Earlier this month, a remastered update to DOOM + DOOM II came out. Though it lacks some features in many existing source ports of the game, it’s a technical achievement and a marked improvement over the Unity port. It comes packed with tons of new stuff, but overwhelmingly the best part is Legacy of Rust, the first real DOOM expansion in years. Legacy of Rust is not only a fantastic addition on its own; it also features one of my favorite pieces of game music of all time.
It is worth briefly going over the mostly good and few rough spots of Nightdive Studios’ work on DOOM + DOOM II. Done in Nightdive’s Kex engine, the game is better than the previous official release it replaces, particularly for consoles. The new port adds multiplayer and coop support, deathmatch, a fantastic vault, an improved soundtrack thanks to Andrew Hulshult, and improved 4k and 120fps rendering on most modern platforms. Digital Foundry has a fantastic breakdown of this in their technical analysis.
The port also allows for BOOM and MBF21 compatible WADs to be played, although you cannot play the YouTube infamous MyHouse.wad or anything else created around GZdoom (in fact, it will crash anything uploaded that relies on GZdoom). This is reasonable, as GZdoom is very complex and basically its own thing at this point. That said, there are some notable issues that need ironing out. Players have noted slight movement differences with the game, but the actual mod section of the game is the part I personally struggled with the most. Aside from being a content free-for-all, allowing players to upload whatever incompatible or problematic content they want without attribution, it’s just a nightmare to sort through. It’s a slightly sloppy part of an otherwise meticulous update, and I hope that it is updated soon.
What Nightdive has achieved in this version of DOOM + DOOM II is massively impressive. But the real star of the show is the newest expansion: Legacy of Rust, a collaboration between id Software, Nightdive Studios, and MachineGames. It is a synthesis of what the previous DOOM games were and what the DOOM community has made over the decades. It features new weapons and enemies, some of which were pulled from cut content in the original games. Dominic Tarason has a fantastic writeup of it at PC Gamer. There is a real sense of modernity to the design, a synthesis that is hard to articulate without seeing it in action.
Though many hands were involved in Legacy of Rust’s creation, it is worth highlighting Xaser Acheron, who spearheaded the project, works at Nightdive, created many of the levels, and wrote Legacy of Rust’s soundtrack. Xaser is a DOOM virtuoso, working on WADs for decades. You only need to look at his extensive output, in particular completely transformative mods like Psychic. Nightdive itself has many staffers plucked from the Doomworld forums, but if anyone is going to make an officially-sanctioned DOOM expansion, Xaser is a perfect person to lead it.
This brings us to the soundtrack. Every song in Legacy of Rust is either appropriate to DOOM, idiosyncratic in its orchestration, or just a stone cold heater. The tracks “Tactical Blasphemy,” “Cliff Diver,” and “March of the Vespers” in particular are all unbelievable bangers. These compositions are among some of my favorites in any DOOM game, beautifully intricate and symphonic. But in the entire soundtrack, the track “The Shores of Heaven,” which plays in the second map “Sanguine Wastes,” takes the cake. I rank it not only equal to the original DOOM soundtrack, but among my favorite chiptune tracks period. It’s in the same tier as the Robocop title theme by OCEAN Software and demoscene tracks like “Funky Stars” by Quazar.
Legacy of Rust’s first level, “Scar’s Gate,” is fairly routine by DOOM standards, something old to ease the player in. But the transition to the second stage, a fantastical portal into hell with a sharper difficulty bump than is normal, is elevated by the sudden inclusion of “The Shores of Heaven.” This transition itself is as good a metaphor as you can get for the evolution of DOOM.
Legacy of Rust is what happens when a community is fostered over decades, constantly in conversation with itself and iterating, in large part thanks to code and tools that are open and free. Precious few games allowed to thrive for decades beyond their release the way DOOM has, that is the beauty of the Doomworld community. It is only appropriate to have the first real expansion in ages led by some of the best people the Doomworld forums has to offer. That’s what really gives me goosebumps, and is why I can’t stop blasting “The Shores of Heaven.”
