Video Game / Legacy of Rust

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Legacy of Rust is a 2024 Doom II episode released by id Software, Nightdive Studios, and MachineGames as part of the 2024 Kex Engine port of Doom I + II for consoles and PC. It is the first new Doom II episode released in 14 years since No Rest for the Living and the first new official episode since the original Doom II to release with new weapons and enemies.

Taking place in a remote region of Hell known as Vassago's Rest and New Eden, the UAC explored the place that even the demons feared to go to and searched for its secrets. Naturally, it isn't long before all hell breaks loose, and within three hours, New Eden is a sea of molten glass. Doomguy is then sent by the top brass to see what happened.

Legacy of Rust consists of 16 levels broken up into two 8-level episodes with one Secret Level each, Vulcan Abyss and Counterfeit Eden. Along with the new weapons and enemies are new textures and scripting as a showcase of what the newest id24 modding standard can do.

This video game provides examples of:

• Action Bomb: One of the new enemies introduced in this expansion is the Banshee, a floating amorphous cloud of blood-red stuff that will self-destruct on death, or when it's close enough to Doomguy.
• Adapted Out: The Plasma Gun, BFG, and cells are removed to make room for the new weapons and their ammo type, fuel. This can be noticed from the HUD, where "CELL" now reads "FUEL".
• Anti-Frustration Features: The Tyrants fought at the end of MAP14: Brink are uniquely coded to take longer to respawn on Nightmare so that the fight doesn't drag on due to respawning enemies preventing you from opening the exit, since it only opens after they're all dead at once.
• Ascended Meme: "MAP10: Dis Union" features a map editor doodle that exclaims "FREE HISSY!" This is a reference to classic Doom community icon and Cacodemon plushie Hissy and an early community meme about her being "Hissy hogged" during an intended Doom community tour. Made even funnier that the current Hissy Hogger is Xaser Acheron, the man who composed the entirety of Legacy of Rust's soundtrack.
• Bookends: The first level involves Doomguy entering Hell through a demonic portal, and the last one has him exiting Hell through the same method.
• Call-Back: Several levels include a shout-out to the past Doom instalments, in one way or another.
  • "MAP04 Descending Inferno" has a courtyard and a small storage next to it, similar to Doom PlayStation port's exclusive level, "Twilight Descends".
  • "MAP05: Creeping Hate" has the starting room heavily resemble the one from Ultimate Doom's E4M2, "Perfect Hatred".
  • "MAP07: Forfeited Salvation", has the main room contain an "O"-shaped ring above the damaging blood and spread around a platform with a threatening monster firing at you from it, just like The Plutonia Experiment and its MAP21, "Slayer"... which, in turn, is a more difficult remix of Doom II's MAP11, "Circle of Death".
  • "MAP11: Echoes of Pain" is a reference to Master Levels, with the overall structure of the level in particular resembling the style of John "Dr. Sleep" Anderson, one of "Master Levels"'s key map designers.
  • "MAP12: The Rack" contains several design similarities to "Thy Flesh Consumed", the fourth episode of Ultimate Doom.
• Call-Forward:
  • This level pack includes Tyrants, which are essentially to Cyberdemons what Hell Knights are to Barons of Hell: recolored versions of a Doom 1 boss with less HP to be used as a regular enemy. The concept of a Degraded Boss version of the Cyberdemon named "Tyrant" comes from Doom Eternal.
  • The two new weapons are essentially adaptations of weapons from Eternal to fit with combat from II. The Incinerator is the Flame Belch turned into a separate weapon, not causing enemies to drop armor due to II having a bigger focus on preserving resources rather than constantly spending them, while the Calamity Blade functions very closely to the Ballista's Destroyer Blade mod, though more restricted due to lack of freelook in II.
  • The plot of the UAC attempting to mine Hell for resources is essentially the plot of Doom (2016) on a smaller scale.
