So I've noticed divided reception of Brutal Doom lately

For those of you who don't care for--or just plain despise--Brutal Doom, could you elaborate? I don't use it all the time, but when I do, it's always a blast. I personally feel it adds a whole wealth of strategic possibilities, particularly with features such as mancubus fireballs causing fires, the ability to pick up and throw barrels/lost souls, the ability to equip yourself with mancubus cannons/revenant missiles, iron sights for long distance targeting and the clever alternate firing modes, not to mention all of the visual ornamentations. Several of these features, I've wanted to see in Doom for a very long time. Sure, the fatalities get old, and it's not bug-free (most glaringly, a fatality sometimes involves the wrong enemy!), but it's one of the most interesting things to happen to Doom modding in a long time. So for those of you that just plain don't like it, let's hear your voice.

Brutal Doom? What is this, 2013?

I believe Baron explained it best when I asked about his opinion on it on YouTube one time.

BaronOfStuff said:

It's incredibly overrated. It's ADHD: The Game. I dislike it because it's simply an obnoxious audiovisual experience that plays for nothing but 10 minutes of novelty value; you can't do anything without all sorts of shit flying all over the place, and many of the sounds are just fucking horrible. In all honesty I think these elements serve only as a distraction to try and cover up a poorly-balanced excuse for a mod -- IWADs may be passable, but several PWADs are literally unplayable. That's not to say some elements aren't technically impressive; I just think that it's a bad example (i.e. a total clusterfuck) of how to use ZDoom's features. Bloat, feature-creep and the author's ego (thanks to ass-kissing fanboy retards) have turned it into an incomprehensible mess that should just be put away somewhere under a banner reading "Never Again".

Retarded fanboy suggestions coupled with the author's inability to take a step back and say "that's an awful idea" have 'Doomed' (HURHURHUR) the project into being one of the biggest piles of inconsistent shit since those godawful (and thankfully short-lived) playerclass mods that included random characters like knights, Imperial Stormtroopers, and Sonic the fucking Hedgehog. And usually they were the crappiest of crappy model rips. What I find impossible to comprehend is the inclusion of 'enraging' demons by giving them the finger. What the fuck is this shit? Is this supposed to be funny? It makes no sense in any context, no matter which way you look at it. It's fucking retarded. Seriously, just fuck BD. Fuck it to the Seventh Circle of Hell. It started off as a half-decent (if novelty) idea, but it's an unsalvageable wreck of a mod now because some people just don't understand when enough's enough.

Also, a lot of Doomers are not happy with the fact that many people insult Vanilla Doom because they played Brutal Doom first and claim that Vanilla Doom has not aged well.

I'm not vehemently against BD per se - weapon/gameplay mods without maps have never really held my attention for very long anyway. Where my beef lies is in the absolute, total and unequivocal dominance of Brutal Doom to the complete exclusion of anything else - incompatibility with BD being reported as a "bug" that should be "fixed". That's what pisses me off. From a purely technical standpoint, BD is be very impressive, but as a mod it just doesn't appeal to me.

I enjoyed Brutal Doom for a bit, but lost interest after awhile; the biggest problem I had with it was the sheer amount of blood released from attacks as minor as a single rifle shot. I'd be able to look past most of it's issues if it had a version with about a third as much blood. Having just a few enemies in a relatively small space will leave everything red/green/blue or a variety of colors. It just became overwhelming after awhile.

I don't think it's that bad...yeah it might be over rated a bit but it still provides a nice diversion from normal gameplay....there's nothing stopping you from swapping out Brutal Doom for Vanilla every once in a while to stop you from getting sick of it.

One thing I think it did well, was having multiple death animations for the enemies, as opposed to them dying in the same way over and over. The amount of blood it causes might be too much for some, but can't you go look for mutators to downgrade it a bit?

If people hate it...well get over it, nothing is forcing anyone to play it...so any hate is quite pointless. If it isn't to taste just turn away and forget about it, and that could be after you look up mods for the mod to customise it. It's one thing to dislike something because it isn't compatible with you, but to hate it like it's the worse thing ever is over reacting and a bit petty really.

