find various ways of acquiring all the deaths. Hit it with shotgun and you blow the upper half away, plasma rifle will leave a burnt electrified corpse, machineguns will make them dance a little while rockets just chunkify everything around themselves.

Before paintjob...

...after paintjob.

There are some downfalls though, with the high level of explosive giblets and everything having far more blood than is physically and logically possible, the game can suffer from having too much on screen and quickly identifying what is dead, dying and still a threat can be a hard task. The new approach to the game also will catch many players out with the faster AI and alternative attacks, enemies previously locked to sectors may start wandering to places the players will not expect and more quickly too. New scope is now feasible for ambushes in various places and players toes will be kept upon.

Yes you are seeing that right, and yes the revenant can STILL attack.

There's also the sad truth in that there's various situations and circumstances that make the game exponentially more difficult while in some places outright impossible due to the layout of the level, placement of the enemies and the modifications brought in by this near Total Conversion. Incidentally it doesn't stop it from being just outright, immature, gore fest fun.

You'll end up just staring when the action lets up and seeing the beautiful horrors.

So get this mod, grab a BFG and paint the town RED.