Doom 2 Bloodshot

The story I am about to tell you is not exactly anything special, it is merely just a note of a peculiar event that happened to me roughly about a month or two ago.

If I'm correct in my saying so, a vast majority of us PC gamers will remember a brilliant game franchise called Doom. Many people like me who have played this iconic game series for a long time will also know much of the intensive modding community that has so far followed these games for the best part of two decades. Recently I came upon a particular mod for Doom 2 called "BloodShot" Which as it happens, is the mod that I will be talking about here.

I was first introduced to Doom at quite a young age, beginning with the 1995 PSX port of the game. I thought that Doom was by far the best thing that the expansive world of video games had to offer me, however bearing in mind that I was only a child at the time. The extreme gore, guns, monsters and extensive violence was definitely the highlight of my childhood days. I had no nightmares from it but I dreamed of the game quite a lot. Picturing myself alone in a maze as an adult, killing the imps and zombiemen with my two favorite weapons of all time, the double barreled shotty and the chainsaw. Of course, my mother wasn't exactly happy about the idea but I didn't care in the slightest what she thought about it. I just really loved that game. Little did I know that it would spark a slight obsession that still rages on to this day. Remember what the Doom 2 PC box says on the back? "Let the obsession begin, again!" With me, it never left and my lust for pixel-perfect gore remaining forever constant.

Now sixteen years later, I find myself downloading WADs and PK3s to refresh my Doom experience, my all time favorite being brutal doom, for obvious reasons. Downloading these mods allows me to bring new dimensions and gameplay aspects to the series I love most, that even being a massive innovation for the PC first-person shooter genre, would probably have faded with the times without this large community and cult following. Whilst browsing Doom WAD Station for new material I happened across the very file that this story bears it's title from. I found something interesting straight away in the fact that the comments had somehow been disabled for the mod, probably enforced by the creator in fear that the mod that he or she created would attract some negative feedback. Brushing aside the thoughts of why the comments would be disabled, I clicked on the download link eagerly as I awaited the possible new experience that lay ahead of me. The file was 234 megabytes in size so I left the room for a moment to have myself a smoke while the mod downloaded using my ungodly slow internet connection.

After a few well enjoyed cigarettes, the zdoom IWAD selection menu was showing on my screen. I found this strange but not before I considered the possibility that due to my eagerness, I may have chosen to open the file instead of just saving it to my computer. Clicking on Doom2 I had a brief moments loading to endure before I was greeted by an elegantly designed menu screen, oddly mesmerizing and attractive MP3 music played in the background while I selected new game and my usual difficulty, which was always Ultra Violence, thus beginning my adventure. I found myself in a small hallway hearing nothing but eerie ambient noise along with the moans and anguish cries of what I suspected to be new monsters roaming the corridors behind the many doors ahead of me. I decided to take the door situated up the stairs on the left first. I opened the door which, to my surprise opened outward and away from my character. I thought this was amazing for a Doom mod as most of the doors you find open upwards. Walking along the corridor I was welcomed half way with a drowned sounding groan from my first new monster. A man with his neck twisted upside down, arms outstretched was walking shakily towards me, blood appearing to seep from his exposed eye sockets. This was great to see in a mod as the Doom franchise is well esteemed for it's high levels of gore and diverse library of monsters. My only weapon was a revolver with 12 bullets. After firing a few rounds, the monster let out an almost speaker shattering scream as it fell to the floor, twitching and writhing around before it stopped moving completely.

I quickly and easily progressed through the first 3 levels, thinking that I had found a new favorite Doom mod albeit to me seeming easier than I had expected. Along the way I encountered a variety of new monsters, one more notable of which was a variation of the archvile called the soulscorcher. It was a blackened, charred mess of a monster that, as far as I could tell from the lower resolution had a few bones protruding from various gashes in it's body, intestines trailing along the floor as it walked slowly towards my character, leaving a rather impressive trail of blood in it's wake. The scream it made as it used a fire attack was a genuinely chilling sound to hear. Despite it's obvious weak points, the monster was unrelenting in it's attacks and very difficult to dispose of.

My thoughts of this mod being somewhat too easy rapidly changed course once I reached the fourth level of the game, whereupon I was stopped from moving after my first step as line of large text appeared across the middle of the screen that read "If you thought for one second that this was too easy, then think again... I'm only just beginning to have my fun with you." After the line of text disappeared, a loud screeching laugh was heard and the screen flashed from blue to green and finally to red. Once the original game screen returned, the beautifully designed mansion like textures that the game had presented to me in the preceding levels slowly melted away and burned up into a dirty, bloody and dilapidated shadow of what was once the mansion I had explored. Curiously I continued onward to the first room, slowly opening the door to a long rusty sounding creak. What I had read from the text had most certainly came true. The difficulty of the level drastically increased the second I entered the door, which slammed shut behind me. I was instantly swarmed by screaming entities and monsters that on more than one occasion had almost killed me, they would have succeeded aswell if I hadn't found myself an MP40 on the second level. Another oddity that soon caught my eye was that a lives counter had now replaced my armor. The worrying fact was that it simply read "lives 1" Trying to save, I then realized that I only had one chance to beat this game as the save function seemed to have been permanently disabled.

