Part of it is the subtly different palette mingled with the equally subtle but absolutely exquisite lighting.īut a lot of it is the journey itself. Part of it is the way the mapset uses the most advanced Boom features and surprising faux-3D mapping tricks to make the game feel like it’s not quite Doom anymore. Part of it is the sinister, unidentifiable ambient soundtrack creeping under your skin. The word you’re looking for is “eldritch,” of course – and DotB manages it without throwing a single tentacle at you. If you don’t play Quake, what you’ll notice is the feeling that everything is subtly, cosmically wrong, a feeling like the crumbled civilizations you crawl through and the horrors you face are just the equivalent of a tiny rat-maze that you’re trapped in as the entire universe teeters around you. If you play a lot of Quake, the first thing you’ll notice is that DotB is a dead ringer. You think blithely to yourself, “Ah, another 20-foot tower of flesh and metal with a rocket launcher for an arm maybe I can lead it across this canyon made of intestines to help me dispose of the hundred screaming murderskeletons over there.”ĭimension of the Boomed is seriously creepy, though. If you’ve been playing Doom for a long time, chances are there’s little to be found in its cartoony world that you find genuinely unsettling anymore. But the love and commitment to fleshing it out, to exploring qualities any given player is unlikely to notice or truly appreciate on their first playthrough, is what lifts it to this higher plane of being. The main concept is compelling enough, the execution ornamented with enough comic flair, that Preacher would be memorable with a quarter of the depth. Darch, to this date most well known for 2013's whimsical GZDoom TC Pirate Doom (yes, that is him too), is a refreshing case of a creator who is not only playful but also committed to roundedness in more fundamental areas. Item pickups such as Jesus spheres, prayer itself appearing in weaponized form, and the ever-present cackling of our hero as ambiance - I won't spoil it all - are just the tip of the funeral pyre. Make no mistake, this is also a silly wad. There is enough atmosphere that it certainly couldn't be thrown in an old pine box and expected to stay put! I was taken by how so many levels, despite the necessary abstraction of their floorplans, could realistically be an actual place. Every map holds its own architectural and sensory delights: elegantly coiffured facades, breathtakingly imposing towers, the warm red glow of demonic aura, creepy pools of shadow you'd think just have to be packed with spiders, and so on. The core assets are cobbled together from diverse sources, but they share a similar grainy feel that places them at home under the same steeple. A number of design elements work to that end, notably: pseudo-randomized player spawn spots intricate and terraced layouts open paths and dynamic architecture for fluid monster pathing and a helter-skelter placement of mobs that throws any semblance of order and reliability to the wayside in favor of more primal thrills. Above all, Preacher sets out to create a chaotic experience, one where you are given all the raw tools to enjoy yourself but not sermonized on exactly how. That quest is destined to be a bloody and messy one. If, of course, the power of Christ compels him. Staged in a moody, dour, vaguely phantasmagorical world - visiting such locales as decrepit gothic bastions, old West fortifications, nightmare noir realms, and magisterial theaters of violence - it can be interpreted as the quest of a theomaniacal undead cultist to expunge the foul-breathed demons and all that is unholy from his private realm. Preacher is a self-described musical conversion, built around tracks kindly authorized for use by gothic metal band Those Poor Bastards.
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