So I've noticed divided reception of Brutal Doom lately

[Avoozl]

Nash's gore mod was enough for me.

[Platinum Shell]

All these mods are reminding me of that old mod Doom +, with it's floating in mid-air shell casings and it's invisible revenant rocket pickups. I've long since lost it though.

[purist]

Clonehunter said:

I liked some of the earlier incarnations, but then it became very unbalanced and the like. I'd more or less like a version with all the gore intact, but the original gameplay and enemies and weapons and whatever in tact. Poor balance though was the big thing.

Didn't SMIV release Ketchup for this very purpose?

[Reisal]

Yea, but gibbing shit with the shotgun or stronger is just silly.

[DooM_RO]

I love it but it doesn't replace Doom for it. Also, all the newcomers who demand vanilla maps to be rebalanced for BD should be publicly shamed.

[MFG38]

Avoozl said:

Nash's gore mod was enough for me.

It would be for me too. That mod is pretty hard to come across. I've done numerous Google searches for it, with no results.

[Hybrid Moments]

I came back to Doom after a 10 year hiatus, oddly enough after seeing an article on Brutal Doom. I figured I'd give it a try. It was fun for roughly 20 minutes. After that, the obnoxious death screams, alternate monster attacks, and mindless gore ran itself VERY thin.

So I booted up vanilla and pushed BD as far out of consciousness as humanly possible. Now all is right with the world.

Edit: The fact that over-caffeinated 13 year olds demand Brutal Doom compatibility with PWADs is absurd. Not playing a classic WAD because BD either doesn't work with it or breaks it? GTFO.

[Reisal]

If I knew how to and could remove all the useless or pointless shit when v20 is out, I would. Ya know, tone down the blood, remove the stupid special attacks, custom monster weapons, monster on player fatalities, remove limb dismemberment, restoring monsters to their vanilla specs, stuff like that.

Brutal Doom has indeed become bloated from feature creep with crap nobody cared for (v15 or 16 had alpha Commando voice for zombies, etc) and I wish it stayed without some of the dumb crap SgtMarkIV has added over the years.

For those who have played through multiple versions (I have since v7 in 2011 when it was simpler), what do you think are some of the worst additions to the mod? I personally think adding special attacks to the weaker monsters like the imp and former human was a bad mistake, as groups of them can whittle down your HP if you're not quick enough.

Another feature I hate is the limb dismemberment and the scream it used for a couple of versions. The only use for that scream is the "on fire" animation where the zombies run around like their head was cut off.

This last one might be a double edged sword but the fatalities. As a result, the baron and knight had their blood switched to red since if you used anything but the default marine uniform color, the blood in fatalities would have been that color. I can do without fatalities, honestly.

If Mark finally finalizes Brutal Doom, I sincerely hope he makes a "Lite" version without the weapon changes or other features so I could use Perk's smooth anims.

Also, fixing up Ketchup so even a simple pistol doesn't gib enemies! I may be a fan of Brutal Doom but I'm not sucking Mark's dick, the mod is not without its faults either.

[mrthejoshmon]

Mr. Chris said:

For those who have played through multiple versions (I have since v7 in 2011 when it was simpler), what do you think are some of the worst additions to the mod?

"Intelligent enemy AI" (like dodging and such) because you were already getting your ass handed to you due to poor balancing, so then when the AI got more attacks and learned to dodge it got even more horrible.

The running around on fire guys, they deal a shed load of damage if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Kicking over fire barrels because that means even more on fire dudes.

Flipping off a Cyberdemon is also equally retarded.

[Hybrid Moments]

The one positive aspect of Brutal Doom IMO is that it has brought a lot of people into the Doom community. Of course its brought some shitheads, but I'm sure that some of these people could settle down and become contributing members to the community at large.

Also: at least they aren't playing Call of Duty.

[Doominator2]

Hybrid Moments said:

Also: at least they aren't playing Call of Duty.

At rather play call of duty(2) than see doom being butchered by BD.

