Unpopular Wad opinions.

jmickle66666666 said:

re: skillsaw: lunatic > valiant > vanguard for me, love all of them tho.

For me it's "Valiant > Lunatic > Vanguard" (no mistake), and I also like them all a lot. Well, Vanguard's thematic and difficulty progression seemed too oddly random to me.

I love eternal doom III, and despise eternal doom IV.

I also love Hell To Pay, even with its whacky sprite replacements.

I like a lot of those WADs that try new things in Doom (Super Sonic Doom, for example) that most people seem to dislike. At the same time, I do enjoy the majority of WADs that give me standard Doom gameplay. However, when things get too chaotic for me (like in most slaughtermaps, and in some WADs like Going Down and Scythe 2), I kinda get turned off a bit.

Unloved is really overrated.

I'll agree with Dobu about not liking the original id maps. I especially dislike Doom 2 because it's way too hideous. I can actually vomit over Tenements.

With a few -- very few -- exceptions, I don't like Sandy Petersen maps. The ones I like a lot, such as Containment Area, were mostly Sandy finishing Tom Hall maps. That said, I do appreciate some of his innovations in gameplay, especially the Sandybox.

My favorite maps in Doom 2 were mostly the early American McGee maps that so many people seem to dislike.

IMO, Knee Deep In The Dead remains the only sustained set of masterful maps from id. It was all downhill from there.

I love techbase maps, and representational maps in general. Not sure how unpopular that view is, but there seems to be a 50/50 split in the community on that issue. IMO, BTSX E1 is the best sustained set of techbase maps I've yet seen.

I just can't get into Team TNT's Daedalus.

MFG38 said:

I find KDiZD overrated.

To my understanding, that's quite a popular opinion, actually.

+1 here regards not enjoying SiD - the visual tricks were stunning, but I got lost to the point of quitting during MAP03. Haven't touched it since. Greatest respect to the late, great Espi, but it just wasn't my kind of .WAD.

Also +1 regards slaughtermaps. Every time I see some huge, grand, stunning piece of level design in the screenshot threads I just know the gameplay will end up chucking me into an arena with high-tier items and Megaspheres all over the place and at least 6 Cybers, 30 Archies, 50 Revs and a couple of thousand stragglers to pick off. Why can't such gorgeous visuals be put into maps that encourage exploration every once in a blue moon?

scalliano said:

Why can't such gorgeous visuals be put into maps that encourage exploration every once in a blue moon?

The trend of today, I guess.

Doom 2 is the best IWAD.

scalliano said:

Why can't such gorgeous visuals be put into maps that encourage exploration every once in a blue moon?

Look into the Russian mapping scene. Monster Hunter, Bloody Steel, Doxylamine Moon, Hell Ground, Frozen Time, Voodoo Guns, etc. sound like exactly what you're looking for.

Louigi Verona said:

I feel that what I like about Doom is very different to what people like about it. A huge part for me is the atmosphere. I do not like shooting too much, I don't enjoy tough levels where you have to run around and shoot dozens of big monsters thrown at you.

I 2nd your opinion.

Cynical said:

Look into the Russian mapping scene. Monster Hunter...

didy is not Russian, he's German. :)

Wolfen for Hexen always struck me as highly overrated; about the nicest things I have to say about it are that the map design's mostly decent and the Aeon Mana thing is a good idea in theory at least, yet it consistently gets titled "Best Hexen WAD" by a lot of people.
OTOH, Deathkings of the Dark Citadel remains in my mind the gold standard of Hexen maps (aside from the end map and that &*%$* maze zone in Sump), but seems not to be very well liked.
Shannara also seems underrated; I wonder how many people passed it over just because of the super ugly first two rooms that the author should probably have deleted, or because of its source of inspiration. Though it could also be dragged down because it hits a fatal limit loading the final map in vanilla despite being from The Time Before Ports--but it's completable if you do use a port, unlike Centromere which is higher rated despite not being beatable at all.

Cynical said:

Look into the Russian mapping scene. Monster Hunter, Bloody Steel, Doxylamine Moon, Hell Ground, Frozen Time, Voodoo Guns, etc. sound like exactly what you're looking for.

I second this recommendation

I really dislike The Way id Did.

gaspe said:

Unloved is really overrated.

I found the gameplay tedious.

I like Final Doom (both parts) better than Doom 1 and Doom 2.

SteveD said:

I just can't get into Team TNT's Daedalus.

Same here. I've tried at least twice and just immediately bounced right off.

Job said:

I found [Unloved's] gameplay tedious.

Me too (especially the final slaughter battle(s) which I pretty much just noclipped through) but the atmosphere more than made up for it for me.

scalliano said:

+1 here regards not enjoying SiD - the visual tricks were stunning, but I got lost to the point of quitting during MAP03. Haven't touched it since. Greatest respect to the late, great Espi, but it just wasn't my kind of .WAD.

