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Doom At 30: Siren is a great intro to the hellish world of Doom total conversionsThese aren’t your granddaddy’s Imps
These aren’t your granddaddy’s Imps
Image credit:Dithered Output
Image credit:Dithered Output
There are as manyDoom modsas there are stars in the sky: jillions of accursed celestial bodies orbiting the supermassive black hole that is id Software, each infested with its own local flavours of cacodemons and keycards and shotguns. I’ve played just a handful - certainly, far from enough to pronounce myself any kind of expert - but I do feel like I’ve played one of the best in the shape of Siren, aDoom IItotal conversion from Dithered Output, the first episode of which can be downloaded free fromItch.io.
Doom Mod: ‘Siren’ v0.85 - Campaign Demo UpdateWatch on YouTube
Doom Mod: ‘Siren’ v0.85 - Campaign Demo Update
The mutants are really awful. They are not a fun time. The initial crop of zombies are easy enough to put down, but after that you get Imp equivalents that move like xenomorphs, scuttling across the ceiling when they’re not hurling fireballs. Thankfully, you’re pretty agile yourself, equipped with aQuake-esque jump and a mantling move.
Image credit:Dithered Output
Then there’s the titular Siren. I don’t want to give too much away about the Siren, but suffice to say that if you hear the scratching of a thousand insect claws on the other side of a door, you should avoid opening it, and if you see smoke at the far end of a corridor, you should run. There are ways of dealing with the Siren, but so far, they don’t involve bullets. Fortunately, the entity is as much of a threat to certain other denizens of the Redark as the player.
If the hazards are a handful, Siren’s major hook is the setting itself. I realise that’s what critics always say about sci-fihorror gamesin the Alien tradition, so let’s be slightly more specific: the Redark is both a convincingly wrought and storied environment, and an interesting cross-section ofFPSinfluences. There’s the classic Doom loop of finding keycards and secret areas, but the layouts and interior design also evokeDead Spacein forming a coherent workplace, made up of areas such as loading bays, fuel storage and control centres with terminals that bestow hints.
The aesthetics blend the original Doom’s gunky pixels with latter-day flourishes such as CCTV displays that point you towards a new discovery in a previously visited area. The weapons, including pistols, shotguns and pulse rifles, are beautiful creations with similar modern touches. You can aim down the sights - the rifle has a holo visor, though I find it too unwieldy to use - and when you reload, you hear the discarded clip rattle across the floor, which is one of those disposable grace notes that somehow pins the whole experience together.
Image credit:Dithered Output
Siren isn’t one of your fancy avant garde mods, likeSky May Be. It’s just a very well-put-together horror shooter that both celebrates a 30-year-old FPS template, and grafts ideas onto it from successor titles and broader works of sci-fi. Mind you, it does have the capacity to get weirder. The incidental writing puts me a little in mind ofSignalis, in that there’s clearly some larger philosophical conceit at stake. I’m hoping that the Redark’s lower levels will house twists and revelations that carry Siren beyond its debts to Scott and Giger.
For the moment, the first episode is a great introduction tothe wider world of Doom total conversions, demonstrating both why Doom has aged so well and how much it can be altered while still being basically Doom. There’s no 1.0 release date yet, but if recent triple-Ahauntedspacehouseescapadeshave left you cold, Siren’s first maps could be what you’re hungering for this yuletide.