[IMX]

But they do play TF2 and gmod

[GreyGhost]

MFG38 said:

Avoozl said:
Nash's gore mod was enough for me.

It would be for me too. That mod is pretty hard to come across. I've done numerous Google searches for it, with no results.

Here you go - it's the old 2006 release. Should you happen to stumble across the fabled version 3.0, let me know.

[FireFish]

Brutal doom surprised me when i first encountered it...
but after half an hour i started to go mental over armor which did nothing while the novelty started to fade.

The mod is nice and fun for a short time, but eventually as a personal
view and thought i would have rather seen it as an total conversion, or in other words 'a new game using the doom engine.'

it is clear that a lot of work went into it, and new generations re-discovered doom because of that, but i think the novelty will fade for everybody eventually.

nothing beats the look and feel of an original doom(2) wad which holds a tech or dark fantasy atmosphere, which brutal somewhat destroys.

[dg93]

Mr. Chris said:

For those who have played through multiple versions (I have since v7 in 2011 when it was simpler), what do you think are some of the worst additions to the mod?

I started off with v17, although I have played v1 (which I actually enjoy more in my opinion). My major complaint with v19 is the new plasma rifle. I highly dislike it especially the secondary fire (plasma flames). It has to be one of the worst secondary fire addition to the mod. My other major complaint used to be with the chaingun because it would recoil and I would have to use my mouse to control it (I really wish Brutal Doom allowed the option of autoaim), but thankfully he fixed it in v19. My last complaint is how the imps, Hell knights/Barrons, and cacodemons project their fireballs at such a fast pace. More than half the time I get killed instantly when encountered by multiple demons that use projectile attacks. That needs to be toned down just a bit.

EDIT:

FireFish said:

nothing beats the look and feel of an original doom(2) wad which holds a tech or dark fantasy atmosphere, which brutal somewhat destroys.

I agree.... This is totally off topic but I just want to inform you that the DMR wad has been uploaded to /idgames: http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/?file=levels/doom2/deathmatch/Ports/megawads/dmr_2014.zip

[Doomkid]

Wow, this thread is still going without any major flaming or stupidity. That's awesome. I was expecting someone to come in here and act all retarded by now.

It would be nice if wads like Community Chest and such got the amount of "non doom community" publicity that BD has, however the reason they don't is because of appeal to the lowest common denominator. Someone said that earlier in the thread and I just have to echo that point, because it's annoying and frankly doesn't speak well for the intelligence of the common gamer. That's why so many devs have games "hold your hand" these days.

Again, this isn't meant as hate for BD, just a hate for people who say "it makes Doom better". I'm tired of seeing that comment on every damn Doom video.

[PRIMEVAL]

Brutal Doom is overrated but I do enjoy playing it every now and then for the lulz. For fancy graphics, though, I usually play Particle Fire Enhancer which has all sorts of fancy effects (similar to Doom Expanded and such). Watch any Doom gameplay video on my YouTube channel (link in sig) and you can see some footage.

[Varis Alpha]

i think PFE is the most solid "Doom Enhancer" mod there is right now. unfortunately, there's so many enhancement mods for Doom that it becomes a quite bloated market to fill (ReDoom, Beautiful Doom, Doom Expanded, Particle Fire Enhancer, and probably others i forgot about). i'd rather see some of this custom content to other Doom engine games instead, as they lack a lot of what Doom has in spades.

[Clonehunter]

Brutal Strife? Beautiful Heretic? Chex Quest Expanded (PLZ)?

[Varis Alpha]

Mark actually did a Brutal Strife before, and received great backlash from that. i think Chex Quest doesn't really need much graphical improvement or whatever because it all feels pretty clean and great already. Heretic and Hexen could really use some stuff, though, especially some better sounds since they're really awful, IMO.

[Da Werecat]

Hexen has great sound. It would be rather sad to see it spoiled by some amateur mod.

[mrthejoshmon]

Doomhuntress said:

Mark actually did a Brutal Strife before, and received great backlash from that.

