Bloodshedder

What is the /idgames Archive? The /idgames Archive is a host for all types of Doom engine PWADs and modifications. It is hosted by Gamers.org and maintained by Eric Baker and Bill Koch. Doomworld does not have any connection to the FTP server or web server at archives.gamers.org, nor any of the official mirrors. However, Doomworld does run the web-based front end to the archive (see below). What is the Doomworld /idgames Archive database? The /idgames Archive database on Doomworld is located at http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/. It provides a web-based front end to nearly all files in the /idgames Archive. Players can vote and comment on WADs, as well as get convenient download links from all supported mirrors of the archive What is FTP? Where can I get an FTP client? FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. For more information, see the Wikipedia entry on FTP. You can find a list of FTP clients here. We recommend either CoreFTP or the Filezilla Client. You can also use the FireFTP extension for Firefox if you prefer that browser. If you really have no idea what you're doing, try using this tutorial. I don't understand all this FTP stuff. Is there an easier way to upload my files? You can use the browser-based idgames Upload form instead of worrying about all of these FTP instructions. Refer to the official rules before uploading to the archive. Don't forget to include your WAD's text file inside the ZIP file, and additionally upload a copy of the text file separately. Where do I get the template for the text file? Here. Alternately, you can use the /idgames text file generator. Please note: If you are behind a proxy server, the connection may not work. There is a limit on the number of simultaneous users on the FTP server. BE PATIENT. Do not hammer the server by continually trying to log in. Try accessing it some time around midnight EST (5 AM GMT). ZIP your WAD files, and always put the text file describing your WAD inside the ZIP file, as well as uploading it separately. Again, you should read the official rules regarding uploading to the archive. Instructions for using a GUI FTP client: Load an FTP client (FileZilla or something similar). Connect to archives.gamers.org. The username is "anonymous", and the password is your email address (i.e. user@host.net). Once connected, navigate the directory structure to /pub/idgames/incoming/. Upload your ZIP file, and BE SURE to upload the text file required to accompany it. Instructions for using a command-line FTP client: ftp archives.gamers.org username: anonymous password: (put e-mail here) cd /pub/idgames/incoming/ bin put (ZIP file) put (text file) quit What will be rejected? Uploads with long filenames (more than 12 characters); uploads with filenames containing spaces or accented characters. Warez copies of anything. Junk in ZIP files. RAR, 7z, UHA, etc. files (compression must be ZIP format). Uploads with no text file included. Anything not related to any Doom engine games (such as a modification for Quake 3). Any SLIGE/OBLIGE levels. WADs with resources used without permission (though these might slip through; if someone complains, the file may be removed). MP3s/OGGs in WADs, unless it can be verified that the creation is original, and ideally is intended for the specific WAD file. Copyrighted sound clips of Disney, Beavis and Butthead, etc. Unmodified parts of any IWAD. "Demo" WADs that are not playable in their own right (other than editing examples). Modified id Software levels. Trademarked or copyrighted symbols. Files over 50MB in size without prior approval. Any other questionable things. Do I need to do anything else after uploading a file? The archive maintainer will send an e-mail to the address you specified in the text file to make sure the upload is genuine. Details are available here. Where can I get reports about which files were rejected or accepted? Rejected and accepted items from the last 7 days. How long will my file remain in /newstuff, and what happens to it afterward? If your file is accepted, it is placed in /newstuff and remains there for ten days. At the same time, it is also placed in its final location, which varies according to the type of WAD you uploaded. The "accepted" report above will indicate its final destination. Where can I upload Demos (LMPs)? There is no active LMP upload area any more. You can probably find all you want concerning demos at the Doomworld Demos forum, the SDA, and COMPET-N. How do I contact the archive maintainers? E-mail idgmaint@gamers.org; start your subject line with 'DOOM-FTP:'. Where can I download files? Use the main download mirror, which is located here. We also recommend using Doomworld's /idgames Archive page, which provides a web-based front-end for WAD rating, reviewing, and downloading. None of the FTP download links are working in my browser! In their infinite wisdom, the developers of Chromium have completely removed all FTP support from the browser. This means that any other browser based on this browsing engine, such as Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, or Opera, will not be able to open FTP links. Use the HTTP or SSL links (they start with http:// or https://) instead. I'm getting the message "archives.gamers.org not found" (or something similar). What's going on? Chances are that you are behind a proxy server. Ask somebody else that you know to upload your WAD for you. I'm getting the message "There are too many connections from your internet address." What's wrong? The FTP server does not allow multiple connections from the same IP address. Check your FTP client's settings and limit the simultaneous number of connections to 1. In FileZilla Client, this can be done by creating an entry for the /idgames Archive in the Site Manager, going to the Transfer Settings tab, checking the box that says Limit number of simultaneous connections, and setting the value to 1. I'm having problems uploading with Internet Explorer. What should I do? Internet Explorer is not an ideal option for uploading files via FTP. Find a real FTP client using the links above. I just made a big circular room with a cyberdemon in it. Will it be accepted? Yes, but expect a bad review (if any at all). I made a music WAD. Will it be accepted? Yes, but no copyrighted MP3s. Any digital music must specifically be made for your level or project. My WAD uses resources from other games or WADs. Will this be accepted? Only if you have received the proper permissions. If it is accepted without getting the proper permissions, the owner of those resources will likely be able to get it removed from the archives. I'm looking for a WAD on the FTP, but I cannot find it! Try the /idgames Archive database search.

Swift Death - franckFRAG (guest mappers JCD & Memfis) Doom 2 - Single Player - Boom Compatible - 1.51 MB - (img) (img) Reviewed by: Voros Swift Death is a Doom 2 megawad, replacing all 32 maps. The name says everything... Swift Death has the theme of slaughterfest and arena shooter. But the difference is there is no progression. You start a new game, and in one second, you'll find yourself desperately running around in the small space given, while trying to avoid the multitude of Revenant fireballs coming your way, with a pistol in your hand... all on MAP01. This on "Beginner Challenge", which replaces "Hurt Me Plenty". The author says to take "Toilet Break" first, which is basically "Hurt Me Plenty". Visually, it's nice, with the new skies and all. Don't expect mindblowing details though. You won't have time to admire the sights! The demons... demons everywhere. But used uniformly, so there's some chance of surviving. Unless you have a BFG 9000, your chances are pretty slim (but not impossible). Thankfully, such large numbers of demons in one place is bound to start infighting. Unfortunately, finding a spot to wait it all out seems impossible. This is a well-executed megawad, and if you ever finished The Plutonia Experiment on Ultra-Violence, then you must try this. The Last Sanctuary - cybermind (aka Mistranger) Doom 2 - Single Player - MBF compatible - 9.03 MB - (img) (img) (img) (img) (img) Reviewed by: Ribbiks The Last Sanctuary is a rather spectacular MBF-compatible map crafted by Russian author cybermind (aka Mistranger) for the 16th First-Try Demo Contest (FDC). For those unfamiliar, the premise of FDC is that participants race through a map that no one has played before and try and complete it as quickly as possible, so it's a contest of navigation and planning as well as combat. For this map there were 15 players in total, myself among them, with some familiar names scoring the fastest times. Onto the map: first of all, this thing is huge. It boasts ~64k linedefs in its description, and Veinen's winning FDC time was more than 40 minutes, so expect to spend quite a bit longer if you intend to soak up the sights. Without spoiling the sense of "holy cow, there's a whole other area over here?" I had when first playing, I'll say the map consists of three main areas with distinct themes following the much loved tech -> hell aesthetic. Fans of the dreary narrative-implying semi-realism, sprawling jagged caverns, and diverse texture schemes that typify Russian releases won't be disappointed, as this map has plenty of it all. The monster placement mostly suits the exploratory gameplay, with incidental mobs lining the rooms between the occasional arena-like setup. My greatest familiarity with the map is on skill 2, the setting used during FDC, which is designed to be very friendly for the player who's in a hurry and can't afford to hunt for resources when short stocked. The enemy composition is quite a bit meaner on the higher settings, and might be a smidge harder than the average fan of exploratory maps might be looking for, but that's why the settings exist, right? To me the most impressive attribute of The Last Sanctuary is the amount of technical wizardry that cybermind managed to pull off in a mostly Boom-compatible fashion. The highlight feature is a grandiose outdoor section that transitions from day to night in real time using some slowly animated textures in conjunction with half a million voodoo dolls, very cool! Another absurdly neat feature is the implementation of a combination lock to open the exit. I've spent like an hour studying that thing in DB2 but still only have a tenuous understanding of how it was done. There are also quite a number of elaborate elevator and stairbuilding triggers, and some quirky conveyor mechanics. In general, the behind-the-scenes functionality seems to be of such complexity that I'd wager bits of it had to have been procedurally generated. In short: Strap in for a gigantic adventure, ogle the cool technical bits, and don't be afraid to lower the difficulty if needed to blast your way through this beast; it's worth seeing! Abyssal Speedmapping Session 24 - Various Doom 2 - Single Player - Boom Compatible - 2.46 MB - (img) (img) (img) (img) Reviewed by: Jaws In Space For the 24th entry into the Abyssal Speedmapping Session, mappers were given the theme choices of silent teleporters, use a max of four monster types, or use the textures and palette from AD_79's Violence. For the second round of mapping 12 hours after the first, the bonus of avoiding placing lines parallel to the grid was given. Of the 18 maps submitted, 17 used the Violence textures; the only one that didn't was Joe-Ilya's map 32 because he started and finished making his map before the themes were revealed, which is why his map was put into the secret slot. Only two maps (4 and 31) use the bonus theme of no lines parallel to the grid; I don't read the themes before playing these wads, and I found that this theme was hardly noticeable. The other two themes are the most interesting from a player's standpoint and appear at least ten times each throughout the wad. ASS starts off slow and sweet with maps 1 - 4 being quite easy to blast through, and they all look pretty decent for speedmaps, Jimmy's map 4 being the standout visually. Map 5 is the first bad map of the wad; a combination of a huge lost soul swarm and damaging floors make the map annoying to play. In addition the map is quite bland visually, and seeing that it was only made in 45 minutes I don't find the lack of quality surprising. Maps 6 and 7 by Jimmy and TMD are two of the best maps in ASS 24; both maps look great and are very intense to play. Map 8 by Breezeep is another pretty good one; there are lots of nice boom effects used in this map, but the monster placement is a bit of an acquired taste, lots of Caco and Revenant hordes to be found here. Map 9 is the worst map in the project; the author drew a 256x256 square and then copy/pasted it around the editor until he had a maze. Map 10 is where difficulty starts to ramp up in these maps; map 10 itself is an open arena style map with a few side corridors. Map 11 is another great map from rf`; it's the biggest map in the wad and is nicely detailed throughout. I'm impressed with what rf` was able to make in such a short time. Maps 12 - 14 are the end of the wad toughies, map 13 being a true BFG spam slaughter map. Of these three maps, Obsidian's map 14 is the best both visually and in the gameplay department. ASS 24 has three bonus maps in slots 31-33. Map 31 is Return to Castle Funhouse by TMD; the gimmick here is a moving floor that circles the player around the map. This map is extremely hard. Map 32 is Joe-Ilya's map; aside from not following the rules of ASS at all, this map is OK. Map 33 is a visually updated version of map 3 that was done long after ASS had taken place. Rezulux's First Map - Rezulux Doom 2 - Single Player - ZDoom Compatible - 15.78 KB - (img) (img) Reviewed by: gaspe This is a really short single map, and it's the first one by the author. Visually is okay; it's the usual techbase stuff, though some of the texture choices seem amateurish. The gameplay was rather fun; there will be only low-tier monsters to kill, but the section with the red key was interesting and there were also a few nice traps in there. Overall the map is all right, only thing is that it could have been expanded a bit. Nevasca - Deadwing Doom 2 - Single Player - ZDoom Compatible - 23.15 MB - (img) (img) (img) (img) (img) (img) (img) (img) (img) (img) (img) Reviewed by: antares031 Nevasca is a ZDoom compatible single player wad, developed by Deadwing. It presents eight regular levels and one secret level to play, with a lot of custom elements such as weapons, monsters, background music in MP3 format, items, and powerups. Every level is played with ZDoom UV-Pistol Start during the review. As I've just mentioned, this wad has lots of custom features to offer. Now you have a Freezegun, Railgun, and Biorifle from NeoDoom, instead of the BFG9000. And you have some tougher monsters than the original counterparts, such as dark revenants called Death Incarnation and insane zombie specialists who launch deadly rockets at you. The distinctive change in the replaced monsters is the speed of their projectiles. Even the new dark imp now shoots a speedy fireball, which is almost as fast as a plasma shot of arachnotrons. Not to mention that the new, irritating lost soul from Doom Alpha can not only charge towards you, but also shoots a plasma shot to distract you even more. To compensate your disadvantages, health items and bonus items now offer more health than before, and there are new powerup items you can get, such as regeneration, a power orb that boosts the damage of your weapons, etc. Now it's time to talk about the level design. Like the author mentioned from the text file, every level features a non-linear layout, which is always nice to play. The architectural detail isn't superb, but it's good enough to express the concept and environment of frozen, tundra-like planet with ruins and tech-bases. And this is not a slaughter wad. Even the level with the highest monster quantity offers less than 150 monsters on UV. The difficulty of Nevasca is set by stronger monsters with faster projectiles and tricky moments to deal with. Some levels are easy to beat for intermediate players, but some levels are a little bit hard to go through with pistol start unless you've spent some lives to understand the layout. Nevasca isn't a megawad, nor an outstanding masterpiece. But it is a modest, interesting, enjoyable single player wad with well-designed non-linear levels. Of course, if you're fan of the original vanilla Doom levels, you may have a chance of not liking this one with lots of custom elements. But to me, I spent slightly less than two hours to beat this one, and it was totally worth it. I usually don't play many ZDoom compatible wads with custom elements since I'm a huge fan of limit removing wads. But I will give an exception to Nevasca. Tramplak - KJS Doom 2 - Single Player - ZDoom Compatible - 212.06 KB - (img) (img) (img) Reviewed by: gaspe Tramplak is a single map, and the first made by this author to be precise. The setting is a "techbase" building which has also some bits of hell corruption. Visually it is quite good though there's nothing remarkable, but the lighting was really nice. Gameplay isn't really hard but the ammo is really tight, and there won't be the usual stock of only zombies and imps. In particular the room with the chainsaw and the plasmagun that traps the player was quite nice. That said, it's really good for being a first, and there are some interesting things in this level. Village DeathMatch - IMMODIUZ Doom 2 - Deathmatch - ZDoom Compatible - 82.78 KB - (img) (img) (img) (img) (img) Reviewed by: Voros Village Deathmatch is a simple DM map for ZDoom-related sourceports, but poorly executed. The lack of environment variations makes the whole map look like the suburbs than a village. It also has tight corners and claustrophobic paths between the houses, not very ideal for a Deathmatch map. All the houses are the same, non-interactive and placed uniformly, with a few not in order. There's also a well that contains the BFG 9000, which I think is an OK hiding spot. Suburban Deathmatch might have been a better name. But the main problem: lack of weapons. There's one of each kind on the map except for the chainsaw and shotgun, the latter having around three. And the ammo for these weapons is pretty scarce, but the plasma rifle and rocket launcher ammo seem only possible to obtain by rocket jumping. There isn't even a single health-related pickup! It probably doesn't sound fun to play Deathmatch with your friends (unless you like "no health packs"), but I forgot to mention: this is a first map. Frankly, it may be unbalanced, but it shows the author has potential in map making. If the author chose to put in some more guns and reduce the houses, it would get my stamp of approval for any Deathmatch. Debrecen - HUNdebLeonidasX Doom 2 - Single Player - GZDoom - 2.41 MB - (img) Reviewed by: Hornbuckle Debrecan is a single level with new textures and decorative sprites. Altogether, this is a very good level. It's more or less a slaughtermap, engaging a few large mobs whenever you explore a new part of the city. The whole level is modeled after the author's hometown. All the weapons you'll pick up are from zombies, except a rocket launcher I didn't even notice I picked up until a showdown with an archvile. Most of the enemies you'll encounter will be grunts, zombies and imps. In the big street segment, you'll find some heavy resistance. The textures really make it feel like a Doom level, be that good or bad. I like it, but others may be spoiled by some of the recent HD textures to really appreciate the old-school feel it gives off. One complaint is that, at least in the latest developmental build for GZDoom, there is an invisible hell knight. Before I noticed it, I was hugging it while it was scratching me up. Another, although very minor, is that there is a stimpack next to a tree that is unattainable. I was at 7 health and scouring the map for packs, and this one just teased me mercilessly. Very fun, a bit challenging (maybe I just suck), and looks very good. The architecture was a joy to explore, and it was fun finding monster closets. I definitely recommend it. Trick Or Treat? - Federico Milesi (aka MrFroz) Doom 2 - Single Player - ZDoom - 1.47 MB - (img) (img) (img) (img) (img) (img) (img) (img) (img) (img) (img) (img) Reviewed by: yukib1t Trick Or Treat? is a single-player level for ZDoom (I used GZDoom) by Federico Milesi, aka MrFroz. The level has apparently gone through some revisions since it was first released, with this version specifically adding some ZDoom features. The level is split into two main sections, which can be played in any order. A third section acts as an exit chamber, as well as containing a nice health fountain. I played through on UV and found it to be be pretty easy, mostly due to the low number of enemies. In fact, nearly all the damage I received was from some careless treks through hellslime or nukage. But there also isn't much health or ammo, and I found myself with nothing but a few rockets more than a few times. This did help to balance things out in the end, though I still feel as though the level needs more challenge. Despite being for ZDoom, the level looks and feels much more like a level from the mid-90s. Not that this is a bad thing, but it is the weakest aspect of this level. Most rooms are pretty bland, with only a few nice decorative touches here and there. Light levels are also simple, but effective, though the differences between bright and dark sectors can be a bit jarring in places. As far as texturing goes, there really isn't much variation, with the bulk of the level sticking to the brown city/hell textures. Overall not a bad level, but doesn't feel too memorable either. Same Linedef Challenge Example - Royal_Sir Doom 2 - Single Player - Boom Compatible - 459.7 KB - (img) (img) (img) (img) (img) Reviewed by: BloodyAcid Let me preface this review with some context - these maps are Royal_Sir's second and third completed maps in the entirety of his or her mapping career. The two maps bundled in "Same Linedef Challenge Example" (or SLCE for short) are constrained by several gimmicks. In addition to the already well-practiced 1024x1024 size and the symmetrical layout, each map must look and feel different from each other despite using the same layout. While the maps in and of themselves accomplish this challenge, that is unfortunately the best, or perhaps the only, positive feedback I can sing about this project. Starting with the non-gameplay related quips, there are about 620 loading warnings, specifically missing patches when loading textures. I don't think that this affects the maps at all, aside from an overhanging HOM sky texture in the first map. Aside from the slight patch mishap, there is also a custom palette provided in addition to all the textures needed to play the map standalone, and some nice custom tunes. The maps are undeniably both cramped and ugly. Both maps feel terribly claustrophobic, and not in the sense of the acclaimed megawad of the same name. Many 1024 maps attempt to creatively sculpt an atmosphere that emulates areas larger than what they actually are, but SLCE boasts a "what you see is what you get" feel; you're stopped short at literally every corner due to the countless little bumps and protrusions that exist solely to hinder player movement. If you're not all banged up and bruised from faceplanting into every other wall to fight some demons, you'll find that the first map is extremely rough with ammunition. Unless you've struck a deal with the damage roll and bullet spread gods, you'll need to fist your way through at least a few mid-tiered monsters (bonus brownie points for each one that the archvile revives). On the offhand, the second map is much easier and lax with supplies. There's nothing appalling about the gameplay designs that stick out - and the combat is decent, relative to the cramped maneuverability conditions you get to fight in. In the visual design department, the map suffers from multiple cases of doors opening into the void, paper-thin walls and stairs, misaligned textures, the occasional HOM, and corners sharp enough to slice regular passers-by. The themes are consistent, but the sloppy and inconsistent texturing ruin the sense of atmosphere. Any sense of architecture also crumbles under the tiny map boundaries and poor texturing. All in all, these are decent first maps, but there's nothing worth playing through, even out of sole curiosity; move on and look forward to something else. Outpost HW - Topi Hattukangas Ultimate Doom - Single Player - Limit Removing - 144.82 KB - (img) (img) (img) (img) (img) Reviewed by: Not Jabba A while back I reviewed this mapper's first wad, Big Circular Room With Cybie, and my verdict was that they had created an almost interesting level from a crap concept, so I was interested to play a real level by the same author. I'm not sure Outpost HW really delivers, although it does have some interesting moments. Hattukangas continues to build a mapping style around tricks, traps, and forcing the player to think and observe, but many of those tricks just feel unreasonable. In the first half of the map, I had a monster closet open up literally right next to me while walking along a narrow catwalk and was expected to drop down into a tiny pit with two Pinkies to pick up a rad suit. On the other hand, there were also several situations where I was able to eliminate monsters without fighting them directly (via barrels or crushers) or even sneak up on them from behind -- not that it really felt necessary to do any of this, as there was plenty of ammo and most of the enemies in question were Imps and zombies, but at least it was interesting. The last few rooms of the level really drive the concept home by pitting you against more enemies than you're likely to be able to beat with your ammo (though you do have the chainsaw) and giving you opportunities to use barrels and infighting to your advantage. There were one or two bugs (I remember an Imp that was stuck until I shot it), but most of the frustration in this level comes from weird progression. A Soulsphere secret dropped me down into a previous part of the level and forced me to re-traverse a bunch of the map for no apparent reason. At the end, my way back to the rest of the map was completely cut off, and I was faced with four Barons that I really didn't feel like fighting with only a few rockets, so I ran past them to the exit switch. The author seems to have taken great care with secrets in this level -- there were many, but I only figured out how to get a quarter of them, and they may be the sort of secrets that rely more on timing and hidden switches than the more traditional visual cues. The level's big megasecret revolves around an enormous and presumably extremely annoying single-textured maze, and at the end of it you find...the author's entire first level, Big Circular Room With Cybie. Of course, if you want to play that level, you can just download it separately. Needless to say, I didn't feel compelled to try to go for 100%. This mapper does show some promise, but I can't condone this kind of trollish nonsense. Still, if you enjoy levels where the combat situations themselves are sort of like puzzles and half of the content is secret (in some ways, Hattukangas almost reminds me of yakfak), then you might like Outpost HW. The /newstuff Chronicles is a usually-weekly roundup of new items uploaded to the /idgames archive, and it is written entirely by community members like you. If you wish to contribute, the /newstuff Review Center is the place to do so. Register on the Doomworld Forums first if you don't already have an account, because you need one to submit reviews. Special thanks goes to the nearly 300 users who have submitted reviews over the past several years.

