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Brutal Doom, then, is Doom taken to another level. To quote the description of a particular Youtube video, it’s
"The only mod which makes Doom even MORE like Doom." And it’s all there to see. More gore, punchier sounds and animations. Monsters crawl around with their guts hanging out as others are torn apart by your chaingun, Doomguy turning from a player self-insert of sorts to a wise-cracking sadistic testosterone freak. All done with the power of modern sourceports. The language used to refer to it reflects the notion that this is Doom “turned up to 11” - Gameplay enhancement. Improved animations. Better gore.
But the mods which make Doom more like Doom have been out for years before Brutal Doom’s inception. Alien Vendetta. Scythe 2. Deus Vult 2. And none of these see fit to mess with weapon feel, gore effects or animations - the last of the 3 adding sunglasses to Doomguy’s head as a small stylistic touch. They’re just custom level packs, a few custom textures here and there. A custom enemy or two patches a hole in the bestiary. Nothing more.
This simple, old-fashioned, mindless shooter has entranced level designers for going on 20 years now. The Cacowards run every year to pick out some standout favourites, and thousands of wads are available to download and play. Most of which require little in the way of advanced engine features bar some limit removals and optimization.
While Doom was no doubt the product of a bunch of nerds doing what they love, the game offers a more intelligent gameplay palette than just about any other pure FPS in the world
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It’s not artificial intelligence you fight in Doom. Most enemies have behaviour, no matter how diverse it is, that you could sum up in a sentence or two. But Doom’s simple tools and smart toolkit (as well as a graphical style allowing for highly abstract environments) allow level designers to set up encounters and environments around that behaviour, providing surprise, challenge and delight for players in equal measure. It’s not artificial intelligence you fight when you’re locked in a room full of Barons of Hell and Revenants and voicelessly asked to pick a side in the resulting infighting (It’ll take more ammo to finish off the barons, but revenants are more likely to give you a nasty right hook or slap you with a rocket in the process) - it’s human intelligence.
And now we come back to Brutal Doom
1. Layers on layers of obsessively-researched and sourced gore sprites, about 100 times more unsettling gurgling and pitiful screams from your enemies. Doom’s hardly the cleanest of games, but it has a boyish charm to it - Doom is Eddie winking at you on the cover of an Iron Maiden album, Brutal Doom is a screaming face being pressed into a meat grinder on the cover of a Cannibal Corpse album.
Weapon “rebalancing” means hitscanners hit harder and revenants are pathetically frail, headshots add a completely unnecessary and confused element to the game, “fatality” animations quickly turn from shocking and visceral to stale, played-out and overlong. The BFG no longer has its quirks that require a blend of timing, elegance and aggression, being replaced with what can only be described as “a big dumb green rocket”. Brutal Doom is Doom with the intelligence taken out and all the viscera turned up to 11. Fine in small doses, the definitive experience it ain’t. And it will easily
ruin most wads not designed with it in mind.
Doom is much more than a mindless demon-blasting experience to be fondly remembered and perhaps brought out for its quaint charms now and again. Some people want you to think it is - these are the people looking forward to unnecessary reboots of old IPs like Rise of The Triad, Wolfenstein and bizarrely Shadow Warrior, forever falling back on weapon inventory space and player run speed as indications of game quality.
They’re wrong.
