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Despite the title – and the undeniable way in which the level of violence and destruction in BD becomes comically exaggerated – gore splatter is actually Brutal Doom’s least interesting or innovative feature. Then I’ll conclude with an overview of how to customize the mod with add-on mods. This post will dissect what that core BD experience is and how it changes in Project Brutality and Ali’s Brutal Doom. It has also spawned numerous unofficial forks of the core BD experience. More importantly, it has influenced other Doom mods such as Project Brutality, Ali’s Brutal Doom, Brutal Doom Black Edition, Johnny Doom, the 555 Project, and Call of Doom. Some say that Brutal Doom influenced the official Doom reboot, but I think that’s a bit far-fetched. Many new indie shooters on Steam have traces of Brutal Doom. I think that the biggest signal of its value is how influential it has been. That being said, Brutal Doom got a shoutout from no less than John Romero himself and has racked up awards. This – along with Brutal Doom creator Marcos Abenante’s infamy in modding circles – has made the mod extremely controversial in the Doom world.
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Brutal Doom is so different from vanilla Doom – and has so many customizable features – that it qualifies as a separate game.
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I only gave a capsule overview of them in the last post. Here I will discuss the Brutal Doom family of mods in more detail.
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In a previous entry, I discussed at great length what makes Doom great and how well it has aged. Only one way to resolve this: excessive, mindless, and brutal force. They also want to stay alive, a Lost Soul and a Cacodemon can try to dodge your rockets, Zombies and Pain Elementals, which can’t engage in melee combat, can notice if you get way too close to them and will fall back to a safer distance, a Baron of Hell is more aware of his surroundings and can use the body of dead enemies as a weapon against you, and monsters will react differently to the damage you cause to them depending of the weapon and where you hit them. They behave and look much more like demons from hell wanting to tear your arms off, stomp on your face, and have your guts for dinner. You are free to do almost everything, you have more control over your body, you can kick, you can do a combat roll, you can flip off enemies, rip their heads off with your own hands, the guns fells more alive, animations are smoother, and monsters are not just some vectors that throws projectiles on you until you can bring their health down to zero.
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