Swift Death - franckFRAG (guest mappers JCD & Memfis) Doom 2 - Single Player - Boom Compatible - 1.51 MB - Reviewed by: Voros Swift Death is a Doom 2 megawad, replacing all 32 maps. The name says everything... Swift Death has the theme of slaughterfest and arena shooter. But the difference is there is no progression. You start a new game, and in one second, you'll find yourself desperately running around in the small space given, while trying to avoid the multitude of Revenant fireballs coming your way, with a pistol in your hand... all on MAP01. This on "Beginner Challenge", which replaces "Hurt Me Plenty". The author says to take "Toilet Break" first, which is basically "Hurt Me Plenty". Visually, it's nice, with the new skies and all. Don't expect mindblowing details though. You won't have time to admire the sights! The demons... demons everywhere. But used uniformly, so there's some chance of surviving. Unless you have a BFG 9000, your chances are pretty slim (but not impossible). Thankfully, such large numbers of demons in one place is bound to start infighting. Unfortunately, finding a spot to wait it all out seems impossible. This is a well-executed megawad, and if you ever finished The Plutonia Experiment on Ultra-Violence, then you must try this. The Last Sanctuary - cybermind (aka Mistranger) Doom 2 - Single Player - MBF compatible - 9.03 MB - Reviewed by: Ribbiks The Last Sanctuary is a rather spectacular MBF-compatible map crafted by Russian author cybermind (aka Mistranger) for the 16th First-Try Demo Contest (FDC). For those unfamiliar, the premise of FDC is that participants race through a map that no one has played before and try and complete it as quickly as possible, so it's a contest of navigation and planning as well as combat. For this map there were 15 players in total, myself among them, with some familiar names scoring the fastest times. Onto the map: first of all, this thing is huge. It boasts ~64k linedefs in its description, and Veinen's winning FDC time was more than 40 minutes, so expect to spend quite a bit longer if you intend to soak up the sights. Without spoiling the sense of "holy cow, there's a whole other area over here?" I had when first playing, I'll say the map consists of three main areas with distinct themes following the much loved tech -> hell aesthetic. Fans of the dreary narrative-implying semi-realism, sprawling jagged caverns, and diverse texture schemes that typify Russian releases won't be disappointed, as this map has plenty of it all. The monster placement mostly suits the exploratory gameplay, with incidental mobs lining the rooms between the occasional arena-like setup. My greatest familiarity with the map is on skill 2, the setting used during FDC, which is designed to be very friendly for the player who's in a hurry and can't afford to hunt for resources when short stocked. The enemy composition is quite a bit meaner on the higher settings, and might be a smidge harder than the average fan of exploratory maps might be looking for, but that's why the settings exist, right? To me the most impressive attribute of The Last Sanctuary is the amount of technical wizardry that cybermind managed to pull off in a mostly Boom-compatible fashion. The highlight feature is a grandiose outdoor section that transitions from day to night in real time using some slowly animated textures in conjunction with half a million voodoo dolls, very cool! Another absurdly neat feature is the implementation of a combination lock to open the exit. I've spent like an hour studying that thing in DB2 but still only have a tenuous understanding of how it was done. There are also quite a number of elaborate elevator and stairbuilding triggers, and some quirky conveyor mechanics. In general, the behind-the-scenes functionality seems to be of such complexity that I'd wager bits of it had to have been procedurally generated. In short: Strap in for a gigantic adventure, ogle the cool technical bits, and don't be afraid to lower the difficulty if needed to blast your way through this beast; it's worth seeing! Abyssal Speedmapping Session 24 - Various Doom 2 - Single Player - Boom Compatible - 2.46 MB - Reviewed by: Jaws In Space For the 24th entry into the Abyssal Speedmapping Session, mappers were given the theme choices of silent teleporters, use a max of four monster types, or use the textures and palette from AD_79's Violence. For the second round of mapping 12 hours after the first, the bonus of avoiding placing lines parallel to the grid was given. Of the 18 maps submitted, 17 used the Violence textures; the only one that didn't was Joe-Ilya's map 32 because he started and finished making his map before the themes were revealed, which is why his map was put into the secret slot. Only two maps (4 and 31) use the bonus theme of no lines parallel to the grid; I don't read the themes before playing these wads, and I found that this theme was hardly noticeable. The other two themes are the most interesting from a player's standpoint and appear at least ten times each throughout the wad. ASS starts off slow and sweet with maps 1 - 4 being quite easy to blast through, and they all look pretty decent for speedmaps, Jimmy's map 4 being the standout visually. Map 5 is the first bad map of the wad; a combination of a huge lost soul swarm and damaging floors make the map annoying to play. In addition the map is quite bland visually, and seeing that it was only made in 45 minutes I don't find the lack of quality surprising. Maps 6 and 7 by Jimmy and TMD are two of the best maps in ASS 24; both maps look great and are very intense to play. Map 8 by Breezeep is another pretty good one; there are lots of nice boom effects used in this map, but the monster placement is a bit of an acquired taste, lots of Caco and Revenant hordes to be found here. Map 9 is the worst map in the project; the author drew a 256x256 square and then copy/pasted it around the editor until he had a maze. Map 10 is where difficulty starts to ramp up in these maps; map 10 itself is an open arena style map with a few side corridors. Map 11 is another great map from rf`; it's the biggest map in the wad and is nicely detailed throughout. I'm impressed with what rf` was able to make in such a short time. Maps 12 - 14 are the end of the wad toughies, map 13 being a true BFG spam slaughter map. Of these three maps, Obsidian's map 14 is the best both visually and in the gameplay department. ASS 24 has three bonus maps in slots 31-33. Map 31 is Return to Castle Funhouse by TMD; the gimmick here is a moving floor that circles the player around the map. This map is extremely hard. Map 32 is Joe-Ilya's map; aside from not following the rules of ASS at all, this map is OK. Map 33 is a visually updated version of map 3 that was done long after ASS had taken place. Rezulux's First Map - Rezulux Doom 2 - Single Player - ZDoom Compatible - 15.78 KB - Reviewed by: gaspe This is a really short single map, and it's the first one by the author. Visually is okay; it's the usual techbase stuff, though some of the texture choices seem amateurish. The gameplay was rather fun; there will be only low-tier monsters to kill, but the section with the red key was interesting and there were also a few nice traps in there. Overall the map is all right, only thing is that it could have been expanded a bit. Nevasca - Deadwing Doom 2 - Single Player - ZDoom Compatible - 23.15 MB - Reviewed by: antares031 Nevasca is a ZDoom compatible single player wad, developed by Deadwing. It presents eight regular levels and one secret level to play, with a lot of custom elements such as weapons, monsters, background music in MP3 format, items, and powerups. Every level is played with ZDoom UV-Pistol Start during the review. As I've just mentioned, this wad has lots of custom features to offer. Now you have a Freezegun, Railgun, and Biorifle from NeoDoom, instead of the BFG9000. And you have some tougher monsters than the original counterparts, such as dark revenants called Death Incarnation and insane zombie specialists who launch deadly rockets at you. The distinctive change in the replaced monsters is the speed of their projectiles. Even the new dark imp now shoots a speedy fireball, which is almost as fast as a plasma shot of arachnotrons. Not to mention that the new, irritating lost soul from Doom Alpha can not only charge towards you, but also shoots a plasma shot to distract you even more. To compensate your disadvantages, health items and bonus items now offer more health than before, and there are new powerup items you can get, such as regeneration, a power orb that boosts the damage of your weapons, etc. Now it's time to talk about the level design. Like the author mentioned from the text file, every level features a non-linear layout, which is always nice to play. The architectural detail isn't superb, but it's good enough to express the concept and environment of frozen, tundra-like planet with ruins and tech-bases. And this is not a slaughter wad. Even the level with the highest monster quantity offers less than 150 monsters on UV. The difficulty of Nevasca is set by stronger monsters with faster projectiles and tricky moments to deal with. Some levels are easy to beat for intermediate players, but some levels are a little bit hard to go through with pistol start unless you've spent some lives to understand the layout. Nevasca isn't a megawad, nor an outstanding masterpiece. But it is a modest, interesting, enjoyable single player wad with well-designed non-linear levels. Of course, if you're fan of the original vanilla Doom levels, you may have a chance of not liking this one with lots of custom elements. But to me, I spent slightly less than two hours to beat this one, and it was totally worth it. I usually don't play many ZDoom compatible wads with custom elements since I'm a huge fan of limit removing wads. But I will give an exception to Nevasca. Tramplak - KJS Doom 2 - Single Player - ZDoom Compatible - 212.06 KB - Reviewed by: gaspe Tramplak is a single map, and the first made by this author to be precise. The setting is a "techbase" building which has also some bits of hell corruption. Visually it is quite good though there's nothing remarkable, but the lighting was really nice. Gameplay isn't really hard but the ammo is really tight, and there won't be the usual stock of only zombies and imps. In particular the room with the chainsaw and the plasmagun that traps the player was quite nice. That said, it's really good for being a first, and there are some interesting things in this level. Village DeathMatch - IMMODIUZ Doom 2 - Deathmatch - ZDoom Compatible - 82.78 KB - Reviewed by: Voros Village Deathmatch is a simple DM map for ZDoom-related sourceports, but poorly executed. The lack of environment variations makes the whole map look like the suburbs than a village. It also has tight corners and claustrophobic paths between the houses, not very ideal for a Deathmatch map. All the houses are the same, non-interactive and placed uniformly, with a few not in order. There's also a well that contains the BFG 9000, which I think is an OK hiding spot. Suburban Deathmatch might have been a better name. But the main problem: lack of weapons. There's one of each kind on the map except for the chainsaw and shotgun, the latter having around three. And the ammo for these weapons is pretty scarce, but the plasma rifle and rocket launcher ammo seem only possible to obtain by rocket jumping. There isn't even a single health-related pickup! It probably doesn't sound fun to play Deathmatch with your friends (unless you like "no health packs"), but I forgot to mention: this is a first map. Frankly, it may be unbalanced, but it shows the author has potential in map making. If the author chose to put in some more guns and reduce the houses, it would get my stamp of approval for any Deathmatch. Debrecen - HUNdebLeonidasX Doom 2 - Single Player - GZDoom - 2.41 MB - Reviewed by: Hornbuckle Debrecan is a single level with new textures and decorative sprites. Altogether, this is a very good level. It's more or less a slaughtermap, engaging a few large mobs whenever you explore a new part of the city. The whole level is modeled after the author's hometown. All the weapons you'll pick up are from zombies, except a rocket launcher I didn't even notice I picked up until a showdown with an archvile. Most of the enemies you'll encounter will be grunts, zombies and imps. In the big street segment, you'll find some heavy resistance. The textures really make it feel like a Doom level, be that good or bad. I like it, but others may be spoiled by some of the recent HD textures to really appreciate the old-school feel it gives off. One complaint is that, at least in the latest developmental build for GZDoom, there is an invisible hell knight. Before I noticed it, I was hugging it while it was scratching me up. Another, although very minor, is that there is a stimpack next to a tree that is unattainable. I was at 7 health and scouring the map for packs, and this one just teased me mercilessly. Very fun, a bit challenging (maybe I just suck), and looks very good. The architecture was a joy to explore, and it was fun finding monster closets. I definitely recommend it. Trick Or Treat? - Federico Milesi (aka MrFroz) Doom 2 - Single Player - ZDoom - 1.47 MB - Reviewed by: yukib1t Trick Or Treat? is a single-player level for ZDoom (I used GZDoom) by Federico Milesi, aka MrFroz. The level has apparently gone through some revisions since it was first released, with this version specifically adding some ZDoom features. The level is split into two main sections, which can be played in any order. A third section acts as an exit chamber, as well as containing a nice health fountain. I played through on UV and found it to be be pretty easy, mostly due to the low number of enemies. In fact, nearly all the damage I received was from some careless treks through hellslime or nukage. But there also isn't much health or ammo, and I found myself with nothing but a few rockets more than a few times. This did help to balance things out in the end, though I still feel as though the level needs more challenge. Despite being for ZDoom, the level looks and feels much more like a level from the mid-90s. Not that this is a bad thing, but it is the weakest aspect of this level. Most rooms are pretty bland, with only a few nice decorative touches here and there. Light levels are also simple, but effective, though the differences between bright and dark sectors can be a bit jarring in places. As far as texturing goes, there really isn't much variation, with the bulk of the level sticking to the brown city/hell textures. Overall not a bad level, but doesn't feel too memorable either. Same Linedef Challenge Example - Royal_Sir Doom 2 - Single Player - Boom Compatible - 459.7 KB - Reviewed by: BloodyAcid Let me preface this review with some context - these maps are Royal_Sir's second and third completed maps in the entirety of his or her mapping career. The two maps bundled in "Same Linedef Challenge Example" (or SLCE for short) are constrained by several gimmicks. In addition to the already well-practiced 1024x1024 size and the symmetrical layout, each map must look and feel different from each other despite using the same layout. While the maps in and of themselves accomplish this challenge, that is unfortunately the best, or perhaps the only, positive feedback I can sing about this project. Starting with the non-gameplay related quips, there are about 620 loading warnings, specifically missing patches when loading textures. I don't think that this affects the maps at all, aside from an overhanging HOM sky texture in the first map. Aside from the slight patch mishap, there is also a custom palette provided in addition to all the textures needed to play the map standalone, and some nice custom tunes. The maps are undeniably both cramped and ugly. Both maps feel terribly claustrophobic, and not in the sense of the acclaimed megawad of the same name. Many 1024 maps attempt to creatively sculpt an atmosphere that emulates areas larger than what they actually are, but SLCE boasts a "what you see is what you get" feel; you're stopped short at literally every corner due to the countless little bumps and protrusions that exist solely to hinder player movement. If you're not all banged up and bruised from faceplanting into every other wall to fight some demons, you'll find that the first map is extremely rough with ammunition. Unless you've struck a deal with the damage roll and bullet spread gods, you'll need to fist your way through at least a few mid-tiered monsters (bonus brownie points for each one that the archvile revives). On the offhand, the second map is much easier and lax with supplies. There's nothing appalling about the gameplay designs that stick out - and the combat is decent, relative to the cramped maneuverability conditions you get to fight in. In the visual design department, the map suffers from multiple cases of doors opening into the void, paper-thin walls and stairs, misaligned textures, the occasional HOM, and corners sharp enough to slice regular passers-by. The themes are consistent, but the sloppy and inconsistent texturing ruin the sense of atmosphere. Any sense of architecture also crumbles under the tiny map boundaries and poor texturing. All in all, these are decent first maps, but there's nothing worth playing through, even out of sole curiosity; move on and look forward to something else. Outpost HW - Topi Hattukangas Ultimate Doom - Single Player - Limit Removing - 144.82 KB - Reviewed by: Not Jabba A while back I reviewed this mapper's first wad, Big Circular Room With Cybie, and my verdict was that they had created an almost interesting level from a crap concept, so I was interested to play a real level by the same author. I'm not sure Outpost HW really delivers, although it does have some interesting moments. Hattukangas continues to build a mapping style around tricks, traps, and forcing the player to think and observe, but many of those tricks just feel unreasonable. In the first half of the map, I had a monster closet open up literally right next to me while walking along a narrow catwalk and was expected to drop down into a tiny pit with two Pinkies to pick up a rad suit. On the other hand, there were also several situations where I was able to eliminate monsters without fighting them directly (via barrels or crushers) or even sneak up on them from behind -- not that it really felt necessary to do any of this, as there was plenty of ammo and most of the enemies in question were Imps and zombies, but at least it was interesting. The last few rooms of the level really drive the concept home by pitting you against more enemies than you're likely to be able to beat with your ammo (though you do have the chainsaw) and giving you opportunities to use barrels and infighting to your advantage. There were one or two bugs (I remember an Imp that was stuck until I shot it), but most of the frustration in this level comes from weird progression. A Soulsphere secret dropped me down into a previous part of the level and forced me to re-traverse a bunch of the map for no apparent reason. At the end, my way back to the rest of the map was completely cut off, and I was faced with four Barons that I really didn't feel like fighting with only a few rockets, so I ran past them to the exit switch. The author seems to have taken great care with secrets in this level -- there were many, but I only figured out how to get a quarter of them, and they may be the sort of secrets that rely more on timing and hidden switches than the more traditional visual cues. The level's big megasecret revolves around an enormous and presumably extremely annoying single-textured maze, and at the end of it you find...the author's entire first level, Big Circular Room With Cybie. Of course, if you want to play that level, you can just download it separately. Needless to say, I didn't feel compelled to try to go for 100%. This mapper does show some promise, but I can't condone this kind of trollish nonsense. Still, if you enjoy levels where the combat situations themselves are sort of like puzzles and half of the content is secret (in some ways, Hattukangas almost reminds me of yakfak), then you might like Outpost HW. The /newstuff Chronicles is a usually-weekly roundup of new items uploaded to the /idgames archive, and it is written entirely by community members like you. If you wish to contribute, the /newstuff Review Center is the place to do so. Register on the Doomworld Forums first if you don't already have an account, because you need one to submit reviews. Special thanks goes to the nearly 300 users who have submitted reviews over the past several years.

