If you're old enough to remember the early 90's then you'll remember the hysteria surrounding the first generation of first person shooter games like Hexen, Wolfenstein or Duke Nukem. For myself there was one that always that stood above the rest. Doom. In the 20 years since it's release it still holds up well, albeit now firmly in the nostalgia section of our mind. I downloaded an emulator for 68k Macintosh computers to relive it again and the experience was good rather than great. That's when I noticed this trailer doing the rounds online...

8 bit graphics have never looked so good

Holy hell. If only we could parcel this version up and send it back in time. It's still the same game, same graphics, same sounds and same music. If you watched that trailer above however, you'll see it's an astonishing improvement over the original version. The destruction of the bodies blown apart by the all new gun range is just one of the many new features to love about this game - and there's quite a few new features to love. The ability to talk, the ability to jump (which will now get you out of those annoying situations where you are trapped in a pit or something), the ability to tear enemies up with your bare hands and even the ability to fly.
Purist of Doom won't be disappointed either as Brutal Doom is quite literally the same game. It requires a program like Zandronum or PrBroom to function and uses the WAD files of the original Doom series. That means the biggest hurdle of getting this game and playing it is finding the original WAD files. I tore my hair out trying to find them as I'm pretty computer illiterate, but when I finally did get the game up and running, I felt embarrassed by how easy it is.

In an era of Minecraft and other games which revert back to the retro look of 8 bit graphics, Brutal Doom fits into this modern trend seamlessly. Looking at it purely from the perspective of the modern gamer in 2014, Brutal Doom is a great game. Playing the original Doom, Doom II or Final Doom has a novelty factor in it and leaves you satisfied having quenched your thirst for nostalgic first person shooter games after about an hour. Brutal Doom does not have such a novelty factor. This game can be enjoyed (immensely I might add) to the teenage gamer or the novice who's never even heard of the series. It's an extremely violent, fun, satisfying variation on the granddaddy of all first person shooter games and it stands up and exceeds more modern varieties of the genre.

Doom has finally been given immortality.

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