The Rebirth

Very impressive levels, joy to play in 2024

Solid. Worth a play and addition to your personal DOOM archive. Interesting custom monsters. Creative construction and some exciting encounters, especially in the late stages. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Would recommend.

The Rebirth is a one-man megaWAD from an era when such big efforts were no commonplace. Nowadays the editor utilities have been upgraded with user-friendly features that facilitated both testing and troubleshooting; in 2003, half his lifetime ago, the German author Björn Ostmann (a.k.a. Vader or Bobjet) had less sophisticated tools at his disposal. He was not short of ambition and determination though, as he did not settle for stock resources and predictable IWAD homages, but he wanted to add something new and personal to his first submission to the community.

He used a DOS programme called Doom Construction Kit (DCK) to build the maps, WinTex utility to edit textures and sprites, and an obscure software named Capella800 to compose his own MIDIs. I have tried building Doom levels with a DOS editor myself, and I know how difficult and time-consuming it can be. The language barrier from German to English was another obstacle that Vader overcame quite proficiently, despite his disclaimer in the info file and a few oddities in the level names. I am not forgetting that he started working on The Rebirth when he was 17 or 18 years old, which is undoubtedly an adequate age with lots of free time that you might dedicate to modding, but it neither implies the maturity to bring such a long and cross-disciplinary work to completion, nor does it guarantee that it will feature consistent quality and solid gameplay.

The young Ostmann showed his talent by uploading a full megaWAD of small to medium-sized levels, sure to not overstay their welcome while featuring a nice challenge, at least on continuous play. The awkward weapon, ammo and resource distributions on most maps suggest that pistol start was not considered a standard approach, ideally reserved to speed runners that wanted to record demos. Beating The Rebirth on pistol start requires foreknowledge of map layout, encounters, and secrets, and it promises to be a miserable experience for contemporary Doomers facing it blind and with a casual attitude. June was a short month with not much free time, so I opted for a relaxed continuous play on Ultra-Violence, with savegames mid-level (not during encounters to cheat the RNG or to facilitate anything). I got pistol-start sensations by self-restraining my weapons (I used only weapons provided in each map, after acquiring them), and sometimes I found myself in trouble because of this choice. Some maps in the second and third episode hid crucial armaments out of sight or in the secrets, therefore I ran out of ammo just like a blind pistol starter.

The Rebirth was set 12 years after Doom II: Hell on Earth and the defeat of the Overlord of Hell. While humankind slowly repopulated the planet, a small part of the Overlord’s brain had survived and reanimated itself. Our Doomguy woke up one day in Starbase Omega2 (maybe a reference to Space Station Omega released in early 2003), he learnt that a new invasion has begun, so he grabbed his pistol and got ready to kill some ugly creatures from hell. His journey followed the customary progression through a first episode consisting of different types of tech-bases, followed by a streak of urban maps that was diluted by brown and abstract/generic settings in the second half. These entries might have been influenced by The Plutonia Experiment, although they did not strike the same balance between fair challenge and wickedness, due to scarce and unevenly distributed resources. The third episode brought the protagonist to hellish places, offering a decent variety of settings, gradually increasing the complexity of the layout and the use of the beautiful textures created by Vader himself.

The custom artwork, dominated by grey and vibrant red hues that reminded me of Quake, must have raised some interest in a time when quality textures and sprites were not plentiful. His accurate touch up of the Baron of Hell, called Lord of Heresy, is still used today in the Doom community, and the headless Former Human was both silly and creepy. I enjoyed the exaggerated sound of the pistol, replaced by a loud shotgun blast without the pump action, also turning the chaingun into a badass weapon like the Commando’s. Other audio changes included an unsettling Arch-Vile alert noise, and a few midis composed by Vader himself (used on MAP 03, 10, 12, 15, 30, 32) that add a unique feeling to the megaWAD. Despite having a nice midi pack made by the community, I chose to play with the original soundtrack lo listen at the author’s music selection, and to have the bespoke tracks stand out a bit more. Considering that each map took between 5 and 20 minutes to complete, I never got bored of a song, even if it was D_RUNNIN. The whole playthrough lasted 6 ½ hours, one of the shortest experiences I had with a 32-map megaWAD.

Beyond the graphic adjustments and the sound personalisation, The Rebirth shapes up as a classic Doom II megaWAD, a journey down the memory lane to an era when standards were still set by the original games, and not by ground-breaking community projects released after 2010. The monsters were used adequately, but still followed the IWAD tropes and mandates; the maps were suitable for both exploration and incidental combat, but they lacked a few big and fast encounters to spice up the routine; the secret design was traditional, and the only innovation was that they were often mandatory for pistol starters. Vader was surely aware of the Doom modding scene of his time, as proved by the Toxic Touch-y looks of MAP09 and by the involvement of none less than Vincent Catalaà in the playtesting, but he chose to stay true to his original ideas. A glaring first attempt with the editor like Operator was not a proper introduction for The Rebirth and in hindsight it should have been replaced, but the author left it there and chose to show everybody his humble beginnings.

I appreciate this kind of artistic honesty, and the amazing technical gap between MAP01 and MAP29 is the true abyss that Björn Ostmann crossed on his own, working for more than one year on a solo project. For contemporary Doomers, The Rebirth has less appeal than recent, more streamlined releases, especially if pistol starting is a must. Sticking to this approach will probably sour the blind attempts; on the other hand, pistol starting with foreknowledge was an interesting challenge that I tried on a couple of times, just to confirm my impressions.

