The definitive gameplay enhancement mod for the GZDoom and Zandronum engines. Adds realistic gore, dismemberments, headshots, executions, lightning effects, particles, makes enemies smarter and harder, makes gun louder and beefier, and adds epic new boss battles.
10/10 - Agree (235) Disagree (33)
Brütal Doom clearly deserves a 10, for several reasons:
First, it has been developed almost single handedly by a goodwill individual, who clearly has shown the outmost dedication and perseverance through 2 years of continued development, besides from being always open-minded and patient, hearing suggestions and criticism and enduring ludicrous amounts of flame-wars on some of the forums where the project was being discussed. Such professionalism must be taken in note.
Second: the level of compromise put into the mod. Rather than simply rush things, all versions, besides from adding increasingly surprising new features, kept trying to improve the core gameplay, gradually polishing it. From the crude first versions, which had a very “experimental” feel, to the current V 0.16, which plays very smoothly and makes me think we may not be so far from the final 1.0 release, there’s a world of differences, and that clearly proves the effort put into the mod.
Third: the mod itself. While the titular buff in brutality is already worth it, that’s only the peak of the iceberg of awesome BD is, the added gameplay elements, way too many to mention here, expands DooM into a whole new level and makes worth to revisit old WADs just to see how everything’s different and how new strategies can be pulled off.
The increased difficulty, criticized by some, helps a lot to bring back the feelings we all had in our heads back in ’94, when we really feared our enemies and never felt really safe walking around an abandoned techbase or hell itself. We’ve all got used to DooM tricks by now, but BD just forces us to forget everything we’ve learned and find new ways to fight back the monsters we had come to take as easy pickings. Hard fights in classic DooM will make you cry blood in BD, but, when you finally manage to win, you really feel like you’re the Doomguy, a puny, fleshy mortal who has just kicked Hell’s *** for all eternity. And in the end, that’s all that really matters.