I remember back in my salad days the many happy hours I would spend downloading various Doom mods. I remember searching through thousands of them, and some of them were quite excellent. I remember there was one mod based on some zombie movie or other where I felt like the weapons and the environment was very lovingly and evocatively created. I especially liked how in that game the little 1 point health bonuses were replaced by "junk food", which was awesome for a zombie survival themed game. I also remember how there were various versions of Barney Doom, where usually it was the Barons of Hell who were replaced by Barney sprites. And after all, frankly speaking, it's hard to imagine Barney better portrayed than as one of the hellish monsters in the Doom setting. Those really were the days, and there were a lot more anti-Barney ("B'harnii") humor sites out there then, too...

So I was a little bit surprised recently when I bought myself a used copy of Doom 3 off amazon.com and found that there aren't very many good mods out for Doom 3. I realize that it was probably a whole lot easier to mod Doom and Doom 2, and that modding Doom 3 is more labor intensive, but besides for that, I just don't see a lot of good ideas out there in the mod arena. You'd think the least someone could do would be to make a Barney mod for Doom 3 where maybe the Revenants are Barney and the homing rockets are replaced by exploding homing hearts. And frankly speaking it would be pretty freaking awesome to have that in your Doom 3 game.

But I don't really want to get hung up on Barney. My point is that today I see a lot less proliferation and good ideas in Doom 3 mods; I don't see any real strong or truly memorable ideas out there in the mod sites. The only Doom 3 mod I'm excited about right now is the Mind-Killer mod, which is supposed to improve enemy AI, and make the various weapons more "realistic". Normally I'd be skeptical of any combination of realism and Doom, but the original mod author was the person who made the very best Soldier of Fortune II realism mod that pretty much helped to define the latter years of college and grad school for me, so I'm willing to try it out. (Right now I'm having techincal problems with the installation, though. ) And from just playing vanilla Doom 3 I can see how certain things could be more evocative by making them more realistic. For example Mind Killer is supposed to reduce the spread of the shotgun pellets, whereas in the default game the spread of the shotgun pellets is so wide that the first time you see it you're mentally jarred and you lose a little suspension of disbelief. Your assault rifle looks like it's supposed to be a caseless rifle, but in the default game it spits out casings, which is always make you feel a bit weird and confused. So I'd be willing to try the game out (once I can get it to work with the mod) with things more "realistic" and see how that makes me feel.

Also, what about an Aliens mod? Doom 3 has got the absolutely ideal atmosphere for Aliens. I'm surprised nobody has attempted that. I know that an Aliens mod was one of the first mods that came out for either Doom or Doom 2. I expect that graphics and animation are the biggest obstacle, but I guess I'm still surprised no one (to my knowledge) has even created a Colonial Marines weapon pak, or reskinned the Marines, or something like that. Because you know it would be ferociously awesome to play through Doom 3 as a Colonial Marine with a pulse rifle.

Does anyone know any good Doom 3 mods? Can anyone recommend certain mods? I really hope there are some creative, interesting, or fun Doom 3 mods out there, but that I just haven't found them.