What are you playing now?

[Capellan]

All the "100 lines" maps. I was up to date, but 2 more got posted yesterday.

[dobu gabu maru]

Besides the club wads (which I prematurely completed since this weekend was slow), I played Snakes’ “Into Hell” and cannonball’s “Sparta”. The former was a very fun skirmish through a handful of relatively easy mapa that showcase some neat design and layout. Despite being an odd word to use, I’d define the three maps as “cute” due to their small size and some interesting custom textures. It’s a good set to burn 15 minutes on that feels like it ends sooner than it should have.

Sparta was a pretty rippin’ good time. Cannonball has a knack for large rooms and here he throws together various gladiator-styled squares for the player to fight in. While it starts off slow, once the first map lets you out into the open with the cyberdemon stomping around, cb’s crafty monster placement really starts to shine. Infighting is the name of the game here and in all three its imperative to start up some monster parties as soon as you can, seeing as you’re often starving for a few more rockets than were given. The second map is a great example of this, being a big nonlinear bout that has multiple paths all leading to grisly ends unless the player can get the baddies to fight while they dash about to stock up weapons. It’s tarnished somewhat by the sheer amount of hitscanners plinking away at your health across the map, since there’s little you can do about that. Health, ammo and balance are great, and despite being not much of a looker, it certainly does the job it set out to do.

The last map left me a little ambivalent, being a pretty tenacious beast but for some wrong reasons personally. Everything was fine and dandy up until after the blue key, where hitting two switches in lava caverns opens a literal floodgate of archviles to happily revive the mess you made. Unfortunately, the only safe spot from their incineration is inside the caverns and unfortunately the only rad suits are outside with the legion. This put me in a absurd predicament where I had to camp in the single safe spot in the cave with 300 cell and no radsuit, waiting for an opening where I could run past them and flee to safety. I was in a perpetual state of death as I suffered time and time again for the simplest mistakes (just letting two of them blast you pretty much rends your effort forefeit, so it’s chaotic to get all 5-6 of them preoccupied). This trend of throwing AVs throughout the level continued and I felt like the design was balanced in the favor of one-shotting them with the BFG, as was quite apparent with the room before the IoS. The IoS itself was an interesting but inessential effort, spawning too many cubes to be worth the clean up required. Still, cb delivers a fierce, sharp mapset that’s provides some meaty challenges in the end.

[kmxexii]

Hey, let's get this show on the road again.
Played YEAR_21 & 22, TGH maps and pretty fun to boot. They're both short and 21 is pretty MAP01 but 22 feels more like the nasty TGH style I'm familiar with in terms of ambushes and such.

Played Temple of the lizard Men 1 & 2. I prefer the gameplay of 2 but the story elements are questionable. I do kind of think alando1 does good on his "Doom as Unreal" idea, more so with 2. It's very...Indiana Jones meets Sword and Sorcery meets Doom.

Now doing Interception.

[Touchdown]

In the past weeks I've finished a couple of mapsets.

Sunder // Impressive architecture, found the gameplay pretty tedious though. I was in a mood for it so I still had fun with beating those levels.
NewDOOM Community Project II // Absolute atrocity. Horrible ideas and retarded scenarios. It looks impressive though. The only really good map was map18: Ominous Core.
Speed of DOOM // It was pretty fun. Some 'challenge' levels were annoying but it's a decent mapset nonetheless.

I'm currently going through The Ultimate Torment & Torture. Not having a lot of fun with it, though. I also want to finish all CHORD maps someday (currently at CHORD2).

Aside from that I tried Zones of Fear but it's pretty terrible.

[clamgor]

I've been playing these wads recently:
Switcheroom - has a great concept, well-done maps and fair difficulty.
Nothing much differs from the actual maps of Doom, but they do add their own areas here and there.

Doom the Way Id Did - a classic which won the favor of the admins of Doomworld. I have to say they did an amazing job. It looks as if it were really made by either Petersen, McGee or Romero. The maps are also twice as long as the original. Tons of replayability for secrets and speedruns.

Abscess - Barely completed the first level.

