DOOMBRINGER E1 Early Access Playthrough
4This isn't Doom-based like the other early access titles I'm playing this summer, but it has Doom in the name; close enough.
It's been years since I bought this; it'll probably also be years before it's fully completed, at the rate it's going, so I might as well check out E1 now. (Rest assured E2 has progressed and in the hands of playtesters, according to one of the E1 level designers, who visited the stream during my playthrough.)
Doombringer is based on Quake (Darkplaces, if I'm not mistaken), but you'll have a hard time telling, because not only does it have a full-blown fresh coat of steampunk paint, it also has movement far more reminiscent of some Quake III Arena mods. It also has Heretic door noises, which I have a hard time taking seriously in any other game, even if they aren't unreasonable in this context.
Something about the style of the graphics and animation and gunplay in this give me Doom 3 vibes - which isn't a bad thing, because honestly it incorporates only some of the more satisfying parts of Doom 3 (read: not the screenshake). If you manage to find the secret level in E1, you'll find some other Doom references as well, including in the soundtrack.
The soundtrack overall is another excellent showing by our good friend PRIMEVAL, featuring a combination of Quake II, Doom, and Unreal vibes. You can find it on his bandcamp: https://johnsweekley.bandcamp.com/alb...
My playthrough was not without issue, as I felt a couple of the levels give players enough rope to hang themselves, there are occasionally excessively dark corners or entire rooms, and enemies can kill you in just a few hits on medium difficulty once your armor is gone. The game also managed to hang my Linux installation at one point by running it out of memory (I have 16GB of RAM). In terms of the gunplay, my one complaint is about the grenade launcher - which would be more aptly referred to as a grenade pooper given its abysmal trajectory. Why mess with what worked in basically every Quake game?!
Overall though, I appreciate Doombringer from the perspective of someone who always wished Quake III Arena had a legitimate single-player campaign. I'll be very curious to see how E2 shapes up, since it sounds like it involves some different level designers on board than E1.
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