Video Game / Hideous Destructor

"You know, if the mod's not complicated, then why is the tutorial video an hour long?"

— The Ultimate Hideous Destructor Bootcamp

Hey, you! Did you think Doom was tough? Miss the good ol' days of classic Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon? Did you think "Gee, SWAT 4 is cool, but I wish I could use this shotgun on demons instead of punks and terrorists"? Ever wished Dark Souls had guns?

Hideous Destructor is, of all things, a realism mod for Doom. You move and aim like an actual human being, and die like one, too - unarmored, you'll die in one or two hits - and if you don't, you're most likely bleeding to death. You're going to use cover, wits, and reflexes to keep the demonic hordes at bay - and the good news is that your enemies usually die just as easily. Usually...

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Tropes:

• Armored Mook: Certain enemy types like Jackboots, Marines, and Chaingunners have a chance to spawn with light armor. The latter two will almost always have it, while the former may spawn without. All armored types also have a very low chance to spawn with heavy armor.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: 7,76mm ammunition is steelcore, making it able to even penetrate heavy armor. .355 Masterball is able to penetrate light armor. Alternatively, the legs and helmet, as well as faceplate, will make RNG rolls on armor strength when hit, from 0-100% for the former, and 0-80% for the latter. If nothing else, there's that...
  • The Brontornis manportable cannon fires an API 35mm shell, penetrating walls and armor with contemptuous ease and shields just as easily.
• All There in the Manual: The manual contains backstories and flavor text for the weapons and enemies, such as why the default assault rifle is prone to ammo cookoffs, the weapon names, what powers the BFG, and how the invasion of Hell started.
• Abnormal Ammo: The BFG uses "frag", this essentially translates into hell energy, which is pretty much everywhere since the invasion.
• Attack Drone: The DERP, a useful little toy (described as a "webcam with wheels and a gun") that uses pistol ammo, and can be commanded to patrol, secure, or rove around and attack. There is also the HERP (Heavy Engagement Rotary Platform), which not only takes three 50-round assault rifle magazines and fires full auto, it's also more resistant.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The BFG requires a warmup and can revive non-gibbed enemies after its use. Still, it can literally erase rooms of almost any enemy besides the Cyberdemon.
  • The Mk IV Brontornis cannon needs to be braced to not slightly damage the operator, is a single shot weapon, and the reload process is rather tedious. On the other hand, it will outright gib humanoids and drop hard targets in a single hit.
  • The Mk XI "Thunder Buster" requires the operator to hold steady with its primary firing mode in order to essentially cook off an explosion on a surface, which can be difficult and presents the potential of accidentally killing the operator if fired in too close quarters. However, it destroys shields very quickly, causes tremendous damage, and the electrical arcs left behind leave some area denial.
• BFG: Of course!
  • The titular Hideous Destructor, it's an enormous gun that requires charging and launches an enormous ball of green energy that gibs anything in its path.
  • The Thunder Buster, the plasma rifle replacement that is a scaled-down version of particle weapons mounted on spaceships.
• Bottomless Magazines: The BFG is capable of charging batteries from frag, granted either its internal or removable battery requires at least 35% charge to start the thing.
• Bulletproof Vest: There's two tiers of bodyarmour. Green, which can on a good day stop 4,26mm/.355 Masterball bullets out of the box, and reliably stop 9mm/00 buckshot any day of the week, or Blue, which can produce reliable protection from 4,26mm bullets and some resistance to 7,76mm, but degrades much faster. Both are described as full body suits of armour, and act accordingly. In most cases sprinkling someone with 9mm rounds will do literally nothing other than take a few points of their armour off.
• Counter-Attack: If you've got good aim, or are just lucky, you might be able to shoot certain fireballs and stop it dead in its tracks - or, if you shoot them close enough to the imp, burn him a little.
  • Because of the velocity/screen turn based melee combat, it's possible to gib a babuin that's jumping at you with a hard punch if you time it right.
• Crippling Overspecialization: The plasma rifle - now the "Thunder Buster" - was an attempt to make man-portable versions of anti-ship particle weapons. Unfortunately, said anti-ship particle weapons work a lot better in space, controlled by computers, and on inanimate objects, which makes the Thunder Buster only useful on slow-moving heavy targets.