Shadowmaker - Nicholas "Tiger" Gautier Doom 2 - Invasion - Zandronum - 15.5 MB - Reviewed by: Decay Tiger is known for making maps that push the limits of computers. Shadowmaker is an invasion map for Zandronum. It requires Skulltag_content for some weaponry. It apparently REQUIRES the use of OpenGL. I'm not convinced of that, but since there is glaring text telling me otherwise, OGL I go. I shouldn't have to screw around with my lighting/brightness settings to play a map. The outside is pitch black, how in the world are you supposed to see your enemies? Gameplay wise, it's a fairly typical invasion map. New areas open up after waves, and Tiger implemented a music changer after certain waves. The game play is not bad at all, in invasion principle. The waves get progressively harder, culminating in a "boss" fight at the end. It seemed fairly balanced to me, as someone who is not a PvE player, so maybe some others would find it a little easy. The tower at the top of the hill and using other corners to your advantage make the map not too difficult. Good spread out of weapons too, and use of Skulltag items. The map's obvious strong point is its looks. It is a beautiful map, if a little busy, but does well in creating an atmosphere outside and appropriate structuring on the inside of the castle, though it seems attention to lighting went a little by the wayside inside. The single-most, biggest problem with this map is that it requires, absolutely requires, a strong PC to run smoothly. The map looks really well-crafted, very pretty and I can tell a lot of effort was put in, but it is hard to appreciate the map you're playing when you are moving around at under 10 FPS trying to kill enemies and trying not to die yourself. Other problems include cliffs you can jump up and suddenly die in water, teleports that lead you to instant death pits (why in the world would you do that), and perhaps a little bit of over detail inside the main building lead to catch-ons and double-looks to make sure you got everything. Overall, if you have a strong PC, I recommend giving the map a play. If not, pass for now, otherwise you'll find yourself struggling to play. Mindphuq - HdRambo, Eko, Vegence Doom 2 - Deathmatch - GZDoom - 215.53 KB - Reviewed by: Decay "This wad is utter garbage." That's all that is really worth saying about this wad, but I need to expand on this for reasons of reviewer integrity. Mindphuq.wad is a Boom format...DM wad... for all the Boom DM players... right. It was made by HDrambo, someone literally straight from the fabled Dwango series, who coincidentally hosts a Dwango5 server to boot. Anyway, in the pictures for the wad you'll see some of the things I'm describing. A "simplistic" battle arena that also supports SP and Coop play, this wad is straight out of 1994 in terms of being unconventional, but also in terms of being straight up ugly to look at. Featured in this wonderful "DM" wad is a spawn in an inescapable cage full of megaspheres and a damaging floor, many death pits, items strewn everywhere, similar to the dragon balls spreading out after use, dark cave mazes filled with hanging corpses (lit up for your benefit in the pic), a pitch black room full of crushers, a dark damaging liquid area full of inescapable pits and exploding barrels, and a... boxing ring... way the heck off to the side far from EVERYTHING. Given it's evidently a meme wad, there is no point in discussing item placement/technicalities of the map. I have no idea how anybody is supposed to have any sort of DM in this map. Or any semblance of fun at all. Maybe a few laughs at the author's expense but that's about it. Mindphuq isn't really a mind fuck, it's just a stupid and terrible wad that should've been left behind in 1994. It isn't funny, it isn't trippy, and it isn't good. DMMPST: DooM MaP StaTistics - Frans P. de Vries N/A - N/A - N/A - 183.11 KB Reviewed by: Walter confetti This is a little Java program created by Frans P. de Vries for Unix / Windows machines that finds all the type of things in a map; let's say this is a modern version of WadSpy. A really cool little program, pretty useful too! Download it and take a chance! Twilight of the Gods - Ed C. Doom 2 - Single Player - ZDoom Compatible - 459.7 KB - Reviewed by: Csonicgo This map, "Twilight of the Gods", was to be included in Doomworld Mega Project 2013, but an older version made it into the map pack instead. This is the "newer" edition of the map. And while this map is quite large in scale, it's also large in boring. I'm not trying to be a bitch here, I'm saying that this map is everything I cannot stand about a ZDoom map. The whole thing is made of slopes. ZDoom slope physics are from another planet, so it's not only a pain to get around, the slopes also trap monsters in the floor. That doesn't look good; why do people keep doing this? Why? I assume the goal of this map was to hit certain switches certain ways, but since there was nothing happening when I tried just that, multiple times, I conclude that the map is broken. It doesn't help that I can hit those same said switches multiple times in a row, screwing up the scripting so badly that ZDoom plummets to single-digit frame rates. I couldn't see past my nose in the darkness in GZDoom, and the HUD messages that appeared when I flipped switches sounded like the mapper was trying so hard to be edgy. If the mapper happens to read this, please do not make a slope-heavy map again. In software mode, it just makes your map even worse! The main attractions in this map were the grey revenant giants, which kill you instantly if one of their fireballs makes contact. Slap them with the BFG and move on. There were around 10-15 cyberdemons running around when I decided to give up on the map, because I was going in circles at that point, and the Mock 2 levels of demon projectiles were slowing the game down to an unplayable mess. I'm sure if I had a stronger computer, I could be arsed to continue, but there is zero fun here in the first place. it's just running around effortlessly flipping switches. If I wanted that, I could play Eternal Doom. A strong Pass on this one. I know the mapper can do much better than this. CCCP 20 - m0wgli Doom 2 - Single Player - GZDoom - 9.59 MB - Reviewed by: JudgeDeadd According to the text file, this map pits you against hordes of "homo sovieticus" created by the far-future Soviet Union. The Soviet theme is mostly evident in one or two pieces of monumental architecture, as well as run-down buildings, perhaps meant to evoke the squalid living conditions in USSR. Unfortunately some parts of the level don't play very well due to misguided attempts at realism. It may be cute to design a kitchen and a communal bedroom in Doom, but gameplay-wise there's not much fun about running from one flat tiny room to another, killing dinky hitscanners one by one. The difficulty curve isn't the best. Initially your biggest problem will be surviving the copious amounts of distant hitscanners with very little health to be found. This does add some genuine challenge. Once you clear out the initial areas, however, the level is more or less a breeze, with traps that have no teeth, cramped corridors where you're never exposed, and enough ammo to never worry about the next fight. The only more demanding battle is the final crossfire, but there's nothing stopping you from cheesing it by simply retreating into the building behind you. Worth mentioning is that the author insists on having damaging sectors surrounding several of the light sources, which I found both annoying and stupid (is the Doomguy really so clumsy that he can't stand next to a candle or lamp without burning himself?). If there's anything that the level has going for it, it's that the music is fairly addictive, and the visual design is interesting; among the more memorable bits (captured in my screenies) is the lighted stairwell near the blue key door, as well as a cozy-looking office near the end. Though it might have been better if the author had built up on the story hinted in the text file, and emphasized the Soviet theme with some more recognizably Communist architecture, propaganda posters, etc. The map uses ZDoom features, though the author didn't specify port compatibility in the text file; regular ZDoom 2.8.1 seems to work okay (although there are ugly HOMs in one place, so maybe it'd work better in GZDoom). Castle Argh! - El Tupi Doom 2 - Deathmatch - GZDoom - 91.86 KB - Reviewed by: Decay The First of El Tupi's DM maps. I went backwards, starting with his most recent, and they definitely got progressively better because Castle Argh is one of the absolute biggest travesties of a DM map I've ever seen. There really isn't much worth saying here, the screenshot speaks for itself. It's a lame maze (terrible for DM), with items strewn everywhere for absolutely no reason, and very little actual feasibility in DM game play. It is visually ugly to behold, and I can only say "thank God the author improved." This is an example of a "myfirstDMlevel" wad at its finest. Precious Snowflake - El Tupi Doom 2 - Deathmatch - GZDoom - 53.64 KB - Reviewed by: Decay El Tupi's 2nd DM map. Featuring more 3D floors and double-decker style play, this map is a little more progressive but not as good as map 3, for reasons of a boring symmetrical layout and the worst spawn gimmick I've seen in a while. Players spawn in a small alcove hallway, get a weapon, green armour, and ammo, and then fall down a small tube into the main arena. Kinda sucks if you die and don't get the extra goodies, and falling in a small tube away from the central megasphere really puts you at a huge disadvantage against a powered up player with a rocket launcher, SSG, and 200/200. Also, if played in LMS, a player can easily just stay in the spawntube to win. Alternatively, get a few frags up, respawn in the tube, and just wait the rest of the match out. There are also medikits strewn EVERYWHERE, way too much health, we are playing DEATHmatch, not LIFEmatch. The visage is plain and boring, not much to be said in the looks department. Not really worth a play once, but it's nice to see someone trying progressive layouts. No One Lives Forever! - El Tupi Doom 2 - Deathmatch - GZDoom - 39.68 KB - Reviewed by: Decay OK so El Tupi made a series of DM wads. In each one, what we have here is a break from conventional flat DM maps and an attempt at something different, focusing on verticality (freelook highly recommended/required), looks like item control with a central soulsphere, and jumping. GZDoom (or OpenGL in Zandronum) features include dynamic lights, and there are some 3d floors. 3rd Map, "No one lives forever" A DM map for... GZDoom DM... right. Well, it works fine in Zandronum, where players actually are and DM might actually happen. In any DM map these days, it's bad practice to have spawns with no weapons immediately on them. Dominating pistol spawns is easy, and I think people may have too many flashbacks of thrashings on Dwango5 map07 or being spawn-fragged to oblivion in Toxic Refineries in various CTF compilations. If you only play this map with the intended 2-4 players it might actually be okay. The single SSG is placed in a central location. The major flaws in this map come from the item/thing placement though. There are way too many armours for example, and if you don't have a SSG and are trying to pick away at someone with a CG or SG only and they have a SSG + soulsphere + GA, you aren't going to have a good time. Visually, it's very plain and boring, which isn't great if you're unfamiliar with the map because you won't know exactly where you're going for a while. No landmarks really stick out, but then again the center area is a big ole open pit so finding opponents shouldn't be tough. Overall I feel like this a map that has potential to be a decent romp in one of Doomkid's various 1990s wads compilations. Cleaning up and changing some item placement (more rocket play for example, and more SSG game play) would probably help out quite a bit. Area 02 Temple Study & Excavations V0.8 - Boss Claw Doom 2 - Single Player - ZDoom Compatible - 255.93 KB - Reviewed by: Csonicgo Area 02 is a very simple map. It looks "okay", even though lighting is rather bland, textures aren't aligned properly, and there isn't much texture variety. It's supposed to be played with Brutal Doom, but since I'm not playing that, I played it with Lithium instead. I think that's fair! Although the ammo is rather tight, there's not much to write home about here. There was supposedly a cacodemon theme, but I found the mancubus encounters to be more exciting. The map ends very abruptly, too. I hit a switch thinking it would lower something and only found it to be the exit. There was so much of the map that wasn't accessible - for some reason? I can't figure out why. Perhaps the mapper just gave up on that area and left it in. I don't know. If you have a few minutes, check it out. Don't expect much challenge, though. Controlled System - Memfis Ultimate Doom - Single Player - Vanilla - 67.93 KB - Reviewed by: Csonicgo Memfis comes through with a small but fun E1-style map, with lots of nukage and not much difficulty. That's not a bad thing - it's rather fun to turn the brain off and just shoot the brains out of some demons. My only complaints here are the use of cacodemons. There's a hidden one somewhere that will bother you if you're after 100% kills. My next playthrough uncovered his cowardly tomato self, and his hiding place looks like a secret area, but it's just a trap. There is also a chainsaw that I never thought to use, which would probably have helped in the ammo department - ammo is very tight in this map! Just don't miss too many times. Also, you can skip a major fight by straferunning to a small ledge from the last key platform, which I don't think I was supposed to be able to do. So naturally, I took that route. Sorry! If you have played Doom all your life this won't be much of a challenge for you, but it's a fun few minutes. Kentucky Fried Wad - Memfis Ultimate Doom - Single Player - Vanilla - 54.35 KB - Reviewed by: joepallai This was my first time playing a map by Memphis, so I wasn't sure what to expect going into this. What I found was a well-made and clever map with expertly staged combat and a near ruthless parceling of health on Hurt Me Plenty. Ammo balance is tight initially but becomes plentiful by the second half of the level. The music selected is fun and works quite well (even after dying as many times as I did, it still worked). Atmosphere is excellent and the map has that 90's Doom feeling to it, especially with the new textures. The only serious gripe I have is the lift controls in the SE section of the map aren't particularly obvious, especially for the lift leading to the red door section; eventually I figured it out, but it seems odd to not have a separate switch nearby to allow entry into that area. So is it fun? Yeah it is. It's a map that has that in-your-face simplicity that mocks you with each failure, driving you on until you beat it. There's a lot that can be learned from this map, especially monster staging; and I'm now interested in what else Memphis has made. Highly recommended if you want a challenging vanilla map. DOOM CHRISTMAS - For Doom II & Final Doom - Various (see credits) Doom 2 - N/A - Vanilla - 3.55 MB - Reviewed by: Csonicgo It's the middle of May, and I'm back from my slumber (if you could call it that), so why not something to fool me into thinking the heat I feel is only because it's cold outside? This must be how Australia feels every Christmas. Anyway, this is a compilation of all the Christmas Doom PWADs that have existed since we were able to throw our own/someone else's assets in Doom, because nothing says Christmas like... wh... what is this? There are 32 Christmas midis, various sounds from Christmas TV specials, and sprites like a Cacodemon Christmas bauble, demons with Santa hats, imps with Santa hats, Santa himself (?!) and... Keen, who has been replaced by a Doomguy wearing boxer shorts. Weird. Textures have been modified to be more wintry or "Christmassy" whenever possible, although this is inconsistent in terms of color sometimes. Most Wolfen-bricks are decorated, but the swastika textures aren't, presumably because there is so much Fascism radiating from the Nazi Party symbol that the snow just melts right off. The Novelty wears thin really quickly, and it's good for a laugh or two in a Deathmatch I suppose, but it only works on "Offical" IWADs the best, so don't expect Christmas Brutal Doom or Santas vs Zombies. Besides, hearing "GO FUCK YOURSELF" while carols are playing probably gets you on Santa's naughty list. Also, go check out the WolfSS replacement. I dare you. The /newstuff Chronicles is a usually-weekly roundup of new items uploaded to the /idgames archive, and it is written entirely by community members like you. If you wish to contribute, the /newstuff Review Center is the place to do so. Register on the Doomworld Forums first if you don't already have an account, because you need one to submit reviews. Special thanks goes to the nearly 300 users who have submitted reviews over the past several years. View full news article

Shadowmaker - Nicholas "Tiger" Gautier Doom 2 - Invasion - Zandronum - 15.5 MB - Reviewed by: Decay Tiger is known for making maps that push the limits of computers. Shadowmaker is an invasion map for Zandronum. It requires Skulltag_content for some weaponry. It apparently REQUIRES the use of OpenGL. I'm not convinced of that, but since there is glaring text telling me otherwise, OGL I go. I shouldn't have to screw around with my lighting/brightness settings to play a map. The outside is pitch black, how in the world are you supposed to see your enemies? Gameplay wise, it's a fairly typical invasion map. New areas open up after waves, and Tiger implemented a music changer after certain waves. The game play is not bad at all, in invasion principle. The waves get progressively harder, culminating in a "boss" fight at the end. It seemed fairly balanced to me, as someone who is not a PvE player, so maybe some others would find it a little easy. The tower at the top of the hill and using other corners to your advantage make the map not too difficult. Good spread out of weapons too, and use of Skulltag items. The map's obvious strong point is its looks. It is a beautiful map, if a little busy, but does well in creating an atmosphere outside and appropriate structuring on the inside of the castle, though it seems attention to lighting went a little by the wayside inside. The single-most, biggest problem with this map is that it requires, absolutely requires, a strong PC to run smoothly. The map looks really well-crafted, very pretty and I can tell a lot of effort was put in, but it is hard to appreciate the map you're playing when you are moving around at under 10 FPS trying to kill enemies and trying not to die yourself. Other problems include cliffs you can jump up and suddenly die in water, teleports that lead you to instant death pits (why in the world would you do that), and perhaps a little bit of over detail inside the main building lead to catch-ons and double-looks to make sure you got everything. Overall, if you have a strong PC, I recommend giving the map a play. If not, pass for now, otherwise you'll find yourself struggling to play. Mindphuq - HdRambo, Eko, Vegence Doom 2 - Deathmatch - GZDoom - 215.53 KB - Reviewed by: Decay "This wad is utter garbage." That's all that is really worth saying about this wad, but I need to expand on this for reasons of reviewer integrity. Mindphuq.wad is a Boom format...DM wad... for all the Boom DM players... right. It was made by HDrambo, someone literally straight from the fabled Dwango series, who coincidentally hosts a Dwango5 server to boot. Anyway, in the pictures for the wad you'll see some of the things I'm describing. A "simplistic" battle arena that also supports SP and Coop play, this wad is straight out of 1994 in terms of being unconventional, but also in terms of being straight up ugly to look at. Featured in this wonderful "DM" wad is a spawn in an inescapable cage full of megaspheres and a damaging floor, many death pits, items strewn everywhere, similar to the dragon balls spreading out after use, dark cave mazes filled with hanging corpses (lit up for your benefit in the pic), a pitch black room full of crushers, a dark damaging liquid area full of inescapable pits and exploding barrels, and a... boxing ring... way the heck off to the side far from EVERYTHING. Given it's evidently a meme wad, there is no point in discussing item placement/technicalities of the map. I have no idea how anybody is supposed to have any sort of DM in this map. Or any semblance of fun at all. Maybe a few laughs at the author's expense but that's about it. Mindphuq isn't really a mind fuck, it's just a stupid and terrible wad that should've been left behind in 1994. It isn't funny, it isn't trippy, and it isn't good. DMMPST: DooM MaP StaTistics - Frans P. de Vries N/A - N/A - N/A - 183.11 KB Reviewed by: Walter confetti This is a little Java program created by Frans P. de Vries for Unix / Windows machines that finds all the type of things in a map; let's say this is a modern version of WadSpy. A really cool little program, pretty useful too! Download it and take a chance! Twilight of the Gods - Ed C. Doom 2 - Single Player - ZDoom Compatible - 459.7 KB - Reviewed by: Csonicgo This map, "Twilight of the Gods", was to be included in Doomworld Mega Project 2013, but an older version made it into the map pack instead. This is the "newer" edition of the map. And while this map is quite large in scale, it's also large in boring. I'm not trying to be a bitch here, I'm saying that this map is everything I cannot stand about a ZDoom map. The whole thing is made of slopes. ZDoom slope physics are from another planet, so it's not only a pain to get around, the slopes also trap monsters in the floor. That doesn't look good; why do people keep doing this? Why? I assume the goal of this map was to hit certain switches certain ways, but since there was nothing happening when I tried just that, multiple times, I conclude that the map is broken. It doesn't help that I can hit those same said switches multiple times in a row, screwing up the scripting so badly that ZDoom plummets to single-digit frame rates. I couldn't see past my nose in the darkness in GZDoom, and the HUD messages that appeared when I flipped switches sounded like the mapper was trying so hard to be edgy. If the mapper happens to read this, please do not make a slope-heavy map again. In software mode, it just makes your map even worse! The main attractions in this map were the grey revenant giants, which kill you instantly if one of their fireballs makes contact. Slap them with the BFG and move on. There were around 10-15 cyberdemons running around when I decided to give up on the map, because I was going in circles at that point, and the Mock 2 levels of demon projectiles were slowing the game down to an unplayable mess. I'm sure if I had a stronger computer, I could be arsed to continue, but there is zero fun here in the first place. it's just running around effortlessly flipping switches. If I wanted that, I could play Eternal Doom. A strong Pass on this one. I know the mapper can do much better than this. CCCP 20 - m0wgli Doom 2 - Single Player - GZDoom - 9.59 MB - Reviewed by: JudgeDeadd According to the text file, this map pits you against hordes of "homo sovieticus" created by the far-future Soviet Union. The Soviet theme is mostly evident in one or two pieces of monumental architecture, as well as run-down buildings, perhaps meant to evoke the squalid living conditions in USSR. Unfortunately some parts of the level don't play very well due to misguided attempts at realism. It may be cute to design a kitchen and a communal bedroom in Doom, but gameplay-wise there's not much fun about running from one flat tiny room to another, killing dinky hitscanners one by one. The difficulty curve isn't the best. Initially your biggest problem will be surviving the copious amounts of distant hitscanners with very little health to be found. This does add some genuine challenge. Once you clear out the initial areas, however, the level is more or less a breeze, with traps that have no teeth, cramped corridors where you're never exposed, and enough ammo to never worry about the next fight. The only more demanding battle is the final crossfire, but there's nothing stopping you from cheesing it by simply retreating into the building behind you. Worth mentioning is that the author insists on having damaging sectors surrounding several of the light sources, which I found both annoying and stupid (is the Doomguy really so clumsy that he can't stand next to a candle or lamp without burning himself?). If there's anything that the level has going for it, it's that the music is fairly addictive, and the visual design is interesting; among the more memorable bits (captured in my screenies) is the lighted stairwell near the blue key door, as well as a cozy-looking office near the end. Though it might have been better if the author had built up on the story hinted in the text file, and emphasized the Soviet theme with some more recognizably Communist architecture, propaganda posters, etc. The map uses ZDoom features, though the author didn't specify port compatibility in the text file; regular ZDoom 2.8.1 seems to work okay (although there are ugly HOMs in one place, so maybe it'd work better in GZDoom). Castle Argh! - El Tupi Doom 2 - Deathmatch - GZDoom - 91.86 KB - Reviewed by: Decay The First of El Tupi's DM maps. I went backwards, starting with his most recent, and they definitely got progressively better because Castle Argh is one of the absolute biggest travesties of a DM map I've ever seen. There really isn't much worth saying here, the screenshot speaks for itself. It's a lame maze (terrible for DM), with items strewn everywhere for absolutely no reason, and very little actual feasibility in DM game play. It is visually ugly to behold, and I can only say "thank God the author improved." This is an example of a "myfirstDMlevel" wad at its finest. Precious Snowflake - El Tupi Doom 2 - Deathmatch - GZDoom - 53.64 KB - Reviewed by: Decay El Tupi's 2nd DM map. Featuring more 3D floors and double-decker style play, this map is a little more progressive but not as good as map 3, for reasons of a boring symmetrical layout and the worst spawn gimmick I've seen in a while. Players spawn in a small alcove hallway, get a weapon, green armour, and ammo, and then fall down a small tube into the main arena. Kinda sucks if you die and don't get the extra goodies, and falling in a small tube away from the central megasphere really puts you at a huge disadvantage against a powered up player with a rocket launcher, SSG, and 200/200. Also, if played in LMS, a player can easily just stay in the spawntube to win. Alternatively, get a few frags up, respawn in the tube, and just wait the rest of the match out. There are also medikits strewn EVERYWHERE, way too much health, we are playing DEATHmatch, not LIFEmatch. The visage is plain and boring, not much to be said in the looks department. Not really worth a play once, but it's nice to see someone trying progressive layouts. No One Lives Forever! - El Tupi Doom 2 - Deathmatch - GZDoom - 39.68 KB - Reviewed by: Decay OK so El Tupi made a series of DM wads. In each one, what we have here is a break from conventional flat DM maps and an attempt at something different, focusing on verticality (freelook highly recommended/required), looks like item control with a central soulsphere, and jumping. GZDoom (or OpenGL in Zandronum) features include dynamic lights, and there are some 3d floors. 3rd Map, "No one lives forever" A DM map for... GZDoom DM... right. Well, it works fine in Zandronum, where players actually are and DM might actually happen. In any DM map these days, it's bad practice to have spawns with no weapons immediately on them. Dominating pistol spawns is easy, and I think people may have too many flashbacks of thrashings on Dwango5 map07 or being spawn-fragged to oblivion in Toxic Refineries in various CTF compilations. If you only play this map with the intended 2-4 players it might actually be okay. The single SSG is placed in a central location. The major flaws in this map come from the item/thing placement though. There are way too many armours for example, and if you don't have a SSG and are trying to pick away at someone with a CG or SG only and they have a SSG + soulsphere + GA, you aren't going to have a good time. Visually, it's very plain and boring, which isn't great if you're unfamiliar with the map because you won't know exactly where you're going for a while. No landmarks really stick out, but then again the center area is a big ole open pit so finding opponents shouldn't be tough. Overall I feel like this a map that has potential to be a decent romp in one of Doomkid's various 1990s wads compilations. Cleaning up and changing some item placement (more rocket play for example, and more SSG game play) would probably help out quite a bit. Area 02 Temple Study & Excavations V0.8 - Boss Claw Doom 2 - Single Player - ZDoom Compatible - 255.93 KB - Reviewed by: Csonicgo Area 02 is a very simple map. It looks "okay", even though lighting is rather bland, textures aren't aligned properly, and there isn't much texture variety. It's supposed to be played with Brutal Doom, but since I'm not playing that, I played it with Lithium instead. I think that's fair! Although the ammo is rather tight, there's not much to write home about here. There was supposedly a cacodemon theme, but I found the mancubus encounters to be more exciting. The map ends very abruptly, too. I hit a switch thinking it would lower something and only found it to be the exit. There was so much of the map that wasn't accessible - for some reason? I can't figure out why. Perhaps the mapper just gave up on that area and left it in. I don't know. If you have a few minutes, check it out. Don't expect much challenge, though. Controlled System - Memfis Ultimate Doom - Single Player - Vanilla - 67.93 KB - Reviewed by: Csonicgo Memfis comes through with a small but fun E1-style map, with lots of nukage and not much difficulty. That's not a bad thing - it's rather fun to turn the brain off and just shoot the brains out of some demons. My only complaints here are the use of cacodemons. There's a hidden one somewhere that will bother you if you're after 100% kills. My next playthrough uncovered his cowardly tomato self, and his hiding place looks like a secret area, but it's just a trap. There is also a chainsaw that I never thought to use, which would probably have helped in the ammo department - ammo is very tight in this map! Just don't miss too many times. Also, you can skip a major fight by straferunning to a small ledge from the last key platform, which I don't think I was supposed to be able to do. So naturally, I took that route. Sorry! If you have played Doom all your life this won't be much of a challenge for you, but it's a fun few minutes. Kentucky Fried Wad - Memfis Ultimate Doom - Single Player - Vanilla - 54.35 KB - Reviewed by: joepallai This was my first time playing a map by Memphis, so I wasn't sure what to expect going into this. What I found was a well-made and clever map with expertly staged combat and a near ruthless parceling of health on Hurt Me Plenty. Ammo balance is tight initially but becomes plentiful by the second half of the level. The music selected is fun and works quite well (even after dying as many times as I did, it still worked). Atmosphere is excellent and the map has that 90's Doom feeling to it, especially with the new textures. The only serious gripe I have is the lift controls in the SE section of the map aren't particularly obvious, especially for the lift leading to the red door section; eventually I figured it out, but it seems odd to not have a separate switch nearby to allow entry into that area. So is it fun? Yeah it is. It's a map that has that in-your-face simplicity that mocks you with each failure, driving you on until you beat it. There's a lot that can be learned from this map, especially monster staging; and I'm now interested in what else Memphis has made. Highly recommended if you want a challenging vanilla map. DOOM CHRISTMAS - For Doom II & Final Doom - Various (see credits) Doom 2 - N/A - Vanilla - 3.55 MB - Reviewed by: Csonicgo It's the middle of May, and I'm back from my slumber (if you could call it that), so why not something to fool me into thinking the heat I feel is only because it's cold outside? This must be how Australia feels every Christmas. Anyway, this is a compilation of all the Christmas Doom PWADs that have existed since we were able to throw our own/someone else's assets in Doom, because nothing says Christmas like... wh... what is this? There are 32 Christmas midis, various sounds from Christmas TV specials, and sprites like a Cacodemon Christmas bauble, demons with Santa hats, imps with Santa hats, Santa himself (?!) and... Keen, who has been replaced by a Doomguy wearing boxer shorts. Weird. Textures have been modified to be more wintry or "Christmassy" whenever possible, although this is inconsistent in terms of color sometimes. Most Wolfen-bricks are decorated, but the swastika textures aren't, presumably because there is so much Fascism radiating from the Nazi Party symbol that the snow just melts right off. The Novelty wears thin really quickly, and it's good for a laugh or two in a Deathmatch I suppose, but it only works on "Offical" IWADs the best, so don't expect Christmas Brutal Doom or Santas vs Zombies. Besides, hearing "GO FUCK YOURSELF" while carols are playing probably gets you on Santa's naughty list. Also, go check out the WolfSS replacement. I dare you. The /newstuff Chronicles is a usually-weekly roundup of new items uploaded to the /idgames archive, and it is written entirely by community members like you. If you wish to contribute, the /newstuff Review Center is the place to do so. Register on the Doomworld Forums first if you don't already have an account, because you need one to submit reviews. Special thanks goes to the nearly 300 users who have submitted reviews over the past several years.

