Known perhaps as the most divisive mod on the internet, Sergeant Mark IV’s Brutal DOOM series is one of those love-it-or-hate-it internet phenomenons that seem to exist merely to stir up emotions. Regardless, the mod’s newest version, v20b, has just been revealed as being ready for release at the end of this year on December 31st. Tagging along with that release will be the new “starter pack map pack” as well:

This update fixes several bugs previously present on Brutal Doom v20, adds new stuff such as more death animations, even better gibs, a rebalanced and more satisfying melee system, and huge performance improvements.

The “Starter Pack Map Pack” comes separately with 32 new maps, featuring realistic environments, cities, outdoors, space stations, hellish cities, new enemies and bosses, all balanced for Brutal Doom’s gameplay. The entire campaign has a plot of how a demon invasion starts on a UAC Mars facility, then it breaks into Los Angeles, and UAC’s Space Marines are deployed to save the city. All maps have continuous progression, every map starts where the previous map ended, giving a feeling of a big adventure instead of just random maps placed in a megawad. Maps that takes place on Earth even have daytime progression (first map starts at dawn, second map at noon, third and fourth maps in different parts of dusk, next map is at night, and so on).

Performance boosts seem to be the major reason this update was pushed through, with maps that were previously unplayable (Or that at least ran poorly) now being able to run at a fairly decent clip, as seen in the above youtube video.