Wraithcorp Megawads: The other Final Doom

[MajorRawne]

I only found out about "Perdition's Gate" and "Hell to Pay" from reading about them on Doomed: Doom Wad Reviews, a rather good review site. Apparently you have to actually buy these and they command a high price on eBay. Has anyone got or played these lost levels, and were they worthy of carrying the torch? I get the impression from the reviews that they were good enough.

[Demon of the Well]

Some people find them very charming, I can't count myself amongst them, though. A very large contingent of the maps in Perdition's Gate are teeny-tiny little slapdash affairs (read: filler in the most literal sense of the term, for commercial purposes). If you've ever played the Build game 'Shadow Warrior', it's kind of like what happens to the map design in that game once you leave the shareware episode, only considerably more severe. Some of the more sincere maps in the WAD are worth seeing though, I guess.

Generally I'd say the maps in Hell to Pay are better--a lot of them have a sort of Evilution charm to them--although I can't specifically remember all of them offhand. What mars Hell to Pay is some highly suspect resource replacements. Some of the new textures are okay (again, in a TNT/Icarus sort of way), but the sprite replacements not only look pretty naff on their own, but also seem thematically out of place with a lot of the setting/other stuff in the WAD. They aren't quite as tacky/poorly done as what one might see in 'Lord of the Flies', for example, but they still hurt the product, in my eyes. Of course, because there are no actual changes to monster behavior or the like, you could take the trouble to just edit the replacements out, and play with the default resources, which will probably see the WAD putting its best face forwards.

Anyway, like I say, don't take my word for it, some folks really like these WADs. But whether or not they're worth seeing on their own merits aside, are they better products than Final DooM? Haha, no. Fuck no. Get outta town.

[Clonehunter]

Hell to Pay had some neat sets and areas that actually resembled what the maps were named. Whether or not they were any good is a whole 'nother discussion. They aren't terrible, but they ain't special either. I do, however, liked how they tried to add in some story with little paragraphs replacing he Level Name graphics in between levels.

[Shadow Hog]

I like what I've played of Perdition's Gate, at least. If nothing else, I absolutely love its SKY1; it really evokes an Episode 1-ish feel, with the overcast sky and big hills overhead (albeit these hills are more of a grassy green than a rocky gray - ignoring that the Chinese mountains the Episode 1 sky is based on are totally swarming with trees IRL).

[mrthejoshmon]

I remember Hell to Pay having a shareware/limited edition where only 15 maps from the thing were included, I also think this limited edition was on /Idgames but I can't find it anymore (Also didn't the limited editions also come on shovelware discs?).

Anyway I love Hell to Pay, the missions are short, sweet, brutal and fun but I have never even played Perdition's Gate (And I don't think that one had a shareware version).

[Devalaous]

I have both and I love them. It pains me that even though PG's creator wants everyone to enjoy it, Doomworld takes extreme issue with this (Someone tends to be banned EVERY TIME the wads are mentioned.)

Perdition's Gate is a shorter wad, mostly made by Tom Mustaine of Team TNT and his father, and has a lot of brilliant ideas and highly interconnected maps. It does suffer near the end, where the HTP team helped finish the wad in time for release.

Hell to Pay is a partial TC; several monsters and weapons are replaced, generally with terrible graphics. Aside from that, they do make the wad feel so different. This wad inpires me to this day, as it is absolutely full of vanilla trickery; Rockets and missiles get launched, halls explode, theres a goddamn convincing SPACEWALK, and so much more.

Several of the innovations from both PG and HTP have influenced Revilution in fact, leading to a bit of an injoke in "It can be done in vanilla!"

I hope one day there is a community project to expand on these wads (Whether sequels or TWID style), mainly to deliver the experience of the wads, in new levels, so that those unlucky enough to not be able to get thier hands on the wads, can experience their styles.

[Joshua Schäferhund]

I have played both of these megawads and I have to say they are really well designed. However, IMO some of the custom graphics look pretty ugly and haven't aged too well (Like the UAC logos in Perdition's Gate and the hanging corpses in H2P for example.) I also really don't like how they reskinned the monsters in H2P. (Though of course you can easily remove them with a WAD editor of your choice.)

Still, I think the maps themselves are still well designed and are a lot of fun to play. Plus the music is pretty good, if you've played Evilution and/or Icarus you might find some of the music tracks similar to the ones from those WADs. Hell there's even an extended remix of Smells like Burning Corpse in them. (Or at least it sounds like it.)