3 Heures d'agonie 3 - 3ha3 Team Doom 2 - Single Player - Vanilla - 3.24 MB - Reviewed by: magicsofa I once took a French film class, and the first thing we watched was the gut-wrenching trial of Joan of Arc, portrayed without dialogue or color. The director had to rely on a more limited tool set than what we are used to now, but they came up with something that still has power even today. In Trois Heures d'Agonie, the mappers have limited themselves to three hours (ish) of build time for each map. The director of Joan of Arc had no choice, but these people purposely crippled their construction materials just for fun? Well this is the third installment from the French speedmappers, and in many of the levels I found myself thinking "this must have taken more than three hours." A few of the levels are rather bare, but none looked horrible. Usually lighting contrast was most neglected in terms of visuals. Most of the maps look good with some being exceptionally shiny. The MIDIs were pretty top notch throughout, including selections from Doom 1 and Heretic that I enjoyed a lot. So she has a sexy voice and stylish clothing, but what about her personality? 3ha3 is a really fun megawad to play. It's fast, it's easy going, most of the maps are not very long and aim for quality rather than quantity. The mappers here have done an excellent job of utilizing those three hours to pack some punch into their small maps. Creative uses of moving sectors and previously visited areas lent an unexpected and lively atmosphere to the gameplay. Instead of turning each corner to find yet another intricately detailed room that's really just a square with ten thousand border sectors, you will instead fight through interesting configurations that change in just the right way as you play. All this is done with a subtle touch in relatively short maps, so nothing feels beaten to death other than the demons under your feet. Most of the maps are very short, but a few are longer, especially at the end. The last couple maps bump the monster counts up into the hundreds, and the final map is actually sort of a composite of three mappers' efforts and follows a more slaughter-oriented style. It's fitting as a final map however, even if it strays a bit from the rest of the WAD's style. The progression of the maps is also pretty darn good considering the lack of a binding theme. Overall, this excellent megawad won't drag you down with extensive layouts - instead it's like a buffet of delicious appetizers that have totally filled you up by the time you've eaten 32 of them. And what's more, it features a mod to the SS Nazi which makes it almost fit in as a normal Doom monster! Just what I've always dreamed of... Back to Phobos - Serge Haikin Doom 2 - Single Player - ZDoom Compatible - 54.36 KB - Reviewed by: magicsofa A short, small map for E1M1. It's fun and has a very classic feel to it, although there's randomly a baron (easy to skip) and some cacodemons that are a chore to fight with just the shotgun. Detailing is simple but effective. The lighting was pretty good although a bit dark in some places. Could be a nice beginning to an episode, but doesn't stand for much on its own. The description is cute though. "You find a time machine and throw the switch." Sounds like something Doomguy WOULD do... Snot Station - Xyzzy01 Chex Quest - Single Player - ZDoom Compatible - 30.4 KB - Reviewed by: antares031 Snot Station is a single level, created by Xyzzy01. This level was designed for Chex Quest 3, which requires ZDoom to run. For your information, this level doesn't have difficulty settings. The level itself is pretty simple and straightforward, with minimal details around this Chex Quest techbase. Ammo and health supplies are just enough to keep you alive, and monster placements are pretty challenging for the casual players. If you don't manage your ammo wisely, you'll end up with your bootspoon, while a bunch of cycloptis are trying to cover you with green slime. This level even has a boss monster, Lord Snotfolus, so this level doesn't play around. Keep in mind that there are some evil Chex Warriors, which don't technically count as monsters. So stay alert, even if the monster count shows 100% kills. Despite some difficult moments, this level can be beaten within five minutes on UV-Max, once you know how to beat it. Snot Station is a simple, but challenging level, thanks to its ammo and monster placements. If you're not familiar with the original Chex Quest, I suggest you to play the original game before you try this level. If you enjoyed Chex Quest, then go ahead and play this level. If you beat this level first try with no foreknowledge, I guarantee that you're pretty good at Chex Quest. Short Dance at Iris Base - Carlos Lastra Doom 2 - Single Player - ZDoom Compatible - 50.09 KB - Reviewed by: obake This is a single ZDoom map set in a base. Details are nice, and there are no notable technical errors. Like its name, this map is a dance, and a deceptively difficult one. You start only battling zombiemen, but the damage they inflict on you can easily turn into more stress during later encounters, as health pickups are few. Saving up on shells is a must, as later encounters will pit you against multiple sergeants and even chaingunners. The map weaves in a loop, so simply running away from them is risky. It also does not use many ZDoom-specific features, but since it looks and plays nice, I do not mind. It is a good map, though it can be frustrating due to the amount of hitscanners. Once you obtain the chaingun, it becomes less strenuous, and you can enjoy the work put into the detailing. Plus, it is short, with less than 100 monsters even on UV. Give it a whirl. Torn - Robert Kruger (MarketAnarchy) Doom 2 - Single Player - Boom Compatible - 5.51 MB - Reviewed by: JudgeDeadd A humongous map with over 4000 enemies. Sounds difficult? Well, it really isn't that hard. There's a lot of helpful nooks to hide in, as well as heaps of health and ammo, allowing you to pick off the monsters one by one from a safe spot. In the end, probably the most difficult challenge of this map is mustering enough patience to whittle down the entire population over the course of a few hours. Personally, I only had enough stamina to get through the first thousand. About this point I got trapped on south-eastern stairs (a glitch?), unable to get past the green torches; it was as good an excuse as any to stop playing. The map is very good technically, with great visuals (including shadows baked into wall textures) and a nice, unobtrusive song — an important thing in such a long map. If you're the grinding sort of gamer, who won't mind spending hours getting kills one at a time, you can have a good time with this map. MAYhem 2016 (v1.2) - A buncha mother schmuckers Doom 2 - Single Player - Boom Compatible - 19.31 MB - Reviewed by: Catpho It's Quack time baby! The community staple "MAYhem" series returns for its fifth installment. As per usual, it sports some restrictions: either having a maximum thing count of 160 in a map, or having a monster count of the map number multiplied by 10. The latter theme is not really pronounced, as the project never reached 32 levels, resulting in maps getting different slots than their intended ones (MAP31 still kept its original limitation however: monster count was the map slot multiplied by 100). Another creative factor was the resource pack given. It's all Quac--I mean Quake themed, very beautiful to boot: textures from Quake I, a Quake I total conversion called "Malice", and the Quake II inspired "The Darkening E2". The 21 maps in Mayhem 1600 are a diverse lot. Not like community projects were known for consistency mind you, but it's especially apparent here. You could be in a Quake temple in one map, but then find yourself in a colorful train space station a few maps later. Gameplay concepts follow suit: slaughtermaps, gimmick levels, adventure romps, and run 'n' gun action all find their place here. That means, for some, it brings a whole lot of different locales to discover, but for others, a bunch of illogical transitions without any sense of a big adventure or some sort of plot. That being said, the set manages to maintain beautiful visuals throughout. And if we are talking about a quality Doom experience, "MAYhem 1600" has a lot of nice individual bits, mostly thanks to experienced mappers like Alfonzo, Tarnsman, Breezeep, an_mutt, and Jimmy. There's the polished and fast MAP11 "Quake Plumbing Inc", the alluring, evocative and majestic expedition through MAP14 "Ancient Den", or just the good ol' Doom guilty pleasure of MAP04 "Affinity". There are also some weirder trips through the awesome gimmick in MAP20 "The Performance", the usual eccentricity of Ribbiks's obsession with colorful death boxes filled with monsters in MAP18 "Maria", the devilishly cruel MAP08 "Lodi Eno Rebmun Si Ocin", and slaughter pieces like the nightmarish MAP09 "Blood from a Stone" and the epic MAP31 "In Death, Is Life". The misfires weren't too bad, as they had one redeeming character one way or another (expect MAP07, you can skip that). There's something for everyone, and truly shows that variety is the spice of life... ... but to quote forum member "Demon of The Well", it could also be "the secret sauce of death"! The difficulty level here is astounding, and the aforementioned lack of consistency also created nonexistent difficulty progression and a myriad of ways to kill the player. Death here comes in many faces: maybe you didn't control a horde correctly in a slaughtermap, maybe a weird challenge got you, or maybe just 10 incredibly well selected and well placed monsters doing great teamwork (MAP01!). UV is a very grueling journey in this set, so i advise you to chose HMP or lower if you are just fresh off IWAD UV! Overall, MAYhem 1600 is a solid community project thanks to a pool of talented authors on board and the beautiful variety. Quite bone-breaking, but also very satisfying to play! Distribution Center - Rayziik Doom 2 - Single Player - GZDoom - 3.91 MB - Reviewed by: Scotty A sprawling single map for ZDoom that includes a variety of custom monsters. Aesthetically this is reminiscent of Knee Deep in the Dead, albeit highly modernised and rife with tastefully implemented ZDoom features. Combat is polished, and the map has a smooth difficulty curve, with fights gradually escalating in difficulty and size as you progress. This level won the Vinesauce mapping contest, which should give some indication of the quality you can expect here. Fast and for Doom - JC Dorne Doom 2 - Single Player - Vanilla - 283.68 KB - Reviewed by: Obsidian Is it just me or are maps made by the French Doom community oddly brutal? I think of Swift Death, Tangerine Nightmare, 3 Heures d'agonie...and then my brain segues seamlessly into blunt force trauma to the head (in a nice way, of course). There's just something inherently vicious about the gameplay in maps from the French community, throwing you into the action like a dog treat into a Pomeranian's eager jaws. That isn't to say it isn't fun though, oh no: there are few feelings more satisfying than looking back over the twisted cadavers in your wake and resisting the urge to do the Conan monologue. Today we're looking at one such example. "Fast and for Doom" is a collection of five speedmaps brought to us by a Mr JC Dorne, he of Tangerine Nightmare and Survive in Hell fame. I'll be going through each map on pistol start and reviewing them as they stand due to the small quantity, but I doubt that victory will be handed to me on a SHAWN2 platter. So let us begin. MAP01: Technological I wasn't kidding when I said you get tossed right into the thick of things! It's a small affair at 34 monsters, but the use of space and monster arrangement makes you work to kill those 34 monsters. It's a style of mapping I dig: it's economical with the resources a mapper has to hand and, as most limitations do, it breeds creativity. It's a theme that you'll see repeat throughout the wad. As for the map itself, it's a compact affair that looks pretty stylish. It's obvious that the gameplay is the main focus, but I appreciate the time put in to make the map look pleasing. All in all, a good opener. MAP02: Open Space As the name suggests, this one's got a bit more room to move and dodge and the monster count is bumped up to compensate. There's a bit more of a focus on mobs with MAP02, usually as punishment for accessing stronger weapons: thankfully, the map title stretches here too as more of the map is cut away as you progress to allow egress and dodging. It even stretches to the solitary secret: yes, the extra ammo is useful, but the real prize is the utility that the newly revealed space offers you when fighting. It's a nice approach to map design, both on a gameplay and aesthetic level. For want of criticism, I'd say that the gameplay lessens in intensity as you go on when it should be escalating: there's an effective two-pronged attack upon grabbing the red key, but after that the map doesn't quite return to that zenith. Personally I'd have had 1 of the 2 Archies before the end warp away to keep the player on their toes, but it's not something that overly bugs me, and the subsequent dramatic reveal of the single Lost Soul at the exit gave me a good chuckle. MAP03: Bloodbath In some ways Bloodbath feels similar to the map that preceded it, complete with the architecture opening up in time with the player's progression. The similarities don't stretch to the gameplay though: swapping out low for mid-tier monsters does the combat a world of good and ups the stakes nicely. There's a bit more transformation this time around too, with the centerpiece being the way the starting room opens up near the end. I won't lie, I dug that a lot. Good stuff. MAP04: Plutinya Heh, I wonder if 40oz has a copyright on that name. As is obvious from the moment this map slides into view, this is a pint-sized piece of Plutonia. Oddly enough it actually doesn't dunk you into monster line of sight on startup like the other maps, so I wonder what's in sto- "Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, dicks! DICKS!" So yeah, out of all the maps this one is definitely the craziest. You expected Plutonia, in all its Revenant and Chaingunner-drenched glory? You got it, and you got it in spades! At a guess I'd say that's why you have the moment's grace, as this is very much a map you have to approach as a puzzle more than a map. What enemies you shoot, where you go, all of these things are worth thinking over to determine the best route. The biggest threat by far is the collection of Revenants near the yellow skull, as they tend to have a decent line of sight over most of the map and will not hesitate to use it: the best tip I can give is to be aware of them at all times. The map also sets a couple of Archies loose at the end, although the impact they have is lessened somewhat by their positioning. In the end, it's a Hell of a rush to beat this map. The finale awaits! MAP05: In the Void The finale to Fast and for Doom has a fairly simple setup: there are 2 keys, you need 2 keys. Each key has a mini-gauntlet to soldier through and gives you a particular weapon to deal with the nasties. From a gameplay standpoint, I'm a little iffy on the fact that you can pick up both weapons before tackling each key challenge: the super shotgun makes the chaingun area somewhat trivial in my view, and forcing the player to go through a challenge with only 1 weapon might've been more challenging. Still fun though, and the little maze area was quite inspired. The standout part of this map for me though is definitely the end. It might not seem like much from a broken down perspective - a fight with a single Cyberdemon around a pillar - but the small arena gives the encounter a sense of urgency while the lower windows prevent splash damage from becoming a major bugbear. Again, I feel like the SSG's absence could've made this more tense: as it stands you can activate the Cyberdemon's pain state fairly easily whenever it pops its head around the corner, while the supplied plasma rifle falls by the wayside a bit. Again though, it doesn't stop being fun and it felt damn good to see that bastard go down. And that's yer lot! I may have had some nitpicks on the gameplay front in some places, but considering these are speedmaps I can easily forgive them, and the experience I took away from this mapset was ultimately a positive one. If you're looking for some Doom-flavoured entertainment with its fair share of teeth, I highly recommend you check this out. The /newstuff Chronicles is a very sporadic roundup of new items uploaded to the /idgames archive, and it is written entirely by community members like you. If you wish to contribute, the /newstuff Review Center is the place to do so. Register on the Doomworld Forums first if you don't already have an account, because you need one to submit reviews. Special thanks goes to the nearly 300 users who have submitted reviews over the past several years. View full news article

3 Heures d'agonie 3 - 3ha3 Team Doom 2 - Single Player - Vanilla - 3.24 MB - Reviewed by: magicsofa I once took a French film class, and the first thing we watched was the gut-wrenching trial of Joan of Arc, portrayed without dialogue or color. The director had to rely on a more limited tool set than what we are used to now, but they came up with something that still has power even today. In Trois Heures d'Agonie, the mappers have limited themselves to three hours (ish) of build time for each map. The director of Joan of Arc had no choice, but these people purposely crippled their construction materials just for fun? Well this is the third installment from the French speedmappers, and in many of the levels I found myself thinking "this must have taken more than three hours." A few of the levels are rather bare, but none looked horrible. Usually lighting contrast was most neglected in terms of visuals. Most of the maps look good with some being exceptionally shiny. The MIDIs were pretty top notch throughout, including selections from Doom 1 and Heretic that I enjoyed a lot. So she has a sexy voice and stylish clothing, but what about her personality? 3ha3 is a really fun megawad to play. It's fast, it's easy going, most of the maps are not very long and aim for quality rather than quantity. The mappers here have done an excellent job of utilizing those three hours to pack some punch into their small maps. Creative uses of moving sectors and previously visited areas lent an unexpected and lively atmosphere to the gameplay. Instead of turning each corner to find yet another intricately detailed room that's really just a square with ten thousand border sectors, you will instead fight through interesting configurations that change in just the right way as you play. All this is done with a subtle touch in relatively short maps, so nothing feels beaten to death other than the demons under your feet. Most of the maps are very short, but a few are longer, especially at the end. The last couple maps bump the monster counts up into the hundreds, and the final map is actually sort of a composite of three mappers' efforts and follows a more slaughter-oriented style. It's fitting as a final map however, even if it strays a bit from the rest of the WAD's style. The progression of the maps is also pretty darn good considering the lack of a binding theme. Overall, this excellent megawad won't drag you down with extensive layouts - instead it's like a buffet of delicious appetizers that have totally filled you up by the time you've eaten 32 of them. And what's more, it features a mod to the SS Nazi which makes it almost fit in as a normal Doom monster! Just what I've always dreamed of... Back to Phobos - Serge Haikin Doom 2 - Single Player - ZDoom Compatible - 54.36 KB - Reviewed by: magicsofa A short, small map for E1M1. It's fun and has a very classic feel to it, although there's randomly a baron (easy to skip) and some cacodemons that are a chore to fight with just the shotgun. Detailing is simple but effective. The lighting was pretty good although a bit dark in some places. Could be a nice beginning to an episode, but doesn't stand for much on its own. The description is cute though. "You find a time machine and throw the switch." Sounds like something Doomguy WOULD do... Snot Station - Xyzzy01 Chex Quest - Single Player - ZDoom Compatible - 30.4 KB - Reviewed by: antares031 Snot Station is a single level, created by Xyzzy01. This level was designed for Chex Quest 3, which requires ZDoom to run. For your information, this level doesn't have difficulty settings. The level itself is pretty simple and straightforward, with minimal details around this Chex Quest techbase. Ammo and health supplies are just enough to keep you alive, and monster placements are pretty challenging for the casual players. If you don't manage your ammo wisely, you'll end up with your bootspoon, while a bunch of cycloptis are trying to cover you with green slime. This level even has a boss monster, Lord Snotfolus, so this level doesn't play around. Keep in mind that there are some evil Chex Warriors, which don't technically count as monsters. So stay alert, even if the monster count shows 100% kills. Despite some difficult moments, this level can be beaten within five minutes on UV-Max, once you know how to beat it. Snot Station is a simple, but challenging level, thanks to its ammo and monster placements. If you're not familiar with the original Chex Quest, I suggest you to play the original game before you try this level. If you enjoyed Chex Quest, then go ahead and play this level. If you beat this level first try with no foreknowledge, I guarantee that you're pretty good at Chex Quest. Short Dance at Iris Base - Carlos Lastra Doom 2 - Single Player - ZDoom Compatible - 50.09 KB - Reviewed by: obake This is a single ZDoom map set in a base. Details are nice, and there are no notable technical errors. Like its name, this map is a dance, and a deceptively difficult one. You start only battling zombiemen, but the damage they inflict on you can easily turn into more stress during later encounters, as health pickups are few. Saving up on shells is a must, as later encounters will pit you against multiple sergeants and even chaingunners. The map weaves in a loop, so simply running away from them is risky. It also does not use many ZDoom-specific features, but since it looks and plays nice, I do not mind. It is a good map, though it can be frustrating due to the amount of hitscanners. Once you obtain the chaingun, it becomes less strenuous, and you can enjoy the work put into the detailing. Plus, it is short, with less than 100 monsters even on UV. Give it a whirl. Torn - Robert Kruger (MarketAnarchy) Doom 2 - Single Player - Boom Compatible - 5.51 MB - Reviewed by: JudgeDeadd A humongous map with over 4000 enemies. Sounds difficult? Well, it really isn't that hard. There's a lot of helpful nooks to hide in, as well as heaps of health and ammo, allowing you to pick off the monsters one by one from a safe spot. In the end, probably the most difficult challenge of this map is mustering enough patience to whittle down the entire population over the course of a few hours. Personally, I only had enough stamina to get through the first thousand. About this point I got trapped on south-eastern stairs (a glitch?), unable to get past the green torches; it was as good an excuse as any to stop playing. The map is very good technically, with great visuals (including shadows baked into wall textures) and a nice, unobtrusive song — an important thing in such a long map. If you're the grinding sort of gamer, who won't mind spending hours getting kills one at a time, you can have a good time with this map. MAYhem 2016 (v1.2) - A buncha mother schmuckers Doom 2 - Single Player - Boom Compatible - 19.31 MB - Reviewed by: Catpho It's Quack time baby! The community staple "MAYhem" series returns for its fifth installment. As per usual, it sports some restrictions: either having a maximum thing count of 160 in a map, or having a monster count of the map number multiplied by 10. The latter theme is not really pronounced, as the project never reached 32 levels, resulting in maps getting different slots than their intended ones (MAP31 still kept its original limitation however: monster count was the map slot multiplied by 100). Another creative factor was the resource pack given. It's all Quac--I mean Quake themed, very beautiful to boot: textures from Quake I, a Quake I total conversion called "Malice", and the Quake II inspired "The Darkening E2". The 21 maps in Mayhem 1600 are a diverse lot. Not like community projects were known for consistency mind you, but it's especially apparent here. You could be in a Quake temple in one map, but then find yourself in a colorful train space station a few maps later. Gameplay concepts follow suit: slaughtermaps, gimmick levels, adventure romps, and run 'n' gun action all find their place here. That means, for some, it brings a whole lot of different locales to discover, but for others, a bunch of illogical transitions without any sense of a big adventure or some sort of plot. That being said, the set manages to maintain beautiful visuals throughout. And if we are talking about a quality Doom experience, "MAYhem 1600" has a lot of nice individual bits, mostly thanks to experienced mappers like Alfonzo, Tarnsman, Breezeep, an_mutt, and Jimmy. There's the polished and fast MAP11 "Quake Plumbing Inc", the alluring, evocative and majestic expedition through MAP14 "Ancient Den", or just the good ol' Doom guilty pleasure of MAP04 "Affinity". There are also some weirder trips through the awesome gimmick in MAP20 "The Performance", the usual eccentricity of Ribbiks's obsession with colorful death boxes filled with monsters in MAP18 "Maria", the devilishly cruel MAP08 "Lodi Eno Rebmun Si Ocin", and slaughter pieces like the nightmarish MAP09 "Blood from a Stone" and the epic MAP31 "In Death, Is Life". The misfires weren't too bad, as they had one redeeming character one way or another (expect MAP07, you can skip that). There's something for everyone, and truly shows that variety is the spice of life... ... but to quote forum member "Demon of The Well", it could also be "the secret sauce of death"! The difficulty level here is astounding, and the aforementioned lack of consistency also created nonexistent difficulty progression and a myriad of ways to kill the player. Death here comes in many faces: maybe you didn't control a horde correctly in a slaughtermap, maybe a weird challenge got you, or maybe just 10 incredibly well selected and well placed monsters doing great teamwork (MAP01!). UV is a very grueling journey in this set, so i advise you to chose HMP or lower if you are just fresh off IWAD UV! Overall, MAYhem 1600 is a solid community project thanks to a pool of talented authors on board and the beautiful variety. Quite bone-breaking, but also very satisfying to play! Distribution Center - Rayziik Doom 2 - Single Player - GZDoom - 3.91 MB - Reviewed by: Scotty A sprawling single map for ZDoom that includes a variety of custom monsters. Aesthetically this is reminiscent of Knee Deep in the Dead, albeit highly modernised and rife with tastefully implemented ZDoom features. Combat is polished, and the map has a smooth difficulty curve, with fights gradually escalating in difficulty and size as you progress. This level won the Vinesauce mapping contest, which should give some indication of the quality you can expect here. Fast and for Doom - JC Dorne Doom 2 - Single Player - Vanilla - 283.68 KB - Reviewed by: Obsidian Is it just me or are maps made by the French Doom community oddly brutal? I think of Swift Death, Tangerine Nightmare, 3 Heures d'agonie...and then my brain segues seamlessly into blunt force trauma to the head (in a nice way, of course). There's just something inherently vicious about the gameplay in maps from the French community, throwing you into the action like a dog treat into a Pomeranian's eager jaws. That isn't to say it isn't fun though, oh no: there are few feelings more satisfying than looking back over the twisted cadavers in your wake and resisting the urge to do the Conan monologue. Today we're looking at one such example. "Fast and for Doom" is a collection of five speedmaps brought to us by a Mr JC Dorne, he of Tangerine Nightmare and Survive in Hell fame. I'll be going through each map on pistol start and reviewing them as they stand due to the small quantity, but I doubt that victory will be handed to me on a SHAWN2 platter. So let us begin. MAP01: Technological I wasn't kidding when I said you get tossed right into the thick of things! It's a small affair at 34 monsters, but the use of space and monster arrangement makes you work to kill those 34 monsters. It's a style of mapping I dig: it's economical with the resources a mapper has to hand and, as most limitations do, it breeds creativity. It's a theme that you'll see repeat throughout the wad. As for the map itself, it's a compact affair that looks pretty stylish. It's obvious that the gameplay is the main focus, but I appreciate the time put in to make the map look pleasing. All in all, a good opener. MAP02: Open Space As the name suggests, this one's got a bit more room to move and dodge and the monster count is bumped up to compensate. There's a bit more of a focus on mobs with MAP02, usually as punishment for accessing stronger weapons: thankfully, the map title stretches here too as more of the map is cut away as you progress to allow egress and dodging. It even stretches to the solitary secret: yes, the extra ammo is useful, but the real prize is the utility that the newly revealed space offers you when fighting. It's a nice approach to map design, both on a gameplay and aesthetic level. For want of criticism, I'd say that the gameplay lessens in intensity as you go on when it should be escalating: there's an effective two-pronged attack upon grabbing the red key, but after that the map doesn't quite return to that zenith. Personally I'd have had 1 of the 2 Archies before the end warp away to keep the player on their toes, but it's not something that overly bugs me, and the subsequent dramatic reveal of the single Lost Soul at the exit gave me a good chuckle. MAP03: Bloodbath In some ways Bloodbath feels similar to the map that preceded it, complete with the architecture opening up in time with the player's progression. The similarities don't stretch to the gameplay though: swapping out low for mid-tier monsters does the combat a world of good and ups the stakes nicely. There's a bit more transformation this time around too, with the centerpiece being the way the starting room opens up near the end. I won't lie, I dug that a lot. Good stuff. MAP04: Plutinya Heh, I wonder if 40oz has a copyright on that name. As is obvious from the moment this map slides into view, this is a pint-sized piece of Plutonia. Oddly enough it actually doesn't dunk you into monster line of sight on startup like the other maps, so I wonder what's in sto- "Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, dicks! DICKS!" So yeah, out of all the maps this one is definitely the craziest. You expected Plutonia, in all its Revenant and Chaingunner-drenched glory? You got it, and you got it in spades! At a guess I'd say that's why you have the moment's grace, as this is very much a map you have to approach as a puzzle more than a map. What enemies you shoot, where you go, all of these things are worth thinking over to determine the best route. The biggest threat by far is the collection of Revenants near the yellow skull, as they tend to have a decent line of sight over most of the map and will not hesitate to use it: the best tip I can give is to be aware of them at all times. The map also sets a couple of Archies loose at the end, although the impact they have is lessened somewhat by their positioning. In the end, it's a Hell of a rush to beat this map. The finale awaits! MAP05: In the Void The finale to Fast and for Doom has a fairly simple setup: there are 2 keys, you need 2 keys. Each key has a mini-gauntlet to soldier through and gives you a particular weapon to deal with the nasties. From a gameplay standpoint, I'm a little iffy on the fact that you can pick up both weapons before tackling each key challenge: the super shotgun makes the chaingun area somewhat trivial in my view, and forcing the player to go through a challenge with only 1 weapon might've been more challenging. Still fun though, and the little maze area was quite inspired. The standout part of this map for me though is definitely the end. It might not seem like much from a broken down perspective - a fight with a single Cyberdemon around a pillar - but the small arena gives the encounter a sense of urgency while the lower windows prevent splash damage from becoming a major bugbear. Again, I feel like the SSG's absence could've made this more tense: as it stands you can activate the Cyberdemon's pain state fairly easily whenever it pops its head around the corner, while the supplied plasma rifle falls by the wayside a bit. Again though, it doesn't stop being fun and it felt damn good to see that bastard go down. And that's yer lot! I may have had some nitpicks on the gameplay front in some places, but considering these are speedmaps I can easily forgive them, and the experience I took away from this mapset was ultimately a positive one. If you're looking for some Doom-flavoured entertainment with its fair share of teeth, I highly recommend you check this out. The /newstuff Chronicles is a very sporadic roundup of new items uploaded to the /idgames archive, and it is written entirely by community members like you. If you wish to contribute, the /newstuff Review Center is the place to do so. Register on the Doomworld Forums first if you don't already have an account, because you need one to submit reviews. Special thanks goes to the nearly 300 users who have submitted reviews over the past several years.