Ah, I remember the "glorified human slaughter simulator", I can tell you that it made me feel kind of bad for what I was doing when I tried it out but surprisingly the gameplay wasn't as unplayable as Brutal Doom, it almost looks like he tried to balance it to a degree.

And didn't he also try Brutal Hexen? I can kind of understand Brutal Hexen, the melee combat system would cater to more gore with blunt and blade styled weapons but the game is hard enough already.

[Reisal]

The thing is to not add pointless attacks to the monsters and it should be fine.

[Xegethra]

There's nothing wrong with adding in one or two new attacks....it's only for variety that Brutal Doom did it.

If it were to happen to the other games it wouldn't so bad, all it would do is keep you on your toes for a bit. You just gotta be a little bit more aware of what's going on when they gain new attacks from these sorts of things.

[dg93]

I think he is currently working on Brutal Duke Nukem 3D now.

[FireFish]

Brutal is fun the first day you see it, but what actually gives this 'plays weird' feeling are a few bugs, While the extra attacks are killer. the imps scratching instantly after opening a door, or the ammo wastage when former humans roll away.

i just suspect this to be a ideology based problem ;
-> purists following the known and its unwritten rules.
-> those whom play anything they find to be fun.

It is the same with mapping, what person A hates, person B might like.

[Reisal]

My ideal Brutal Doom:

1) Ditch the current weapon set so people can use weapon mods, including the special weapons like Mancubi cannon, Revenant launcher, Nazi MP40.
2) No special attack modifications to monsters (Zombie 3 shot, Imp pounce, cyber stomp, etc).
3) No arm or leg dismemberment.
4) "Classic" monster stats and behavior (as vanilla. Restoring hitscans for zombies, etc)
5) No monster on player or monster on monster fatalities.
6) Implement fixes from Brutal Doom Patch into v20.
7) Tone down blood/gore released from shooting and exploding.
8) Remove shadow effects from everything.
9) Remove unnecessary sounds (IE item pickup, powerup pickup) and sprite replacements (Evil eye replacement, armor replacement, etc)
10) Restore original player pain DECORATE logic.

I can 2, 3, 4, 8 and 9, which I typically do with every version. I wish BD was more simplistic, is it so hard to not add or change crap that is not needed?

[Xegethra]

But those things are what make the name of the mod appropriate....a little bit. Without half those things the term "Brutal" would be even more redundant.

I get that it might be too much for some though, so perhaps an ideal situation would be to have two versions of the mod, one with everything it has in it currently...and one that tones it down...so people have a better choice and don't have to go looking for mods for the mod if they don't want to have to (Those mutator thingies). If anyone knows about modding, surely they could do this...or pester Mark for forever until he does it.

It could be called "Not as Brutal Doom" or something.

[OpenMaw]

Why would you get rid of limb dismemberment in BD? It's a nice upgrade. Granted the mod goes way over the top in places, I think little touches like headshots actually being headshots and blasting off monster's limbs is right in line with the dark themes of Doom. It's not as if the game didn't have body parts and mangled corpses/twitching bodies lying around. Then again i'm a big fan of player feedback within the environment. So having weapons that literally take the enemy apart appeals to me.

I would get rid of the retarded Comic Book inspired elements elements though. Things like the middle finger and battle cry serve no purpose beyond being crass or OTT dumb. The battle cry can get you killed with no benefit.

Also, the fatalities done to the player by monsters are brilliant! Why would you want to discard them?

Especially love this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgZGfYulkmU

Not as big on the player-to-monster fatalities. Only because they end up slowing the game down. Cool the first few times you see them, then they lose their magic. Personally i'd redesign it so that the fatalities are simply alternative deaths for the monsters, that don't take you out of FP. Punch a monster in the head and their head comes off. Things like that.

[Pirx]

SFoZ911 said:

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 also prefer doom's classic gameplay, many of brutal doom's feature change this or get in the way. i liked the early version when it was just a gore mod, then it got this feature creep. now i prefer loading sgt. mark's ketchup mod, it's just splattering zombies all over the place without any change to the gameplay.