Good pwads that feel like official expansions

What are some good wads that are so well-crafted they feel like official add-ons or expansion packs? Would also like to see new monsters and bosses if possible that don't look poorly drawn and/or animated. Gets kinda boring seeing the samo samo shotgun guys, cacodemons and what not all the time.

C.

Scythe 2. It's really professional in every aspect - except you don't have to pay for it. :)

The levels are awesome on their own, but the megawad is just as well structured as a whole. The new monsters fit in well with the existing cast and are reasonably balanced.

It could be argued the later maps are too hard for an "official" add-on, though. Experience has shown gamers will try for the hardest difficulty even if they don't have the skills for it and will complain if they get their ass kicked, so it's not a sound business decision to actually make the top difficulty difficult. On that particular aspect, Scythe 2 doesn't feel like an expansion pack - and I'm glad it doesn't. :p

I guess you could take a look at KDiZD, too. Level design is poor, but the whole thing holds up very well as an atmospheric experience. There's many custom monsters, weapons and bosses, which I guess is what you're looking for.

Espi's Suspended in Dusk for Doom 2, Back to Basics for Ultimate Doom, and The Shrine (map27) from Eternal Doom 4.

Vader's Thunderpeak Powerplant, Termination, and Blackrock from ZPack.

To highlight a recent release that's Doomy and a hell of a lot of fun, setting a distinct visual theme while remaining somewhat classic-ish in its design and gameplay, 40oz and Super Jamie's UAC Ultra for Doom 2.

Honestly it's hard to just pick a few, because there are so many great wads that have been made over the years that feel so much more polished than the official maps released by id Software. The production quality of Plutonia 2, for which a rather direct comparison can be made, blows practically everything in Final Doom out of the water (at least in my opinion), while still sticking to vanilla Doom2.exe compatibility.

Trivia: Perdition's Gate took too long and missed the window of opportunity, or it would have been a third component in Final Doom. (The Mustaines had been in contact with Shawn Green about it.) I think it would have deserved that place.

For Heretic, I can't say enough nice things about Kristus' Curse of D'Sparil.

I've always thought of STRAIN as the final chapter in my "personal" Doom canon. It could have benefited from some more polish, but I think the level design and atmosphere are fantastic. Most people don't really care about this, but it also has one of the better stories among Doom WADs.

Titan 1 and 2. Both of these wads (particularly 2) manage to evoke the atmosphere of the original Doom episodes, but with a nu-skool twist and some incredibly grand architecture. They also deliver on the new monster front (Titan 2 throws in a new weapon, too). That said, 1 is ZDoom specific while 2 is GZDoom specific.

Perdition's Gate is a pretty megawad that makes me feel nostalgic, well at least first 2 episodes of it. After that, the levels get disappointing, repetitive and feels rushed.

For Hexen, Waldo's The Wizard's Vaults and Caldera. They were the most memorable wads in my opinion.

Hmm, interesting question:

Plutiona / Plutonia 2: One of which is an official expansion, the other is not. Both feel very Doomy and are lots of fun.

Scythe 2 is definitely top notch. UAC Ultra is a good one. The Darkening E1 / E2. Suspended in Dusk. Alien Vendetta is a very cool mapset, but punishingly hard towards the end. Deus Vult 2 is awesome.

Well I'd have to say Equinox. That turned out pretty good.

http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=11412

cacomonkey said:

Would also like to see new monsters and bosses if possible that don't look poorly drawn and/or animated.
C.

Trust

Other than those already mentioned, I'd have to say Eternal Doom. Full 32 maps with a lot of custom textures, music, sounds. The amount of assets it has is comparable to a full game, however its known for its overwhelming map sizes and convoluted puzzles (switch-hunts).

I liked Underworld for jDoom. It was one of the first PWADS I played when I first discovered source ports and I quite enjoyed it. A shame there's only one episode for it, but I felt like it was worthy of being an official expansion pack.

You can find it here, by the way:

http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=11856

Coldfusio said:

Trust

Thanks for all the replies & suggestions, guys. Right now I'm playing Ultimate Torture & Torment and loving it. Love the new textures, architecture, monsters & overall design. Are there any other similar mods to this that make Doom feel like a whole new game? I;m guessing the purists might not like this but it just feels fresh. I was playing Eternal Doom but finally grew bored of its sprawling, frustrating nature. What about single level maps that take 1-2 hours to play? Any worthwhile ones? I must admit, I like the zdoom enhancements a lot.

C.

Even if you're not a fan of Eternal Doom, I'd still recommend taking a look at MAP27 from the Eternal Doom 4 demo, The Shrine by Esa "Espi" Repo. It's an absolute masterpiece of a level by any standard.

While there are some WAD's that are pretty awesome, I still think that Alien Vendetta is one of the liter that feels like something that would have come from ID or Raven


(not counting the midis that are rips ofc)

Even though a load of Doom 1/2 midis are rips of metal tracks? :P

Phml said:

Experience has shown gamers will try for the hardest difficulty even if they don't have the skills for it and will complain if they get their ass kicked

Quoted for truth.


1) "This mod is too hard, it sucks and blows at the same time."

2) "What difficulty setting are you playing on."

1) "UV of course. I'm no n00b!!!111one"

:roll:

Gez said:

Trivia: Perdition's Gate took too long and missed the window of opportunity, or it would have been a third component in Final Doom. (The Mustaines had been in contact with Shawn Green about it.) I think it would have deserved that place.

I couldn't agree more. Perdition's Gate is easily one of the greatest megawads I've ever played. My favorite qualities of it is how versatile it is. It's got all the skill levels, all maps are playable from a pistol start, the layouts are pretty nice, the gameplay is great, to top it off, the maps also double as deathmatch maps.