It's unlikely that any DOS source ports were maintained long enough to have their sidedef limit increased from 32768 to 65535. According to the Doom Wiki, Brigandine has 51206 sidedefs.

Please try again, I have modified the SPF settings on the Doomworld mail server. I would like to see if it works now. If you get another rejection mail, please send the contents again.

I am currently attempting to get the site working correctly after the PHP upgrade. Please post any issues you are having in this thread only.

Related story: https://www.wired.com/story/on-the-trail-of-the-robocall-king/

You can just copy and paste the list it gives you into Notepad or something and then don't save the changes to the WAD afterward.

While I chuckled during the beginning of "Into Sandy's City", changing almost every instrument to an organ and removing all the percussion does not make Doom music "Castlevania style". Sorry.

At first I thought the CON12 connector on the back of the laptop was for the RAM upgrade, but didn't notice that the upgrade board had two connectors on it. My label of the keyboard connector on the motherboard is wrong; it should say "AT keyboard". Thank you for the info on tag RAM, I had never heard of the need of it. I have some experience with older systems, but apparently not as much as you.

I don't see any L2 cache or a socket to install any. There is a set of 4 plugs on the front side, but I have no idea what they might be used for. The two chips labeled TC514256AJL are fast page DRAM chips, but I'm not sure what they would be used for. I have no idea where you can buy the memory expansion module.

"32Kx8 High-speed CMOS Static RAM" - this is probably the CMOS memory chip where BIOS settings are stored. It is not cache memory. Also, it is only 256 bytes large.

https://imgur.com/a/3FQKhDk Your board is way too old to have PCI Express slots. RAM is SIMMs which need to be installed in matching pairs in order to work. You have two pairs, most likely of different capacities, which is why they look different. The battery says "replace this" because it has gone dead according to the startup screen you showed.

I don't know if the math works out exactly like that, but the ISA bus only runs at 8MHz, while the PCI bus will run at 33MHz generally. Since you have 3 PCI slots, you can easily add another PCI card if the case has room. I don't have any experience running Doom on the minimum RAM requirements, but I suspect it will be a bit choppy even if you have a 486. Don't know if it will output color. It is very unlikely that RAM from a desktop machine will fit a laptop.

https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/graphics-cards/C-D/DFI-INC-XVGA-VG-8000W-WH.html - I guess it might play Doom, but being an ISA graphics card, it will be much slower than a PCI card. http://tulipgv.nl/tlt-nb.html - here is some info on Tulip laptops, but it's in Dutch.

Disjunction - floatRand Doom 2 - Single Player - Boom Compatible - 10.66 MB - Reviewed by: magicsofa Disjunction. Judging by the name, I first thought this might be a financial planning mod, taking Doom to its outer limits, where you have to trade caco-coins and baron-bucks until you realize your career is worthless. Or perhaps a train simulator, with the unattainable objective of not crashing and killing everyone aboard. It turns out neither of these fantasies are true. Today's offering from last year is a straight-forward, no BS megawad by floatRand. Let me be clear, though, when I say "no BS", I do not mean "no frustrations". The fact is, this WAD did frustrate me in a couple of ways. But it was also delightful in other ways. So we'll focus on the good first, because good things are good. Let's talk about the visuals. 99% of these maps are stunning, and I don't mean stunning in the sense of "I put on so much makeup today that you can't see my actual skin." floatRand has a way of making things look really nice without always using ten thousand sectors. Don't get me wrong, there are enough sectors to go around, but I really loved the overall sense of composition and purpose in the architecture of Disjunction (ironic, isn't it?). I say 99% because a tiny portion of areas looked bland, especially parts of the very first outdoor area, as well as parts of the final map which is insanely large so a bit more excusable. Many of the maps are themed heavily around one vibrant color among dark backgrounds, which I find pleasing because I'm a simple person. The music was awesome. Much more on techno/fantasy side, with tracks from Megaman and Jazz Jackrabbit (yay!). Metalheads might not like it. But I liked it, and I was ready to gaze at 11 beautiful maps and jam to the tunes and whatnot. So what about my frustrations? Well, those are found in the "whatnot". The "whatnot" being all those things you do in Doom other than look at the walls and listen to Cyber Rainforce. You know, finding keys, shooting hellspawn, et cetera. At first I was confronted by lots of monsters, and difficulty was high but since these were generally small humanoid enemies, the flow was alright. Unfortunately in these early maps the architecture does get in the way because it's way too cramped and annoying to traverse. That problem goes away once the maps themselves become bigger, but is overshadowed by a different problem: incessant use of monsters in annoying ways. For example, there are a ton of surround-traps. You enter a room, the door locks behind you, monsters surround. You go through a teleport, monsters surround. You grab a key, monsters surround. There are just way too many locked-in-a-room-full-of-monsters scenarios for my taste. Also, once you get past the first few maps, you find a lot of encounters with almost every enemy type. I felt that floatRand was placing monsters based on how cool it looked, not how it would make a good battle. Expect to find battles like: one arachnotron, one mancubus, one pain elemental, and four revenants. Also both during and after large battles you can expect two to four archviles to brighten your day. I don't want to make it sound like the action was never fun. At times it was cooking. Sometimes there were tricks to get around the battle, which I generally welcomed. But more often than not the pot seemed to be boiling over, and by the end you're facing giant hordes that make your BFG seem kinda weak. The epicness of the scenery gets more and more grand, but the gameplay actually grinds to a slow crawl because it just takes a long time to clear the rooms. Maybe I'm just getting old and slow. I did play on HMP so I guess I could have lowered the difficulty, but a quick look at monster counts showed only a small difference. I'd consider playing it again with some custom weapons. A minigun and a railgun would balance the game nicely, I think. Slaughter enthusiasts and masochists can fire up UV or Nightmare, but for the rest of us, expect to be severely punished. I wouldn't want anyone to miss out on the phenomenal level design, but I know some people will be turned away by the high difficulty. If you think you're one of those pansies (I know I am!), then consider playing on super easy mode or using a mod to increase your firepower. Or play on "cooperative mode", which we all know means spawning a bot to flail about at the beginning of the level in order to give yourself infinite lives. Whatever you need to do, this is a WAD that shouldn't be ignored - it's more like a famous tourist attraction that's always busy and you just have to suck it up. On a scale from lamb to lambchop, I give this WAD a solid 7.9. Temple of Unholy Fire, chapter 1 (demo) - Cacodemon9000 Doom 2 - Single Player - Boom Compatible - 8.96 MB - Reviewed by: magicsofa We've all done it: or at least most of us have, and we have learned the consequences and hopefully will never repeat our mistake. Any time you write "Chapter 1" on something, you're guaranteed not to finish that thing. Well that was the case here with Cacodemon9000's map "Temple of Unholy Fire, chapter 1 (demo)". Tragically this was the last thing they uploaded to /idgames. Perhaps it was because of the scathing review by Zalewa, who is all over that s*** playing everybody's maps. Who are you anyway, Zalewa, and why do I keep having to talk about your reviews? Anyway, this level suffers a lot from tedious battles as well as some bland architecture. There's some modification to the bullet weapons, making them a bit more powerful, but it's basically useless against the hordes of monsters - some of which just had to be upgraded themselves. The archvile's flame attack, for example, spawns many explosions throughout the animation, which is funny because you can outrun it, but also stupid because it's out of control. That might have been cool for the boss battle (which was, astoundingly, a THIRD version of archie), not for the entire map. Add to that spectral cacodemons, mancu-serpents, and beefed up arachnotrons, and you have a little party. The actual geometry of the map was pretty cool in a lot of places (less cool in others when it was very long hallways), but the texturing and lighting made it mostly ugly. Since there was often no contrast, you couldn't really see the nice features until you're right on top of them. The outdoor areas were generally nice looking, and easy to traverse. Indoors however the layout is very boxy. The path you're supposed to travel does loop over itself in a nice way, but gets confusing at times, and most of the switches activate something random that you have to go find (like Hexen, but not as bad). There are some good ideas buried in this chapter 1 (demo), and I think Cacodemon9000 should continue mapping since Doom will never die, and neither will we IF WE JUST KEEP MAPPING. Perhaps they're mapping for another game or whatever, I just hope Zalewa's criticism didn't turn Caco9000 away from mapping entirely. Next time I would suggest posting the WAD in the forums to get feedback before uploading to /idgames, because the one-paragraph reviews are often flippant and discouraging. However, the criticism was indeed fair, and for someone looking to play a polished level, chapter 1 (demo) isn't gonna cut the mustard. On a scale of 1 to chapter 1 (demo), I give this WAD a chapter 1. Vertigone - Brett 'Mechadon' Harrell Doom 2 - Deathmatch - Skulltag - 217.52 KB - Reviewed by: magicsofa I'm thoroughly confused by this text file. First paragraph goes something like this: "This is my second oldest surviving map that I still have, and my very first DM map ever. However, the gameplay and layout are pretty awful, so I wouldn't really even bother playing it. I uploaded it for nostalgia reasons, I suppose." Sounds normal enough right? But then: "(Note from Mechadon from the future!! I decided to upload this while updating some other releases in the archive. I'm really only uploading it for, uh, 'historical' reasons. You should never play this map, at least not seriously :P )" So Mechadon went back in time in order to warn us that instead of not really bothering with this map, we should instead never play it. Well I played it, for "historical" reasons, and it's pretty bad. Could be worse though! It could always be worse. Always. On a scale of 1 to forgotten, let's move on to the next WAD, shall we? Newgothic Movement 2 - Armouredblood and Archi Doom 2 - Single Player - Boom Compatible - 10.95 MB - Reviewed by: magicsofa Welcome to Newgothic - Movement 2. The first installment, released in 2010, was generally liked. So the stakes are high, your training wheels are off, the GDP must go up (forever). I spent my last review whining and complaining about unfair and wild monster placement. That's because I'm extremely sensitive. You can imagine my feelings when I read the description. "Slaughter. Fun Slaughter. With music. Enjoy." ...I'm going to be slaughtered to music? And I'm supposed to enjoy it? Fine. Some of us are aggressively against slaughter maps, and we can see why. They just filled the hallways with monsters, perfectly placed on the grid, all facing the same way. It's stupid. But you know what, it's also stupid that you can carry 100 rockets. And that's what makes Doom fun. Not the hellish landscapes, nor the goring of endless demonic flesh. It's really the insanity of your own character, the voiceless Doomguy, sliding around inside a nightmare firing rockets that move slower than himself. The beautiful thing about Doom is that you can enjoy it many different ways. Even though the textfile says "Difficulty settings: not implemented", they are always there for you. And in many other ways you can cheat around the true, hardcore experience. Want to save every ten seconds? Go for it. Want to play co-op, turn on infinite ammo, or skip maps? Only your pride can stop you. So I enjoyed these maps with a pleasant little Biffbot to keep the savings away. Aesthetically these maps were mostly awesome. Only a few of the massive areas looked bland to me, and since they would soon spill over with bodies, it kinda didn't matter. Complementing the monster counts in the thousands were ridiculous amounts of ammunition and health. Several places could be muscled through by collecting the health along the way. This (along with all my cheating) made the slaughter feel more like a party. Maybe they should be called party maps! Moving on, there are overwhelming numbers of guests at this party, and my poor bot was often being swarmed at the spawn by hungry zombies reaching for the keg. It was fun. And you deserve a bit of fun after your long day at the office. This megawad delivers what it promises. I have only a few small gripes - such as difficulty settings would be kinda nice (take out a few cybies plz), and a couple of map oddities such as giant but inconspicuous doors - but nothing really major. So slaughter away, my friends. On a scale of 1 to nutz.wad, I give Newgothic Movement 2 a near-perfect score of 1.6. Silent Hill Orphan TC - Autz (sonic_HD87) Doom 2 - Single Player - GZDoom - 24.91 MB - Reviewed by: magicsofa And now for something completely different! This TC uses "messy code" to turn Doom into a point-and-click adventure! Specifically, it copies Silent Hill: Orphan, an obscure mobile game. The code seemed to work fine to me; it's got inventory, dialogue, totally illogical puzzles (yes, put the candle in the pot of sludge), and even combat! However, the game is unpolished, with the creator sometimes talking to your character, saying stuff like "I was too lazy to put this in." It's still quite an accomplishment. Perhaps someone could use this engine to create a Doom point-and-click using screenshots of maps as the backgrounds. Anyway, check it out if you want to see a very obscure use of GZDoom. Vulkan (Episode 1) v1.2 - DavidN - @DavidXNewton Doom 2 - Single Player - GZDoom - 36.12 MB - Reviewed by: magicsofa Vulkan has nothing to do with Star Trek, which is a good thing. I love Doom and Star Trek separately, and I wouldn't want one to be ruined by the other. I don't remember setting anything to "stun" in Doom - do you? So anyway, DavidN has created an episode about a UAC project that accidentally drilled into hell. Your job is to get dropped off and totally abandoned, as usual, so you can dive to the bottom of the infested power station. I had a blast playing this WAD, which overall has a cool vibe that reminds me of Doom 1, mixed with a little Quake, and a slight nod to Descent. The environments are not caked with detail, but they are put together in a way is evocative and beautiful. Unfortunately the lightning isn't so great in places: you will encounter some bright areas that don't have enough contrast, and much worse, insane darkness in others. I was turning my gamma up to 1.4 and still finding walls with my face. Some of that was from destructible light sources, but other times it was obligatory. Was there a flashlight that I missed? Thankfully it was only a few small areas that had this problem. Brutal Doom is included with the package, which is awesome, but I can't be judging that portion of it. I think these maps would be a success even without it. The swarms of axe-men made me feel like I was playing Nazi Zombies at times. The bigger monsters on the other hand were less of a threat with the Brutal weapons. They just go down too easy, and weren't used in big enough numbers to be taken seriously. You'll be more worried about lightning fast pinkies. Some other customization added nice variety to the gameplay. You collect "vulkoins" in each map which give you a bonus to your health and armor when you get 100, and there's a few scripted events including a mechanic at the end where you have to bring cooling orbs to reactors to cool them down, which was fun and cute. And cuteness is the most important thing in any WAD. So despite some minor kinks, Vulkan has mostly atmosphere and action to offer you, and I hope DavidN is working on the next episode. On a scale from 1 to core breach, I give this mod an 8.1. Secretdoom: Hell's Memento 2 - Cyberdemon531 Doom 2 - Single Player - GZDoom - 25.19 MB - Reviewed by: magicsofa After sacrificing your soul to the depths of Hell, you wake up in a pool of blood and walk into a gateway. You find yourself in the depths of Hell once again, and you have to find your way out. Deeper, and deeper, into the depths of Hell. Once again... depths of Hell. You should all know Cyberdemon531 already, from their status as a "speed runner extraordinaire". I hate running, so I don't really follow that side of the community. Anyway, in this WAD you will be facing insane amounts of monsters, and you'll also have a ridiculous buffet of items both healthy and ammunitious. Starting with map05 you get enemy counts in the several-hundreds. Often you'll be free to wander a vast expanse, but some areas are very crowded. A lot of the battles were repetitive or too easy. A few moments did get interesting, such as a fun trap that cages the player, or suicide bombers swarming around a barrel. Additionally there were a ton of switches to hit, which was cool (because stuff was happening) but not executed well. What I mean is, the switch might lower a wall, revealing a room. And in the room is another switch... and another wall lowers, revealing a similar room with a switch. And on and on in the endless depths of Hell. And if you call the depths of Hell right now, we'll even include two additional pools of blood, and one additional gateway to Hell, totally FREE! All we need is your soul that's 1-800-DPTH for two gateways and three pools of blood to wake up in every morning! The design of the maps fluctuates a great deal in terms of visuals. Many of the areas are just so big, it's impossible for them to look nice. In other places there's decent geometry but poor lighting and texturing, or just extreme darkness. Some areas did look quite nice however, with the techbase and industrial areas being the best. The music was pretty good, but I think it was composed by Zagfan590 (referred to in the .txt as supplying "choice clips"). This plays more like a speedrunning/slaughter training camp than an atmospheric adventure, and perhaps that's what you are looking for. Perhaps that's the whole point of the Secretdoom series (secret's out!). There were some nice ideas buried under the demons piled 900 high, as well as some pretty areas but also some ugly areas. Kind of like my brain. On a scale of 1 to 1-800-DPTH, your pools of blood can be delivered straight to your door! Good Morining Phobos - sincity2100 Doom 2 - Single Player - Boom Compatible - 9.93 MB - Reviewed by: magicsofa Good Morining, Doomworld. Today's class is about an exciting and brand new experience created mostly by sincity2100. It also happens to be the last review for March 2017. Huzzah! This WAD has already received a number of positive reviews, so if that's enough for you, why are you wasting your time listening to me yammering away instead of playing? God knows. Anyway, Good Morning Phobos is long and beautiful. It's attractive in a non-invasive way, making it almost relaxing to behold. It appears that sincity2100 can use any clashing styles they want and still have it look amazing. It took me a moment to realize that giant lamppost was made of rock. It's not a detail-fest but with 33 maps, I don't even want that. Your eyes need a place to rest once in a while. I was impressed that all 33 were pretty consistently gorgeous, with decent gameplay to match. Enemy placement was where this WAD shined a little less clean. The layouts were almost always so wide-open that you'd rarely get stuck, which is nice, but can also make encounters too easy. On the other hand, most of these levels are just brimming with former humans and company. The hitscan attacks quickly turn the wide areas into death traps. So you'll spend a fair amount of time sniping dudes out with your chaingun, and as a fan of games like Ghost Recon I actually don't mind this type of gameplay. However, I can see how it discourages the run-and-gun attitude possible in classic Doom, which might feel weird in a WAD that otherwise feels kinda old-school. Welcome to post-modernism! In conclusion, I really liked GMP and you could too. It's got a classy surface and respectable organs. It's got great MIDIs. It's not sure if it belongs in 1996 or 2016, just like us. Next class, I want an essay about your emotional response to playing this WAD and how it might affect your relationships with your family and friends. Dismissed! The /newstuff Chronicles is a very sporadic roundup of new items uploaded to the /idgames archive, and it is written entirely by community members like you. If you wish to contribute, the /newstuff Review Center is the place to do so. Register on the Doomworld Forums first if you don't already have an account, because you need one to submit reviews. Special thanks goes to the nearly 300 users who have submitted reviews over the past several years. View full news article

