Prepare to descend into the abyss of "The City of The Damned 2," a haunting sequel to the unholy terror that was its predecessor. This nightmarish ZDoom map, infused with the sinister essence of Monolith's "Blood," now emerges from the depths, cloaked in the eerie glow of dynamic lights and adorned with nightmarish enhancements, all in the haunting embrace of GZDoom.
As you step into this accursed realm, brace yourself for a descent into madness. The very air is thick with dread, the city streets shrouded in perpetual darkness. Unholy forces conspire in the shadows, as malevolent zombies, deranged cultists, and diabolical demons lurk around every corner, their malevolence palpable.
With trembling hands and pounding heart, you shall embark on a nightmarish odyssey where the line between the living.
Prepare to descend into the abyss of "The City of The Damned 2," a haunting sequel to the unholy terror that was its predecessor. This nightmarish ZDoom map, infused with the sinister essence of Monolith's "Blood," now emerges from the depths, cloaked in the eerie glow of dynamic lights and adorned with nightmarish enhancements, all in the haunting embrace of GZDoom.
As you step into this accursed realm, brace yourself for a descent into madness. The very air is thick with dread, the city streets shrouded in perpetual darkness. Unholy forces conspire in the shadows, as malevolent zombies, deranged cultists, and diabolical demons lurk around every corner, their malevolence palpable.
With trembling hands and pounding heart, you shall embark on a nightmarish odyssey where the line between the living.
* Description *
The City of the Damned 2 - Apocalypse is a mixture of Resident Evil, Silent Hill and Blood, combining the best of all of these games in a new genre, that can be considered as Horror-Action-Survival-Adventure.
* How to play *
The game is standalone (packaged with GZDoom 4.11.3 and Freedom) but can also be played as a mod by simply launching your own instance of the engine with tcotd2.pk3.
I waited too much for this, i'm so glad this happened finally <3
Looking forward to your feedback
I played it fully last night and I really enjoyed it a lot!, but I have kinda some things I would like to comment
- the motion blur even if made it look good, it was kinda... annoying, at some point I got used to it but I can't deny that I prefer to have a option to disable it.
- The siren... dunno if you put it less time or is that by making the map large, the siren sounds more, I a full playthrough of 2 hours, after 30 minutes of getting the dark moon key I swear I felt the siren was literally every 2 minutes, I love the siren idea, but after 4-5 times it got instead or scary or worrying, annoying
- Ngl, the revolver I thought you could see in the hud how many bullets has, would be cool if has a bit more of damage in exchange maybe of have to reload more time if you used all the bullets and the same way if you used just one bullet (like a real revolver? xD)
- the bosses... I have really issues with all of them:
- The spider queen (great sprite btw) feels a bit unfair, if you have enough ammo awesome, if not, say goodbye, not because the proper spider queen is powerful but because of the minions, 150 hp for a small spider is a lot when your pistol can do approx 60-100 hp
- the beast was more harder at the second encounter than in the insides of the house of Steven.
- the wizard of the temple... in the 2007 version was great because was 2007, but now... felt incomplete, I mean, we are using the latest version of GZDoom, we can do something much more interesting than just this..., even the effects!
- and Thamuz..... this is more IMO, so... I can't deny that I love Thamuz as the boss of the city of damned 2 (I even did a tribute in a project ;_;) so I was a bit conflicted when I saw the version you used to replace the recolored cyberdemon, I understand that thamuz was just a recolor but for some reason I just like it.
- But in the gameplay side of Thamuz... i'm again a bit conflicted, in the original was interesting because you could use the entire city, and I think that's a good point, you are fighting a demon lord, come on, and in the actual version you can just... circle strafe... IMHO would have been better not to restrict the player to the center of the city, and make it work all around the city, even if that means give much more firepower to the thamuz, the idea is a horror game, I find scarier having to run through the streets knowing there is literally a demon lord around, than just... circle strafe...
- Again with thamuz, the effects were awesome, the summoning part, the sky, the fire even of the borders.... but was anticlimatic that the dead of the thamuz was less worked than his previous version...
- Now enough with Thamuz, the ghost of Kdidz.... my god, for some reason I found it harder than in the original version, I swear is the worst enemy of this game, dunno if you buffed and if so, is noticiable.
- the new areas were great in aspect of design, but gameplay I found them a bit.... too different, the caravan was slaughter, the cistern was a puzzle kinda easy and the swamp was the only one I liked it.
- The sounds..... I have a big problem with this, you added new music and monsters, but not new or better sounds?, I know some have, like the tommy gun or the revolver, but hearing the sounds of the door of heretic was a bit anticlimatic, I highly suggest even if means unrespect the original add new things, sounds deparment is always important and even more in a horror game, come on you, I jumped more times with Mr X thanks to his footsteps in Re 2 for example, so you get my point
Don't get me wrong!, I really loved the project still, It made my night knowing that wasn't abandoned the remaster, I love still too much the original, I mean, thanks to it I was inspired to do a lot of things in my own projects and worked as a constant inspiration for certain things, but even if is great remaster that I recommend trying, it can still be much better :')
- the motion blur even if made it look good, it was kinda... annoying, at some point I got used to it but I can't deny that I prefer to have a option to disable it.
There is an option under Advanced Options, scroll down and check for Motion Blur
I'm blind then, thanks for telling me that :)
Thanks a lot for the detailed feedback. There are some very good points in there and I guess we might be able to incorporate some suggestions :)
i'm glad to help, I've been a fan of this mod for a long time and I even did simple addons, so I'm happy this in the end got out :)
It has been such a trip to contribute on this project, but also pretty fun. Surely BlooM lovers will also notice something... Don't miss this mod guys!
