Psychic (XA-PSYCH.PK3)

PSYCHIC

by Xaser Acheron

My reintroduction to Doom is tangentially related to Psychic. A friend gifted me a Something Awful account back in '09 and one of the forums that I gravitated toward was the Let's Play forums. They had a Doom mods thread going on at the time and I think that they were playing a combination of Psychic with B.P.R.D.'s Equinox. I saw so much cool stuff going on with Doom (my previous dips in user-created content being limited to whatever I found on my Dad's Doom 1 & 2 Collection shovelware CD as well as Kaiser's Doom 64: Absolution TC) that I wanted to dive right in. Of course, if you're a long-time reader you know that I don't spend a lot of time playing gameplay mods, but fourteen years to finally load up Xaser's Psychic seems, in retrospect, a bit excessive. At least I had planned it out back in 2019 to play it after The Abyss! That's got to count for something, right?

Russian Overkill (RO_PB_2.5.PK3)

RUSSIAN OVERKILL

by "Pillowblaster"

Gameplay mods are wicked cool things. I don't use them when I play PWADs for review because I prefer to explore the way in which authors balanced their levels. There is something cathartic, though, in blowing through super-tough mapsets that consumed hours of my life (e.g. Sunlust) with a heinously overpowered weapons mod. Enter Russian Overkill. This GZDoom institution was originally released in 2011 and saw several feature updates until 2013, after which it undergoes the occasional under-the-hood retuning. Pillowblaster received 2012's Best Gameplay Mod Cacoward due in part to the convergence of two community developments as well as the mod's specific style.

Samsara (SAMSARA-V0.3666-BETA.PK3)

Samsara allows you to play as a formidable complement of classic FPS heroes and either duke it out in deathmatch or slay monsters alone and in co-op. The intent was to provide something like Marvel vs. Capcom for Zandronum. Term eventually discontinued development when he moved on to a new project to drive all the Doom players crazy - Demonsteele - but Kinsie of Reelism fame eventually took up maintenance of the mod so that you can use the same package in both GZDoom and Zandronum just as easily as you can use all of the heroes in any of the idtech1-derived games.

Idle Doom: Tech Breakthrough (IDLEDOOM.WAD)

IDLE DOOM

TECH BREAKTHROUGH

by "Albertoni"

I've "played" a few idle games. Cookie Clicker was my first but I've also enjoyed the depth of Realm Grinder and Clicker Heroes. If you've never played one then you're not missing out on much. The ultimate objective is to earn more of the game's currency. The process never really ends but idlers tend to have some sort of prestige mechanic where you can reset your progress for long-term benefits that accrue over time so you can have days of milestones to reach. This helps to keep at least one carrot on a stick in front of the player at all times. Idle Doom is an interesting experiment that explores the very basic mechanics behind these clicker games within the framework of ZDoom. There's at least one significant difference: you can actually reach an end.

Doom 2 Minor Sprite Fixing Project (SPRFIX19.ZIP)

DOOM 2 MINOR

SPRITE FIXING

PROJECT

by "Revenant100"

id kickstarted a legendary legacy of user-created content, all built on a set of rock solid assets. Plenty of people not satisfied with Doom's lo-res aesthetic have tried their hand at trying to re-make the textures and sprites to something more pleasing to them, with the latter typically resulting in unintentionally hilarious 3D models or painstakingly smudged upscales. I initially thought the original look to be pixel perfect but over the years I've noticed a handful of imperfections only to simply accept them as the quirks of doing business. Enter the Doom 2 Minor Sprite Fixing Project, a deep dive of the base resources. Revenant100 corrects these very issues as well as a host of things that casual - perhaps MOST - players have probably never noticed.

The Ranger (13ZD-RGR.WAD)

THE RANGER
by "TerminusEst13"

TerminusEst13 has taken Doom's modding scene by storm with stuff like Samsara, DemonSteele, and Push. The Ranger was his first release, published in 2011 for ZDoom and Skulltag. It's a new character for Hexen, and an attempt at bringing something of gunpowder tech to a familiar fantasy setting. The Ranger doesn't change any of the core conceits of Hexen's gameplay; none of the enemy behavior has been touched. Any alterations to item behavior are just additions to cover what the Icon and Flechette do when wielded by the formidable Ranger, which isn't just understandable - it's to be expected.

Chaos, Uprising (RSLCHAOS.PK3)

CHAOS, UPRISING
by "Richard Smith Long"

It's time to settle down, and where would any weary inter-dimensional traveler rest his or her laurels but at Parthoris? Once Corvus slew the serpent rider and fixed that business with the insane Seraph, trouble was all but forgotten, and technology and magic was free to advance with the inexorable march of time. That's why "The Newcomer" picked the Sidhe homeworld, anyway. Pity that all good things must come to an end. After only a couple years of retirement, a horrible plague engineered by the rejuvenated Serpent Cult grips Parthoris, and your happy ass is the only one that can stop them. Maybe the combined forces of science and magic can put an end to this bullshit once and for all.

Zen Dynamics (ZENDYN_X.WAD)

I don't know much about the progression of the ZDoom modding scene. I do know that early works like Tei Tenga and Hell Factory are lauded as being watersheds of things like hubmaps and cutscenes, and I also know that Xaser's Zen Dynamics is heralded as the progenitor of most modern weapon mods in one way or another. Released in 2005 (with an update in 2006 making some major changes and adding a level), Xaser replaced every weapon in the Doom arsenal and added a few more just to give you something to think about as well as threw in a ton of new enemies for you to ponder on. At a modest ten maps, you get something of the feel of how these things change gameplay, as well as what the ZDoom engine was capable of at the time.

Fractal Doom (FD_ZD_V0.2.4B.WAD)

Fractal Doom is... interesting. It's an unusual gameplay mod from Doomworld Forum superstar Scroton that debuted in 2013. I'm reviewing the ZDoom version at rev 0.2.4b, so I expect this summary to become eventually outdated. I like surprises, though! Fractal Doom is rooted on the concept of fractals, something I'm completely unqualified to discuss. You might be familiar with fractal imagery, where a large pattern is iterated upon by itself on a smaller and smaller scale, creating wonderful, complex imagery. This is the crux of Fractal Doom, played out in enemy and weapon behavior. This review documents a snapshot of the 0.2.4b release for ZDoom, so if something is different, it's Zrev modding.

Reelism (REELISM-X2.1_.pk7)

REELISM
by "The Kins" and "300 Pounds"

Reelism has been around awhile (released right around Christmas in 2011) and has had two "expansion packs" since its initial release, with more potentially on the way. Which brings up an important question. What is Reelism? Well, The Kins started it, and has since added the talents of a handful of contributors in various aspects of its design. It's a spinoff of "invasion"-style gameplay, something I'm not familiar with outside of as it's carefully choreographed in regular PWADs. Reelism is my first proper experience with this dedicated mode of play. If you didn't already know, invasion mods involve throwing monsters at the player in waves. Reelism spices things up with irreverent semi-randomness provided through its major hook, triads of wave elements dictated to the player through slot reels. It doesn't necessarily require the Doom II IWADs (Doom II, Evilution, Plutonia), but if you don't use them, you're going to be seeing some checkerboard nightmares.