Disjunction - floatRand Doom 2 - Single Player - Boom Compatible - 10.66 MB - Reviewed by: magicsofa Disjunction. Judging by the name, I first thought this might be a financial planning mod, taking Doom to its outer limits, where you have to trade caco-coins and baron-bucks until you realize your career is worthless. Or perhaps a train simulator, with the unattainable objective of not crashing and killing everyone aboard. It turns out neither of these fantasies are true. Today's offering from last year is a straight-forward, no BS megawad by floatRand. Let me be clear, though, when I say "no BS", I do not mean "no frustrations". The fact is, this WAD did frustrate me in a couple of ways. But it was also delightful in other ways. So we'll focus on the good first, because good things are good. Let's talk about the visuals. 99% of these maps are stunning, and I don't mean stunning in the sense of "I put on so much makeup today that you can't see my actual skin." floatRand has a way of making things look really nice without always using ten thousand sectors. Don't get me wrong, there are enough sectors to go around, but I really loved the overall sense of composition and purpose in the architecture of Disjunction (ironic, isn't it?). I say 99% because a tiny portion of areas looked bland, especially parts of the very first outdoor area, as well as parts of the final map which is insanely large so a bit more excusable. Many of the maps are themed heavily around one vibrant color among dark backgrounds, which I find pleasing because I'm a simple person. The music was awesome. Much more on techno/fantasy side, with tracks from Megaman and Jazz Jackrabbit (yay!). Metalheads might not like it. But I liked it, and I was ready to gaze at 11 beautiful maps and jam to the tunes and whatnot. So what about my frustrations? Well, those are found in the "whatnot". The "whatnot" being all those things you do in Doom other than look at the walls and listen to Cyber Rainforce. You know, finding keys, shooting hellspawn, et cetera. At first I was confronted by lots of monsters, and difficulty was high but since these were generally small humanoid enemies, the flow was alright. Unfortunately in these early maps the architecture does get in the way because it's way too cramped and annoying to traverse. That problem goes away once the maps themselves become bigger, but is overshadowed by a different problem: incessant use of monsters in annoying ways. For example, there are a ton of surround-traps. You enter a room, the door locks behind you, monsters surround. You go through a teleport, monsters surround. You grab a key, monsters surround. There are just way too many locked-in-a-room-full-of-monsters scenarios for my taste. Also, once you get past the first few maps, you find a lot of encounters with almost every enemy type. I felt that floatRand was placing monsters based on how cool it looked, not how it would make a good battle. Expect to find battles like: one arachnotron, one mancubus, one pain elemental, and four revenants. Also both during and after large battles you can expect two to four archviles to brighten your day. I don't want to make it sound like the action was never fun. At times it was cooking. Sometimes there were tricks to get around the battle, which I generally welcomed. But more often than not the pot seemed to be boiling over, and by the end you're facing giant hordes that make your BFG seem kinda weak. The epicness of the scenery gets more and more grand, but the gameplay actually grinds to a slow crawl because it just takes a long time to clear the rooms. Maybe I'm just getting old and slow. I did play on HMP so I guess I could have lowered the difficulty, but a quick look at monster counts showed only a small difference. I'd consider playing it again with some custom weapons. A minigun and a railgun would balance the game nicely, I think. Slaughter enthusiasts and masochists can fire up UV or Nightmare, but for the rest of us, expect to be severely punished. I wouldn't want anyone to miss out on the phenomenal level design, but I know some people will be turned away by the high difficulty. If you think you're one of those pansies (I know I am!), then consider playing on super easy mode or using a mod to increase your firepower. Or play on "cooperative mode", which we all know means spawning a bot to flail about at the beginning of the level in order to give yourself infinite lives. Whatever you need to do, this is a WAD that shouldn't be ignored - it's more like a famous tourist attraction that's always busy and you just have to suck it up. On a scale from lamb to lambchop, I give this WAD a solid 7.9. Temple of Unholy Fire, chapter 1 (demo) - Cacodemon9000 Doom 2 - Single Player - Boom Compatible - 8.96 MB - Reviewed by: magicsofa We've all done it: or at least most of us have, and we have learned the consequences and hopefully will never repeat our mistake. Any time you write "Chapter 1" on something, you're guaranteed not to finish that thing. Well that was the case here with Cacodemon9000's map "Temple of Unholy Fire, chapter 1 (demo)". Tragically this was the last thing they uploaded to /idgames. Perhaps it was because of the scathing review by Zalewa, who is all over that s*** playing everybody's maps. Who are you anyway, Zalewa, and why do I keep having to talk about your reviews? Anyway, this level suffers a lot from tedious battles as well as some bland architecture. There's some modification to the bullet weapons, making them a bit more powerful, but it's basically useless against the hordes of monsters - some of which just had to be upgraded themselves. The archvile's flame attack, for example, spawns many explosions throughout the animation, which is funny because you can outrun it, but also stupid because it's out of control. That might have been cool for the boss battle (which was, astoundingly, a THIRD version of archie), not for the entire map. Add to that spectral cacodemons, mancu-serpents, and beefed up arachnotrons, and you have a little party. The actual geometry of the map was pretty cool in a lot of places (less cool in others when it was very long hallways), but the texturing and lighting made it mostly ugly. Since there was often no contrast, you couldn't really see the nice features until you're right on top of them. The outdoor areas were generally nice looking, and easy to traverse. Indoors however the layout is very boxy. The path you're supposed to travel does loop over itself in a nice way, but gets confusing at times, and most of the switches activate something random that you have to go find (like Hexen, but not as bad). There are some good ideas buried in this chapter 1 (demo), and I think Cacodemon9000 should continue mapping since Doom will never die, and neither will we IF WE JUST KEEP MAPPING. Perhaps they're mapping for another game or whatever, I just hope Zalewa's criticism didn't turn Caco9000 away from mapping entirely. Next time I would suggest posting the WAD in the forums to get feedback before uploading to /idgames, because the one-paragraph reviews are often flippant and discouraging. However, the criticism was indeed fair, and for someone looking to play a polished level, chapter 1 (demo) isn't gonna cut the mustard. On a scale of 1 to chapter 1 (demo), I give this WAD a chapter 1. Vertigone - Brett 'Mechadon' Harrell Doom 2 - Deathmatch - Skulltag - 217.52 KB - Reviewed by: magicsofa I'm thoroughly confused by this text file. First paragraph goes something like this: "This is my second oldest surviving map that I still have, and my very first DM map ever. However, the gameplay and layout are pretty awful, so I wouldn't really even bother playing it. I uploaded it for nostalgia reasons, I suppose." Sounds normal enough right? But then: "(Note from Mechadon from the future!! I decided to upload this while updating some other releases in the archive. I'm really only uploading it for, uh, 'historical' reasons. You should never play this map, at least not seriously :P )" So Mechadon went back in time in order to warn us that instead of not really bothering with this map, we should instead never play it. Well I played it, for "historical" reasons, and it's pretty bad. Could be worse though! It could always be worse. Always. On a scale of 1 to forgotten, let's move on to the next WAD, shall we? Newgothic Movement 2 - Armouredblood and Archi Doom 2 - Single Player - Boom Compatible - 10.95 MB - Reviewed by: magicsofa Welcome to Newgothic - Movement 2. The first installment, released in 2010, was generally liked. So the stakes are high, your training wheels are off, the GDP must go up (forever). I spent my last review whining and complaining about unfair and wild monster placement. That's because I'm extremely sensitive. You can imagine my feelings when I read the description. "Slaughter. Fun Slaughter. With music. Enjoy." ...I'm going to be slaughtered to music? And I'm supposed to enjoy it? Fine. Some of us are aggressively against slaughter maps, and we can see why. They just filled the hallways with monsters, perfectly placed on the grid, all facing the same way. It's stupid. But you know what, it's also stupid that you can carry 100 rockets. And that's what makes Doom fun. Not the hellish landscapes, nor the goring of endless demonic flesh. It's really the insanity of your own character, the voiceless Doomguy, sliding around inside a nightmare firing rockets that move slower than himself. The beautiful thing about Doom is that you can enjoy it many different ways. Even though the textfile says "Difficulty settings: not implemented", they are always there for you. And in many other ways you can cheat around the true, hardcore experience. Want to save every ten seconds? Go for it. Want to play co-op, turn on infinite ammo, or skip maps? Only your pride can stop you. So I enjoyed these maps with a pleasant little Biffbot to keep the savings away. Aesthetically these maps were mostly awesome. Only a few of the massive areas looked bland to me, and since they would soon spill over with bodies, it kinda didn't matter. Complementing the monster counts in the thousands were ridiculous amounts of ammunition and health. Several places could be muscled through by collecting the health along the way. This (along with all my cheating) made the slaughter feel more like a party. Maybe they should be called party maps! Moving on, there are overwhelming numbers of guests at this party, and my poor bot was often being swarmed at the spawn by hungry zombies reaching for the keg. It was fun. And you deserve a bit of fun after your long day at the office. This megawad delivers what it promises. I have only a few small gripes - such as difficulty settings would be kinda nice (take out a few cybies plz), and a couple of map oddities such as giant but inconspicuous doors - but nothing really major. So slaughter away, my friends. On a scale of 1 to nutz.wad, I give Newgothic Movement 2 a near-perfect score of 1.6. Silent Hill Orphan TC - Autz (sonic_HD87) Doom 2 - Single Player - GZDoom - 24.91 MB - Reviewed by: magicsofa And now for something completely different! This TC uses "messy code" to turn Doom into a point-and-click adventure! Specifically, it copies Silent Hill: Orphan, an obscure mobile game. The code seemed to work fine to me; it's got inventory, dialogue, totally illogical puzzles (yes, put the candle in the pot of sludge), and even combat! However, the game is unpolished, with the creator sometimes talking to your character, saying stuff like "I was too lazy to put this in." It's still quite an accomplishment. Perhaps someone could use this engine to create a Doom point-and-click using screenshots of maps as the backgrounds. Anyway, check it out if you want to see a very obscure use of GZDoom. Vulkan (Episode 1) v1.2 - DavidN - @DavidXNewton Doom 2 - Single Player - GZDoom - 36.12 MB - Reviewed by: magicsofa Vulkan has nothing to do with Star Trek, which is a good thing. I love Doom and Star Trek separately, and I wouldn't want one to be ruined by the other. I don't remember setting anything to "stun" in Doom - do you? So anyway, DavidN has created an episode about a UAC project that accidentally drilled into hell. Your job is to get dropped off and totally abandoned, as usual, so you can dive to the bottom of the infested power station. I had a blast playing this WAD, which overall has a cool vibe that reminds me of Doom 1, mixed with a little Quake, and a slight nod to Descent. The environments are not caked with detail, but they are put together in a way is evocative and beautiful. Unfortunately the lightning isn't so great in places: you will encounter some bright areas that don't have enough contrast, and much worse, insane darkness in others. I was turning my gamma up to 1.4 and still finding walls with my face. Some of that was from destructible light sources, but other times it was obligatory. Was there a flashlight that I missed? Thankfully it was only a few small areas that had this problem. Brutal Doom is included with the package, which is awesome, but I can't be judging that portion of it. I think these maps would be a success even without it. The swarms of axe-men made me feel like I was playing Nazi Zombies at times. The bigger monsters on the other hand were less of a threat with the Brutal weapons. They just go down too easy, and weren't used in big enough numbers to be taken seriously. You'll be more worried about lightning fast pinkies. Some other customization added nice variety to the gameplay. You collect "vulkoins" in each map which give you a bonus to your health and armor when you get 100, and there's a few scripted events including a mechanic at the end where you have to bring cooling orbs to reactors to cool them down, which was fun and cute. And cuteness is the most important thing in any WAD. So despite some minor kinks, Vulkan has mostly atmosphere and action to offer you, and I hope DavidN is working on the next episode. On a scale from 1 to core breach, I give this mod an 8.1. Secretdoom: Hell's Memento 2 - Cyberdemon531 Doom 2 - Single Player - GZDoom - 25.19 MB - Reviewed by: magicsofa After sacrificing your soul to the depths of Hell, you wake up in a pool of blood and walk into a gateway. You find yourself in the depths of Hell once again, and you have to find your way out. Deeper, and deeper, into the depths of Hell. Once again... depths of Hell. You should all know Cyberdemon531 already, from their status as a "speed runner extraordinaire". I hate running, so I don't really follow that side of the community. Anyway, in this WAD you will be facing insane amounts of monsters, and you'll also have a ridiculous buffet of items both healthy and ammunitious. Starting with map05 you get enemy counts in the several-hundreds. Often you'll be free to wander a vast expanse, but some areas are very crowded. A lot of the battles were repetitive or too easy. A few moments did get interesting, such as a fun trap that cages the player, or suicide bombers swarming around a barrel. Additionally there were a ton of switches to hit, which was cool (because stuff was happening) but not executed well. What I mean is, the switch might lower a wall, revealing a room. And in the room is another switch... and another wall lowers, revealing a similar room with a switch. And on and on in the endless depths of Hell. And if you call the depths of Hell right now, we'll even include two additional pools of blood, and one additional gateway to Hell, totally FREE! All we need is your soul that's 1-800-DPTH for two gateways and three pools of blood to wake up in every morning! The design of the maps fluctuates a great deal in terms of visuals. Many of the areas are just so big, it's impossible for them to look nice. In other places there's decent geometry but poor lighting and texturing, or just extreme darkness. Some areas did look quite nice however, with the techbase and industrial areas being the best. The music was pretty good, but I think it was composed by Zagfan590 (referred to in the .txt as supplying "choice clips"). This plays more like a speedrunning/slaughter training camp than an atmospheric adventure, and perhaps that's what you are looking for. Perhaps that's the whole point of the Secretdoom series (secret's out!). There were some nice ideas buried under the demons piled 900 high, as well as some pretty areas but also some ugly areas. Kind of like my brain. On a scale of 1 to 1-800-DPTH, your pools of blood can be delivered straight to your door! Good Morining Phobos - sincity2100 Doom 2 - Single Player - Boom Compatible - 9.93 MB - Reviewed by: magicsofa Good Morining, Doomworld. Today's class is about an exciting and brand new experience created mostly by sincity2100. It also happens to be the last review for March 2017. Huzzah! This WAD has already received a number of positive reviews, so if that's enough for you, why are you wasting your time listening to me yammering away instead of playing? God knows. Anyway, Good Morning Phobos is long and beautiful. It's attractive in a non-invasive way, making it almost relaxing to behold. It appears that sincity2100 can use any clashing styles they want and still have it look amazing. It took me a moment to realize that giant lamppost was made of rock. It's not a detail-fest but with 33 maps, I don't even want that. Your eyes need a place to rest once in a while. I was impressed that all 33 were pretty consistently gorgeous, with decent gameplay to match. Enemy placement was where this WAD shined a little less clean. The layouts were almost always so wide-open that you'd rarely get stuck, which is nice, but can also make encounters too easy. On the other hand, most of these levels are just brimming with former humans and company. The hitscan attacks quickly turn the wide areas into death traps. So you'll spend a fair amount of time sniping dudes out with your chaingun, and as a fan of games like Ghost Recon I actually don't mind this type of gameplay. However, I can see how it discourages the run-and-gun attitude possible in classic Doom, which might feel weird in a WAD that otherwise feels kinda old-school. Welcome to post-modernism! In conclusion, I really liked GMP and you could too. It's got a classy surface and respectable organs. It's got great MIDIs. It's not sure if it belongs in 1996 or 2016, just like us. Next class, I want an essay about your emotional response to playing this WAD and how it might affect your relationships with your family and friends. Dismissed! The /newstuff Chronicles is a very sporadic roundup of new items uploaded to the /idgames archive, and it is written entirely by community members like you. If you wish to contribute, the /newstuff Review Center is the place to do so. Register on the Doomworld Forums first if you don't already have an account, because you need one to submit reviews. Special thanks goes to the nearly 300 users who have submitted reviews over the past several years.