I played through the whole mod and I really enjoyed it for the most part. Although, as much I remember the 2007 version, I felt underwhelmed over 2 things such as the lack of something new for the church section, and Thamuz fight itself. While I appreciate the new effects that you put into for Thamuz, the whole thing is just circle-strafe which it just lost the charm that the 2007 had.
I could pinpoint about other things but I think Gaia74 already covered it so, there's that.
I enjoyed the remaster quite a bit. Had some nice improvements and smoothed out some of the rough edges of the old version.
New enemies were nice and a decent challenge (I played on hard) The spider boss was a surprise and had a suitably sad backstory to go with it, and while a surprise at first, I only needed two deaths to realize if I bunched her and the spiders together I could kite them in circles around the room while blasting them (And pitchforking once I ran out of shells, which was pretty funny actually) I especially liked the Warewolves, and the story hints behind them, the one in the wilderness being the one that infected Steven's kid I presume, hence two warewolves. I do think the church boss could do with being replaced for something a bit more interesting. I guess the sorcerer works in the setting, but I feel it could be better.
Also, as a possible extra boss idea you could expand on the cultist leadership and have either one powerful boss cultist (Their leader) or a group of strong-ish unique cultists scattered about the map, or plop he/she/they in the cultist camp, I mean these guy's were organized enough to take over a city, hence clever/powerful leaders. The ghost enemies were a bit of a surprise, but they made the dark places real scary. Cool effect with the black remnants, too, learning to dodge their projectiles while retaliating to disrupt their rate of fire was quite the fun experience.
A suggestion for a low level stationary enemy I have is for that floor grate near the guillotine, I avoided it at first cause I expected to hear a noise if I stood on it and for tentacles or something to spawn if I stood there too long; hey, maybe it'd make a fun if optional weak early game enemy to add that only shows up if you stand on the grate for a set period of time.
I like the new areas well enough. The Swamp was cool and offered a useful shortcut later on. The cultist camp was mostly just a big gun fight, and the cultists did half the work for me by killing eachother, lol. The reward for going there was okay, but the pendant didn't last long sadly. Certainly enjoyed the dark areas and the dread they inspired (Surprised you didn't include rare boxes of matches or something as an inferior shorter-lived alternative to the illusive lantern.
The improvement to the tent that leads into the other dimension was maybe my favorite part, seeing your character's reflection vanish around corners and getting spooked by it was a stroke of cleverness, so kudos for that; I was half expecting to have to fight a mimic armed with the same weapons as me and with equally fast movement, but luckily that wasn't the case since a battle like that in those confines would've been a nightmare, especially if it was a mimic along with reflections of the player an the mimic.... I'm getting off topic. - also have to split comment due to character limit.
The cistern was interesting, though apart from finding the lantern I felt my explorations down there were, narratively speaking, not all that compelling, or rather non-existent. If a reason to go down there could be worked in to the story. If not that, then perhaps near drains and water sources, toilets and so on, really weak but annoying small enemies could spawn from them occasionally until the cistern is cleared. Or a simpler incentive could be a note about some guy who had a stash of supplies he was hiding and had the key to, but the cultists killed him and dumped him and his key in the sewer, leading to a gross corpse hunt, also making the lantern a happy discovery along the way -- as an added idea, said stash could contain a sort of prelude to the rocket launcher weapon in the form of two or three grenade-type weapons, only found in that stash and nowhere else, or a second melee weapon, inferior to the pitchfork but better than fists after throwing the fork at enemies. Eh just spit-balling ideas.
Moving on, the arena setting for both the hounds and the final boss was an good idea, though I think it worked better for the doggos given how relentlessly on your tail they are, but the big boss was a walk in the park, had a merry old time dancing around him and blasting away, heck I did more damage to myself than he did to me due to the launcher's splash damage. The boss itself is improved attack wise and has some cool effects, but I liked being able to use the entire city as my battlefield against him since it gave it a sense of scope and scale. When I fought him in the old version, ran and hid, I was scared he'd teleport to my location or something. But yeah, he was probably the least intimidating part of the wad.
Overall I enjoyed it more than the original, the weapons felt more useful, not bad balance in ammo and resources, I like the challenge of not being wasteful with ammo and med supplies, I felt the pressure but not too heavily to where I ran out of options. Maybe if I played on Nightmare difficulty that opinion might change, but as it was I did okay with ammo and tactical pitchfork usage (falling off the dock into the water by accident at the very start helped in that regard a little.) Speaking of the dock, Part of me sort of wished for the player to be able to walk back to their boat after the boss fight and roll the credits there, sort of a feeling of closure, like "Well, my work here is done." Even if we don't know why the player visited the city in the first place. But now I'm just nitpicking, and really I'm kinda crap at reviewing, praise and criticism, so meh.
Anyways, I'll leave off here since I've rambled on long enough and the length of this comment is already absurd. Sorry about the wall of text, I got a bit carried away. Thanks for the work put into it, it was pretty damn fun.
Thanks kindly for your detailed review, this is definitely of help and interest and I think we can incorporate one or another suggestion for a 2.1 release :)
great job tormentor667, processional stuff as always! awesome!
Thanks a lot!
great job tormentor667, professional stuff as always! awesome!
Thank you as well!
An absolute blast to play congratulations! To think I remember playing the original way way back! It's a great kind of reimagining of blood.
Thanks a lot for the kind words!
stuck at the church :/
also not enough ammo.
coop is fantastic tho. works flawlessly.
Try to save ammo by using the pitchfork, there should be plenty enough :)
Tried a bit of it, but got frustrated with the ghost enemies that can't be defeated. Even though it looks awesome i can't be bothered with frustration.
It's most likely tuned for Co-Op and not solo play.