• Continuity Nod: "MAP07: Forfeited Salvation", the final map of Legacy of Rust's first episode The Vulcan Abyss, ends with Doomguy getting trapped an "unwinnable" room surrounded by enemies and a damaging floor that automatically ends the level when he hits 10 HP or less. The intermission screen refers to this trap as "the oldest trick in the book", for a tongue-in-cheek reference to Doom I: the first episode ends the same way, so for Doom level design, it quite literally is one of the oldest tricks in the book.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Played With; this wad retains many straight examples of this trope from Doom II where extremely hot stuff (such as lava) doesn't hurt unless you're touching it, but it also has subverted examples with the Incinerator's fire stream and the Vassago's fireballs, which can hurt you by standing in their proximity even without direct contact.
• Cycle of Hurting: The Incinerator allows you to invoke this on the demons. It fires very fast, and each of its projectiles can also deal lingering area damage after they collide with something. Since enemies have a flat percentage chance to be flinched after taking damage, the Incinerator's projectiles and lingering flames will hurt victims multiple times a second, and (save for freak accidents of bad luck) it'll stunlock most enemies, leaving no room for them to retaliate.
• Damage Over Time: A key feature of the Incinerator is that the flames left behind remain for a while, radiating splash damage that hurts player and enemy alike, making the Incinerator a poor choice for close quarters combat. The same also applies to Vassago fireballs as well, making them a more deadly threat than just a reskinned Baron.
• Denial of Diagonal Attack: The Calamity Blade's second biggest flaw is that, unlike every other weapon in the game, it never auto-aims; it will always fire out straight in front of you, making it useless against anything above or below you.
• Developer's Foresight: Digging through the WAD file containing the levels reveals similar readme and credits text files common in fan-made Doom WADs. The former even mentions that the WAD can also be run on any MBF21-compatible source port, but the engine used by the Compilation Re-release is recommended.
• Drought Level of Doom: Played with. The first episode's sixth map, The Coiled City, features supplies and ammo, but only for rockets and fuel, and the entire level is designed to make it hard to use the rocket launcher or Incinerator without damaging yourself.
• Dug Too Deep: The basis of the story is that the UAC found a place in Hell that was full of valuable resources, and set up base in that location to extract that stuff. Predictably, it all turns to shit because it's Hell, and Doomguy is called in to fix things once more.
• Early Game Hell: Second Coming, the first mission of Counterfeit Eden, begins as this with the player having to deal with higher-tier enemies right off the bat while being starved for resources. Oh, and there's a goddamned Cyberdemon right at the start ready to blast you with rockets like a living turret.
• Enemy Roll Call: Similar to Doom II and Final Doom, the game ends with a slideshow of the enemies the player fought, albeit only for the foes introduced in this campaign.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: The energy weapons of the original game are replaced by new fire-based weapons, both powered by fuel cans instead of energy cells. The Incinerator is a classic flamethrower that sprays lingering flames at a fast fire rate, while the Calamity Blade charges up to unleash an incinerating heatwave.
• Fission Mailed: Similar to Doom I's level Phobos Anomaly, Forfeited Salvation ends with a seemingly-unwinnable encounter, surrounded by Vassagos and left with no way to escape the damaging lava floor. You'll "win" the map when your HP drops below 10, after which the demons will throw Doomguy in a cage as he realises that New Eden is unsalvageable and that the UAC betrayed him.
• Horrifying the Horror: Not Doomguy, but rather the Ones Beneath, the new enemies in Legacy of Rust. The plot synopsis in the 2024 re-release of Doom I and II states that even the demons fear them, and thus tend to stay away from that region of Hell.
• Intentional Engrish for Funny: The first two tracks in the soundtrack are "It's Begin!" and "Welcome to Die". No other tracks are titled like this.
• Joke Item: "MAP10: Dis Union" features a computer map to reveal secrets and level geometry. However, it only appears at the end of the level, so after the player has explored everything. Thus, all it's useful for is seeing the "FREE HISSY!" Easter Egg on the automap.