[Rook]

I've been playing UAC Ultra, and just finished map 5. I love the texture set and the really well-judged difficulty so far - if it carries on at this level it'll probably be in my top 5 WADs.

[Havoc Crow]

I made a few attempts at Earth and walked away disappointed. It really doesn't have much going for it, apart from the occasional impressively large-scale architecture (and, well, the ever-famous splashing waves.) Messy and visually unattractive.

Before that, I played and completed Demons of Problematique. This was quite fun at times, and atmospheric, though mostly at the beginning.

[mouldy]

Playing epic 2 again, fantastic wad. Really interesting maps and nice looking settings.

[Inkie]

I've mostly been doing a run of classic doom 2. I've gotten to map17 so far.

Other than that, a few minor odds and ends here and there.

[Gothic]

Hellcore 2.0, simply a masterpiece

[Touchdown]

Finished Claustrophobia 1024. A decent set of maps with some creative usage of space. Unfortunately, like 99% of Megawads, it completely falls apart in the third episode. 22 maps are great (not counting secrets, played one and it was fun), the rest is horrible. Most rely on annoying traps and ambushes every step of a way and the further you go, the less inspired their design gets. The earlier maps are 10x better and more interesting.

[Suitepee]

Finished 100th Wave, currently playing through Vile Flesh for the DWMegawad Club and 1Monster as a Let's Play for my channel.

[EvilNed]

Playing, on various savegames:

Ultimate Doom. One of my regular playthroughs. Playing on my laptop.

No Rest for the Living, through the bfg edition. Had it for awhile, without playing it. Great mapset! Really digging it! Also on my laptop.

Doom 2 the way ID did. Only four or five levels in. Like it so far. On my desktop computer.

Damnation. Best custom wad I've played since... Ever. Awesome! On my desktop as well.

[joe-ilya]

Doom the way ID did , I'm in the third episode.

[Megamur]

Just beat Castle of Evil after an indeterminately long period of time. People said it was the longest `94 map ever, but I figured that meant "long by `94 map standards." But no, that map is just plain HUGE. And alarmingly hard for how old it is.

Honestly, I enjoyed RRWARD02 a lot more. It managed to be really large without being so utterly twisting and convoluted, and the difficulty was balanced better so you weren't totally screwed if you picked the wrong path.

In the end, however, I don't regret playing either of them.

[Stupid Bunny]

RRWARD02 is one of the first PWADs I played, and still one of my favorites. It sets a good standard for how a map can be massive and still have a logical progression without being too linear, either, and were it not for some boring bits in the southeast of the map it would be pretty much perfect.

[Obsidian]

Currently murdering my way through Vanguard, up to MAP11. Can't believe I beat MAP10, that was mental. 0_o

[Rook]

Obsidian said:

Currently murdering my way through Vanguard, up to MAP11. Can't believe I beat MAP10, that was mental. 0_o

I love Vanguard, it's still my favourite WAD. I particularly love MAP10 - I actually spent a significant amount of time flying around it and marvelling at it in Doom Builder after I finished it. I think one of the things that Vanguard does really well is coaxing players like me into slaughtermaps, which I wouldn't otherwise play. The fact that it manages to do that when it was originally meant to be a megawad amazes me even more.

As I've just given up on Vile Flesh for the megawad club I'll have to have a think about what to get onto next. I did tentatively start Unholy Realms but I'm not sure it's really for me - I'm slightly tempted to plough through Plutonia again with the midi pack Jimmy organised.

[Cynical]

If you like Vanguard, Unholy Realms will definitely be up your alley.

At the very least, you'll want to give map 27 a go, since it's by the same author.

[mrthejoshmon]

Just finished Icarus Alien Vanguard, now moving onto Plutonia 2.

I liked Icarus because the levels were short, easy and sweet as well as the music being some of the best I have ever had the pleasure of hearing and having some of the most fun and interesting levels I have played to date.

So instead of going for something like Hell 2 Pay (Which I am doing next, then Doom 2 Rebirth*) that is also short and sweet, I have decided to play a more challenging megawad, and thus Plutonia 2...
I have done Map01 and it is already kicking my ass, I guess I just suck :P.

* I think that is the name, I could be wrong.

