Reviews - CALL OF DOOM: TARKOV - CoD/EFT Style Advanced Weapon MOD for Doom

Call of Doom is the best implementation of Real Guns' Call of Duty weapons in Doom yet. 

This mod elevates itself above the Real Guns series of mods and its derivatives for a number of reasons:

Firstly, the mod does not shy away from using arbitrary and unrealistic weapon stats and behavior (e.g. a TMP that fires PDW rounds instead of 9x19mm) in order to achieve great weapon variety and balance. Real Guns and many other tactical-style Doom mods get caught in the trap of sticking too closely to real-world weapon behavior and end up only having minor differences between weapons of the same class, making choosing weapons mostly only a matter of taste rather than because of gameplay. Call of Doom puts realism in the backseat and puts gameplay first. The result is a tactical-style / real-world weapons mod with an unprecedented amount of weapon variety, and gameplay balance that gives the player satisfaction for picking one weapon over another.

Secondly, great UI design (in terms of both function and aesthetics), controls and inventory management.
- The mod uses a one-weapon-per-slot rule that makes managing the many weapons that will be encountered smooth and painless. You'd think this is common sense but plenty of gameplay mods forgo this type of design. This mod deserves praise for adhering to it.
- When running over weapon pickups for a weapon slot that is already occupied, the slot number, icon and name of that weapon is displayed on the lower part of HUD, and running over a different weapon instantly updates the information. This is extremely important in managing the many guns that you run into in the game and is a much more effective implementation of weapon pickup notifiers than in other mods with lots of guns and limited slots (e.g. Real Guns, DoomRL Arsenal). 
- The mod also has a number of utility items (e.g. medkits, satellite phones for calling in backup, C4 explosives) and the controls for using their various functions are displayed while the item is active — a very helpful and nicely executed UI touch. As a side note, these utilities act as "weapons" that you have to switch to in order to use (rather than being quick-use inventory items) and that style of design makes them feel more "real" and enforces the tactical identity of the mod.

Thirdly, the various gameplay mechanics in the mod are harmonious with Doom's gameplay and are deliberately chosen to avoid tedious gameplay that is sadly prevalent in modern Doom gameplay mods.
- Unlike RGA2, Call of Doom does not use regenerating health but instead uses a medkit-use system that works better with Doom's gameplay while still putting a tactical spin on its gameplay.
- The mod forgoes using RGA2's tedious enemies that can resurrect themselves after you kill them. 
- The knife is not obscenely powerful like in RGA2 and is treated only as an emergency weapon — a good design choice because spamming the knife (or any infinite-use weapon) is tedious and a game's gameplay systems should not encourage it.
- The mod leaves out Brutal Doom's weapon unload function because picking up fallen weapons to scavenge them for ammo is a tedious gameplay mechanic (for a game like Doom) however realistic it may be. 
- Unlike RGA2 and plenty of newer mods, there is no RPG-like progression system. Such systems are becoming more common in gameplay mods as they become more common in mainstream action games and more accessible for modders to implement but they always have predictable and obvious progression paths. They end up being mere busywork that detracts from the gameplay at best, and gimps the player early-game at worst.

The various design choices found in the mod is evidence that the developer knows what he's doing and wisely avoids the common pitfalls of action gameplay design. Not only is Call of Doom far superior to the Real Guns series of mods, it is also probably the first mega weapon pack mod for Doom that manages to be slick and have fluid inventory and weapons management (even something as straightforward as LegenDoom fails in this regard).

That said, the mod makes the player much more powerful compared to unmodded Doom and the mod may be a bit too easy on most wads or level sets. I recommend playing on the higher difficulty levels for most level sets. If you have a bit of know-how, I recommend going a step further and fine-tuning the difficulty parameters (e.g. amount of damage you receive, monster health) by editing Brutal Doom's MAPINFO file or overriding it with your own. 

Epic,just epic.

I loved this particular mod and want the author to not abandon his project.

Excelent work

All the mod is marvelous, the Nine score is because the muzzle flashes are a bit simple, just a png flash image that contrast with all the great quality of the mod

Such a Realistic mod that i've been waiting for 10 months!

10/10

a-*******-mazing

its good