• Monster Closet: As usual with Doom maps, walls that open to reveal monsters inside are standard. One particular monster closet in Soul Silo stands out: when you snag the suspiciously-placed Calamity Blade, the opposite wall opens up to reveal two Cacodemons. Then the rest of the wall opens up to reveal a large horde of Cacodemons.
• Musical Nod: The track for the seventh level, "They're All Gonna Laugh At You", is a very obvious send-up of "The Only Thing They Fear Is You", down to the similar titles.
• Mythology Gag: The title of the second level's music is "The Shores of Heaven", a nod to the first game's second episode, "The Shores of Hell".
• New Weapon Target Range: The very first Calamity Blade pickup in the expansion will teleport you to an arena full of Mindweavers and Spider Masterminds with their back turned to you. This massive array of demons provides the best demonstration of the Calamity Blade's crowd-annihilating capabilities.
• Off-the-Shelf FX: The Calamity Blade's sprites were made using a toy gun, "The Machine" (alternately known as Roargun), the same one used to create the BFG sprites for the original game. The crossbow-style "limbs" on the Calamity Blade are noticeably grips, with the yellow parts of the weapon being the label on the right side of the original toy gun.
• One-Hit Polykill: The Calamity Blade's fire waves can pierce through multiple demons at once.
• One Riot, One Ranger: The UAC's New Eden base is obliterated in the span of three hours. To reclaim it, the UAC sends in Doomguy and nobody else.
• Secret Level: Two optional, hidden levels can be accessed via secret exits in Sanguine Wastes and Dis Union, which will take you to Ash Mill and Panopticon, respectively.
• Shout-Out:
  • The first level is called "Scar Gate". If the name doesn't immediately give it away, the level features Doomguy entering Hell through what looks like a demonic version of a Stargate.
  • The track that plays during the first level is called "Welcome to Die", from an Engrish-y quote of Magneto's from X-Men (1992).
  • The track for "Creeping Hate" (map 5) is called "They're all gonna laugh at you."
  • Ash Mill, the secret level for Vulcan Abyss, is the windmill from Army of Darkness lifted wholesale. The title of the level is the name of the Evil Dead original protagonist (Ash), and just like the Army Of Darkness windmill scene, this level introduces an Evil Counterpart to Doomguy: Shocktroopers, bad guys with Doomguy's appearance and his Plasma Rifle from the original games' duology.
• Standard FPS Guns: The standard Doom II weaponset returns to fill out most of the standard FPS guns, but the Plasma Gun and BFG get new replacements:
  • The Incinerator is a flamethrower to replace the Plasma Gun. It's a short-range, rapid-fire flamespitter that deals Damage Over Time to enemies caught in its fire — or its user, if used recklessly.
  • The Calamity Blade is a powerful BFG to replace the original BFG. Taking after the Ballista's Destroyer Blade mod, it can charge up a spreading wave of fire to obliterate large crowds of demons, at the cost of very high ammo consumption.
• Technicolor Fire: The sky textures in some of the levels consist of a giant, green blaze.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: In the finale, Doomguy uses a total of nine nuclear warheads that he detonates all at once to destroy New Eden, screwing over both Hell and the UAC gloriously.
• Villain Ball: By this point, the forces of Hell KNOW how dangerous Doomguy is, yet when he's ambushed and defeated at the end of the first episode (a la the first episode of Doom 1), instead of doing the logical thing and killing him, they throw him in a cage. Naturally, he escapes and ruins everything. Again.
• The War Sequence: The midsection of Soul Silo siccs slaughtermap-levels of Imps on you, their density numbered in the hundreds. Then, when you think you're done with the Imps, the exit bridge is jam-packed full of Vassagos...
• What Did You Expect When You Named It ____?: The UAC base you're clearing out is named "New Eden" in the official Bethesda description of the wad. This is immediately followed by: "Just like the Garden of old, mankind's exile from this newly settled realm was swift and brutal."
• Wolfpack Boss: One nasty encounter near the end of Soul Silo pitches you against a group of boss-tier Cyberdemons at once.
• You Nuke 'Em: The climactic finale of the expansion lets the player get their hands on some nuclear warheads: to win the level, Doomguy has to prime the UAC's nukes, scramble out of dodge, return to the UAC base on Earth, then blow up New Eden to kingdom come from safety.