The Blood Trials - youraverageamir Doom 2 - Single Player - ZDoom Compatible - 2.82 MB - Reviewed by: Crawldragon I was initially very excited to play The Blood Trials. My previous Doom source port of choice was the now-defunct Skulltag and its successor Zandronum, but I'd heard many a tale about the advanced non-Doom-compatible features which GZDoom boasted, so when I picked up The Blood Trials and found it had been specifically designed with GZDoom in mind, well, I had to take it for a spin. Reading the description, I was led to believe that there were three separate paths to go through. In reality I myself could find only two, but a quick peek using a level editor did reveal that the third one branches out from the second. Each route seems to be based around a single enemy type, but I'll get on to that in a bit. The level design, though it initially piqued my interest, was ultimately disappointing, and I don't think it took full advantage of the advanced GZDoom features in the way I was hoping. I wouldn't say the map was poorly designed, just a bit lackluster, and that's without me nitpicking at the occasional misaligned or out-of-place texture. But Crawldragon, why did you look at a level editor for the other two routes instead of playing them through? Well, allow me to explain. The first path I initially chose to take was the labyrinth, and I normally don't like labyrinths in a first-person shooter because they involve a lot of groping around half-blind. However, on closer inspection, I noticed that the walls of the labyrinth were actually reflected on the ceiling, so you had a map of sorts, if only a limited view of it. I thought this was a clever way of getting around how god-awful mazes can be in first-person. It didn't fully help me on my first playthrough, however, because I was too busy dodging Cacodemons to fully pay attention to where I was going, and ammunition is pretty sparse in The Blood Trials. The first time I played through I hadn't seen the switch in the first room which enables access to the chaingun, so I was blasting away at Cacodemons with a shotgun. I remember naively thinking "this seems like a lot of cacodemons." Anyway, I got through the labyrinth relatively unscathed, whereupon I exited out into a little alcove separated from a large courtyard by a wall of vines. Incidentally this courtyard is also the first room in the second and third routes that's immediately accessible. Bizarrely, you can't shoot through the vines. Anyway, in this little alcove I found a chaingun! Yes! Now I have some firepower! And then I learned that ZDoom adds a new monster named The Enhanced Cacodemon, which ate my face off. You see, The Blood Trials is very difficult, but in the early stages at least I felt that the challenge was very fair. Even after learning how to acquire the chaingun from the start, I found that it was a real challenge holding on to ammunition, but for the most part I initially thought that I had all of the tools that I needed to beat the game fair and square without having to lower the difficulty setting, so I pressed on and walked straight into a room of what felt like a dozen more Cacodemons, with another Enhanced Cacodemon and a Pain Elemental thrown in just for fun. After some time I managed to fight my way through that and climb the tower into a room with an Enhanced Cacodemon and a Cracko Demon, and this Cracko Demon can fuck right off with its multiple unpredictable one-hit-kill attacks. Who puts a flying enemy in such a cramped space, anyway? As I said, each route in The Blood Trials seems to be based around a single enemy type, and up until the very end I don't think a single encounter on the labyrinth route wasn't just a boss rush of Cacodemons or a small number of cannon fodder former humans. Given how much damage Cacodemons can absorb, and the total lack of any plasma rifles or rocket launchers, after a while I was really struggling with getting through even small encounters without running out of ammunition. On top of that, Cracko Demons are really difficult to deal with in a cramped environment, so it was at this point, after hours of trial and error, I decided to shamelessly IDDQD my way through the rest of the level to see if it got any more varied, and with the exception of a final encounter consisting of enhanced versions of the three monster types the routes are based around it really didn't. At the end of the day, this level is just a straight up series of blatantly unbalanced monster rushes in vaguely interesting but ultimately underwhelming architecture. It's a shame that I can't bring myself to give The Blood Trials more than two stars, but I've gotta be honest it got really stale really fast, and for me, as much as I enjoyed the challenge of it, it really just came down to how much bullshit you're willing to put up with all at once. While the initial labyrinth encounter angered me just enough to keep playing, after a while the whole thing just devolved into a boring slog that made me want to stop playing, and really isn't that the cardinal sin of level design? If you want to prove that you have balls of steel, by all means give The Blood Trials a shot. If you're looking for a fun experience to mix up your WAD collection, skip it. GZDoom is capable of far better than this. Trigger-happy (Updated version) - pintolinh0 Doom 2 - Single Player - Vanilla - 123.93 KB - Reviewed by: Crawldragon When I read the readme for Trigger-Happy, and it mentioned that Nazis were included in the level, I wasn't sure whether to be iffy about the conflicting game themes or amused at how appropriate Nazis in Hell would be. Fortunately, pintolinh0 seems to have blended the two themes rather well, with a nice choice of textures that doesn't quite make this level feel like Hell but doesn't make it look like an SS base either; it makes it look like an SS base in Hell. Unfortunately, as much as I liked the architecture, I didn't have much time to appreciate it, because this level comes at you fast and HARD, in all the right ways. There are monsters freaking everywhere, all cramped up in small spaces and tucked away behind teleporters and closets. It creates this massive rush, but at the same time after you've cleared a room it gives you as much time as you need to catch a breather. Even the compact map is utilized well, making enemy waves feel more pressing and urgent while also opening up over time so that the map doesn't quite feel too small to move around in. It's not even just that this level is challenging, either; it's also cathartic. You start off with a super shotgun absolutely wrecking shit, and then it gives you more little by little, so that by the end, if you win, it feels like such a victory. I was a little tempted to say that this level is a little too difficult, actually, because at one point during "part 1" of this map I was having a hard time with some Hell Knights because all I had was a shotgun and a pistol, but then after a couple of respawns I found a secret containing a plasma rifle. Fortunately this secret isn't too hard to find, especially if you know Wolfenstein, so I'm not going to deduct points for that. And the tension only gets amped up by the final encounter. If you're like me, by the time you get to "part 2" and everything crescendos into a last stand of sorts, you're low on health and desperate for ammunition. The level doesn't quite let up at this point, but it is very generous with ammunition, so it's fairly well-balanced and if you've got your head screwed on right you'll get there in the end. I'm not going to spoil the final encounter, because I think the best way to experience this level is to be as surprised as I was and use your head to figure out what the level designer wants you to do. Now, some might argue that the challenge factor to this level ultimately comes down to your ability to strafe out of the way of enemy fire while firing back, and that's true, but at the same time because there's so much going on at any given moment I can safely say that the level doesn't need to bring any more challenges than that to engage me. If you're a better Doom player than me, maybe you won't find this level quite as much of a test of skill as I did, but I can almost guarantee you'll still find it fun. Since the author recommended Chocolate Doom for the authentic old-school experience, I shall summarize my opinion with a chocolate-related metaphor. Trigger-Happy is like a truffle: Not a whole lot of it, but what there is is so rich and full. Sure, it might be little too intense for novices, but if you take your time to get used to it you can get into this zone where you acquire a taste for it. Five out of five, would eat a whole box of this level if I could. Check it out, even if you just play it once. Planisphere 2 - Perro Seco Doom 2 - Single Player - ZDoom Compatible - 741.65 KB - Reviewed by: kmxexii This was originally released back in 2012. It's essentially a scale model of some of the New York City area. You start out in New Jersey and fight your way through Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, as well as Rikers Island. The work involved must have been painstaking. There is a ton of open world to explore, and while it isn't interactive in the same way one might expect a Duke Nukem 3D city level to be, it still works as a Doom playground. Back when it was originally released, PLANISF2 showcased the "Hitscan attacks hit invisible barriers in large open areas" bug and required some additional measures to get it ready for play outside of ports that built nodes on startup, like GZDoom. Perro Seco made a pass at polishing the level, removing the latter headache as well as other quality of life improvements, but the updated version is not the one that was anonymously uploaded to the archives. Back to Saturn X E1: Get Out Of My Stations - Esselfortium and a lot of wonderful people Doom 2 - Single Player - Vanilla - 17.54 MB - Reviewed by: joepallai Honestly, what more needs to be said here? Initially released on December 10th, 2012 (why does that date sound familiar?) and finally uploaded to the archive on March 3rd, 2017 after years of exhaustive bug crushing and fine tuning, this 27 level mapset can best be described as one of the crowning achievements in Doom mapping. When I played it for the first time back in 2012/2013 over Christmas vacation, I was struck by how professional the art direction, music, and level design was. This could have been a commercial game release back in the day—though really it's better than that. It has nuance, and style and exciting combat with carefully hidden secrets. It oozes atmosphere and immerses you into a alternate Doom universe with its clever level designs that artfully lead the player, yet manages not to feel ham-fisted like a lesser work would. What makes it even more remarkable is that all of this is done within the strict limits of vanilla Doom mapping. Sure the save game overflow limit is broken every time, but honestly, all good maps break that limit. (I suppose the hub levels act as the save points for this mapset in vanilla Doom.) To me, what is most impressive here is that this beautifully detailed and ever expansive environment doesn't break the VPO limitations. The skill and planning to pull this off is amazing (and a little intimidating to be honest). I stopped playing and went into the editor on two occasions to see how a room was done—I simply couldn't believe I was playing a vanilla Doom level. It felt like a true 3D space to me—it's that good in its design. That is what truly impresses me here. The other strength that this mapset has is the combat. The combat is really engaging, coming at you from multiple sides and heights. I love how the monsters are arranged to find you and are always applying pressure to the player. Also the barrel placement is top-notch; they're almost always right there where you need them. Everything about "Back to Saturn X" is of the utmost quality. There's little to actually complain about that wouldn't be a personal preference. I stand by my statement that "Back to Saturn X" is one of the crowning achievements in Doom editing, if not the pinnacle. It simply is that good. Pollution - HUNdebLeonidasX Doom 2 - Single Player - ZDoom Compatible - 6.91 MB - Reviewed by: JudgeDeadd A techbase mapset by HUNdebLeonidasX, with eight maps plus one secret. There's one new enemy I noticed, an electric Demon which moves faster and can rapidly shoot ball lightning. The first few levels don't make a very good impression, mainly because of how incredibly easy they are, even on UV. There's more than enough ammo and health, and the enemies you meet are for the most part little fries; even when you come upon something bigger, there's usually lots of room to let you run circles around them. Later the maps get slightly tougher, but not by much. The visuals certainly aren't bad; there's use of beautiful CC4 textures and eye-catching detail and all. However, due to the uninspired enemy placement and lack of any proper challenge, the levels feel very samey and dull. It's basically one pretty-looking room after another, but it feels empty and it's not working as a single memorable experience. However, there is one map that I did enjoy playing: the secret level, MAP09: Leftover of the Nile. Its Egyptian visual theme and architectural design (and music) are pleasant enough to stand on their own, and the gameplay, while still rather easy, feels somehow more solid. "Known bugs: If you find one, good for you." Well, that's nice to hear, 'coz there are quite a few bugs. The end of map04 has a stuck spiderdemon. Map05 has an event where a key is supposed to teleport to your location, but sometimes the teleport fails to work. On map06 I left the lost soul room early, and somehow locked myself out (the door at sector #815 wouldn't open all the way anymore, just a few units), making the level unwinnable without cheating. And I can't figure out map08. Maybe it's a bug or maybe I'm missing something, but I can't open up the second half of the map, no matter what I try; even after opening the map in the editor, I'm still stumped. (If this helps, I'm running ZDoom 2.8.1 with standard compatibility settings. But then, the author claims in the textfile that this was tested with ZDoom, so...) Withering Graves - Ryan "quakis" Rouse Doom 2 - Single Player - Limit Removing - 346.97 KB - Reviewed by: JudgeDeadd A short, but solid level where you explore a graveyard to put rowdy corpses back into the graves. Hope you like revenants, there's quite a couple of them. The visuals are nicely detailed and easy on the eye, and the gameplay offers quite a challenge, at least at the beginning (owing in part to tricky hitscanner crowds); once you get your hands on the chaingun, things get way more mellow. Take it for a spin if you're in the mood for a short map. Tlacopan - riderr3 Doom 2 - Single Player - Boom Compatible - 257.56 KB - Reviewed by: Scotty A remake of the Plutonia map "Aztec". This map retains the theme of cramped, curved corridors connecting larger, more open spaces. This lends itself nicely to providing varied and generally entertaining combat. Progression is somewhat non-linear in that you can choose from a couple of routes, but ultimately everywhere must be visited in order to obtain all the necessary keys. In some instances keys are only accessible after certain sequences of switch activation and understanding how to actually get to the key, which served to slow proceedings down and create a lull between encounters. A Walk In Hell - Skul Doom 2 - Single Player - Vanilla - 76.79 KB - Reviewed by: Walter confetti A short and pretty cute map made by Skul for the first Vinesauce Contest held by Joel set in a bright red cavern environment with some nice details here and there and for Boom-compatible ports. Layout is pretty organic and the cavern looks pretty natural. The only "problem" I found is some minor texture alignment, but nothing that breaks the play experience. Gameplay is nicely crafted; the short monster count is composed of medium-hard enemies for harder fights, including some traps and good enemy placement. Thing placement in general is good. This map includes an external DeHackEd file that modifies the monster behavior (the barons of hell) so that when you kill them, it opens the exit door by special sector tags. Overall, it is a fun little map that I recommend playing! Running Late - A2Rob Doom 2 - Single Player - Boom Compatible - 1.18 MB - Reviewed by: Scotty A short five-map jaunt through some techbase type environments. Action is generally free flowing and fairly fast paced, although the odd lock-in-style trap is encountered in places. The infamous plasma marines are present in this wad, and they add extra urgency to proceedings when they appear. This wad has an Erik Alm/early Skillsaw vibe to it, so players who like those mappers will most likely find enjoyment here too. If you are looking for a good hour or two of solid Doom entertainment, then consider checking this out. The /newstuff Chronicles is a very sporadic roundup of new items uploaded to the /idgames archive, and it is written entirely by community members like you. If you wish to contribute, the /newstuff Review Center is the place to do so. Register on the Doomworld Forums first if you don't already have an account, because you need one to submit reviews. Special thanks goes to the nearly 300 users who have submitted reviews over the past several years. View full news article

The Blood Trials - youraverageamir Doom 2 - Single Player - ZDoom Compatible - 2.82 MB - Reviewed by: Crawldragon I was initially very excited to play The Blood Trials. My previous Doom source port of choice was the now-defunct Skulltag and its successor Zandronum, but I'd heard many a tale about the advanced non-Doom-compatible features which GZDoom boasted, so when I picked up The Blood Trials and found it had been specifically designed with GZDoom in mind, well, I had to take it for a spin. Reading the description, I was led to believe that there were three separate paths to go through. In reality I myself could find only two, but a quick peek using a level editor did reveal that the third one branches out from the second. Each route seems to be based around a single enemy type, but I'll get on to that in a bit. The level design, though it initially piqued my interest, was ultimately disappointing, and I don't think it took full advantage of the advanced GZDoom features in the way I was hoping. I wouldn't say the map was poorly designed, just a bit lackluster, and that's without me nitpicking at the occasional misaligned or out-of-place texture. But Crawldragon, why did you look at a level editor for the other two routes instead of playing them through? Well, allow me to explain. The first path I initially chose to take was the labyrinth, and I normally don't like labyrinths in a first-person shooter because they involve a lot of groping around half-blind. However, on closer inspection, I noticed that the walls of the labyrinth were actually reflected on the ceiling, so you had a map of sorts, if only a limited view of it. I thought this was a clever way of getting around how god-awful mazes can be in first-person. It didn't fully help me on my first playthrough, however, because I was too busy dodging Cacodemons to fully pay attention to where I was going, and ammunition is pretty sparse in The Blood Trials. The first time I played through I hadn't seen the switch in the first room which enables access to the chaingun, so I was blasting away at Cacodemons with a shotgun. I remember naively thinking "this seems like a lot of cacodemons." Anyway, I got through the labyrinth relatively unscathed, whereupon I exited out into a little alcove separated from a large courtyard by a wall of vines. Incidentally this courtyard is also the first room in the second and third routes that's immediately accessible. Bizarrely, you can't shoot through the vines. Anyway, in this little alcove I found a chaingun! Yes! Now I have some firepower! And then I learned that ZDoom adds a new monster named The Enhanced Cacodemon, which ate my face off. You see, The Blood Trials is very difficult, but in the early stages at least I felt that the challenge was very fair. Even after learning how to acquire the chaingun from the start, I found that it was a real challenge holding on to ammunition, but for the most part I initially thought that I had all of the tools that I needed to beat the game fair and square without having to lower the difficulty setting, so I pressed on and walked straight into a room of what felt like a dozen more Cacodemons, with another Enhanced Cacodemon and a Pain Elemental thrown in just for fun. After some time I managed to fight my way through that and climb the tower into a room with an Enhanced Cacodemon and a Cracko Demon, and this Cracko Demon can fuck right off with its multiple unpredictable one-hit-kill attacks. Who puts a flying enemy in such a cramped space, anyway? As I said, each route in The Blood Trials seems to be based around a single enemy type, and up until the very end I don't think a single encounter on the labyrinth route wasn't just a boss rush of Cacodemons or a small number of cannon fodder former humans. Given how much damage Cacodemons can absorb, and the total lack of any plasma rifles or rocket launchers, after a while I was really struggling with getting through even small encounters without running out of ammunition. On top of that, Cracko Demons are really difficult to deal with in a cramped environment, so it was at this point, after hours of trial and error, I decided to shamelessly IDDQD my way through the rest of the level to see if it got any more varied, and with the exception of a final encounter consisting of enhanced versions of the three monster types the routes are based around it really didn't. At the end of the day, this level is just a straight up series of blatantly unbalanced monster rushes in vaguely interesting but ultimately underwhelming architecture. It's a shame that I can't bring myself to give The Blood Trials more than two stars, but I've gotta be honest it got really stale really fast, and for me, as much as I enjoyed the challenge of it, it really just came down to how much bullshit you're willing to put up with all at once. While the initial labyrinth encounter angered me just enough to keep playing, after a while the whole thing just devolved into a boring slog that made me want to stop playing, and really isn't that the cardinal sin of level design? If you want to prove that you have balls of steel, by all means give The Blood Trials a shot. If you're looking for a fun experience to mix up your WAD collection, skip it. GZDoom is capable of far better than this. Trigger-happy (Updated version) - pintolinh0 Doom 2 - Single Player - Vanilla - 123.93 KB - Reviewed by: Crawldragon When I read the readme for Trigger-Happy, and it mentioned that Nazis were included in the level, I wasn't sure whether to be iffy about the conflicting game themes or amused at how appropriate Nazis in Hell would be. Fortunately, pintolinh0 seems to have blended the two themes rather well, with a nice choice of textures that doesn't quite make this level feel like Hell but doesn't make it look like an SS base either; it makes it look like an SS base in Hell. Unfortunately, as much as I liked the architecture, I didn't have much time to appreciate it, because this level comes at you fast and HARD, in all the right ways. There are monsters freaking everywhere, all cramped up in small spaces and tucked away behind teleporters and closets. It creates this massive rush, but at the same time after you've cleared a room it gives you as much time as you need to catch a breather. Even the compact map is utilized well, making enemy waves feel more pressing and urgent while also opening up over time so that the map doesn't quite feel too small to move around in. It's not even just that this level is challenging, either; it's also cathartic. You start off with a super shotgun absolutely wrecking shit, and then it gives you more little by little, so that by the end, if you win, it feels like such a victory. I was a little tempted to say that this level is a little too difficult, actually, because at one point during "part 1" of this map I was having a hard time with some Hell Knights because all I had was a shotgun and a pistol, but then after a couple of respawns I found a secret containing a plasma rifle. Fortunately this secret isn't too hard to find, especially if you know Wolfenstein, so I'm not going to deduct points for that. And the tension only gets amped up by the final encounter. If you're like me, by the time you get to "part 2" and everything crescendos into a last stand of sorts, you're low on health and desperate for ammunition. The level doesn't quite let up at this point, but it is very generous with ammunition, so it's fairly well-balanced and if you've got your head screwed on right you'll get there in the end. I'm not going to spoil the final encounter, because I think the best way to experience this level is to be as surprised as I was and use your head to figure out what the level designer wants you to do. Now, some might argue that the challenge factor to this level ultimately comes down to your ability to strafe out of the way of enemy fire while firing back, and that's true, but at the same time because there's so much going on at any given moment I can safely say that the level doesn't need to bring any more challenges than that to engage me. If you're a better Doom player than me, maybe you won't find this level quite as much of a test of skill as I did, but I can almost guarantee you'll still find it fun. Since the author recommended Chocolate Doom for the authentic old-school experience, I shall summarize my opinion with a chocolate-related metaphor. Trigger-Happy is like a truffle: Not a whole lot of it, but what there is is so rich and full. Sure, it might be little too intense for novices, but if you take your time to get used to it you can get into this zone where you acquire a taste for it. Five out of five, would eat a whole box of this level if I could. Check it out, even if you just play it once. Planisphere 2 - Perro Seco Doom 2 - Single Player - ZDoom Compatible - 741.65 KB - Reviewed by: kmxexii This was originally released back in 2012. It's essentially a scale model of some of the New York City area. You start out in New Jersey and fight your way through Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, as well as Rikers Island. The work involved must have been painstaking. There is a ton of open world to explore, and while it isn't interactive in the same way one might expect a Duke Nukem 3D city level to be, it still works as a Doom playground. Back when it was originally released, PLANISF2 showcased the "Hitscan attacks hit invisible barriers in large open areas" bug and required some additional measures to get it ready for play outside of ports that built nodes on startup, like GZDoom. Perro Seco made a pass at polishing the level, removing the latter headache as well as other quality of life improvements, but the updated version is not the one that was anonymously uploaded to the archives. Back to Saturn X E1: Get Out Of My Stations - Esselfortium and a lot of wonderful people Doom 2 - Single Player - Vanilla - 17.54 MB - Reviewed by: joepallai Honestly, what more needs to be said here? Initially released on December 10th, 2012 (why does that date sound familiar?) and finally uploaded to the archive on March 3rd, 2017 after years of exhaustive bug crushing and fine tuning, this 27 level mapset can best be described as one of the crowning achievements in Doom mapping. When I played it for the first time back in 2012/2013 over Christmas vacation, I was struck by how professional the art direction, music, and level design was. This could have been a commercial game release back in the day—though really it's better than that. It has nuance, and style and exciting combat with carefully hidden secrets. It oozes atmosphere and immerses you into a alternate Doom universe with its clever level designs that artfully lead the player, yet manages not to feel ham-fisted like a lesser work would. What makes it even more remarkable is that all of this is done within the strict limits of vanilla Doom mapping. Sure the save game overflow limit is broken every time, but honestly, all good maps break that limit. (I suppose the hub levels act as the save points for this mapset in vanilla Doom.) To me, what is most impressive here is that this beautifully detailed and ever expansive environment doesn't break the VPO limitations. The skill and planning to pull this off is amazing (and a little intimidating to be honest). I stopped playing and went into the editor on two occasions to see how a room was done—I simply couldn't believe I was playing a vanilla Doom level. It felt like a true 3D space to me—it's that good in its design. That is what truly impresses me here. The other strength that this mapset has is the combat. The combat is really engaging, coming at you from multiple sides and heights. I love how the monsters are arranged to find you and are always applying pressure to the player. Also the barrel placement is top-notch; they're almost always right there where you need them. Everything about "Back to Saturn X" is of the utmost quality. There's little to actually complain about that wouldn't be a personal preference. I stand by my statement that "Back to Saturn X" is one of the crowning achievements in Doom editing, if not the pinnacle. It simply is that good. Pollution - HUNdebLeonidasX Doom 2 - Single Player - ZDoom Compatible - 6.91 MB - Reviewed by: JudgeDeadd A techbase mapset by HUNdebLeonidasX, with eight maps plus one secret. There's one new enemy I noticed, an electric Demon which moves faster and can rapidly shoot ball lightning. The first few levels don't make a very good impression, mainly because of how incredibly easy they are, even on UV. There's more than enough ammo and health, and the enemies you meet are for the most part little fries; even when you come upon something bigger, there's usually lots of room to let you run circles around them. Later the maps get slightly tougher, but not by much. The visuals certainly aren't bad; there's use of beautiful CC4 textures and eye-catching detail and all. However, due to the uninspired enemy placement and lack of any proper challenge, the levels feel very samey and dull. It's basically one pretty-looking room after another, but it feels empty and it's not working as a single memorable experience. However, there is one map that I did enjoy playing: the secret level, MAP09: Leftover of the Nile. Its Egyptian visual theme and architectural design (and music) are pleasant enough to stand on their own, and the gameplay, while still rather easy, feels somehow more solid. "Known bugs: If you find one, good for you." Well, that's nice to hear, 'coz there are quite a few bugs. The end of map04 has a stuck spiderdemon. Map05 has an event where a key is supposed to teleport to your location, but sometimes the teleport fails to work. On map06 I left the lost soul room early, and somehow locked myself out (the door at sector #815 wouldn't open all the way anymore, just a few units), making the level unwinnable without cheating. And I can't figure out map08. Maybe it's a bug or maybe I'm missing something, but I can't open up the second half of the map, no matter what I try; even after opening the map in the editor, I'm still stumped. (If this helps, I'm running ZDoom 2.8.1 with standard compatibility settings. But then, the author claims in the textfile that this was tested with ZDoom, so...) Withering Graves - Ryan "quakis" Rouse Doom 2 - Single Player - Limit Removing - 346.97 KB - Reviewed by: JudgeDeadd A short, but solid level where you explore a graveyard to put rowdy corpses back into the graves. Hope you like revenants, there's quite a couple of them. The visuals are nicely detailed and easy on the eye, and the gameplay offers quite a challenge, at least at the beginning (owing in part to tricky hitscanner crowds); once you get your hands on the chaingun, things get way more mellow. Take it for a spin if you're in the mood for a short map. Tlacopan - riderr3 Doom 2 - Single Player - Boom Compatible - 257.56 KB - Reviewed by: Scotty A remake of the Plutonia map "Aztec". This map retains the theme of cramped, curved corridors connecting larger, more open spaces. This lends itself nicely to providing varied and generally entertaining combat. Progression is somewhat non-linear in that you can choose from a couple of routes, but ultimately everywhere must be visited in order to obtain all the necessary keys. In some instances keys are only accessible after certain sequences of switch activation and understanding how to actually get to the key, which served to slow proceedings down and create a lull between encounters. A Walk In Hell - Skul Doom 2 - Single Player - Vanilla - 76.79 KB - Reviewed by: Walter confetti A short and pretty cute map made by Skul for the first Vinesauce Contest held by Joel set in a bright red cavern environment with some nice details here and there and for Boom-compatible ports. Layout is pretty organic and the cavern looks pretty natural. The only "problem" I found is some minor texture alignment, but nothing that breaks the play experience. Gameplay is nicely crafted; the short monster count is composed of medium-hard enemies for harder fights, including some traps and good enemy placement. Thing placement in general is good. This map includes an external DeHackEd file that modifies the monster behavior (the barons of hell) so that when you kill them, it opens the exit door by special sector tags. Overall, it is a fun little map that I recommend playing! Running Late - A2Rob Doom 2 - Single Player - Boom Compatible - 1.18 MB - Reviewed by: Scotty A short five-map jaunt through some techbase type environments. Action is generally free flowing and fairly fast paced, although the odd lock-in-style trap is encountered in places. The infamous plasma marines are present in this wad, and they add extra urgency to proceedings when they appear. This wad has an Erik Alm/early Skillsaw vibe to it, so players who like those mappers will most likely find enjoyment here too. If you are looking for a good hour or two of solid Doom entertainment, then consider checking this out. The /newstuff Chronicles is a very sporadic roundup of new items uploaded to the /idgames archive, and it is written entirely by community members like you. If you wish to contribute, the /newstuff Review Center is the place to do so. Register on the Doomworld Forums first if you don't already have an account, because you need one to submit reviews. Special thanks goes to the nearly 300 users who have submitted reviews over the past several years.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon

