Back in my old video game days, I used to play a lot of "Star Wars Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight." While playing this game, I soon found out that there was a huge modding community for it online. A lot of them just reused assets from the original game to make new Star Wars games for me to play, but some of them did what was, at the time, called Total Transformations or TTs for short. These TTs replaced all the assets of the game but kept the engine. In this way, the game could look entirely different and even represent source material for other universes such as the Alien franchise or even *gasp!* Star Trek!
"Harmony" is one of these Total Transformations but for classic Doom. Although, today they seem to prefer the term Total Conversion. Even though you are actually playing Doom, you don't see anything that resembles Doom at all except for the movement controls. Everything else is completely different from the scenery, the enemies, the weapons, and even the sound effects. But don't be fooled. You are actually playing Doom; it just feels like an entirely different game.
The ascetics of "Harmony" feel like they are ripped out of a cheesy 1980s scifi flick. It's actually based on a comic book written and drawn by the author of the game. I have to admit that I am not a huge fan of his art, but the overall design of his universe is amazing.
As far as the story of the game, I'll just copy and paste it to you since Doom games are reliant on text to explain anything:
In the near future: Led by greed and hatred mankind drove itself into another world war. The forces of the Northern and Southern Hemisphere attacked each other with everything their destructive arsenal had to offer. Nuclear, chemical and biological weapons wiped out entire countries. The combined effect of the weapons resulted in an unforeseen side effect; a supervirus emerged that mutated all the men on Earth. For unknown reasons the women were unaffected. But they weren't safe either...
The mutated men, though intelligent, lost touch with reality. From their corrupted minds a new order was formed; 'the Pax Pox'. Its first priority is to rid the world of the "impure".
The women who survived the war united to form an army against the mutant aggressors and called themselves "the Amazons".
Today one of the Amazon outposts is attacked and their leader; Amira is taken captured. Her last hope is her loyal friend; Harmony.
Will Harmony be able to rescue her friend and the rest of the human race?
That's all you really need to know to get into the game. The rest of it is pure action scifi video game. The monsters are all very unique and interesting. The 13 maps have a really nice scifi design to them, and often really feel like real places. I really enjoyed exploring them and fighting off all the various enemies and mutants that it had to offer.
My only big complaint came in the form of the second level. It was really long and tired me out. I almost quit. I kept working on it though and found the rest of the game to be much more engaging. I am glad I kept with it. The sheer love that went into making these strange maps really shows.
If you are interested in playing this game, which I totally recommend, you can find it in the Featured Mods in the excellent "Doom+DoomII Remaster" recently put out by NightDive Studios. It's free and worth the playthrough. It will honestly just feel like you are playing an entirely different game, and that is incredibly cool in and of itself.
This blog was written on January 24, 2025.
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Fascinating that the very same game can be turned into something new by simply changing images and sounds. I admire the creator of this new "Doom" for doing such a thing based on a comic book he personally wrote and illustrated. As a man who writes books, illustrates the covers and creates the title fonts, I sympathize.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, and this is something that has been done many times, and some of them ended up actual retail games.
DeleteIt is amazing what can be done with a little ingenuity. By using the same engine, they were able to make a different game. The raw materials are not as important as how they are arranged.
ReplyDeleteYeah, and it is important to note that all these assets were changed to look different. That is different than what is today called an asset flip, which is not a good thing.
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