Perdition's Gate served as a source of inspiration as far as versatility when I made Motornerve, which was supposed to be a deathmatch wad with monsters jammed in it so they could also be played on single player. Perdition's Gate did a much better job.

Enjay said:

Quoted for truth.


1) "This mod is too hard, it sucks and blows at the same time."

2) "What difficulty setting are you playing on."

1) "UV of course. I'm no n00b!!!111one"

:roll:

Another thing I noticed with comments on the Doomworld WAD database is that if they get their asses handed to them on a platter because they selected too high a difficulty, they'll call the WAD "boring." Well, I would say that it may not be at all fun getting slaughtered every 10 steps, but it's certainly not boring. For example, I just finished SAPPHIRE from the modder who made Ultimate Torment & Torture (would like other great single-level WADS recommended to me), and I thought it was difficult but a great wad with some beautiful visuals & design. But of course it was called "boring" by a few on the DB. Translation: they selected skill level 3-4 when they should have chosen "Daddy, Can I Play"

I'm really enjoying UT&T, and marveling at all the new monsters I'm encountering. I actually jumped when the boss spiders in one episode threw mechanized miniatures of themselves at me that are the size of a crab but do massive amounts of damage. The way they scuttled was creepy. I haven't jumped at a video or PC game in YEARS. This guy is brilliant, and of course all the others that contributed to the Doom community resound pack or created custom mods or graphics. I use to follow the Duke3D modding scene but they hold nothing on the Doom community.

C.

Sapphire isn't a difficult map. It is boring though.

cacomonkey said:

For example, I just finished SAPPHIRE from the modder who made Ultimate Torment & Torture (would like other great single-level WADS recommended to me), and I thought it was difficult but a great wad with some beautiful visuals & design. But of course it was called "boring" by a few on the DB. Translation: they selected skill level 3-4 when they should have chosen "Daddy, Can I Play"

It's not the same "boredom" here, I'm afraid.
Let's compare two wads, say Sunder and Sapphire for example.
The first one is entirely made of Slaughtermaps, the second is a 1-map wad in a beautiful space ship.
In Sunder, the difficulty is nuts and it can really "bore" a player if he/she can't stop dying at every trap.
In Sapphire, it's far from being as difficult, the boredom comes from the fact that you explore corridors all the time. Selecting an easier skill level won't prevent you from exploring those linear corridors :p

You mention Ultimate Torment and Torture, this is an example of a better design by the same author : less corridors and more interesting rooms.

Edit : Kristus beat me to it.

@ Enjay : even worse, some play in UV but with patches that disable monsters ( replacing the Revenant's homing fireballs by "normal" projectiles for example ) :o

I will recommend you two more good maps by that author (his name is Tormentor667).Try "The city of the damned" and it's sequel,"The city of the damned 2".The first is a very interesting level based with a few blood textures,while the second is very scary and interesting.You should be able to find them here:realm667.com

I finished The Ultimate Torment & Torture and thought it was truly outstanding (very much enjoyed Sapphire from the same modder, too, though it got complaints for being a boring corridor shooter, but, hey, it takes place on a space station/ship which you would expect to have plenty of... surprise! Corridors! Anyway, it's far more fun than Doom 3). But I encountered so many different monsters in TUT&T that I only caught glimpses of them, like those tiny fire sprite things which meted out disproportionately huge amounts of damage... Don't fuck with fairies. ;) I really loved the custom content, the zdoom scripting/features, and the level design.

Tried to play Scythe 2 but got bored after only 3 levels. There just wasn't enough variety in those early levels. Right now I'm playing Doom Raider which is amazingly good so far. But getting back to TUT&T, the boss(s) fight at the end was fantastic, even if I did have to cheat, and it took FOREVER to figure out the pattern to defeat them. Was the pentagram thingie custom designed & how you had to win? Incredible.

The Wad scene for Doom is outstanding. Think I'll check out all Torm's other mods & wads, and hopefully I'll happen upon others like it before I saturate myself with too much Doom & leave again. :) Thanks for all the recommendations.

C.

What's interesting is how many of you are naming wads that are notable for the ways in which they differ from the official wads and anything that could possibly be commercially published.

cacomonkey said:

Tried to play Scythe 2 but got bored after only 3 levels.

C.

just wait till you get to the later maps

and RTC-3057: Hub 1 is really nice and uses zdoom features to make it feel like a more modern FPS well still kepping the main base feel doomy

also Tremor is very nice map that uses mainly stock doom textures

Malinku said:

just wait till you get to the later maps

and RTC-3057: Hub 1 is really nice and uses zdoom features to make it feel like a more modern FPS well still kepping the main base feel doomy

also Tremor is very nice map that uses mainly stock doom textures

I tried to play this, and though it was rather compelling, I had to abandon it because I was running out of ammo too often with my ass against the bulkheads & more imps than a greasy teenager has pimples tryin' to get at me. It seemed really nice though.

Yeah, perhaps I shoulda thought of a better title for this topic, like "Good pwads that feel like they're professionally designed, only better." ;)

C.

Well...I finished UTNT without cheating.Wasn't very hard.Also i got most secrets.The pentagram thingy would've been a pain in the ass,but i got the secret in the first map (a pyrocanon prototype that was mainly useless in the rest of the game) that murdered the boss.About 3 shots and it was dead.Also,i found the secret director's cut episode,but didn't play it.It was boring so i didn't play it.I suppose it had a reason to be cut after all :P

I'm currently playing my way through the Community Chest part 1, and so far (I'm on level 10) it's been fun. Some really nice maps in there.

You should give Demon Fear and Cleimos 2 a shot.