While it had not been forgotten by the Doom community, as proven by The Rebirth Midi Pack compiled in 2019, Vader’s debut was not included in any shortlist of relevant PWADs from 2003, maybe because that year featured fundamental opuses such as Scythe, Phobos: Anomaly Reborn, and spectacular ZDoom mods. The Rebirth might have felt old-fashioned even at the time of its release, but it still has some historical significance as an attempt by a single author at modifying all the game features at the same time. Probably Vader did not plan everything since the beginning and he added new features as he gained expertise, resulting in a slightly incoherent work from the thematic standpoint. The player clearly perceives the author’s progress as they advance towards the end of the megaWAD, and I find it a fascinating way to establish a connection with another individual from another time and place. If you like the IWADs, you do not expect to beat the maps on first try when pistol starting, and you have always dreamed of making your own vanilla megaWAD with custom resources, The Rebirth is well worth a few hours of your time.

Best maps:

MAP 09 – The Depot

MAP 14 – The Undertown

MAP 20 – The Gateway

MAP 27 – Wired Hive

MAP 29 – The Abyss

Other standout maps:

MAP 11 – Teleport Center

MAP 31 – Snowed-in Mansion

MAP 16 – The Musty Ones

MAP 22 – Withered Fields

MAP 28 – Netherworld

Detailed commentary of each map can be found in the June 2023 DWMC thread.

Decent old school megawad. The maps are small, there are many cramped corridors. The gameplay is reminiscent of Doom 2. Many implicit secrets, armor is often only in secrets. On some maps, for example 07, without finding secrets, there is a clear shortage of ammunition. Overall a good megawad, but nothing special.

On second thought, this wad is kinda mid if you ask me. After playing through all of it on pistol-start I wasn't really blown away by it. The midi pack that was made for this in 2020 was very nice if you ask me, but why this wad ever deserves a midi pack when it's so bland is what makes me scratch my head. Idk man, I didn't like this one as much as others do :/.

It's an enjoyable and decent megawad, nice texture placement, nice level design overall.  My only complain would be a little couple of secrets doesn't have clear hints to find them

Done with these settings:

- Crispy Doom 4.2

- Ultra-Violence.

- Continuous combined with a pistol start mindset, and some actual pistol starts.

- Saves every 10 minutes or so.

A generally solid old-school style mapset. One that brought me those days where I got back to the game years ago and not so long ago too. The set is like your typical Doom II maps replacement, with a theme progression almost exactly like in the iwad. Includes many new textures to add something extra to the experience, a bit similar to the gothic/ancient theme part of Requiem, which was one of the earliest megawads I've played. In that regards, I enjoyed the aesthetics, more specifically from the later maps where it became notorious the author improved a lot on this side. I'd also noticed a decent usage of light variation as part of detailing, I always welcome darkness as a feature of the gameplay, and it never became unfair from my experience. Originally it comes with a few new tracks by the same author, so I strongly recommend to load this midi pack, it contains not only a great number of very cool midis but also the automap names. It isn't complete, reason why I added random tracks from other wads for myself, so that's also a recommendation (or else, PM me if you want the list). 

It's kinda old-school in what it provides, but at the same time is very consistent. Nothing about abrupt changes in the monster count or general progression, if anything, it only gets better from a layout design view. And this having short-medium sized maps with simple progression should accommodate to any speedrunner, who specifically develop d2all runs. Its offerings are more well-suited to continuous players, because the thing placement can be, at times, baffling, or not very well balanced for casual blind pistol starts. I can tell since I tested a few maps with short ammunition available, without secrets the monsters became more bullet-spongy than usual, or I had to rely on the initial state of the fist against packs of pinkies/spectres, which didn't look fun at all. Therefore, if the player insists in playing each map separately, I'd suggest to look for secrets, at least to achieve kills in the least time possible... Returning to the combat topic, it's similar to the style of the iwad (Doom II), which means that you don't have to overthink what to do since monsters appear generally in front of the player in varied proportions. A few traps here and there, in relatively tight rooms, that can surprise the player from the back if they don't act quickly. I'd say the start is usually the most decisive part, where you need to decide what to kill and what should be left for later. If only this restriction was accompanied with a better distribution of weapons (e.g. not giving the plasma rifle when there's only one monster left), but that's my perception, of course this won't be a matter for players that opt to play with more leeway. However, even in several cases the monsters were begging to be ignored, such as barons in cages or spectres in pits you never need to explore. Talking about barons of hell, they have wings here, as a mere cosmetic change, I liked that more than their usage. Troopers are headless, but don't be fooled by the sound of their guns, they're still the same ol' silly guys. There's a also custom sprite replacement for the nazi, pretty funny to gib, honestly. 

Secret-wise, while not mandatory, they are crucial to get 100% kills, as said above, or else to tank damage from hitscan attrition and tight encounters, because armor sometimes only exists in secrets. A few require wall-hump, which doesn't help. They all provide a decent amount of necessities though, if you happen to find them... Favourite maps, perhaps 20 and 27, stuff from the last episode, I can't really pick many maps that stood out for me in every single way, unfortunately, either good-looking or interesting gameplay, but rarely both in the same map. For example, the super secret map has an interesting concept not seen very often, but the layout design was dull to my eyes. I'll add that in map 29 it's possible to get stuck in the room with four doors, one of them refused to open from one side, no idea why. 

Overall, while not a hidden gem, it's another option to consider if you are a fan of "classic" combat style and design. Just don't pick pistol starts on UV if you're not good at secret hunts. My rate is 6,5/10.