Same for any Brutal Doom fanboys who can't hack vanilla Doom....people are way too eager to rage over quite literally...nothing.

What is supposed to be a silly fun mod is taken waaay too seriously. As for unsalvageable wreck? Please...just go get an earlier version if you don't like the later versions, it's not hard to do.

scalliano said:

I'm not vehemently against BD per se - weapon/gameplay mods without maps have never really held my attention for very long anyway. Where my beef lies is in the absolute, total and unequivocal dominance of Brutal Doom to the complete exclusion of anything else - incompatibility with BD being reported as a "bug" that should be "fixed". That's what pisses me off. From a purely technical standpoint, BD is be very impressive, but as a mod it just doesn't appeal to me.

Agreed wholeheartedly. Plus the fact that people whack it on any old wad without thoughts towards the atmosphere and general ambiance the author was trying to create. I remember VylePhynder's mod-to-wad thread a while back and I could never understand why he'd want to play Epic with Brutal Doom.

My ModDB review (That received some negative attention, but hey opinions do that):

Brutal Doom is an over the top (and OVERRATED) mod for the classic DOS Doom games.
The weapon sprites look nice and smooth... That is where the positives end I am afraid.
The sounds within this mod are terrible (excluding voice acting), the weapons sound like water guns compared to the sounds of the enemies screams of pain (Seriously are you into sadism and shit bro?), the screaming blasts over every other sound going off, it is pure ear hell!
The balancing of the mod is absolutely shagged: More than 10 imps and your ass is on Ebay, Cyberdemons are pussies that can be absolutely crushed in ten seconds (They are literally giant glass windows), if you bump into a baron of hell in a corridor you are brown bread, if you see an arachnotron you will be loading game soon (Dead simple is near impossible on UV), mancubus shots annihilate everything, all you will ever need is the shotgun, the chaingun is wank (And doesn't even penetrate 1 imp making it useless) and the list goes on.
Gameplay: It is basically CoD: Hell Warfare with added gore porn and sadism in the mix, it ruins megawads and cripples original Doom gameplay.
Graphics: the enemy sprites look absolutely hideous, seriously you can see color changes and cut edges of the things (you know, like an unfinished product?)
And then we have the author and his fantards (Not all Brutal Doom fans mind you, just rabid SGT Mark loverboys):
The author is, and always was, a complete and utter egotistical little self obsessed, misogynistic, rascist, suicide endorsing asshole (and that is hardly scratching the surface), he takes negative opinions as "Jealousy", how comical.
Then you have his hardcore fanboys who defend his asshole actions to the grave, attacking (via messages and such, not physically) anybody with a different opinion and accusing them (like Mark himself) of being "Jealous", how comical.
I used to be a fan, but then it hit me: The mod is wank, the authors a cock and so are the fanboys, avoid this shit.

My epic spelling.

Let me elaborate some more:

I used to be a hardcore BD fan (but I didn't know about the mod until V17 or 1.7, whatever the fuck it was).

I played it multiple times with multiple wads and blah blah fucking blah...

When I got round to playing actual Doom, I realized how fucking broken BD really was (that and Mark's actions disgusted me, I may have tried to defend him on the racism part, like an idiot mind you, but the rest of his actions were even more despicable).

The game gets utterly flipped upside down with BD, I noticed during the development of TPBM that PrBoom gameplay (with my settings it is like classic vanilla with the exception of one or two compatibility flags) was so much more fun, easier and balanced compared to BD.

I also don't like the sadistic demon porno going on with the screams and the split in half demons getting further "brutalized" and shit, just nasty.

Also, I don't like the simple minded BD fanboys, they really confuse me:

They can run BD just fine but can't understand how to load a .wad file?!

That enough or do I need to go on? I have plenty of things to say about BD that I really want to say to Mark himself, such as what exactly sucks, what can be done to fix it and better yet what needs to be removed but now he wouldn't listen to me now would he when he has a following ready to suck his cock and giving him even worse suggestions that are retarded as all fuck, not to mention he is already drowning in praise, not to mention I am a passenger on the "jelly train".

