Highway Acceleroid Booster is a Game Mod for Doom, created by Terminusest13, author of previous mods High Noon Drifter, Demonsteele, and Hellshots Golf. Unlike his previous mods, which took inspiration from genres as a whole, Highway Acceleroid Booster takes inspiration from a specific franchise: Mega Man, or more precisely, the X subseries.
In it, you play as Booster, a female reploid modeled after a sports car. Befitting her visual motif forms the main draw of the mod: an incredibly versatile movement system, allowing for dashing, air dashing, Double Jumping, wall grabbing, and Rocket Jumping (multiple times in the air, even). Strong movement options aren't all the mod has to bring to the table though, and Booster gets an appropriately Mega Man-style arsenal of toys to play around with.
The mod can be downloaded here
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This mod provides examples of:
- All There in the Script: Similar to High Noon Drifter, opening the mod in a .pk3 editor such as SLADE reveals commented-out lore text about various weapons. This is the only way players would learn of Booster's engineer Dr. Eisenach without information outside the mod, for instance.
- Anti-Frustration Features: The All Brake's ammo count moves onto the main HUD if you use it then switch to a different weapon while its effect is active, giving you a clear indicator of how much Bullet Time you have left while beating everything to a pulp.
- Arm Cannon: Booster's default blaster is mounted in her arm, as opposed to her arm becoming the gun as is standard for Mega Man style games.
- Badass Fingersnap:
- The Nitro Wheel is detonated by Booster snapping her fingers via the alt fire. It becomes decidedly less badass when you alert a room full of enemies on accident using it.
- The Bullet Time of the All Brake is also cancelled with a fingersnap.
- Burning Rubber: Using the Speed Booster creates two trails of embers behind wherever Booster runs to.
- Creator Thumbprint: The trailer points out that "It wouldn't be a Terminus mod without [lots of CVars]."
- Easy-Mode Mockery: Playing on "Roadkill", the easiest difficulty setting, will super-impose a comic panel of Booster and her creator laughing at the player for playing on said difficulty.
- I'm Dying, Please Take My MacGuffin: In place of Megaspheres are fallen Reploids that give Booster a full restore by taking their power cores.
- Laser Blade: The Fuse Injector, which can attack fast and generates ammo when it hits enemies. You can use up that ammo by holding primary fire for a stronger Charged Attack, or by pressing alt fire for a Static Stun Gun shot.
- Macross Missile Massacre:
- The Heavy Cylinder only gains ammo in multiples of three, since it shoots three spiraling rockets with every shot.
- The Crush Piston shoots more frequently, but with less rockets per shot.
- Me's a Crowd: Side Passenger creates an afterimage copy of Booster that shoots where you aim. Tap alt fire to toggle between follow mode and turret modes; hold it to summon a second copy.
- Mini-Mecha: Invulnerability Spheres are replaced with Ride Armors. They absorb all damage for Booster and last until the armor runs out of health; while it's active, she can fire a heavy machine gun, shoot shoulder-mounted rockets, and slug enemies with a Megaton Punch whose first four strikes can also launch rockets. Dismounting causes it to self destruct and deal continuous damage to all enemies nearby.
- More Dakka: The default weapon, the Clutch Buster. Comes with regenerating ammo to complement this, and Booster's Super Mode drastically increases its fire rate.
- No Fair Cheating: Downplayed: using a Classic Cheat Code from Doom is allowed, but the game will mock it with Kefka's laugh, playing La Cucaracha on a car horn, and displaying a randomly-selected taunt message.
- Power-Up Food: Supertempurature Coolant is the replacement for Doom's hazard suit. Whenever Booster picks one up, though, you can hear a rather distinct gulping sound.
- Reverse Shrapnel: Nitro Wheel, which creates a protective ring of fire around Booster. Hold primary fire after summoning it to accelerate the ring and deal continuous damage; alt fire detonates it for high burst damage.
- Roboteching: The Crush Piston's alt fire; hold it to mark multiple targets, release to fire a salvo of missiles that robotech right towards said targets.
- Sequence Breaking: Booster's incredibly powerful movement tools can snap in two the normal progression of pretty much any map she'd put in. In the mod's forum post, Terminus implies that his love of fast movement is a reason he doesn't have many mapper friends.
- Serial Escalation: Started with the mod author implementing his Original Character into Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch with a hitscan gun and enhanced mobility, and from there, things kept escalating until it got to what Terminus describes as his most complicated mod yet.
- Smart Bomb: The All Brake's alt fire, which hits everything nearby.
- Surprise Jump: Booster's car horn will alert all enemies in sight. Using it close to and behind an enemy makes them jump with surprise.
- Theme Naming: Every weapon in Booster's arsenal is named after vehicle lingo.
- Wreaking Havok: Things killed by the All Brake bounce around the landscape like pinballs in a bouncy castle.
