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‘Doom’ Multiplayer Trailer Mixes it Up
When the new Doom arrives on May 13, it’ll come with nine multiplayer maps and six modes: Soul Harvest, Freeze Tag, Warpath, Domination, Team Deathmatch, and Clan Arena. The selection ought to be familiar to fans of the series, or competitive multiplayer games in general, but like the rest of Doom, everything comes with a twist.
In Team Deathmatch, two teams are tasked with murdering each other, because Doom, and then Soul Harvest is basically more of that, only you don’t get points for killing the opposing team. Instead, when a player expires, they drop a soul that can be collected for a point. And since that’s far too tame for a game like this, the first player to be killed off will drop a demon rune that transforms its collector into a two soul dropping badass.
It’s basically Soul King, if you were one of the four other people who played the underrated multiplayer in F.E.A.R. 3. Incidentally, I might have to start petitioning id Software to bring that game’s Fucking Run! mode — in which a team of four runs from an unstoppable wall of death — with a Doom twist that swaps out the wall of death for an avalanche of demons.
Warpath is Sophie’s Choice meets King of the Hill, set in Hell, with a hill that moves along a set path, and opposite it, a demon rune. Players will have to choose to either focus on the hill, or risk going after the rune.
In Domination, the goal is to capture the control points that have been scattered about the map, unless the demon rune appears — its arrival is announced to all players — then you should definitely go after that.
Clan Arena is interesting because it strips away pretty much everything. It’s purely about eliminating the enemy. No pick-ups, no demons, no respawning, and not a single way to mend yourself, should your abdomen be hollowed out by a gauss rifle.
And finally, we have Freeze Tag. In this ridiculous(ly awesome) mode where shooting an enemy immobilizes them until a teammate can warm them up, with the exception being any frozen player can still be pushed into a pool of lava or some other environmental hazard by another player. This is where you’ll find me.
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Legendary Grimdark ‘Warhammer 40,000’ Artist John Blanche Has Passed Away at 78
In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war, but it was a cheerful illustrator from England who helped to define the terrifying war-torn imagery that inspired what we now know as Grimdark (a hybrid genre combining horror with sci-fi/fantasy).
Unfortunately for fans of Warhammer 40,000, Trench Crusade and countless other sources of Grimdark thrills, veteran artist John Blanche passed away this week after struggling with health issues for the past few years.
While the artist retired back in 2023, he leaves us with an enormous legacy of iconic artwork that continues to inspire gamers and storytellers around the world to this very day.
The news is especially gloomy as it was only last year that Daniel Lowman and Napoleon Dynamite himself Jon Heder released The Grim & the Dark: The Search for John Blanche, a documentary following Heder’s exploration of the Grimdark genre culminating in a heartwarming encounter with Blanche in his own home.
Below is one of my favorite pieces by Blanche, his highly influential depiction of Warhammer 40k’s God-Emperor of Mankind on his Golden Throne.
We send our deepest condolences to John Blanche’s family, friends, and fans.



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