OSIRIS Total Conversion

Epic adventure through egyptian research laboratories, tombs and pyramids. Outstanding music by Jeremy Doyle.
Some new enemies, textures and ambient sounds. Love the theme and smell. It's creepy.

the OSIRIS Total Conversion, which is really more of a partial conversion, is more or less the original Epic. this tells quite a lot given how popular the Egyptian theme became once both Epic and Epic 2 hit the community. but Osiris was first, gave us quite a lot of cosmetic changes, the Egyptian theme mixed in with the techbase theme rather well. on the difficulty scale you're not really gonna find much in actual challenge, as monsters tend to be the newly cosmetic ones most of the time. the Anubis is a reskinned imp with a better projectile but that's it. the Pharoah is a hilariously easy arch-vile variant with not much in challenge, and neither are the bats, blue marines, or scythe-wielding guys. all these make up the bulk of the monsters with a few vanilla ones here and there.

maps are fairly standard, medium-sized, and the design evokes shades of TiC maps from the Memento Moris that came out in the same year. a few traps as one might expect but nothing someone who's played Obituary can't handle. it's a good one for nostalgia, has some fun factor that holds up, and well it's pretty neat overall.

Totally a blast!
From the get go, you are surrounded by new textures, new enemies, and atmospheric sounds. The music by Jeremy Doyle is totally outstanding.

Excellent mapping and very challenging, excellent new weapons, and amazing ambientation. This is how a partial convertion is made!
Who can spect that this mapset was from 1996? Same year of Memento Mori Duology, Icarus: Alien Vanguard, All Hell is Breaking Loose and Dystopia 3? For me, that i played those mapsets, this is far more simplier, but also, far more coherent, making for a perfect balance.

Why a 4,5 and not a 5? well, is too short. But is understandable that they sacrifices quantity over quality.
If one can make a megawad of 32 maps out of this, that would be far beyond perfect.
Aside from that, i love it!
And time make this one justice as in 2018 it was included on one of the top best megawads that missed a cacoward!

Fantastic wad. The level design is very 90s - people today would scoff at the abundance of mazes & corridors. But to me it's still fun despite not being fancy & curvy, with very large and labyrinthine (yet simple & rewarding to navigate) layouts with plenty of creativity. Most of the maps have original music, which is all great and fittingly Egypt-esque. Some of the weapons have been reskinned, and look quite nice. The weapon sound replacements are a bit hit & miss (for example the single-barrel sound is oddly... crispy), but not all bad. Almost all of the enemies have been reskinned as well, and some have been altered with Dehacked. The sprites look very cool, especially the spooky Pinky replacement. Unfortunately there is a ZDoom bug where if you gib a soldier, they will spurt out ammo endlessly. Also there is a loud sound effect used in a couple of levels that will annoyingly repeat infinitely (I had to replace the relevant sound with a blank file for my sanity). Whether that's the wad's fault or ZDoom's, I don't know. Overall a great TC, especially for its age - I'd consider it a forgotten classic.