My opinion on Brutal Doom

Hi.

Since my early days of playing Doom (Back in 2018), I always heard about this mod called 'Brutal Doom'. I always heard people saying stuff like "It's one of the best Doom mods ever!" So because of that I decided to give it a try, and at first glance, the mod didn't seem that good to me, I mean it is a decent mod, but nothing outstanding. I think that it's just like combining the violence of all Build and IDTECH1 games, plus the interactivity of maps from Half Life. And the result in my opinion end up not having an outstanding experience, but a rather "Meh" approach. But on the other hand, I admire the developers of Brutal Doom for making such popular mod that is always in people's brains when they talk about Doom mods, but in MY OPINION, Brutal Doom is just a decent mod that doesn't really give me a 'badass' experience . And I would give it a 7.6/10.

Thanks for reading I guess, and have a happy demon/alien/monster/zombie killing bloodfest!

pls don't hate me brutal doom fans :´(

For me, Brutal Doom/Project Brutality's modern gaming features are a great gateway into oldschool Doom.

I grew up playing Doom 1, 2; they came out when when I was in kindergarten. I played single player and co-op throughout my childhood. I moved on to Half-Life mods like Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, and Firearms as I grew older as far as FPSs go. Other than some RTS and A/RPG games, FPS has always been my thing. I was about "league level good" at these Half-Life mods games. These mods gave me a want for more "realistic" shooters including the Rainbow Six series.

I stopped gaming for many years but when I came back to it the first thing I got into was Project Brutality. Soon I learned about the many great iwads and the brilliantly balanced vanilla gameplay (dare I say, chesslike?) watching various Youtube videos and demos and before I knew it, I was back into vanilla gameplay and recording UV-Max demos myself.

I don't prefer mods but I don't mind them. With Zandronum/Doomseeker, I like to play mods like Shotgun Frenzy, Stronghold, and Master of Puppets to switch it up from my usual vanilla gameplay co-op.

9 hours ago, nelguy said:

Hi.

Since my early days of playing Doom (Back in 2018), I always heard about this mod called 'Brutal Doom'. I always heard people saying stuff like "It's one of the best Doom mods ever!"

To a degree. It introduces a lot of mechanics i would enjoy, but its not like its a holy grail mod.

Something like Jimmy's Jukebox comes to my mind because that's a great novel idea. Kinsie's work, Samsara, Russian Overkill and Hideous Destructor are also good crack.

At the very least BD brought more attention to regular Doom aswell, which is always a plus.

19 minutes ago, DOEL said:

For me, Brutal Doom/Project Brutality's modern gaming features are a great gateway into oldschool Doom.

< Brutal Doom's/Project Brutality's modern gaming features

< are a great gateway into oldschool Doom

One of these things does not correlate with the other.

25 minutes ago, DOEL said:

For me, Brutal Doom/Project Brutality's modern gaming features are a great gateway into oldschool Doom.

That is true but it also comes with the downside that player starts to expect the oldschool Doom to play more like basic first person shooter, with reloading, freelook, jumping, crouching and headshots instead of embracing what makes Doom gameplay and controls feel more unique and special. Actual oldschool Doom feels more like simple arcade game these days and I wish more gameplay mods would try to be next evolution of that instead of trying to make Doom more like newer FPS games that came after it. Pac-Man was also just a simple arcade game but Pac-Man Championship Edition games were really next evolution of that without changing the feel of the original classic.

I also feel like gore isn't anyway important feature for Doom game series and I dislike how Brutal Doom has so much focus on it. But then again, I also feel the same way about Mortal Kombat game series too. Brutal Doom can be pretty fun at times but can also be harmful for learning to play vanilla Doom. It is definitely more fair than many mods with monster randomization but I feel that Brutal Doom is too chaotic and unfocused for any kind of serious skill based Doom gameplay.

I’m curious about the ages of people who like versus dislike BD. I also am from the era of being a little kid when Doom came out and as I played it throughout the 90s, it never felt arcadey but thrilling and exciting with tons of “holy shit” moments and macabre visuals. I can see though that as time moves on, someone playing Doom for the first time recently would maybe not experience it that way because of how old it now is.

Brutal Doom makes playing Doom “feel” like it did for me in the 90s. It brought back some excitement now that in normal gameplay, everything is so well known and calculated. Watching a barrel blow up an imp was crazy when it first came out. Being scared of like a cacodemon and not knowing how many more shots you needed to kill it was different than knowing it was about 6 shotgun rounds, just dodge.

I find the arcade Doom mindset to remove the magic somewhat because as the mechanics became second nature it took away the magic a bit. Brutal Doom isn’t really surprising anymore but it’s varied enough where it still feels fresher.

I understand this isn’t a really popular opinion on DW but tl;dr Brutal Doom feels exciting like playing Doom in the beginning when there was no baseline for comparison and the mechanics had not been internalized and reduced to arcade-like strategy.

My opinion of Brutal Doom is the same as pretty much any mod out there - fine, but only when paired with WADs specifically designed for the mod

I cannot say I really care about the mod itself. But it cannot be denied that it and its offspring play an important role in getting new players into the game.

Why is brutal doom relevant again all of sudden?

In my opinion is a fun mod that bores me after i try all the weapons.

'S brutal.

Danzer: "In my opinion is a fun mod that bores me after I try all the weapons."

That's exactly what I feel when playing it, after some violent events happen I get bored of just going around and seeing such ridiculous amount of blood (even at the low blood mode) that I only see in Build engine games

Brutal Doom was fine up until about v1.0 if you ask me. The problem with the mod in its current state is that it has so many features that feel grossly detached from being Doom and only complicate the gameplay experience needlessly. Especially the vehicles and the map "enhancement" system. I quite like the gunplay and the insane amounts of gore, but that's as much as the mod has going for it as far as I'm concerned.

