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PSA: Registrations Open for the ‘Doom’ Multiplayer Alpha
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to grab that gun over there so you can empty it into every demon you see. Just keep shooting until they resemble spilled plates of lasagna with teeth.
Bethesda opened up registrations for the Doom closed multiplayer alpha this week, and you can get in on it so long as you did the right thing and bought a copy of Wolfenstein: The New Order by May 26, 2014. The alpha will offer a taste of the game’s Team Deathmatch mode, in which two teams of six fight on the industrial-themed Heatwave map.
The alpha will feature six different weapons and two equipment items — the Vortex Rifle, Super Shotgun, Repeater, Rocket Launcher, Static Cannon, Plasma Rifle, Personal Teleporter and Frag Grenade — as well as the chance to use the new Demon Rune to transform into the Revenant demon so you can “use your jetpack and dual rocket launchers to hunt down the other team for a limited time to either secure your team’s lead or mount a comeback.”
Just make sure you watch out for the Gauss Cannon, a crazy powerful gun that essentially serves as the anti-Revenant. Head over here to register.
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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