GMOTA

 

GMOTA | GMOTA_V.1.5.2.PK3

Combine_Kegan

Screenshot from ZeMystic's Vicarious.

Combine_Kegan is a maker of GZDoom gameplay mods with a repertoire going back a decade. While their catalogue isn't as large as, say, Dr_Cosmobyte over on the ZDoom forums, they've cemented a reputation for fun, 8- and 16-bit-inspired mods with clever pixel art, and that's when they're not contributing to the crazy Bring Your Own Class megamod. Their first mod, initially released all the way back in 2014, would set the tone for their later work: fixated on an older, very Japanese mode of presenting video games, one that wasn't really native to the predominantly western PC gaming scene of the 1990s. GMOTA -- which stands for Go Medieval On Their Asses -- is a GZDoom gameplay mod that effectively turns your Doom into a cybermedieval fantasy arcade beat-'em-up. And it's fun as hell.

GMOTA has two parts to it. The first part is a full replacement of the Doom bestiary with a more fantasy theme: demons and spectres are living armors and hooded, dagger-wielding assassins, imps now carry morningstars and shields, the zombies are now hooded fighters with medieval weaponry, and so on. Generally these replacements are about equal in power to their original counterparts, though the hellfos, which replaces the baron, is an extremely dangerous motherfucker who can take and deal far too much punishment.

The second and main part of the mod is the class selection. As of this writing, GMOTA only has two characters to choose from: a melee-focused knight named Lord Blaz, and what appears to be the Doomslayer in his guise as a gun-toting cyber knight, prior to his interment and later discovery by the UAC of Doom 2016. (That's right, GMOTA did it before Doom: The Dark Ages!) The third character, Kustam, a cyborg knight, has been deactivated for tweaking, and a fourth is in the pipeline for after the upcoming 2.0 release. I only played version 1.5.2 so I can't tell you how Kustam played before his removal.

As you might expect, which character you pick dramatically changes how the game plays. Some things are the same: both characters get a quick melee weapon, as well as a sidearm with some function -- Blaz gets a whip that can pull enemies into range, Doomslayer gets a stun gun -- and both characters get a subweapon that can be changed by grabbing subweapons released by red chests. The subweapons have timers, meaning that if you don't grab them before their candle burns down they're gone forever -- but as long as they're in the chests, they're safe... you just don't know what the subweapon will actually be! But outside of these basic mechanics -- which, incidentally, don't all use the same keys -- the gameplay couldn't be more different between them.

Doomslayer is probably the most familiar, being generally not dissimilar to how Doomguy has traditionally played. Sure, the weapons are a little different (and unfortunately there's no skull-chewing nailgun) but they're generally analogous to what we're used to. Your max ammo is a bit low, forcing you to not rely too heavily on one weapon or the other, but the sword you're also equipped with will cause enemies to drop more ammo, similar to Doom Eternal's gameplay loop.

Screenshot from Björn Ostmann's Castle Nevemore

Doomslayer's weapons are pretty fun. You start off with a sword; it's not the most lethal thing in the world, but you'll always have it both as a primary weapon and as a quick melee weapon -- at least until you grab the sawblade, which takes over as the quick melee weapon of choice. The Morningstar Shotgun looks a lot like the Firemace from Heretic but actually useful, iron balls functioning like scattershot. The Thunderbuss is exactly what it sounds like: a powerful, wide-ranged thunder shotgun. The Hydra Repeater is a pretty standard assault rifle kind of deal, though it doesn't use hitscan. The Wrathcaster is basically a rocket launcher, but its rockets' payload is a screaming ghostly skull that homes in on nearby enemies. The Inferno rifle works a lot like the plasma rifle but with a fire-element theme instead. And lastly, the BFUG -- whatever that stands for -- isn't actually selectable in the #7 slot, but is instead accessed via an assigned "unleasher" key to charge it up, and when firing it, it functions like a combination of a souped-up Unmaker from Doom 64 and the BFG 9000. To actually use it, you'll need to smack around enemies to give it charge, or grab the white gems laying around. (This applies to Blaz's ultimate weapon as well.) Oddly enough, as far as his subweapons go, they're all variants on the dagger -- not the most exciting.