  • This has changed a bit with the addition of a "pulse" secondary fire for the Thunder Buster, which sacrifices some ammo efficiency for safer close-range firepower and more consistent output.
• Critical Annoyance: Bleeding heavily is represented by a pulsing red screen in the vein of Call of Duty, as well as your rifle shaking and grunts of pain. Bleeding to death is represented by a flickering black. Burning to death is represented by smoke clouding the screen.
• Die, Chair, Die!: There is a chance that explosive barrels are possessed by demons and will hurl globs of explosive, radioactive, poisonous goo at you. Blow them all up.
• Do Not Run with a Gun: Your aiming stability, and thus your sight picture and therefore accuracy, is at its best when not moving. Any sort of movement will cause the weapon and the sight picture to sway, with faster movement corresponding to more sway. Moving at any speed faster than a walk will cause you to lose your sight picture altogether and make your shots hideously (har har) inaccurate. Sprinting will lower your weapon and prevent you from firing altogether.
• Embarrassing Nickname: The SMG is called the "Sexy Manly Guy", after one of its funders, a politician, was caught with an 18 year old *male* intern.
• Fireballs: Balefire! Hellfire magic brought to you by imps, hellknights, cacodemons, and barons of Hell. Normal fireballs can be stopped by an envirosuit. Balefire on the other hand, zooms right through that, and like standard fireballs, ignore bodyarmour. It also inflicts aggravated damage, which will need blues or other magic to heal.
• Grenade Launcher: Comes in the underslung varieties (on the ZM66] assault rifle and Liberator battle rifle) and standalone varieties (the "Blooper" and the rocquette launcher, the latter of which also doubles as a cassette fed rocket launcher, naturally). All versions have a programmable airburst function.
• Heal Thyself: Players are capable of stabilizing and patching themselves up, though having someone else patch you up tends to be more reliable (but you definitely don't want them using the same medikit applicator for everyone).
• Interface Screw: Aside from the various effects on your vision that taking damage and/or being set on fire inflicts upon you, trying to load a ZM66 with any magazine that isn't a fresh, factory-sealed magazine, will first result in it not able to loaded due to DRM. Yes, the magazines have a EULA. Same for the gun.
  • It can be forced in if you give it a shove as the message comes up. You will also curse out the gun for its design. However, doing this will scramble the round counter, which can be a significant issue if you rely on it.
• Instant Death Bullet: Played with. Unarmored humanoids fold up with a single hit of buckshot. 7,76mm will kill most humanoids with a single bullet. However, sometimes if RNG isn't on your side with the latter, they can survive just long enough to shoot back, or need a second hit.
• Inventory Management Puzzle: With encumbrance limits enabled, all items and weapons have bulk and weight values, which affect how much you can carry and your movement speed respectively, the latter of which may be completely crippled, striking a balance is absolutely necessary.
• Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: The developer nerfed the plasma gun and BFG into energy weapons meant for murdering big targets, so your best bet for killing normal mooks is by using your trusty assault rifle.
  • The plasma gun/Thunder Buster has since received an alternate fire function somewhat more practical for frying zombies and lesser demons.
• Land Mine Goes "Click!": The Grenade may be attached to a tripwire. Upon tripping, a distinct sound is played, followed by the sounds of the grenade and it's spoon hitting the ground. The offending player has five seconds to hide behind cover or run out of its effective range.
• Lightning Gun: The aptly named Thunder Buster, which, when its primary fire triggers, resembles a lightning bolt frying your enemies.
• Luck-Based Mission:
  • Getting set on fire, and putting it out (unless you have a keybinding to turn you 180).
  • The reflexes of your foes vary from enemy to enemy - you may have one that'll take forever to aim and fire, giving you time to finish your reload and shoot him, and another that will erase your face with a storm of lead as soon as you're in sight.
  • Dud grenades/rockets going off.
  • Where the frag of a grenade lands; If the target is more than 8 metres away, it's entirely down to how unlucky they are if they're hit.
  • Penetrating body armour. If you aim for the legs or head, you have a roll for how strong armour is when you hit, form 0-100%. The faceplate, while a smaller target, has a much better chance, at 0-80%.
  • Ballistics simulate wound tracks with RNG too. And pain...