[mrthejoshmon]

Now how the hell did this double post happen?

[Rook]

Cynical said:

If you like Vanguard, Unholy Realms will definitely be up your alley.

At the very least, you'll want to give map 27 a go, since it's by the same author.

I'd heard rumblings of similarities, but I can't say I've seen in any the first several maps - I'm sure I'll persist at some point, or play MAP27 at the very least.

[cannonball]

Rook said:

I'd heard rumblings of similarities, but I can't say I've seen in any the first several maps - I'm sure I'll persist at some point, or play MAP27 at the very least.

Keep at it, the wad improves significantly once you reach the second episode in my opinion and the wad is really top notch from that point.

[Guest]

Pirate Doom.

[Megamur]

mrthejoshmon said:

Just finished Icarus Alien Vanguard, now moving onto Plutonia 2.

I liked Icarus because the levels were short, easy and sweet as well as the music being some of the best I have ever had the pleasure of hearing and having some of the most fun and interesting levels I have played to date.

So instead of going for something like Hell 2 Pay (Which I am doing next, then Doom 2 Rebirth*) that is also short and sweet, I have decided to play a more challenging megawad, and thus Plutonia 2...
I have done Map01 and it is already kicking my ass, I guess I just suck :P.

* I think that is the name, I could be wrong.

Icarus is my favorite MegaWAD of all time, and that's due in no small part to its amazing soundtrack. (And every single level has a unique, original song, which is incredible in itself.)

And maybe you're thinking of Doom 2 Reloaded? If that's so, do yourself a favor: Play the first 17 levels (because they really are great) and then STOP. Map18 is a crate maze/forced-stealth map, and getting cornered by a single imp and not being able to do anything about it because fighting back makes noise and basically ends the level, is just as annoying as it sounds. Then the final episode (Map21 and on) is a huge dip in quality. It's just so much worse than everything that came before it. Map24 is literally just a really long tunnel, to give you an idea of the crap you're looking forward to.

[mrthejoshmon]

Megamur said:

Icarus is my favorite MegaWAD of all time, and that's due in no small part to its amazing soundtrack. (And every single level has a unique, original song, which is incredible in itself.)

And maybe you're thinking of Doom 2 Reloaded? If that's so, do yourself a favor: Play the first 17 levels (because they really are great) and then STOP. Map18 is a crate maze/forced-stealth map, and getting cornered by a single imp and not being able to do anything about it because fighting back makes noise and basically ends the level, is just as annoying as it sounds. Then the final episode (Map21 and on) is a huge dip in quality. It's just so much worse than everything that came before it. Map24 is literally just a really long tunnel, to give you an idea of the crap you're looking forward to.

I really did love Icarus because of its maps, music and themes (Those simulation missions were brilliant!), the track I enjoyed the most had to be Blessed are the Quick (In the OPL format)

And I searched the file name of the megawad I have and it is called The Rebirth not Doom 2 Rebirth, my mistake. It has a few custom sprites, sounds, textures and the occasional track. It is also short and sweet (just how I like it, but I have not played far into it yet so that could change), it is a definite recommendation from me.

[Memfis]

d2reload 18 is a very well done stealth map, 24 - might seem silly at first but it's an amusing and refreshing idea, very few megawad authors have the nerve to pull off something like this. I don't see the mentioned dip in quality at all. Very easy to dislike post by Megamur there, just trashes 2 concept maps, then the whole 15 last maps without even explaining what's so bad about them. That's not how recommendations work I think, you're supposed to say why other people might like or dislike some parts based on their preferences, not just say "play this and not that" imo.

[DeathevokatioN]

Played the first 16 levels of Icarus, I have a real soft spot for the soundtrack, the silver texture usage and the atmosphere of this wad. :)

Now I'm playing through the techbase section of Endgame for inspiration, using a modified version that replaces the stock Doom 2 music. Really killer stuff, lots of unique scenes and fun layouts. Totally underrated gem.

[Memfis]

I'm curious, what music did you choose for each map?

[invictius]

Capellan said:

All the "100 lines" maps. I was up to date, but 2 more got posted yesterday.

Map 2 - finally Maes has his own themed map ;-)