Knee-Deep in ZDoom

While it has its flaws, some rooted in its concept, Knee-Deep in ZDoom is an interesting reimagining of the first episode of Doom. As you progress through the levels, you'll see familiar layouts, but there's new areas added and twists to those classic rooms so that the experience does remain fresh—the familiarity will of course help to find secrets and the like, though not every secret has been recreated.

The expansion of the levels is arguably KDiZD's greatest strength and weakness, as while these highly-detailed environments are interesting, they can also become extremely labyrinthine and confusing to explore. The third level is the best example of this, adding on an entirely-original mines area which itself requires finding keys and switches to progress through this segment. I ended up getting lost and missing a switch, figuring the needed key was in the "original" areas of the map, only to proceed through the level and get blocked by the final door because I hadn't reactivated the generator. The game does give the occasional message prompt, but some parts could have benefitted from giving more direction from the outset.

There's some new monsters. Some don't quite feel Doom-y, like the satyrs (basically melee-only barons) and there's a few too many imp variants, but they do give some more variety to monster encounters. The WAD also adds the super shotgun, as well as two original new weapons to replace the plasma gun and BFG 9000 (amusingly, the game still displayed cell count—GZDoom glitch, maybe?). The grenade launcher serves as a bouncy rocket launcher, doing more damage while being trickier to use, though its greatest trick is its tendency for the grenade to bounce off of tiny details on the floor and blow you to kingdom come instead. The other new weapon is...A Rifle. Just...A Rifle. It fires quite rapidly, is perfectly accurate, and you get a decent amount of ammo for it. And each shot does as much damage as a super-shotgun blast. It is ludicrously overpowered—it can take out tough enemies in just a handful of shots from a long distance, in mere seconds. Even the final bosses, a pair of "bruiser" demons and a giant demon in a pit of lava, go down like chumps provided that you come into these fights with a good amount of ammo for A Rifle.

One thing that does deserve special mention for frustration, though. The game provides an "action indicator" option, to show things in the environment you can use that aren't obvious switches, stuff like consoles and the like. But Z1M3 has a particularly frustrating instance of this, where in order to reach a secret area, you have to interact with a small box sitting on a ledge, which causes the Doomguy to pick up this box so you can then place it on another ledge to jump up into the hatch. Nothing gives any indication that the box in question can be interacted with, and to make it even worse, this secret area is required in order to access the secret level (which is all-important because it gets you A Rifle that much earlier!).

Edit: In hindsight, having played several other WADs as of late, I'm definitely revising this to a 5/5. I've replayed it since, and while it's not perfect, its imperfections are far from annoyances. It plays solid, feels consistent, has decent new monsters, serves as a great reimagining of the original first episode, and doesn't constantly rely on pop-in spam, cheap ambushes, and chaingunner snipers. In hindsight, the maps aren't that confusing to navigate once you're more familiar with them, and other WADs are worse in that regard. Certainly still feels great to play and look at, even in 2022~

Having been recommended to me earlier, a while back i gave this WAD a serious try, whilst by now being quite sure it's not on paper something i'd be likely to enjoy.  And so it wasn't, i simply quit in E1M4, but could've just as easily done so already on M1, as my impression didn't change at all as the game went on.

For me, the layouts are far too protracted and downright boring as a result, and the detailing is heavy-handedly generous, and i would even say, not pleasing to my eye.  Long levels often are not a problem when the layout is well-designed, and when one by the end of it has gotten a good grasp of it, but here i never got that feeling, so for me the layout designs are a problem.  No doubt this is partly due to them being expansions of the original maps, but it shows their efficacy and genius - and it shows that the whole idea of expanding such maps may be ill-adviced unless one can truly match that genius, and here that has not been the case.

i also did not enjoy the alteration of the original areas to 'modernized' or 'improved' versions.  One main feature of this WAD are the gameplay additions, such as mines, forcefields, radiation areas, new monsters and numerous others, and these i saw as nothing more than gimmicks that didn't add any substance, simply detracting from the elegant simplicity of the game.  

As far as gameplay itself goes, on first level there was a severe shortage of health considering the amount of hitscanners, and also some worry about having enough ammo.  On further levels they weren't frivolously given either but that's to be expected (quite a bit of bullet-spongy beasts are present, so it's important to manage it all correctly).  The new monsters didn't add anything to my liking, but i do see what was attempted with them - still, for me they are just a novelty (i sort of like the black crouching figure shooting fireballs, maybe it could be used somewhere and i'd like it...)  Doom is an extremely balanced game, and it's not easy to add to its bestiary without tipping the scales, i'm aware of only a handful of times that it's been successful to my taste.

One interesting thing was the detailed intermission-stats, that even showed as graphs the player's success in past levels and collected/used ammo, health, etc. 

i have in the past used the term gimmick-WAD and this is a good example of exactly what i mean with it.  So for me, this had nothing to do with Doom, but i give two stars regardless, mainly for effort and trying something different.  Even so, this is just my personal experience and preference, and i'm glad a lot of people are of a different opinion.  (Played on LZDoom, HMP and continuous.)

Amazing 10/10 go play it NOW

Much atmosphere and scarcity of ammo make it a survival horror gem in my book. Fantastic detail to be found in the reimagining of the classic locations.