Lord Blaz is a whole different hunk of meat. You're armed with two weapons; the first is your trusty sword, which does decent damage and can be thrown to really put the pain to whatever it hits. If you can grab it again, it's yours to use once more, otherwise it'll teleport back into your hands after a period of time -- and in the meantime you can punch the shit out of everything. The sword can also be charged up by using it, then activated to do extra damage at the cost of charge. Throwing it in this state creates a small explosion, but automatically confers a wait time before it's in your hands again. Your second weapon, in the #2 slot, doesn't actually replace your sword, but rather your subweapon, and is a stun gun that does minor damage but puts enemies into a stun state for a few seconds. Rather than traditional weapons, you get power ups marked by icons. Your chainsaw replacement adds a more powerful finishing slash to your sword combo. The throw booster, in the shotgun slot, makes your sword fly a little straighter and do a little more damage (as far as I can tell.) The power cleave replaces the super shotgun, but I couldn't tell you how exactly it works other than it seems related to the sword's charged up mode. The split shot turns your little stungun into a stun shotgun, handy for those big crowds (honestly a bit of a lifesaver when I played through Mudman!) Stun overload (the rocket launcher replacement) does... something. I'm not entirely sure what. I looked in the files and it was described in the code as "the Overload, which augments [Blaz's] stun shot so he can detonate stun crystals." Now if only I knew what stun crystals were! Anyway... The terror shot strikes fear into enemies, both those you hit with the stungun and anyone nearby, which is again useful for crowd control. The 7th and final powerup is the Fatal Draw, which functions exactly like some anime bullshit: upon pressing the unleasher button, your sword is sheathed, Blaz makes some Dragon Ball Z-style powering-up noises, and when you hit the fire button, he quick-draws the sword for a powerful attack that can take out multiple boss enemies at once. It's stupid and awesome.

Blaz's subweapons meanwhile hit all the classic Castlevania and Ghosts n' Goblins tropes: axes that fly in an arc, holy water for area denial, a jousting lance that flies in a straight line and eventually becomes electrified if it flies far enough (the subsequent area damage effect making it a decent de facto rocket launcher) and so on. What's interesting is that the specific keys for all of Blaz's stuff are different from the Slayer's -- for the Slayer, the alt-fire key swings the sword as a quick melee weapon, and reload key (as set in GZDoom) is for subweapons. For Blaz, reload charges up the sword, and alt-fire is for your subweapons (provided you don't have the stungun out.)

As you probably can guess, playing as Blaz is a wholly different experience. Rather than a straightforward shooter, Blaz turns the game into a first person melee game; your ranged abilities are rather limited and mostly confined to your subweapons (and which subweapons actually spawn seem to be pre-selected? when I was playing, typically only three types would spawn in a given map.) As such combat requires some getting used to, having its own peculiar rhythm that requires more strategic thinking and full use of your gear. To again talk about Mudman, I found myself using the boomerang, as while it didn't really do much to actually harm enemies, stunning large crowds was an absolute godsend -- the ideal subweapon for slaughtermaps. (Oh, and if you want to keep your subweapon, you can set a keybind to lock it.)

Screenshot from eater29's Mudman.

Aesthetically Blaz has got a bit of a Super Nintendo vibe to Slayer's more straightforward 90s PC shooter aesthetic; from what I've seen, Kustam takes on a more NES-flavored conceit, with his overwhelmingly purple color-scheme evoking the more simple sprites of the 8-bit era. This carries over into the music system, with Blaz (and Kustam, if he ever comes back) having a selection of random old SNES and NES tunes, mostly from RPGs (hell, the mod's title screen music is a track from Brainlord!) Slayer, meanwhile, has no custom music to call his own -- rather, he uses the default music that comes with whatever wad you've got running.

Even the items have gotten an overhaul. I'm pretty sure I recognize the bread item (replacing the stimpack) from Minecraft, and when you eat the Castlevania-style hunk of meat (the medkit replacement) a bone goes flying over your shoulder. Most everything functions as it should with some slight tweaks here and there, though there's an option for the strength ring to either boost your health to 100 (like the berserk pack does) or give you +50 HP with overheal. The soulsphere is replaced by a large hamburger, with the pickup sound being the "WHOA! BIG!" sample from Metal Slug, a fact that gives me endless amusement. And the megasphere is a yashichi -- very cute.

I had fun playing GMOTA. While Blaz makes for a very tough learning curve, in the right hands and on the right map even a slaughtermap is no match for the knight. And Slayer is just a hoot -- if nothing else I find it really amusing that Kegan had the idea for this before id Software did. Version 1.5.2 came out early 2023, and while Kustam was promised to return that year, he never did. Kegan says work continues on GMOTA, with a dev diary released on Youtube back in March of this year. Honestly, I'm fine waiting -- between all the other mods Kegan is working on, plus the upcoming BUDD, Kegan's got a lot on their plate! But I have faith that the wait will be worth it.

Get it on itch.io

-June <3

There's something in your soul that makes me feel so old
In fact I think I've died about six hundred times
There's less of me now and more of me then
I'm moving back to the age of men