Playing all of the Cacowards maps, in chronological order

So I unintentionally skipped the "10 years of WADs" section from the 10th anniversary page, but I'll be getting to that soon. I did, however, intentionally skip the first entry on the first Cacowards, "Action Doom." I've played it before and to be honest I'm not too keen on the Contra-style one-hit-kill system, which hurt an otherwise stellar experience. So I'm starting with "Decade," the second entry, instead.

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/d-f/decade
Holy crap, did I miss out on a gem. Beautifully designed map that snaps together a number of memorable architectural moments from Doom 1 and 2, into one giant map that keeps pushing you forward instead of creating a labyrinthine clusterfuck, although it does have a fair amount of classic backtracking. Very tasteful use of Zdoom that reimagines familiar layouts in a very sexy way. I'm also impressed by the enemy placement, as you can bum rush several areas at a time, unleashing a huge amount of enemies which you then have to dispatch. You can really stir things up if you want, which I enjoy.

COMING UP NEXT: After finishing up Decade, I'll backpedal a bit and check out each of the "10 years of WADs" maps.

Groovy! That's an impressive goal

I'm still finishing up Decade. It's absolutely mammoth. It's really interesting in that it borrows from a number of highly memorable sections from Doom 1/2, rather than trying to string entire levels together.

Decade was a bust. The boss fight to grab the yellow key ended up eating every last bit of ammo I had, no matter the strategy. It really killed the experience because everything leading up to it was well balanced. So it remains unfinished.