I'm doing a mod review of a very good randomizer mod here. Hellstorm rebirth (not to be confused with doom - the hellstorm), is a randomizer mod released by a guy on facebook. If you search for :"hellstorm doom mod" and find the facebook page "hellstorm: a zdoom mod" you can download the mod there.
Having nothing in common with the phenominal hellstorm mod I reviewed recently, or the unfinished Eric Oi/Eriance mod that was in development on doomworld in the 90's, this mod is actually a lot like Doomzone, a class based mod that has a randomized enemy feature. If you like randomizers and like class based gameplay where each class can use specific weapons only, this mod is for you.
Having three classes, the mod introduces combat against randomized demons. Many of the demons come from the beastiary. A few are new however. The three classes are the rifle guy, the shotgun guy, and the energy weapons guy. Each has a specialty, machineguns/rifles for the rifle guy, shotguns for the shotgun guy and energy weapons for the energy weapons guy. Not that this specification means a whole lot, as classes who don't have a specification for a certain kind of weapon can still sometimes use those weapons.
The combat is very fun, and lots of new demons fight you. Many are from the beastiary, but some are new. I saw some new ones but none of them are really great, but the beastiary ones are fine. However, some very good ones are commented out in the spawn lists, and that is puzzling.
The weapons are great in this mod, minus 1 glaring issue which I will get to later. Each weapon has been modded a lot to add new sounds, an altfire, and more. There are weapons from many different sources, the beastiary, demon eclipse/eriguns, drla, etc. Many have been altered to fire different projectiles however. Some have been tweaked to be less or more powerful. Many have altfires but not all. Some are damn powerful. The default pistol rips demons to shreds in this mod with it's secondary fire which is shotgun strength. That is nice and that will help make some maps so easy it's not funny. It could be a great mod for slaughtermaps but more testing is needed to see if that is the case.
One glaring issue remains. The game locks up the instant you try to select the redneck rampage ripsaw gun. That cannot be fixed easily and to me the only way to really fix it is to unbind the 1 key so you don't accidentally select it. Since it's very hard to not collect it, I suggest doing this:
make a batch file to load the mod by doing this:
take the following text line and past it into a text file and save it as a txt file and rename it to a batch file (BAT) later
gzdoom -file hellstormv6_001a.pk3 +unbind 1
always use that batch file to load the mod and be careful not to pick up the saw thrower!
It makes it so you can't use melee weapons but it's worth it!
Since weapons don't get autoselected when picked up this helps
Besides that there is no issues, I hope no more freezes happen when enemies fight eachother or such, or else this mod may be ruined
Screenshots:
(loaded with hoover1979's ultra hidef texture pack and nameless rpg lite in the screenshot)