I enjoyed SiD, but it sure felt overrated to me. The levels were gorgeous, and fun, but navigating was so tedious: everything all interconnected with everything else through so many windows that the automap is all but useless.

I don't like Jenesis

As I understand it, the greatest thing about Suspended in Dusk is that it was a revolutionary step in the history of "clean" design. Many mappers that are into heavily polished visuals cite it as their biggest source of inspiration. So to fully appreciate it you also need to keep in mind that it is "historically important".

I also don't like Wolfen a whole lot. It shows ambition (like all works by the same author), and I fell in love with the music track in the first level, but the magic disappeared right about when I travelled to another map. White fog with dark blue skies? Music that sounds like it was taken from a futuristic platformer?

Yeah, I dunno. The wad never fully recovered after that.

ETTiNGRiNDER said:

Though it could also be dragged down because it hits a fatal limit loading the final map in vanilla despite being from The Time Before Ports--but it's completable if you do use a port, unlike Centromere which is higher rated despite not being beatable at all.

You can beat Centromere. In a way. If you see fireworks - there's nothing more to discover.

It's a very good hub, even in its current condition. I wish it was finished by someone. Unfortunately, the text file prohibits tinkering.

Oh, and a hilarious quote from the author:

The reason for this beta is that Hexen 2 is coming soon and I don't
think many people would look at this after Hexen 2's release.

Memfis said:

As I understand it, the greatest thing about Suspended in Dusk is that it was a revolutionary step in the history of "clean" design. Many mappers that are into heavily polished visuals cite it as their biggest source of inspiration. So to fully appreciate it you also need to keep in mind that it is "historically important".

Not really. SiD's "clean-ness" is a selling point of the wad itself, and it appealed to me as a player. Fights were boring for most of the time, but always "sufficiently" good and sometimes more than that. Elaborate navigation didn't drive me off, I can handle that and even enjoy it, although long backtracking is not well entertaining, but then again, the nice aesthetics noticeably helped to endure it. SiD is *not* among the wads that I remember and honor as my favorites, but it's a good wad.

Da Werecat said:

You can beat Centromere. In a way. If you see fireworks - there's nothing more to discover.

It's a very good hub, even in its current condition. I wish it was finished by someone. Unfortunately, the text file prohibits tinkering.

Don't get me wrong, there's some great material in Centromere, and it would probably still make my recommended Hexen wads list, but for me the unfinished-ness of it is a very frustrating aspect.

Maybe I missed something in it, I spent a lot of time looking for the Yorick's Skull mentioned in the text, and after looking at some of the maps in an editor concluded that it didn't exist.

Sadly the author never even released anything for Hexen 2 either, as far as I know.

I didn't like Unloved too. It felt too much "close eyes, hold fire button, and kill everything". I stopped playing after a trap where I did to rely on luck to survive.

I just remembered another one . . .

Me no like Batman Doom.

Zulk-RS said:

I liked DTS-T but the majority hated (And for good reason).

Louigi Verona said:

I feel that what I like about Doom is very different to what people like about it. A huge part for me is the atmosphere.

Just gonna parrot these two ones.

I'll also add my opinion that in both BTSX wads the music is nearly as bad for Doom levels as it can get. Not bad on its own, and some of it does actually kinda fit, at least some parts of some tracks, but the overwhelming majority of the tracks are completely, mind-numbingly unfitting.

Also D2INO was a pretty good set of levels and I'd rather replay that one (minus my own maps since I'm sick of those) than most 'big' wads that are considered good.

esselfortium said:

Doom 2 is the best IWAD.

This is unpopular opinions, not quantifiable facts.

Tarnsman said:

This is unpopular opinions, not quantifiable facts.

I thought you were more of a Plutonia man? I do agree that this is not an unpopular opinion, at least in the sense that Doom 2 would probably enjoy at least parity with (Ultimate) Doom in the hypothetical opinion polls.

purist said:

I thought you were more of a Plutonia man?

They're tied for first place in my heart.

purist said:

I do agree that this is not an unpopular opinion, at least in the sense that Doom 2 would probably enjoy at least parity with (Ultimate) Doom in the hypothetical opinion polls.

People like gameplay additions in Doom 2, but they usually hate the levels.

I actually don't like Plutonia, AND Plutonia 2, mainly because It's just too overly difficult to the point where I just say "Fuck It" and quit, the only level I could go through Is the first two levels. It never Interested me like TNT.

Though, I give Plutonia 2 credit for some of the awesome music and the badass Icon of Sin:



Or The Gatekeeper, they did the Icon of Sin better than Id did, sad.

I liked HR2, though I last played it a loooong time ago. I stopped around 20 maps into resurgence and I didn't really like it. It forced me to play ways I don't find fun. It's been at least a month or two though, I should see if the rest of the maps get better.