My thoughts turning slightly unnerved, I moved cautiously through the level, trying my hardest not to lose the one life that I had been holding onto so dearly. This game had me looking around every corner and in every doorway before moving anywhere whatsoever. After killing a few hordes of monsters, I eventually ended up in a long, dimly lit corridor that had hideous looking bodies in cages decorating the walls. Walking just a mere few yards down the corridor, my steps were interrupted by another text box, this time reading "Haven't I showed you enough yet? Don't you want to turn back, escape this nightmare?" My initial thoughts rested on no but at this point I was actually getting quite nervous as the corridor was becoming darker and it's grim atmosphere being haunted by strange, unsettling ambient noises and faint screaming. I was amazed at this as I had never been even slightly fazed by a Doom mod before. After the text disappeared, the ambiance faded out and was replaced by a hauntingly beautiful piece of music. The track that was softly playing as I walked down the corridor sent me into a false sense of security, I was feeling more confident somewhat due to the relaxing nature of the sound that I could hear emanating from my speakers. After a minute or so of walking down the seemingly never ending corridor, I noticed that the music I had so far been using as a comfort device had considerably slowed down from the serene melody that I had originally been hearing to an almost inaudible, low pitched droll that slammed my once lost nervousness back in it's place.

The colors of the textures began to distort and shift as a glowing hole in the floor started to become gradually visible through the receding blanket of darkness that I had traveled through for what seemed like an eternity. As I walked closer to the hole the screams returned, louder this time until the buzz of what was once the music was completely drowned out by sounds of pure agony. The colors became even more distorted as another piece of text blocked my path, this time accompanied by the hoarse remnants of a woman's voice. "I tried to show you... Maybe you will see better once you become blind? So be it..." I was truly scared by this, I was wondering what the woman could have meant by saying that I would become blind. The pattern of the shifting colors became more intense and it quickly made me so dizzy that I couldn't even move to turn off the computer or the game. A screech followed by a high frequency noise resounded off my walls as the text faded out and my character was slowly drawn towards the hole in the ground, completely out of my control. Drawing nearer, the screaming became almost deafening to me as my dizziness made my hearing very sensitive while the colors shifted faster. I had to try and turn down my speakers but couldn't as I was still unable to move.

The end level screen briefly showed with the words "Entering. The End" But before I could read the rest of the text, the next level began. My body remained paralyzed from the dizziness I still felt, completely unable to avert my gaze from the computer screen. The heads up display had been removed so I could see all of what this game was trying to show me. My character walked slowly forward through a tunnel of swirling dark and light colors, and the only sounds that I could hear was the screaming accompanied by that crippling High pitch noise. The woman's harsh voice echoed as the colors that I was forced to see hypnotized me. "I told you to go back but you didn't listen to me. Now you shall see what fear really is!" The woman screamed, coursing through my head as I fell slowly and painfully into a trance that I had absolutely no power to stop.

I snapped awake on my floor, breathing heavily and sweating profusely. I asked myself out loud if what I had just witnessed was a nightmare. I gasped in fear at what I saw on my computer screen. There on my computer was BloodShot. I jumped over to my computer and mashed ALT and F4 repeatedly, nothing happened. I ripped my PC plug out of the wall but yet again, nothing. I panicked, asking myself frantically what was going on, as it was the only question that was playing on my mind. The dreaded voice of the woman resounding off the walls as she screamed "NOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT FEAR IS?!" I started screaming out loud, begging her to stop as I definitely knew now what fear was. I looked over at my ominously flickering computer screen and saw a horde of the monsters from the game crawling out of my screen. My windows grew darker and my door locked itself before I could escape. The monsters proceeded to surround me, clawing at my skin as if they were trying to tear it from my body. One of the men with the twisted necks crawled out of my mirror, knocking it to the ground and shattering it into many pieces. All I could hear was the monsters groans and the hysterical laughter of the woman who had done all this to me. I couldn't even hear my own agonized screams as the creatures ripped me apart. A shard of glass landed just in line with my face against the cabinet by the wall. The last thing that I saw was my eyes, streaming furiously with crimson tears. I blacked out, blinded by fear.

I screamed, terrified as I opened my eyes to find myself yet again on my floor, in a pool of sweat. This time my computer was off with the plug pulled out of the socket, missing one of the pins. My head splitting, I slowly and shakily got up and walked over to my computer, hoping it would still power up with only 2 of the 3 pins left and luckily, the PC booted up. Once my PC loaded into Windows, I nervously checked my Doom mod folder to find out whether BloodShot was still there. Sure enough there was BloodShots' PK3 file still intact. I suddenly remembered that the mod used a mixture of high frequency binaural tones and swirling distorted colors to cause what I figured was a severe trance induced nightmare, that creepy woman's voice didn't help one bit. I pondered to myself what sort of freaksack would create something that can cause a trance in such a dangerous way. Moving the file over to my played mods folder. I decided it would be best for me to leave it there just to make sure I didn't forget the name and download it again. I'll still download and play Doom mods but next time I'll only play the ones that have comments enabled. I felt really thirsty so I went through to the bathroom to get a glass of water. I was extremely tired because of everything that happened so after my drink I looked into my mirror, I was so tired in fact that my eyes were bloodshot.