Not only is the mod 100% unbearably obnoxious audiovisual noise, but Mark is a fucking asshole. I don't think suicide is a topic to be lightly joked about, and how he treated that one kid on ZDF was despicable. There's also plenty of other things about his behavior I find deplorable.

I'd better not write any more before I blow a gasket.

I don't like seeing it show up in every NeoGAF thread that touches upon Doom, and not any other gameplay mod in existence. I also don't really think it's particularly better than Doom. Worse, maybe, but mostly just different.

That's about it, really. If people think it's fun, then more power to them. I just don't care for it, myself.

Yeah the guy is a horrible person, but even so I don't find the mod to be that bad....I managed to get through doom 1 pretty easily with it. Not got round to any sequels yet though.

I don't like the gameplay or aesthetics at all, they emphasize everything I dislike or don't care about in Doom, and feel quite unbalanced. But that's fine, other people can like things I don't like. What bothers me is the dominance of BD that scalliano talked about. There are lots of other good gameplay mods, and lots of maps that really play best in vanilla.

Technically speaking it's quite impressive, since it really pushes what you can do with ZDoom modding. By the same token it looks like it has a lot of glitches and errors though.


e: It's kind of like people who slather everything they eat in ketchup. It's like, OK, it's your food, you can do what you want with it. But there's lots of other flavours out there, plus you're sure to upset a few chefs sometimes.

Kind of in the same boat as Scalliano. Except how "it needs Brutal Doom" plagues Doom threads/articles in non-Doom forums/sites; and youtube videos. Usually you'll find at least one such remark in a comment or post.

You're basically playing a meme; (and I'm quite sure I'm not the only one that thinks alike). And as such, it lasts on people as much as memes do on people in general.

Nah, I like it. I don't care what its author does or thinks. It's like how I like Megadeth without caring about what dumb thing Mustaine says, or Necrophobic even though their ex-vocalist beat up with wife and daughter.

Edit: I just saw Scaliano finally updated his 667 Shuffle thing. Back to that...

Why would I touch Brutal Doom when I have Doom Expanded?

My word, I never realized how much controversy surrounded this whole thing.

Platinum Shell said:

I'd be able to look past most of it's issues if it had a version with about a third as much blood.

But huge demons are likely to have huge guts. ;)

Never liked BD as it really change the gameplay in a way I really don't like in doom. too much blood, too much noises, monsters act diffrent..
really changing things in a way I don't looking for. besides I have made my own pack which adds tons of things without chaning the core gameplay.

I just don't care for gameplay and audiovisual mods in the slightest. That's why I was never interested in BD in the first place. But hearing about it everywhere is really obnoxious, and from what I gather from everywhere BD is a collection of exactly the shit I hate - buckets of unnecessary and over the top effects and violence, changed sounds, changed balance, lots of unneeded features bogging it down...
But nearly every time someone outside a Doom website mentions Doom (like a "game from his childhood" or something to that effect), there's always some zombie there right away suggesting Brutal Doom as it apparently makes Doom "like a new game again". People who are looking to play Doom for the first time / replay it after a long time REALLY should not be persuaded by these morons to play it with BDoom, it does the game injustice.

Oh man that's terrible. Brutal Doom is an alright mod and I do agree that it breaks some maps. It should have at least came with a few demo maps. Some monsters are overpowered and the ultra-violence is alright by me.

It's not really the opinion on the mod that's that controversial, it's what the author has done.

Also, I've been looking around for that topic where he encourages suicide. It appears to be lost. Anyone find it on some archive so I can read up and contribute properly my honest opinion on this discussion?

plums said:

Technically speaking it's quite impressive, since it really pushes what you can do with ZDoom modding. By the same token it looks like it has a lot of glitches and errors though.

That's kind of the problem with technically ambitious ZDoom mods in general. While it's a very powerful, scriptable engine, people always want to do stuff that there's no easy or direct way to do in it. So what do they do when they really, really want the feature and will stop at nothing to get it, feature request denial be damned? Hacks, kludges, and layers upon layers of messy coding with what is available to them via official (G)ZDoom in order to act outside of the scope of existing features.

