Zombie Wad Still has a Beating Heart

[Grazza]

Former TeamTNT member Dave Armstrong has returned after more than a decade's absence from the Doom community to re-release his highly creative wad Zombie Heart of Death.

This wad was originally released on the CompuServe Action Games Forum (which died in the late 1990s), but the permissions text didn't allow it to be uploaded elsewhere. Discussion of this problem in Doomworld's forums has prompted him to change the license and so make his work available to a new generation of Doomers.

Zombie Heart of Death is a large single-level wad with many new graphics. It makes extensive use of bugs and quirks in the Doom engine to provide a surreal and unique experience. Gameplay is brutal on skill 4 (renamed "Top Doomers Only!") and there is a very difficult puzzle to solve - fail and you become a zombie! And yes, there is a heart, and yes, it does beat. So beware.

[fraggle]

Heh, I did a Google search for zomheart and found a bunch of comments about it here on the forums over the past 10 years, all by you, so I'm guessing it's something of a minor personal obsession :-)

I'm glad to hear that you managed to get this re-released and properly archived. It's sad that there's still a handful of WADs out there missing from /idgames. Ideally I guess it would be nice of some of the commercial PWADs could take their place in there (Hell to Pay, Perdition's Gate, Lost Episodes, etc).

[Tormentor667]

You must be kidding... I just played this, and I honestly don't get why this wad was mentioned here at all, it was one of the worst wads that I have played in my very long Doom career ...

[Memfis]

Fun/unique map. I ragequitted on the first playthrough (chaingunner traps are evil...), but I guess I can blame only myself for choosing "Top Doomers Only!" skill. :) Nice music btw.

[Creaphis]

Tormentor667 said:

You must be kidding... I just played this, and I honestly don't get why this wad was mentioned here at all, it was one of the worst wads that I have played in my very long Doom career ...

When I first discovered video games, at a very young age, I remember that I would never run out of patience for a difficult game. I would happily die in the same place for hours upon hours until someone forcibly removed the game from me or me from the game. The notion that the game might in any way be flawed simply never occurred to me.

I think that when Doom, and mainstream gaming in general, were still young, the entire world of gamers was in this state of innocence, where dismissing a game as "bullshit" was absolutely unthinkable. Every challenge in every video game had real significance and deserved to be beaten. If you read zomheart.txt you'll see that the mapper felt that each part of this map deserved its own name.

I think it's interesting to go back in time and play mods like this, back before we started insisting on such luxuries as pacing and difficulty curves.

[Alfonzo]

Those yellow lines on black remind me of Bassetts liquorice allsorts. And I too died in a (perhaps the) Chaingunner trap.

It's volatile, fantastic fun, and it's super dymanic, too!

[DeathevokatioN]

This really is a great level.

[TimeOfDeath666]

Cool to see he still cares about Doom! I wish other mappers like Bob Evans would re-release their old stuff with updated permissions.

[dew]

let's see... really bad texturing, silly HOMs on the top of the BFG hill, unnatural angles everywhere, no common theme, but also devious ambushes and a truckload of great ideas and puzzles within vanilla engine bounds. this is one of the ugliest, yet cleverest maps in years.

people who like this = doom nerds
people who hate this = doom metrosexuals, go back to pretty zdoom wads with no gameplay

also i gotta know. is it even possible to navigate the voodoo doll into the invul hole to avoid zombification? i guess yes, but HOW?! pistol seems to be the best choice for pushing the doll, but in the end i always pushed it past a corner of the pit.

[Grazza]

How to solve the puzzle and avoid zombification is explained in a separate text-file within the zip (ZomSol.txt).

[Csonicgo]

Tormentor667 said:

You must be kidding... I just played this, and I honestly don't get why this wad was mentioned here at all, it was one of the worst wads that I have played in my very long Doom career ...

Some Doom hipster you are.

Pff.

[Graf Zahl]

dew said:

people who hate this = doom metrosexuals, go back to pretty zdoom wads with no gameplay

I prefer mods that combine pleasant looks with good gameplay. This gives me eyesores which invalidates it by default.

It would have failed my quality threshold even 15 years ago.

[Mr. T]

Graf... do you need a hug?

[Marnetmar]

Not quite sure what I think of this...I don't mind the aesthetics at all, in fact I kind of like them but...I dunno, it's just not...well, fun. I liked the partial invisibility trap towards the beginning of the map, though.

[sgtcrispy]

/me deletes massive rant.

Difficult? Absolutely.
Fun? Indeed. Actually, HELL YEAH!
Teh bestest WAD EV4R!? No.
Has it aged well? Meh? It's one of the better crappier wads.

[Gothic]

i think this is an overrated wad, seriously, this is not the best wad of the world (Where have I heard that?) but I'm not saying it's the worst wad of this year
to me, is just a doom wad

[kmxexii]

fraggle said:

I'm glad to hear that you managed to get this re-released and properly archived. It's sad that there's still a handful of WADs out there missing from /idgames. Ideally I guess it would be nice of some of the commercial PWADs could take their place in there (Hell to Pay, Perdition's Gate, Lost Episodes, etc).

Actually, all of the maps from the Lost Episodes are already scattered about on the archive excepting e3m7 and e3m8 (and e3m8 is just e1m1 plus a Spiderdemon).