This is Doom. You know> this. The rhythms have been burnt into your DNA by this point: Gun, demons, maze, exit. Now add a ticking time limit forcing careful target prioritisation and precise movement and a level full of floating tokens which require collection (most of them, at least) before the exit will reveal itself. This> is Skulldash: Expanded Edition, a massive mod re-released for the GZDoom engine today, and it’s really quite brilliant so long as you don’t mind being a little hurried.

(more…)

The thrills of gibbing demons and sitting still watching numbers go up combine in Idle Doom, a mod turning id Software’s seminal face-paced FPS into an idle game where you watch a machine kill monsters so you can upgrade to a bigger monster-killing machine. It is exactly what it sounds like: a Doom idle game. It’s just the ticket for people who want to feel like they still strafe rough and frag hard but, really, they’re quite tired so it would be grand if they could put their feet up with a cuppa and let someone else handle things for a bit and oh please turn the light off on your way out, ta. (more…)

Would you like a $3,000 copy of Doom 2? Sure, that s a little bit more expensive than the 5.99/$4.99 Steam version, but you d be getting five whole floppy disks! When the world ends, that plastic might be valuable. Still not convinced? Well then, I guess John Romero will have to sell his copy to someone else.

… [visit site to read more]

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

I change my mind whenever anyone asks me (important: no-one ever asks me>) whether Doom or Doom II is the best Doom game, but one thing that was always certain was that Doom II was the best Doom sequel>. Nowadays, I’m not so sure. … [visit site to read more]

I adore mods which give new life to mundane objects. Every crate in the crate-filled warehouse of CrateDM is potentially a player waiting to frag you. Prop Hunt modes put us in the mindset of level designers placing rocks and buckets. In Run For It!, a new mod for old Doom, objects which didn’t have legs do now have legs. Ammo packs, lamps, trees, barrels, weapons, corpses and goodness knows what else have sprouted arms and legs to run around. Yup, it’s as daft as it sounds. Watch this trailer, which comes complete with Doomy Yakety Sax: … [visit site to read more]

Ben Mansell has never released a Doom level before, but his first effort took 300 hours to build, spread across an entire year. Originating as a doodle back in 2003, Foursite is an enormous structure, divided into four parts, each with its own theme and boss battle. Mansell reckons it took a friend three hours to complete on their first attempt and required some tinkering with “advanced processes” to fit the standard file format given its size. You’ll need Doom II to try it out and there’s a full dev playthrough below. … [visit site to read more]

Back in 2010, a chap named Paul Schneider brought Doom II fans an exciting mod in the form of Unloved [official site]. A traipse through the classic shooter several shades darker (way more than fifty shades) than fans were used to, it was an exercise in serving up entrails as floors and chunks of flesh scattered throughout each level.

Most importantly, it was good>. It could have become its own game, honestly. Oh, wait. It looks like it has! Unloved has broken out on its own as a fully-fledged horror shooter after escaping the confines of Steam’s Early Access. It’s available in full now, in fact, and looks like it’s well worth trying.

… [visit site to read more]

After two decades, Doom still has a vibrant modding community. Now game designer JP LeBreton has opted to draft his autobiography, Autobiographical Architecture [official site], as a Doom II mod, deeming the game a perfect medium for the multi-volume telling of his life. Doom has been a huge influence on LeBreton. He started out making his own Doom levels in his bedroom, later finding a career including working on BioShock, becoming lead level designer for its sequel, and being a designer at Double Fine Productions, before going solo. Here’s a trailer showing a little of the mod:

… [visit site to read more]

Do you remember a time when Wolfenstein hero B.J. Blazkowicz was a grinning, bum-chinned sprite with shiny blue twinklers rather than a morose sad-eyed man in a broken world? I’ve enjoyed several versions of Wolfenstein over the years, and perhaps none more so than The New Order, but I’m still fond of the first 3d title in the series. And I fucking love Doom. What a pleasure it is, then, to find Blade of Agony [official site], a GZDoom-based mod/sequel following the continuing adventures of Blazkowicz. It looks spectacular>.

… [visit site to read more]

Of all the genres I would choose if someone held a gun to my head and forced me to make a Seinfeld video game, I can’t say a first person shooter would be high on my list. But hey, that didn’t stop Doug Keener from trying that very thing using Doom II, and dammit he has done a fine job.

… [visit site to read more]