This often leads to the hackiest mods to stop working with newer builds, as the devs (rightly) would rather keep the engine clean than to have it be as messy as some of the mods made for it for the sake of keeping compatibility with them.

I think custom builds are the better solution for TCs and otherwise very extensive mods that reach for the sky. I know many such as Gez deplore this, but I think a clean engine-side implementation of whatever it is the author is attempting for a mod generally meant to be standalone is better than them externally fucking the unmodified official engine six ways to Sunday.

If it's supposed to be so vastly different, not meant or designed to intermingle with other, more general purpose mods, then it does far more harm trying to stay on 'vanilla' ZDoom, especially if it becomes very popular and the devs feel pressured to create special case behavior to support it.

There'd be little need for authors begging for features specific to their mod, as they can just do it themselves without fighting Graf, Blzut3 or Randy for it. Obviously, whoever is doing such a dedicated engine should keep their source open and available, so that it's both cross-platform and future proof.

Of course, this applies to stuff like Action Doom 2. While I know that Scuba did make a tweaked version to stay up to speed with ZDoom and to meet the devs halfway, things were going the other way around for a time, with Graf (understandably begrudged) bending over backwards trying to support the quirks.

Brutal Doom can still go fuck itself.

Crasger said:

Also, I've been looking around for that topic where he encourages suicide. It appears to be lost. Anyone find it on some archive so I can read up and contribute properly my honest opinion on this discussion?

Maybe the mods buried it? I don't know where you could find it if it's gone, maybe try the Wayback Machine. There's a thread here in Post Hell talking about it, you could find the link to it and check the web archive for it.

I remember the gist of it was that some kid said that he was extremely dissatisfied with his life, and Mark started mocking him and encouraged him to commit suicide. This was understandably nipped in the bud quickly. I don't remember who the kid was, but if you're reading this, know that people have your back.

Sodaholic said:

I think custom builds are the better solution for TCs and otherwise very extensive mods that reach for the sky. I know many such as Gez deplore this, but I think a clean engine-side implementation of whatever it is the author is attempting for a mod generally meant to be standalone is better than them externally fucking the unmodified official engine six ways to Sunday.

If it's supposed to be so vastly different, not meant or designed to intermingle with other, more general purpose mods, then it does far more harm trying to stay on 'vanilla' ZDoom, especially if it becomes very popular and the devs feel pressured to create special case behavior to support it.

I agree. I know ZDoom is absolutely riddled with compatibility options and whatnot that would be entirely unnecessary, except that changing them would break something with a mod that won't get updated.

I've found DECORATE really easy to use until you want to do something that it doesn't really support, at which point you've got to get 'creative' - and then all bets are off as to future compatibility.

It's just a mod. I don't get all the fuss - this thread included. :shrug:

I have a problem with its saturation - I remember we had a thread just like this one not long ago. Is it so all-pervasive that people not liking it is unusual? Personally I rarely bother with gameplay mods that don't have maps as they throw the balance.

It is always tiresome when you see a YouTube video purporting to play a map and they're using Brutal Doom though, as that isn't anything like what a lot of us will get in the map of we play it.

I wouldn't say I'm against Brutal Doom, if anything I'm indifferent towards it. At first it was pretty fun, but the novelty wears off. Not to say that I don't appreciate the effort that was put into it.

"This map is very unbalanced on Brutal Doom, 1/5"

I used to quite like Brutal Doom but even when I first played it, I would complete two maps then revert back to some map sets with OS game play. I just find it a novelty really, there are very few game play mods that keep me hooked but even then, I still don't play them for a huge amount of time despite actually liking them. Brutal Doom to me is largely overrated and it gets tiresome seeing mods appear which require its use, or as someone stated; reviews on maps which say "it dont wurk with brootal doom 0/5". So? Use your fucking brain and play the map without it then, if you liked Doom that much you wouldn't need Brutal Doom for every -single - wad that you play.

I hate idiots who think BD is what DOOM was always supposed to be.

Enjay said:

It's just a mod. I don't get all the fuss - this thread included. :shrug:

Seconded.