And don't even get me started on how I feel about people who play exclusively with Brutal Doom, thinking it's "the way Doom was meant to be played".

59 minutes ago, Danzer said:

Why is brutal doom relevant again all of sudden?

I think with 2016 and now Eternal coming out, we're seeing an influx of new players to classic Doom. Many of them will gravitate towards the most well-known mods to start with, and for better or worse one of those is Brutal Doom.

Oh yeah! A brutal Doom thread spergery in the making. I mean, I was expecting a groundbreaking take on BD that I haven't seen yet but it's just OP metacritic score/10

I said it before and I'll say it again here, when I launch BD I know I'm in for some fun BUT (that's a big but) I also know this is not Doom either. Right now I'm playing v19 and having a blast and do play some classic wads on the side. Also wth? Brutal Doom has been around for like... forever. Why do you feel like sharing your thoughts now? Bruh.

Alright for my first topic, I will give my opinion on Memento Mori. It's totally nothing you've read before, I promiss.

Brutal Doom is the best wad ever made 10/10. Nobody is gonna hate you @nelguy

1 minute ago, Gerardo194 said:

Brutal Doom is the best wad ever made 10/10. Nobody is gonna hate you @nelguy

Thanks!

You're welcome @nelguy

It's the brand new safespace for BD aficionados. Count me in.

Don't worry about anything pumpkin, BD is one of the best WADs out there I think.

Now I have a question, What is the best MAP you've ever played?

I like nuts.wad

Nuts would be top dog if only it had a illusio-pit.

in my personal opinion i disagree, On the surface of it the wad was Technologically advanced for it's time but as some have pointed out it has relatively stayed the same as it did when it was released, Unfortunately i think as far as Difficulty ranges, the Mod makes things WAY TOO HARD for a casual player like myself. Not to mention that the Brutal concept has been competed with and done to death by many other people as well (Notably the best contender is PB) While i don't hate the wad, (or the questionable decisions made by the creator.) I think Brutal Doom changes the game too much to the point where i feel new players will be only focused on modding instead of enjoying the wonderfully crafted Levels designed by ID that makes Doom such a icon.

1 hour ago, MFG38 said:

Brutal Doom was fine up until about v1.0 came out if you ask me.

That version only added some rifle weapons and more blood :p
https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/100922-the-first-ever-version-of-brutal-doom/

Maybe you played the one of the boom of the wad, the v18,as v21 it's  hell a lot  diferrent

I played the BD starter pack and it was excellent but I've not played anything else.

My opinion on Brütal Doom has not changed: it was fun at first, but now it's boring and overrated.

I'll take Smooth Doom over this. I won't stop you though... I mean, if you like BD, that's fine with me.

I mean, saying you don't like Brutal Doom on Doomworld isn't exactly topical. I think this forum has a disproportionate amount of purists. That said, I don't disagree.

Take a look at BD64 if you haven't already done so. It's more restrained than something like the BD v20b Hell On Earth Starter Pack, and a lot classier. It's quite fun to remove its maps from the skins folder and play levels from stuff like Doom 2, TNT, Plutonia etc with Doom64 monsters and weapons.

It's one of my favorite mods for the game. New players being attracted to it over regular Doom means nothing to me. There's good reasons as to why the mod is popular but it could never replace classic Doom in any capacity.

Never tried it myself but it seems to bring in a lot of new blood to the community which I think is great.

The impression I get is that it seems to have a lot of gimmicks, which can be fun, but always tend to get old and tired as time goes on.

4 minutes ago, fraggle said:

Never tried it myself but it seems to bring in a lot of new blood to the community which I think is great.

 

The impression I get is that it seems to have a lot of gimmicks, which can be fun, but always tend to get old and tired as time goes on.

Exactly. I'm not saying that it's a bad mod by any means, but I just got tired of it overtime.

People who are familiar with me would know I'm a major BD player to the extent that it has replaced vanilla. I have been playing original Doom frequently on and off since the 90s, mind you.

I'm in the opinion that BD has a more satisfying kills and entertaining balancing. The balance being, it's a lot easier to kill bigger demons more quickly but in return more weaker ones are far more deadly. But all die quickly with the right weapons and aim (sort of what Doom Eternal is going for). Oh and the chain gunners long distance sniping has been eliminated.

Using a SSG on a Cacodemon close range making it literally explode or focusing your chaingun on Barons head to take it out quickly and its specific head kill animation to validate my "skill kill" feels great. Have you guys ever used a chaingun in a narrow hallway against zombiemen? My god the meat grinder effect is better than any game to date imo.

That's not to say I think it's a perfect mod. It has way too much features and gimmicks, some obnoxious and the recent added weapons and duel welds really aren't necessary. Many gimmicks are optionally used anyway.

I couldn't recommend BD on some custom megawads but it's great for Doom 1 and 2. There are other user wads it works well with but others such as "Going Down" makes the first level a nightmare.

A part of me wants to trial lots of wads with BD and share thoughts on whether the mod fits well with the mod or not. I can call it "Does it Brutal Doom?" but I'm too lazy to go ahead with it.

It's a mod. It's alright. I've played better ones, even written about some of them.

It's more the community that it fostered (the "DOES THIS WORK WITH BRUTAL DOOM" types) I don't like. There's nothing wrong with having a preferred mod to play Doom WADs with (for me, it was Metadoom for a while, before that WW's Terrorists), but to say "this is the way to play Doom" that bothers me.

To me, the "way to play Doom," especially for first-timers, is vanilla. Or close to it. No jumping, crouching, mouselook, that sort of thing. You break out the mods for the second time through.