The Inquisitor III - Shadowman, Big Memka, Guest Doom 2 - Single Player - GZDoom - 48.29 MB - Reviewed by: kmxexii INQSTR3 fulfills the promise of Shadowman's first two iterations by giving you an epic fantasy campaign to play through along with a relatively developed statistical progression system. You won't need to play through INQSTR1 or INQSTR2 to get up to speed; the stories of both are included in the intro. The setting is some wonderful fusion of Diablo / Diablo II and Eastern Orthodox Catholocism delivered with a Russian sensibility where gunpowder is a somewhat lost art. You'll battle through the infested mountainside, a graveyard, a cathedral, crypts, mines, a castle, and the depths of Hell, not to mention the secret excursions. There are quest and dialogue systems to help direct you and flesh out the universe. They're fetch and kill, of course, but not much in the name of busywork. You also get two towns to flex them in. There are a ton of weapons and spells. Your ability to use them is determined by your stats - STR, DEX, VIT, INT, and WIS. You roll your starting points but the rest are placed by you. INQSTR3 is really slow to start since you have to clear the majority of the first "map" using the sword but if you can stomach your way through then you'll pick up tools at a much faster rate. The monsters have more of a Diablo II feel and sort of echo the Fallen, goat men, and corrupted rogues, to name a few. New versions appear as you play through, featuring different abilities and posing tougher challenges. As far as difficulty goes, the easier the better. Hard is at times a complete slog with the number of foes and the combat is not nearly as nuanced as Doom II's. You won't get mobbed as badly as in INQSTR2 but your enemies are numerous and belligerent. I don't believe that you'll be cheated out of XP; if I recall correctly, the XP per kill is proportionally higher the lower the difficulty with less monsters to handle. You don't get enough stat points to master every "skillset", so to speak, so I would suggest specializing since you'll miss out on being able to use the crowning perk items. I didn't have a lot of fun fighting some of the bosses (Lich, Dragon) but the big one was all right. INQSTR3 is dripping with atmosphere. Some of it is stolen from Diablo II's soundtrack, but effects like the fog in the graveyard or the rolling mists in the Shadow Gorge are phenomenal. Places like the Cathedral may not have the most distinguished gameplay but they're amazing to visit. I also like little touches like the crows appearing and devouring the corpses of monsters. If you like action RPG adventures then you ought to at least try this one out. Doom II: Purgatory - Corey H. Doom 2 - Single Player - ZDoom Compatible - 44.59 MB - Reviewed by: magicsofa And here we are again, playing a 20 year old game, fighting a tired and sluggish horde of outdated monsters, an endless tide of WADs to play, as if stuck on a hamster wheel that's obviously made of faces, while Satan watches and yawns, it's almost like we're stuck in purgatory. But why venture out into the real world when we can spoon feed ourselves a gratifying experience? Exactly. So fire up that source port and forget about your problems. Corey H. wants to help you by offering up a 9 level epsiode for Doom 2. And Zalewa wants to help me by writing this review on /idgames: "Anything that uses Doom64 audio promises insanity and this WAD does not disappoint. Expect corridors long to THE EXTREME as you listen to the unplugged toilet drain pipe that is Doom64 music. Wonder and ponder why some sounds are replaced with Doom64 moans but others are not. Marvel at disgusting texturing that pays tribute to the worst level design like Dark Forces or that Bethesda Terminator games. Ambitious architecture shows author's strive for good maps, but fun is NULL. Poor, poor, poor!" ONE star. That's all Zalewa is willing to give. No thanks, you can keep your star. All I'm saying is, if you don't want to listen to the unplugged toilet drain pipe, then don't. DoomSpiel liked it. I liked it. We're all doing it man, don't you wanna unplug? Anyway this episode is clearly not everyone's cup of tea, and it's not really structured in the classic Doom style. Corey did say in the text file that he was aiming to emulate Doom64, which I've never played (lol). The music DOES sound like a drain pipe, and there are ridiculously long corridors, sometimes with few or no monsters. This is especially true in the early moonbase maps, where you might question why you're even defending this cold and dead place, where you are completely alone among the forgotten. But if you can handle the intense loneliness, and don't forget who you are, you'll get to the hell portion of the maps, which according to DoomSpiel are "wicked tho." You won't be lonely anymore when you get the Magnum shotgun, do we need another shotgun? Yes we do, and it's going to be your friend. I personally loved this set of maps, despite all the mismatched textures and random uses of colored lighting and fog. In fact the disjointed nature of it adds to the atmosphere of chaos and secrecy. At least I thought so, and I'm totally down with the Doom64 music apparently, even if it was cheesy at times. The puzzles were generally creative but not tedious, and there were lots of secrets and moving parts. The architecture is usually large and impressive, but switches randomly between boxy and simple to more detailed. The monster count was never huge; later levels had more action partially because they were smaller. I didn't find the Unmaker or the secret level normally... both are kinda silly but they aren't needed for the success of the WAD. If you're looking for eerie exploration, light puzzling, and plenty of action to finish you off, give Purgatory a try. On a scale of 1 to Doom2.wad, this is a great episode, understand? DOOM II: Hellscape - Chris Lutz of The Chaos Crew Doom 2 - Single Player - Boom Compatible - 14.1 MB - Reviewed by: magicsofa They say you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover, but I always do anyway, especially when looking at /idgames. Do I really want to download this file? It says it's a recreation of id's levels... another one? Because of my scathing prejudice, I didn't really want to download Chris Lutz of The Chaos Crew's creation. But, it's next on the review list and I'm a sucker for order. Actually it is the second oldest one, but The Inquisitor III is a behemoth and I don't know what all to do with it. So I reluctantly set foot into Doom II: Hellscape, which replaces map21-30. The stunning architecture set me at ease a little bit, and it's stark and highly detailed throughout the entire set. It starts very tough and only gets worse, as it should, but fortunately for any losers the easier difficulty settings more or less match the balancing of the original game. There were an awful lot of chaingunners and pain elementals, both of which are my least favorite enemy, and yes I do get to have two least favorites. Anyway it wasn't all bad because despite referencing id levels, these are enough of a departure to provide a fresh experience. Many parts played more like an obstacle course, and had almost a Quake vibe to them which was fun. But then I got to map29 and was constantly stuck on tiny ledges with revenants and such. I had to tell myself, "You asked for this. You deserve this." Speaking of asking for it, map30 isn't a departure, so if for some reason you want to ride that lift over and over, have fun. It looks really nice, of course. One thing I didn't ask for is that in the earlier levels, lots of important things like switches, doors, and turning hallways were shrouded in almost complete darkness. So if you're wondering where to go, head for those black squares, although keep in mind that some of them are just walls. Other than that the gameplay is quite solid. Normally I'd use a scale from 0 to doom2.wad, but since this is a recreation of maps from doom2.wad, I'm instead going to rate this on a scale from doom2.wad to scythe.wad, in which case I give it a 13. Final Mission - 6XGate Doom 2 - Single Player - ZDoom Compatible - 657.37 KB - Reviewed by: Obsidian ...I can't think of an opening spiel paragraph. Final Mission is the second release of a fellow by the name of 6XGate: haven't played their first release, but I don't imagine that'll impact the review too much. But what caught my eye about this particular offering was the ZDoom port recommendation. That may not sound too special, but in this day and age where everyone is jumping ship to use the latest iteration of GZDoom, a wad that uses simply what ZDoom has to offer is something that can definitely pique my interest. So we load it up and... it looks pretty good. Effort has been put into making the map look pretty decent: not so under-detailed that it feels sparse or barren, but not straining under the weight of Tormentor667's Detail Guide either. Gameplay is pretty simple from the outset as well, although I raised an eyebrow at the early SSG and random stealth monsters. Like, there's about four in the entire map tossed in for some token variety. Odd, but not worth more than a raised eyebrow. So after some back and forth with collecting the three keycards, we activate the teleporter to visit the next area. This is where things get a bit wobbly: not metaphorical, 6XGate uses the Earthquake function a couple of times as you progress :P . The canyon area that greets you is quite nice as areas go, and it culminates in an interesting miniboss fight with an oversized Baron. No, really. There's a screenshot of the fight and that isn't a perspective shot, it's actually scaled up with a bit more health. Again, it's a bit odd, but still all in good fun. But the real wobbles come in the next area: the maze. Appearance-wise it's pretty cool, using Doom II's horizontal spine texture along the walls in a way I appreciate. The problem here is one intrinsic to the gameplay and one I'm more than familiar with: ammunition. At this point in the progression, ammunition dries up and you have to fight mob after mob of imps with your dwindling resources. Yeah, you can backtrack and grab one of the boxes of shells that the map gives you a few of at the start of the Hell-themed area, but it's stupidly unintuitive and only delays the inevitable anyway. After the maze comes a winding pathway with mid-tier enemies that you may very well not have the ammo to kill and then surprise! Another scaled-up enemy, this time a Cyberdemon. It also doesn't have its coded height tweaked, so it follows you out of the arena if you're backtracking to get the ammo you sorely need. And all of this culminates in an Icon fight. Yep. An Icon fight that, if you used up all of your rockets in the previous area, doesn't supply enough to kill the Icon itself. That point was where I heaved a sigh and stopped playing. According to the textfile this wad took three months to make, and it's evident in what I've seen, don't get me wrong. It's well put together from a technical standpoint, and for a second public release it's pretty accomplished. But always remember that the proof of the pudding is in the eating: you are crafting an experience, and anything that disrupts the experience - in this case insufficient ammunition - will be sharply picked up on by your audience. And don't fall into the trap of saying that the secrets make up for it: they're called secrets for a reason, because not everyone will find them. I don't want to discourage Mr (or Mrs, it's a brave new world!) 6XGate though, so I will recommend that they keep striving to improve and simply bear what I've said in mind. I really do feel like some polish could produce great things here and I'd be interested in seeing what they produce next: heck, I'll beta test if they want. Keep on trucking, my dude. :) Suitcase of Gor (Formerly D2Redux) - The Tarnsman of Christmas Past Doom 2 - Single Player - Boom Compatible - 9.87 MB - Reviewed by: Scotty This wad is an incomplete remake of the original Doom 2 maps that covers maps 1-15 and 21-26. There is also what appears to be an Ultimate Doom E4-intended map in the 32 slot. The maps are highly modernized versions of the originals, both in terms of aesthetic as well as gameplay. Visuals are consistent and some impressive vistas can be seen in places. As these are map remakes the wad basically does what it says on the tin - sometimes the source material is fairly closely observed, at other times it is interpreted more loosely - this leads to a feeling of the wad being quite a mixed bag in terms of quality and execution overall. I personally found the more liberally mapped remakes to be more entertaining and creative, and they are perhaps the best reason to try this wad out. Blood and Bones: A Skeleton Scorned - Jaxxoon R Doom 2 - Single Player - ZDoom Compatible - 5.94 MB - Reviewed by: obake Jaxxoon R's "Blood and Bones: A Skeleton Scorned" was made for one of the VineSauce Mapping Contests. Those outside of the loop of the VineSauce channels will find "Blood and Bones" sometimes incomprehensible, with its obscure references and nonsensical cutscenes. You start by hearing the phrase "rise from your grave", a sound clip taken from one of the home ports of Altered Beast. As you punch your way out of a coffin, the map begins. The theme is Egyptian, though the lighting and even the textures are a bit brighter than most pyramid levels, which is a nice change of pace. You can also jump really high. You'll also notice the new, minimalist HUD, which looks good. The pistol is also different, having unlimited ammo, but only shooting straight ahead. Limitations aside, it is quite useful. The shotgun, while effective, feels incredibly odd, given that its animations are much faster. I never quite got used to it. As for the gameplay, it is fine. Encounters are fun and varied, though nothing too memorable, and there are some cool effects like deep water and sliding doors. One of the few complaints I have is lifts looking like normal walls. Different textures could have eased this confusion. Now for Spoiler Territory. There is a long, humorous cutscene of Doomguy meeting his real father, a scientist always wielding a fire extinguisher. He traveled through time searching for his son, in hopes to show him his invention of the world's largest teleporter, which he does. What comes through the teleporter is a reference only people who follow Vinesauce (or obscure memes) will understand: a "7 Grand Dad" version of Mario, complete with the bootleg Flintstones theme. The fight with Mario is the most interesting of the wad. He has a few attacks: a bouncing fireball, a ground stomp, and a charge. The latter is the hardest to avoid, and took a lot of running behind corners. I died a few times, but I eventually took him down. Should you play "Blood and Bones?" If you're a follower of Vinesauce, then absolutely. If not, then the level offers some unique concepts and offbeat laughs, but may not be to everyone's liking. Dimmed Palettes - Julian Nechaevsky Doom, Doom II, Heretic, Hexen, Strife - N/A - Vanilla - 48.96 KB - Reviewed by: Obsidian A pretty self-explanatory release: this contains tweaked palettes for Doom, Heretic, Hexen and Strife that turn down the brightness of each game a notch for a more pronounced feeling of gloom. It's a fairly subtle difference, but one that actually adds a nice melancholy touch to proceedings: check it out if you're looking for a more gloomy Dooming (or Heretic-ing or whatever) experience. For the curious, I've included a comparison screenshot taken in ZDoom to emphasize the difference. Trapped - Aiden (Maisth) Doom 2 - Single Player - GZDoom - 136.2 KB - Reviewed by: Myst.Haruko "Trapped" is a ZDoom compatible DOOM II map made by Aiden (Maisth). Author stated that the map works better with GZDoom (which I used) than ZDoom. I was greeted with custom titlemap instead of traditional Doom II titlepic. Action started at the same location as the titlemap showed, it's like kind of a spoiler. I instantly noticed that there are only ZDoom features - custom sky view point/skybox (not sure for this one), transparency, slopes, and some 3D floors, as I moved forward. Combat is kind of newbish - I wasn't challenged enough; even the last monster wasn't able to kill me, because of cheesable combat. Also, I prefer to avoid having secrets inserted into things. It's better to mark secrets in areas instead of stuff like boxes of rockets. I found missing textures in the red key area, especially in the beginning of that area if you lower the floor nearby. Design choices were questionable; I found reflection and swimmable sectors quite unnecessary, and even more so in the last monster fight, because jumping into swimmable lava was distracting and frustrating thanks to some restricted movement. Feels like author wanted to add all advanced features into one map. Also, I wasn't a fan of impassable linedefs in some places. I recommend playing this wad on your own risk, expect some nitpicks and difficulties in the last fight, and I believe that author in the future will make better maps than this one. Moonblood - Deadwing Doom 2 - Single Player - Boom Compatible - 3.9 MB - Reviewed by: leodoom85 Moonblood is a 32-level megawad made by Deadwing, and it consists of several themes which will be familiar if you played the original IWADs. Without further ado, let's go. Episode 1, which is maps 01 to 06, has a distinctive Doom 1 feel mixed with some Doom 2 architecture, similar to E1M3 - E1M7, but with more variety for the monsters. Maps 01 to 03 has the initial kick of hitscanners, pinkys and lost souls, the weakest but annoying group of monsters. The difficulty is fairly easy but you still need to be alert because of the chaingunners. Maps 04 to 06 start to add damaging floors and some stronger enemies start to appear. Difficulty starts to increase a bit. Obviously, discovering secrets will help you quite a lot. Your trusty shotgun and chaingun will be your preferred weapons for these six initial maps. Episode 2, which has maps 07 to 11, has similarities with Refinery (E2M3) and other similar maps. The main feature is that the mancubus and the arachnotron are heavily used. Map 07, for example, uses a lot of mancubuses and spiders, mainly as major resistance or as an ambush. Map 08 does a nice homage to Underhalls while keeping some of the Doom 1 feel to it, and revenants are fairly used here. Map 09 contains some secrets that will help you greatly, mostly because of some acid and pain elementals. Map 10 is all about radiation, and fortunately there's a bunch of radiation suits. Map 11 is the last of the tech-base maps and has some cramped fights that can kill you if you're not careful. Moving on for a nice change of scenery... Episode 3, which features maps 12 to 15, shows a mountain-cave theme mixed with urban-hell architecture and also contains the secret levels, known as "archive maps". Map 12 has more caves and some hellish bases combined with some tech bases. Map 13 features a sort of small city and... surprise surprise, the first cyberdemon is found in that map... be sure to pick up the invulnerability sphere!!! Map 14 is a medium size map with caves, lava and progressive "hellification" with some ambushes here and there, and map 15 has some nasty traps with lots of monsters waiting to kill you, and the secret level awaits. Difficulty in this episode raises quite a bit; ambushes and damage provoked by a hazardous environment starts to be a constant. Map 31, Dobu Gabu's Exam (quite the name eh?) is a fun and fairly hard map with ambushes and lots of revenants, quite a lot. It also has nice detail without going overboard. The difficulty of this map is expected thanks to the slot it's using: hard, frantic, fast gameplay, and fun overall. What was totally unexpected is the ending... press switch and you die? That was a risky move which, depending on the player, may like it or not, forcing you to do a pistol start, and that takes you to the super secret level!!! Geez... Map 32, map 32, oh map 32... some of you may know this, some of you won't, but this slot had two versions, an older small map that featured a "survive the ordeal while the mastermind is watching you" gameplay where you needed to pass the mastermind somehow without getting killed in the process. Hard, but not a fun map. However, the newer version of map 32 fixes all of that. A map set in some ruins, hard gameplay but at least it's more fun to play unlike its counterpart, accompanied by a MIDI rendition of Botpack#9 from Unreal Tournament... great! Spiders, zombies, revenants, cacos, pain elementals, and two cybies are waiting for you to be crushed or crush them to death. Lovely map. Going back to the normal levels... Episode 4 contains maps 16 to 20 and follows almost the same theme in the last episode, where the main difference is that it features even more tech-base maps. Maps 16 and 17... this is where the real game begins; the difficulty raises some points, it has more ambushes, and it starts relying on revenants, hell knights, and also archviles. Map 18 shows another progressive "hellification" with well-placed monsters and a mastermind in a small place waiting to say hello... oh, and more agitated revenants are on the loose. Map 19 has some really nasty traps involving revs, archies and imps... and a cybie waiting to duel in an island. Map 20 starts the journey to Hell with a gateway in the end of the map along with more hellspawn. Tricky episode for sure, and now... HELL!!! Episode 5 is Hell, composed of maps 21 to 26, featuring hellish maps with a clear inspiration from Plutonia, you'll see that when you play it. Map 21 is like the warm-up for the incoming maps, annoying hellspawn with another cybie as a sort of turret, and some puzzle-lift that you must be quick to progress. Map 22 has one word... REVENANTS!!!... 'nuff said. Map 23 is like the big brother of Mt. Erebus (E3M6), which has big islands surrounded by lava. Map 24 has the trickiest fight of this wad, and it's a tricky map too with lots of places to go. Map 25 is a big hellish town with a gimmick fight against the teleporting cybie. You must be alert at all times or you'll eat one of his rockets. Search all the buildings and don't leave a single bastard alive. And map 26, as the name implies, is a coliseum where you must get all the keys and get out of that place alive. Be really careful of ambushes because archviles are there to burn you to death. After crossing the last resistance, you'll start the last episode. Episode 6, which has maps 27 to 30, mix all the previous episodes in terms of themes and architecture. Map 27 has you do something important in the map and a group of archviles is spawned in several areas, reviving all the monsters that you killed in the process...yeah, expect some infuriating events thanks to that. Map 28 does kinda the same, but instead of archies, revenants can come out along with a small varied group of monsters, and of course... keys and cyberdemons. Ah, one more thing: be careful of traps too. Map 29 is by far the most time-consuming map of the whole mapset... big map with lots of monsters and both bosses, a mastermind sniping you from afar and a couple of cybies hidden from you. All of that for some keys. And the final map. Few monsters, the last resistance, but they can't do much against you except one. Instead of being a typical Icon of Sin map, it was replaced by a special boss monster (which is a Nazi replacement). It has a LOT of attacks with powerful projectiles, and some of them have homing properties. But, some good evading skills and well placed BFG shots are enough to kill that monstrosity. And that's it for the mapset. Good difficulty curve, lots of ambushes and traps, nice homage or resemblance to Doom 1 and Plutonia with the Doom 2 gameplay and... oh yeah, I forgot one key detail! The music. Deadwing ALSO did the music and, honestly, I liked it a lot. If you have a soundfont saved in your Doom folder, I totally recommend you use it... configure it and you're good to go. Before I go, you need to know two things before you play this wad: - All maps have less than 200 monsters - Don't play this wad with randomizer mods because it'll replace the custom boss with a normal Nazi mob and, therefore, you won't finish the map. Well, that's all for this review. I already did a playthrough of this mapset but, after making this new review, I'll say this... Play it by all means. I had a blast playing this mapset. Thumbs up! The /newstuff Chronicles is a very sporadic roundup of new items uploaded to the /idgames archive, and it is written entirely by community members like you. If you wish to contribute, the /newstuff Review Center is the place to do so. Register on the Doomworld Forums first if you don't already have an account, because you need one to submit reviews. Special thanks goes to the nearly 300 users who have submitted reviews over the past several years.