Brutal Doom might be the best way to play Doom these days, given how ludicrously over the top it is. We've been extolling its virtues for a while now, and a new trailer has appeared to remind us why. The trailer shows off the forthcoming 20b update, which adds "detailed destroyable bodies and gib physics", and which hasn't had a release date...until now. Version 20b will be out December 31, as announced on ModDB here.

"This update fixes several bugs previously present on Brutal Doom v20, adds new stuff such as more death animations, even better gibs, a rebalanced and more satisfying melee system, and huge performance improvements", the modders behind the project say.

The release comes with the inclusion of a massive new map pack, which adds a variety of locations full of demons to punch into tiny bits.

"The 'Starter Pack Map Pack' comes separately with 32 new maps, featuring realistic environments, cities, outdoors, space stations, hellish cities, new enemies and bosses, all balanced for Brutal Doom's gameplay.

"The entire campaign has a plot of how a demon invasion starts on a UAC Mars facility, then it breaks into Los Angeles, and UAC's Space Marines are deployed to save the city. All maps have continuous progression, every map starts where the previous map ended, giving a feeling of a big adventure instead of just random maps placed in a megawad. Maps that takes place on Earth even have daytime progression (first map starts at dawn, second map at noon, third and fourth maps in different parts of dusk, next map is at night, and so on)."