On memorial day my girlfriend and I decided to try out Brutal Doom in co-op, and wound up playing till 2:30am.
FYI we had major problems trying to network with the GZDoom version. If you think you might want to do multiplayer at all, I'd highly advise just going with Skulltag. The GZdoom build does look
slightly better, but not enough to make it worth suffering through the netcode. By E1M2 we were permanently desynced every single time.
I probably speak for a lot of people when I say this... As a kid I used to imagine all sorts of scenes and encounters in Doom that weren't remotely possible in-game. As I grew older, I eventually realized the limitations of the game and gave up on those things ever happening. However, in just a week with Brutal Doom, many of those things have finally unfolded as part of its emergent gameplay.
At one point midway through Doom 1's second episode, we passed by this super dark area, where we were attacked and opened fire until everything stopped moving. Then after proceeding for 20 minutes we got stuck and eventually wandered back to see if we missed a door. Given that we'd already shot the place up and nothing was attacking us, we just assumed the room was clear. So I stood there idly studying the automap for a good 1-2 seconds of utter silence, when I was spontaneously eviscerated! Somehow when we killed everyone else in the room, an imp had decided to hide in a dark corner rather than walking straight at us chucking fireballs, and when we came back, he had to have snuck up with deliberate stealth in order to get into fatality range without being shot (it was utterly silent before I died).
The game essentially punishes you for carelessness the same way horror movies kill off their disposable characters, keeping you on your toes. At one point my girlfriend forgot to look both ways when crossing a door, and a Hell Baron suddenly grabbed her from behind and tore her arms off. Another time I made a sloppy berserk rush against a mob of pinkies; I was eaten alive.
At one point late in Doom 1 we suddenly heard demons being killed by plasma fire in the next room. "Wait, was that you?" "No, I was right here, and I had the chaingun." A few moments later, we encountered a 3rd Doom marine wandering the map killing baddies. It was so surprising, I started to consider the extreme unlikelihood of someone else in our apartment complex just happening to be a pc gamer, just happening to be an active Skulltag player, just happening to jump on the unencrypted wireless router we use for LAN play, notice the game running on Doomseeker, and joining up. However, later in the game I found another live marine tied to a post when I went in a secret room to grab ammo. After cutting him free with the chainsaw, he followed us around covering our six until we were eventually separated; obviously NPC AI allies are just a designed part of Brutal Doom's gameplay.
Extended playtime with this mod has made me appreciate the AI upgrades as much as the weapons. Don't let the sophomoric gore deter you from what is a great enhancement to Doom's core gameplay. The zombies weapons actually do proper damage, and they shoot like they're trying to kill you. The imps have leaping claw attacks, often send them through windows and over ledges to hit you from unexpected places. Cacodemons will make sudden strafing movements to avoid fire, Barons will chuck 3 fireballs at once, and rapid fire from a chaingun guy, cyberdemon, or mastermind, is utterly devastating. The game is just a hell of a lot more fun, I almost can't imagine going back to vanilla Doom's gameplay, and I wish there was a version for Doom 3.
The funny thing is, compared to all those "improved textures" and model replacements, the original Doom artwork still looks so much better.
Well, the replacement models are definitely awful, and in the past the high res textures have been pretty spotty, I do think Jdoom provides a pretty significant graphical improvement today. Grab the high res menu addon, the 3d skyboxes, the latest high res textures, Doom 64 sprite pack, PSX music wad, turn the gamma down a bit to give the dynamic lights a bit more prominence, run it at 1080p, and you're rolling.
On that note, I always found it funny when people slammed Doom 64 for using sprites rather than "true 3D" enemy models. If you ask me, those sprites have aged much better than the blocky lego-esque abortions of most 3D games in that era.
