It is the year of our Dark Lord 2020, and Doom and Doom 2, the FPS games that defined much of what the genre would become, have just received a new update.
According to the patch notes, quite a few additions and tweaks have been made, across “QOL improvements, performance optimisation, and more”. The first in the list is Steam support, and confirmed that owners of Ultimate Doom and Doom 2 on Steam will automatically get the new re-releases. The original DOS versions are still on your drive, but the latest iterations will be what automatically boots now. The post also warns that any mods tied to the Steam folder might be affected, and that you shouldn’t mod through the Steam game folder directly.
Widesreen support – 16:9 without letterboxing – has been added, and so has gyro aim, and an optional crosshair that changes colour when on an enemy that can be turned off in the options menu. Another new mode too, Ultra-Violence+, which makes enemies as fast as in Nightmare mode, and the only weapons are from deathmatch/co-op. So, in Doom 2, you’ll start with the BFG and rocket launcher, which is great, but then in Final Doom: Plutonia, Spider Mastermind will be right on you as you spawn, which is terrifying. It brings another layer of chaos to the old PC games.
Many smaller changes and fixes have been made, from re-introducing cut content like an ouch face, to making sure voices and pickup sounds don’t interrupt weapon noises. Nightmare mode enemies will move just like the 1993 version. Speedrunners will be glad to hear milliseconds have been added to the timer, for more accurate record-setting, and Doom 2 now comes packaged with both episodes of the Back to Saturn X fangame.
On the other end of the Doom chronology, this year’s Doom Eternal had its first DLC announced, The Ancient God, Part One, and we spoke to id Software about how it was crafted around player expectation. A Doom Eternal mod is adding Horde Mode, and Matt Heafy of the band Trivium redid Doom’s classic E1M1 for QuakeCon, to bring the soundtrack fully up to date.