There's been a drifter that's been makin' the rounds. He seems a simple enough fellow. Quiet. Polite. But I saw a peek of him, with a burnt cloak that hid a rock of a man, and a hat shadowing his face. I could see his eyes underneath, and they spooked me—shining with a light that wasn't of this world. He tipped his hat at me and wished me good day, but in that moment I felt like I'd glimpsed at eternity.
I'd asked around town, and the folk had some tall tales to say about him. Some say that he's a demon, rebelling from his life in Hell and fighting against his former masters. Others say that he's a vampire, living forever off the blood of those he slays. Others say that he's a priest, doin' God's work on these forsaken lands. And yet others say that he's just a luckier and tougher son of a bitch than the rest. But whoever he is, they all say he's not so much driftin' through towns as he is...worlds. Goin' from one reality to the next, leavin' only hot casings and cold bodies.
He won't be here long. He never is. Guess I can't blame him, not really any place on Earth that could fit a man like him. He only stays long enough to head to a bar, talk to some folks, get some food, and grab a bottle of Corzo white for the road. But such is the life of a drifter.
Who knows where he'll head next? There's some real dark corners in the world out there...
High Noon Drifter is a mod for Doom authored by TerminusEst13, replacing the Doomguy and his high-tech arsenal with the Drifter, a mysterious spirit-ridden cowboy named Corzo whose tools are... more traditional. Rather than Plasma Rifles and Chainsaws, Corzo carries around a slew of antiquated arms: from a powerful revolver to a Magic Staff, he'll slay the demonic hordes just as easily as Doomguy can. The mod can be downloaded here
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See also Demonsteele and Highway Acceleroid Booster, other mods made by the same author with similar focuses on fast movement but with different themes (Heavy Metal and Mega Man X, respectively).
This Doom mod contains examples of the following tropes:
- All There in the Script: Opening the mod in an editor reveals commented-out lore text regarding various items, alongside comments from Corzo about them.
- Amazonian Beauty: Basilissa, who breaks traditional Doom trends in demon appearance to make her 10-feet tall and toned as a bodybuilder, while still being pretty buxom.
- Attack Reflector: The whip can only disrupt enemy projectiles normally, but can outright send them back if the Drifter's grabbed a berserk pack.
- Battle Boomerang: Replaces the chainsaw. You can carry up to nine at a time. They'll even pick up items on the return trip.
- BFG: The Mask of Basilissa. A demonic skull you draw hellfire from to hurl at your enemies.
- Bottomless Magazines: Downplayed. While you do have to reload the revolver, it doesn't take any ammo from your pool. Averted for the rest of the guns by default, but there is an option in the mod's menu to play it straight.
- Break Out the Museum Piece: The weapon set is noticeably more antique than the classic arsenal, including lever-action Winchester shotguns, wooden longbows and boomerangs, and WWII-vintage submachine guns - even the newest-looking weapon in the game, the grenades, look to be based on a model which began production in 1952.
- Button Mashing: The revolver can fire incredibly fast if you can mash fire incredibly fast.
- Caltrops: Available when using the mod with Heretic and Hexen.
- Cavalry of the Dead: Summoned by the Dead Radio.
- Demonic Possession: Inverted. Basilissa's item form places you in a protective trance while you control the eponymous demon as she goes on a rampage.
- Game Mod: There's a compatibility patch which allows to play the Strange Aeons levels and fight their own enemies as Corzo (with all the High Noon Drifter arsenal). In other words, you're a cowboy slaughtering monsters from the Cthulhu Mythos. A playthrough of this version's first episode can be watched on TerminusEst13's own Youtube channel.
- Guns Akimbo: The submachine guns can be dual-wielded, for double the damage at the cost of double the ammo consumption.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: The Drifter in official art.
- Gun Twirling: Has its own keybind. Exactly as useless as it is in real life, but demanded by the Rule of Cool.
- Heroic Ambidexterity: Similar to the Doomguy, Corzo shoots his revolver from and throws grenades with his left hand, but for other guns (such as the shotgun) and his whip he uses his right instead, save for a second submachine gun.
- Magic Staff: The Gate of Anthrakia staff fires a stream of fire and surrounds the Drifter with damaging flames in its alt-fire.
- More Dakka: Dual-wielded submachine guns can fire many bullets in a short time.
- No "Arc" in "Archery": The Heki bow.
- No Fair Cheating: Entering the resurrect command in a source port with one will play a stock sound effect of children cheering and trigger a randomly-selected sarcastic message from the mod's creator.
- Number of the Beast: The default maximum for magic rune ammunition is 333. The backpack doubles your ammo capacity. You do the math.
- Parrying Bullets: Corzo can whip projectiles right out of the air; having a Berserk powerup turns the projectile destruction into projectile reflection. It's no good against hitscan bullets, though.
- Powerup Food: The medipacks of vanilla Doom have been replaced with bottles of beer.
- Quick Draw: The Dead Man's Holster, when used, will let you pull off up to eight instantly lethal shots with your revolver.
- Regenerating Health: The Spirit Bottle, the berserk pack's replacement, automatically brings your health up to 100 if it was below that and adds one point of health a second for thirty seconds.
- Revolvers Are Just Better: Particularly when they have 8 bullets per reload, endless ammo to reload with, and the ability to fan the hammer for faster fire rate.
- Slide Attack: The original sprint functionnote is replaced with a classic Mega Man-style slide. Enemies that aren't already alerted to you won't notice you until you come out of the slide, and depending on your mod settings you can even use it to pass under obstacles that are otherwise too low for even normal source-port crouching to allow you to get under.
- Space Western: The mod stars a demon-slaying cowboy in the futuristic setting of the Doom series and gives the weapons and powerups a Western-esque aesthetic. The fact that you're facing the forces of Hell pushes it into Weird West.
- Super-Speed: Enabled with the Tickets to the 13 O'Clock Little Horn Express.
- Take That, Audience!: Loading this mod with Brutal Doom will cause The Drifter's guns to shoot gibs, eventually killing performance.
Word of God has confirmed that he doesn't hate Brutal Doom, it's just that he got annoyed at people complaining about bugs whose cause always boiled down to "tried to run it alongside Brutal Doom" (which it is incompatible with, since both replace many of the same things), so, like sister mod DemonSteele (which spawns a horde of invincible golden Revenants if it detects Brutal Doom running alongside it), he made the guns shoot gibs, so that if someone complains about bugs and mentions this, he would immediately know what the problem was, making this something of a take that towards players who combine two massive mods then complain to him about it causing bugs. - Taking You with Me: The Drifter explodes when he dies.
- Taunt Button: The Drifter laughs quietly when it's pressed.
- Video Game Flight: Enabled with the Nightmare Saddle.
- Weaponized Headgear: Double Subverted, as throwing one's hat deals chip damage, only enough to kill enemies that themselves have one hitpoint, and is mainly used to distract monsters. On the other hand, having a berserk powerup turns it into a Finger Poke of Doom.