• Mobile Factory: You can use a reloading machine to make 7,76mm rounds out of four complete 4,26mm rounds and one 7,76mm casing, this is the only round that may be created in this fashion. The ZM 7 Liberator battle rifle has one in its stock, which can be handy. Unfortunately, it is a recast bullet, which does not have the armor piercing steel core.
• More Dakka: The Vulcanette has a fire mode that cranks up its fire rate to 2100 RPM. Useful for annihilating Cacodemons.
  • The SMG fires way faster than the default rifle, at the cost of eating its magazine in seconds.
• Nintendo Hard: It's not called "Sci-Fi Dark Souls" on the download page for nothing.
• Noodle Incident: The SMG is nicknamed the "Sexy Manly Guy" after one of the funders, a politician, was caught doing something with a hot young intern.
• No Scope: Achieved by changing the "passive sight view" setting, Alternatively, firing directly after exiting a jog/sprint.
• One Bullet Clips: Averted, the mod takes into account both chambered rounds and the bullets in any given magazine.
• One-Hit Polykill: The Brontornis is capable of over-penetration, the amount of soft targets penetrated vary by type, all affected targets are gibbed.
• Pistol-Whipping: You can melee with any gun. There's no animation for it, and the developer deliberately leaves it up to the player's imagination - pistol whipping, bayonetting, rifle-butting, etc.
• Power at a Price: The new blur sphere works this way, giving invisibility and the power to drive demons crazy, causing them to attack others. The downside is hallucinations, and the fact that it does not play nice with the healing magics.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: Being Doomguy or Doomgal only affects the face sprite, pain noises, and taunts.
• Regenerating Health: There, but not up to Call of Duty levels - it takes quite a while, doesn't work if you're bleeding to death, and you're better off just finding a stimpack (slows bleeding, boosts regeneration)or medkit (Directly stitches wounds up/applies specialist treatment).
• Shout-Out:
  • The developer has stated the way the mod is built was heavily inspired by the final firefight in The Way of the Gun.
  • Most of the exit messages are Heavy's sayings.
    • The chaingunners are described as "big shaved bears that hate people", which is what the Heavy was described as.
  • Summoning fallen soldiers to fight for you via the talisman has flavor text quoted from The Lord of the Rings.
  • The BFG functions as a mix of Doom³'s BFG and the original Doom's BFG, along with bits of Quake 4.
  • The taunt noises are taken from Jay's mom (Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back) or Kuni (UHF).
  • The title itself comes from a line in the Judas Priest song, "Tyrant."
• Shouting Shooter: Possible if you've taken a berserker pack and are busy spraying a room to find the last spectre.
• Shur Fine Guns: As of the time of writing, the player's weapons can jam or malfunction in a multitude of ways:
  • Firing around half a magazine rapidly with the ZM66 assault rifle will cause it to cook off and make the rest of your shots go wild, and inserting another one without allowing the weapon to cool down results in the same thing. Then, there is the occasional jam, which is cleared by pulling the magazine, and spamming reload or unload to try and clear the dud. In these cases it's usually better to beat a retreat...
  • The pump-action shotgun can have its pump worked too quickly, resulting in a short-stroke that ejects the spent round but does not load a new one, requiring another, complete pump. The other way it can jam is a failure to load if the weapon is set to semi, which can be solved by cycling manually. This is justified in the manual entry for the shotgun: the ammunition you find lying around may or may not be of quality, resulting in jams.
  • The bolt-action rifle can get its bolt stuck when pulling it back, resolved by holding the altfire key until the bolt is unjammed. This is caused either by short stroking said bolt, lettting the chamber get too dirty or just bad luck. Mostly the latter two.
• Unfriendly Fire: As with vanilla Doom, you can turn packs of mooks on each other, or at least soften them up, by getting their balefire and bullets to hit the guys in front of them. Risky, though.
  • Your HERP fires at enemy it spots - and won't check fire if you run in front of it.
• Unwinnable by Design: The author warns that this will turn some maps into an unplayable campaign of tears, as most classic Doom maps don't have adequate cover and throw lots and lots of enemies at the player in bum rushes. On the other hand, the mod has given you many tools to clean out even the most aggressive ambushes or assaults...
• Weak Turret Gun:
  • Downplayed with the DERP, as it packs a decent punch but runs out of ammo very quickly.
  • Averted by the HERP. Fed by three magazines of 4,26mm caseless, the HERP fires in automatic and is a nightmare to face if encountered in the wild.
• Wound That Will Not Heal: Bandaging has a chance to fix a wound, but you're better off using a medkit to solve the issue.