GALAXIA.WAD (The Ultimate Czech Level)

great entertaining music, huge map

Probably my favourite 1994 wad. While not quite up to the ID standard, Galaxia is still really creative and unique, but most importantly, entertaining. It has great atmosphere, variety of interesting environments and one of the best MIDIs to ever appear in a Doom wad. Some custom textures and sounds, and an extensive story are a nice bonus.

It also features one of the oldest uses of a voodoo doll.

Galaxia is a classic that stands out far above most other 1994 wads, and gets 5/5 for that.

Love this adventure.

This is a great map for its time - slaugherish at times but can be managed by a decent player.  I dislike the mandatory health/ammo pickups and the paltry armour availability (only a mega armour that I found).  I also can't stand the replacement sounds but I suppose one must keep in mind that it came from the early mapping community.

Galaxia is certainly unique among the levels released in 94. Rather than the standard fare of killing your way from start to finish in an abstract level, Galaxia offers the player a level with a clear narrative that reflects its story quite well. Your goal is simple enough; escape from the underground while wading through a sizeable enemy resistance to get to your ship waiting for you on the surface.

The level layout is simple yet meaningful. Each section is distinct and does a good job of giving you a sense of progress. Starting in a series storage houses you will find your way to a containment of Spider Masterminds, an underground rail system of sorts, winding sewage tunnels, and finally the surface where your ship awaits. The geometry is simple and a bit primitive by modern standards, but it works well enough at portraying what it sets out to do. A use of crude but fitting textures goes a long way in helping set the mood of the map. The best examples of course being the occasional scrolling announcement boards that you will come across along your way. Other textures like the cages and drainage tunnels also do well to convey the unique atmosphere. While there is an amount of strange texture alignment and even stranger texture choices, this is to be expected from the era rather than a glaring fault of the author.

As far as the difficulty of the level goes, it is certainly a rougher experience than base Doom. Giving you a shotgun right off the bat still leaves you no match for the Mastermind that descends into the starting area, and this is intentional. Common sense dictates you avoid it and the other Masterminds you find later on, but even using the provided cover it can be tricky getting out in one piece. On UV there are 300 something enemies to contend with, but only a small margin aren't cannon fodder, and all are spread quite evenly along the level. Health and Armor is somewhat scarce, with ammo only a bit less so. There are no officially tagged secrets, but there are a few hidden areas with goodies that definitely go a long way in making life more manageable. Like the Readme states, you should make it out with just enough supplies to manage against all but the "decorative" spiders, even assuming you miss a few hidden goodies. While the shotgunners can be a bane at times, it is an overall enjoyable fight from beginning to end.

The only serious gripes that someone might have is that in exchange for a narrative driven experience, the map is quite linear, so don't expect huge replay value unless you really like what it offers. The WADS second map on E1M9 is also a good deal underwhelming, being nothing more than a quick and cramped berserk punch-out in a tight ship. Not necessarily terrible, but definitely skippable.

Overall I would recommend giving Galaxia a try, as it really is one of the best of the best 1994 has to offer. If you are a sucker like I am for quasi-realistic maps that tells a narrative through the gameplay, this WAD may just be for you.

One of my favourite 94 wads, if not my favourite. So much character and the map layout is fantastic. 

This is a pretty good map for 1994. A linear Shotgun/Plasma Rifle extravaganza, that keeps it interesting by letting you feel your speed. Favourite part was the traintrack hub fight. Music is weird, but fitting for the gameplay tempo. There are some odd texture choices, but in a map like this you don't care about that.

Cool map. Not the prettiest map, but it mostly avoids being outright ugly, though the weird panels in the metro station are a bit questionable :D

Quite fun to play, though maybe a bit too much focus is placed on the shotgun - I didn't feel there was enough ammo to get as much use out of the chaingun and rocket launcher as I would normally like, but the sound replacement for the shotgun is actually pretty decent and makes it quite satisfying to use. The other sound replacements are ok, save for the pistol/chaingun which sounds awful.

Not hugely difficult, but there are a number of situations which presented some mild challenge - I guess the most difficult section was supposed to be the masterminds in the prison cells, unfortunately though all but two of them were stuck and couldn't shoot (played in QZDoom with Doom strict), so that was cheesed. I did pick up on the intention though with the one-time lifts as I used it to get past the two that weren't stuck, and it is a cool idea, just a shame it didn't work. Overall pretty good map.

There's also an E1M9 included, but this is just short Tyson map in some narrow corridors - maybe a nice little reality mode challenge but otherwise there's not really anything to see there.