"Brotherhood of Ruin"

ruinbros.wad

Author(s):

Kristian Aro

Year of release:

2003

Map(s):

01 - 07

Engine:

Doom2

Date of review:

07/14/2005

Overall rating:

"Brotherhood of Ruin" is an excellent and unique wad.
The author translocated Doom into an ambience of south-american ruins (at least, that's where I would locate the ornaments, whereas the vegetation is not a jungle as you would expect). It also shows a high level of accurateness in a detailed and convincing architecture. The views and the atmosphere is stunning and some new sounds add perfectly to this.
Most astonishing for me was to see many areas that reminded me of my own Biovite Project. Kristian never saw my project and I didn't know this wad until now. So, I was very surprised to see that we both seem to have the same approach on layout and details and even borrowed the same textures from other wads. I found a soulmate in Doom editing here, it seems.
The gameplay is well balanced. You'll meet harder monsters from the beginning, but you can beat them, overall it's hard enough and ammo is scarce, so be careful. Both layout and gameplay are great and even the music is nice, too. It's almost perfect!
The only thing I'd criticise is, that maybe some monsters don't fit into this new ambience. With the author's abilities and originality it would have been pure joy to see new monsters here, too. But of course, that's much to ask.