We're all cooped up and spending time away from people to slow the spread of COVID-19, but at least videogame release date timing is on our side: Doom Eternal and Animal Crossing: New Horizons both came out this week, and while the latter isn't a PC game, it's impossible to ignore what a perfect balance the two strike. Doom Eternal is a ferocious, cathartic demon murder simulator, and Animal Crossing is a slow burn zen garden for manageable debts.
The internet decided that Doomguy and Animal Crossing's Isabelle were friends back when their games' release dates first aligned, but now that meme dream team has become a reality. Modder It's Me Veronica put together a mod for GZDoom that brings Isabelle into the game as a helpful companion.
Isabelle acts a lot like Bioshock Infinite's Elizabeth and then some. Isabelle will throw health, ammo, and armor your way, blast demons with confetti poppers, and even solicit high fives from Doomguy after a nice fight. Isabelle even knows how to use a shotgun if the occasion calls for it.
She can't die either, which is aligned with the spirit of Animal Crossing. It brightens up Doom a bit, filling the air with a touch of optimism (and clouds of confetti). There's nothing like riding the edge between panicked despair in literal hell and party time friendship vibes with a cartoon dog. Bless these modders.
To get Isabelle into Doom, you'll need to own a Doom game and its respective WAD file. Then you need to install GZDoom, a Doom port built specifically for modern hardware and modding. It's pretty good at detecting your installed games automatically, but refer to the installation documentation if you have trouble. Once GZDoom is good to go, just download the Isabelle mod and drag "ISABELLE.pk3" over "gzdoom.exe" to boot 'er up. Enjoy the best of both worlds.
