(Played Via the 2021 “Enriched Edition” Remaster.)

(Before getting to the actual game, I’d like to appreciate how easy and user friendly the devs have made this to play. Usually, mods can range from a tad complicated to a complete bitch to set up, but it’s as easy as downloading, unzipping, and opening the desired episode. You don’t need to download GZDooM since it comes with a copy built in. and, hell; It doesn’t even require you own DooM II!)

Something I really respect about this game is what a strong sense of self it has despite being a DooM mod. From its ruined environments to the dialog, everything reinforces the identity of the world the developers have built.

Ashes inherits DooM’s lightning-fast movement and adds jumping and crouching which make it feel closer to a build engine game than DooM. You get a specific key for a boot knife that you can use at any time. It’s nice that you don’t have to switch to your crowbar every time you want to break a box or vent cover. You also get a lantern that recharges via exposure to sunlight which strikes a balance of not burning energy too fast, but fast enough that you want to conserve its battery. There are radiation hotspots you can encounter, and you get a Geiger counter that will tell you when you are in proximity to such hazards. (Pretty clearly lifted from Fallout, but hey it works well here.) You also get an auto map and a journal to keep track of main and side objectives.

The game includes 7 normal levels, 2 trading hubs and 1 secret mission. All of which are very well designed. They do well in pretty much every kind of way you’d want, with good combat arenas, fantastic looking environments that are impressive both technically and presentation-wise and are choked full of secret loot stashes to uncover. Something I quite like about the secrets are that they are much more based on exploration then DooM’s typical unfun wall humping antics. Trading hubs have plenty of NPCs scattered about with dialog that adds more depth to the world and a few side quests that can land you some scrap to trade to shopkeepers with or even whole new weapons. Speaking of which…

Any good shooter needs good weapons and Ashes is by no means an exception. You get a crowbar, revolver, a 9mm pistol, a pump action shotgun, an SMG, a napalm launcher, pipe bombs and a sniper rifle. Everything feels like it has a place in your arsenal and since ammo is somewhat limited it encourages you to use the right tool for the job. This is even more true in later difficulties that change how much ammo you can get. Every weapon has top notch animations and sounds. They’re just all around are a blast to use. You know that if just the act of firing into a wall feels fun that you have gotten the shooting right.

As for enemies, I think we encounter my first real problem with episode 1: Lack of variety. Mutant cannibals, mutant dogs, Napalm Mutants, Raiders, Shot-gunners, Evil Balloons (???), and the huge mutant for the end of episode 1’s boss are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. It’s a tiny bit underwhelming that there are so few, and it gets a little stale by the end. It’s not a huge problem though since the gunplay is great and the enemies though few are well designed. They are all fun to fight and have very readable designs so it’s easy to tell what you are going up against immediately and the sound queues are great at telling you if an enemy is nearby out of view, if it has spotted you, if its attacking and if its dead.

Something that’s super cool to me is that you get a motorcycle! A vehicle!! In the DooM engine!!! Yes, I know its GZDooM but that’s still impressive. And what’s more impressive is that it controls pretty well too, I know some have had problems with how it handles but I don’t really share those problems. I consider that an achievement. to have not only have a vehicle in an engine very much not designed for vehicles, but one that doesn’t completely suck.

Ashes goes for a very bleak world that’s story centers on a lone scavenger set in the east coast of what used to be the USA, inhabited by mutated monsters, thieving raiders, psychotic cannibals and what little remains of a civilized society.

The story is pretty simple. One day while scavenging you encounter an old radio that still works and somehow is getting a message in a world where only a few remaining radio towers are thought to still even function, let alone be broadcasting. So, you start moving your way toward the city center to find what’s at the source of the signal. I think it’s a simplistic yet interesting premise and quite enjoyed it.

The sound design is topnotch too. The ticking of your Gieger counter, the bolting of a fresh round in your rifle, the roaring engine of your bike, everything just sounds so perfect.

And on top of everything else it does well, the music is A-grade bangers all the way though. It knows when to play more triumphant music for gunning down dozens of bandits and play more reserved uneasy music for the quieter, more uncertain moments, or when to go dead silent. And that leitmotif from the games main them ‘2063’ that presides through so much of the OST is just awesome.

So, all in all: a damn good DooM mod that is absolutely worth your time. Especially since once you are done with it you can play Afterglow.

As a mod for Doom, Ashes inherits the classic's satisfying weapon handling and high-speed movement. So as a standard, it has what we call the Doom Mod Advantage: just an incredible starting point on which it adds its own flavors. Like the world's best cheese pizza and the developers of Ashes just get to pick the extra toppings.

So what toppings does Ashes 2063 add? Well there's some nice post-apocalyptic flavoring lifted liberally from the likes of STALKER, Fallout, and Mad Max. The game manages to be fairly atmospheric. As far as level design goes it's not dissimilar to Doom—you go from set, linear level to set, linear level, progressing from M1 to M2 and so on until you beat the linear progression—but the theming adds a lot on top. The game has some great sprite work and sound design to build up this entirely new view of the Doom Engine. Enemies and weapons animate satisfyingly so it never really gets old blasting raiders and cannibals to smithereens.

And those weapons... man, they're pretty neat. Taking on the more "realistic" side of things vs. Doom, you see the post-apoc standards like revolvers, shotguns, pipe bombs and the like. The real big change to weapons is the need to reload. Unlike Doom, your weapons do run out of ammo and you will have to reload. In classic CoD fashion, swapping weapons is faster than reloading so this system means watching your ammo counts and strategizing when to swap to the next weapon in your loadout. You'll definitely be running out mid-fight so this system adds some tension where Doom's more power-fantasy playstyle doesn't always. And thankfully the weapons stay powerful throughout so you never feel like you're falling back on the "weaker" weapons—that 45 caliber magnum you get at the start is just as useful in the final hour as it is in the opening one.

This is one of the best TCs you can play. Only really held back by not fully realizing a lot of its ideas. There's a motorbike for travel, but it really only comes to into play in a handful of levels. There's a radiation system, but it really only pops its head in as an occasional obstacle in a handful of levels—think of it like Doom's acid pools. As much as it hints at this wider world of the wastes, you don't really get to explore it—it is, after all, just a Doom Style game. Not an open world RPG... But all of those ideas are there just waiting for a sequel to fully realize them. And, hey, maybe I'll have some words on that too