Voodoo Guns | VG.WAD
Alexander "Eternal" S.
There’s no easy way to start this review in a smooth fashion. I cannot talk about Voodoo Guns, a somewhat obscure two-map Doom mini-episode from longtime community pillar Alexander “Eternal” S., without talking about the culture that made it possible. Strap in. When you have a community like the one that sprung up around Doom, that has remained active for decades, and represents a very international collection of often incredibly creative people, it shouldn’t be a surprise that it develops its own language, its own tropes — and a lot of this is regional. (The fighting game community is like this too — there’s an entire online dictionary that lists regional slang like “California Bursting” and the New York-specific “OD.”) In the 2010s, out of Russia and its Slavic neighbors came the term — and design philosophy — “Russian Realism.”
To explain the concept, Russian Realism eschews the abstract nature of traditional (pre-2005) Doom level design or the more recent (post-2005) trend towards nebulous, deathmatch-influenced ideas of flow and form-over-function architecture to instead focus on creating more realistic spaces that people might conceivably exist in, but with emphasis on creating atmosphere and a sense of dread. Maps in the Russian Realism style often make heavy use of photosourced textures (think the original Max Payne or a lot of the original Deus Ex’s texture set) and blocky architecture to create quasi-realistic looking spaces that don’t always jibe well with the idea that Doom gameplay should put combat first. Perhaps the single best example of this is Lainos’ seminal “Doxylamine Moon,” the second map of the apocalyptic Sacrament by Clan B0S, released in 2011. It was a landmark of survival horror Doom mapping with an entire abandoned city with incidental combat encounters and a bleak atmosphere and storyline. It presented a major departure from traditional Doom gameplay, and as such had as many detractors as it did admirers. Either way it was a big influence on the community, Russian and otherwise.
While the heyday of the style petered out as the 2010s wore on, 2012 was a landmark year for Russian Realism, with releases like 5till L1 Complex (another Lainos release, set in the same universe as Sacrament) and A.L.T. (again by Clan B0S), and of course the subject of this review, Voodoo Guns by Alexander “Eternal” S. And is it ever a weird one.
It’s hard to really describe Voodoo Guns adequately. The best I can do is that it’s a mashup of a bunch of different ideas and themes, the first map seeming to lean heavily towards a quasi-steampunk/art noveau aesthetic in a city full of neoclassical architecture (giving it a somewhat American vibe but with obvious Eastern European gloom) and the second map going full on western ghost town. Steampunk-themed posters are everywhere and both maps have their own unique aesthetics, making heavy use of photosourced textures. Most of the monsters are the same ol’ same ol’ but the zombies have a few new accessories like sunglasses and top hats, and the fliers have been replaced with angry ghosts that spit fireballs at you. The spiderdemon has been replaced by the Doom 64 Cyberdemon, but with new behavior. While the weapons have mostly gotten a visual overhaul, they nevertheless behave mostly the same, albeit with the plasma rifle replaced by a Quake-style nailgun.
My mod loadout this time around was yet again HorrorMovieRei’s excellent Gothic Doom, though placed above Voodoo Guns in the mod list so that the latter could add its monster replacements, and with the Gothic Doom zombies broken out into their own file which was placed after Voodoo Guns. I also used High Noon Drifter because given the theme it felt appropriate, and of course Flashlight++.
Voodoo Guns is intended for source ports with support for the MBF mapping standard and accelerated graphics capabilities — these days, that would be GZDoom, Helion, and DSDA-Doom, though GLBoom+ was also an option back in the day. Instead of MIDI it makes use of .OGG formatted music, so I hope you like Johnny Cash doing the title theme over a picture of an edgy skeleton with a gun — see what I mean about this being a mishmash of themes? It’s really hard to pin down what, if anything, Eternal was trying to do with all this. It feels like he threw together a bunch of stuff he liked — steampunk, westerns, a touch of horror (the default player sprite is Caleb from Blood and you’ll run into a bunch of clones of him in the second map) and somehow made it all work together. The first map, “Dark City,” has you start on a train that drops you off at an empty train station, where you can take in the stunning view from the station’s front entrance before you ride the lift down to the streets, which are deserted save for ghostly figures milling around. You’ll face no opposition for quite some time; it’s only once you get in the lab that you’ll have your first encounters, after which the city suffers an absolute invasion of monsters, including not one but two cyberdemons and several archies. Leaving has you wading down a river, the water making it hard to move — and therefore dodge. There’s a sort of natural bridge between the two maps, as you reach the end of the river and hop on a horse; the second map, “Ghost Village,” follows much the same pattern as before, with you exploring the abandoned ghost town. Once you’ve gotten the silver key, a bunch of cowboys from hell show up, but are easily dispatched. You’ll face a more serious invasion once you’ve gotten down into the haunted mines (which pose some really cool scares) and re-emerged in the sealed church, culminating in a fight with the altered cybie, the death of which opens the exit.
While there are better Russian Realist maps out there, Voodoo Guns is a surreal trip, a dedication to a particularly strange aesthetic that I don’t think has quite stood the test of time — when is this thing even supposed to take place? Despite the presence of all the posters for zombie walks and steampunk cons I kinda pegged it as being in the early 30s, based on the presence of a poster for the film White Zombie. If absolutely nothing else, it’s a decent showcase of the things that interested Eternal in the years since his Epic duology and his participation in Plutonia 2. Would I recommend it to fans of Russian Realism? Hell, I’d recommend it to any Doom fan. Just get ready to feel like you just got smacked in the face by the late 2000s.
get it on /idgames
the term that the Batman: TAS leads used to describe its Gotham, with a mixture of zeppelins and genetic engineering and artificial intelligence, androids, and staggering art deco is "never was" and I think that this term pretty well encompasses the aesthetic of Voodoo Guns.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that's fitting.
Delete