[mrthejoshmon]

Patch93 said:

Just for the record, both of these WADs are now freeware...

Not really, they are stuck in copyright hell right now (Kind of like Strife), they are Abandonware (Abandonware is still illegal, but the "Rightful owners" abandoned the software).

The only people who really do anything about this copyright stuff is the moderators, they follow a very strict policy and I can see why.

EDIT:

Ragnor said:

I hope one day there is a community project to expand on these wads (Whether sequels or TWID style), mainly to deliver the experience of the wads, in new levels, so that those unlucky enough to not be able to get thier hands on the wads, can experience their styles.

I was thinking about trying something like that but the fear of somehow being banned because of it stopped me.

[Zed]

To be honest, I don't really like Hell to Pay that much. It's not bad at all (I think it has a lot of cool ideas), but the monster replacements just seem out of place. I just can't see it as a replacement for either Plutonia or TNT.

About Perdition's Gate, I like it a lot. It has small fun maps, that feel much like TVR! or The Rebirth.

In my opinion, I would say that TNT + PG could have made a great Final Doom (of course, Plutonia + PG would be cool, but it happens that I prefer TNT).

Also this:

Ragnor said:

I hope one day there is a community project to expand on these wads (Whether sequels or TWID style), mainly to deliver the experience of the wads, in new levels, so that those unlucky enough to not be able to get thier hands on the wads, can experience their styles.

It was discussed briefly in this thread.

[RUSH]

I've always really liked Perdition's Gate. I agree it has a very unique style that almost nothing else can emulate.

Sadly I have never played Hell To Pay, but PG is an absolute winner.

[Devalaous]

Zed said:

It was discussed briefly in this thread.

I think I would know, im in that thread :p

Someone got banned in that thread too. Someone always claims that both are freeware, ignore all pleas not to link, does it anyway, gets banned. Its a cycle that I'm half expecting to see happen again. I imagine the mods would like to allow it, but have their hands tied. Afterall, the rule benefits not a soul on earth, and hurts many.

Im pretty sure a project for them would be allowed. Wads steal textures and music from hundreds of commercial games all the time, I doubt anyone would be banned over PG/HTP texture usage. As for the monsters an weapons in HTP, just give them a touch up/remake and finish the set.

[MajorRawne]

Sounds like these are worth trying to get hold of. Can't believe I never even knew about these until yesterday.

[Devalaous]

I want both to get the PSX treatment one day too, along with the Lost Episodes of Doom, the third commercial wad (even though technically, only one single level in that one, E3M7, was never released on the archive or anywhere else freely)

Imagine a PSX Final Doom 2 later in the PSX's life when more of the system's ability was available :p

[joepallai]

To this day I regret not purchasing these when I saw them in Electronics Boutique. I ended up playing one of them years later and it had a very cool glass floor effect that I had never seen before (map 31 or 32--not sure). Fun levels overall with some really clever ideas.

[Clonehunter]

Mmm, now the Lost Episodes were enjoyable, imo.

[40oz]

MajorRawne said:

Sounds like these are worth trying to get hold of. Can't believe I never even knew about these until yesterday.

As Demon Of The Well said, the maps most worth seeing are in the shareware/demo wads which are free and readily available for download in many places. If you're an enthusiast, you might crave the whole thing, but you'll prbably have the best experience overall if you just hold on to the demo and consider it a short episode.

I like Hell To Pay in a cool cartoony kind of way. The storyline is a bit more in depth and helps you feel like you are on a mission more so than just needlessly killing everything. There's a map where you have to stop an nuclear missile launch, escape from a self destructing building (that uses moving floors to simulate a working timer, and an extremely tall crusher to that kills a voodoo doll if you don't complete the map in time) a map where you can float around outside of a space ship in anti-gravity (using self-referencing sectors as invisible floors) and more.

Perdition's Gate is more close to home and Doom like even though it still uses more custom textures, but the part that sticks with me are that the maps are non-linear and insist that they are designed specifically to accommodate tough single player gameplay, increased monsters for coop, and nonlinear layouts for deathmatch, and even though it doesn't do it perfectly, I'd say it does much better at combining all three game modes in all of its individual maps than any of IWADs do. It's been a big inspiration for me in my maps in that regard.

[Pirx]

i liked perdition's gate, reminded me somewhat of tnt. hell2pay would have been better without those sprite replacements.