What is the best DOOM .wad / level review in idgames?

[pulkmees]

11 hours ago, wildweasel said:

One of the best Doom mods to be inspired by the works of Albert Camus. Really brings home the total distance there is between all people, men and women, imps and demons, and the futility of communication. For what are we communicating but the fact of our inability to communicate? Ultimately however there is hope; WildWeasel believes that we can change, after all, albeit that we may not survive the transformation.

Lol, this is just golden.

[Ashley_Pomeroy]

I can stick up my hand and say that, yes, I wrote half of those. All of the reviews starting "this wad is dated YEAR", plus Gilbert & George, plus Albert Camus.

 

See, the wad was called The Stranger, which was Camus' most famous novel. And there is something existential about the Doomguy. He is an atomic nucleus of controlled willpower. The demons he faces are vital and alive, but they aren't masters of their souls. They have power without control. And the other human beings he meets are almost without exception liars, villains, cheats, misguided fools, sick, venal - they have neither power nor control. There are a few righteous characters, but they're all dead! Only the Doomguy has the moral and physical strength to be master of his fate. He is an atomic nucleus of controlled willpower at the centre of a seething mass of chaos that fills the universe; and yet the compression strengthens him, and over the course of the games he explodes like a new Big Bang.

 

From my point of view Doomworld's review system had three great attributes. It was immediate; it was trivia, so I could just write anything I wanted; it was short, so I had to keep all my writing down to just one short paragraph. Sadly I don't think there's a way of listing a user's reviews, in fact they weren't tied to usernames in those days. I missed out on all the classic Doom levels back in the day and spent a lengthy period in the mid-2000s catching up. It looks as though Doomworld doesn't allow user reviews any more; or are they sourced from the forums, or what?

 

When did I drift away? All those [clicks "random" a dozen times] yes, the Gamarra levels. 2006. A thousand years from now I will be dead and forgotten, but human society will use my reviews as its foundation, and it will be a better world. Also, the textfiles were a fascinating glimpse at life in the early internet era. It was surprising that so many people were prepared to include their home address and telephone number! And the x-rated wads were a nostalgic look back at a time when Erica Eleniak was a thing.

 

And when I say "thing", I mean "woman".

 

While I'm in a manic state, what was the deal with that "King REOL" chap? Was he famous? The textfiles imply that he saw himself as a major figure in the Doom level editing world - and in the world as a whole - but the maps were tedious.

[fraggle]

17 hours ago, Ashley_Pomeroy said:

While I'm in a manic state, what was the deal with that "King REOL" chap? Was he famous? The textfiles imply that he saw himself as a major figure in the Doom level editing world - and in the world as a whole - but the maps were tedious.

 

Oh boy.

 

REoL was never a major figure in mapping but he certainly wanted to be. That was his main problem, really. His levels were nothing special but he's remembered for being a loud personality desperate to promote his own work. This irritated a lot of people and he made few friends. Among other things I seem to recall he claimed to have invented sky walls (?) and branded himself "The Metallica of Doom" (after a similar comment describing TeamTNT as "The Beatles of Doom"). He named all his files starting with numbers so that they would appear first in FTP listings (1fiffy.wad, 2fiffy.wad, etc.).

 

I believe his later levels improved somewhat though I'm certainly no connoisseur of his work. After the first limit removing source ports arrived he developed a new gimmick: "X-Treme Detail". This meant that he would construct elaborate detailed arches and windows using hundreds 1-unit thin sectors. People complained at the time because if you didn't have the latest hardware it would make the game run very slow. I think to most people it came across as just another desperate attempt to draw attention to himself.

 

After being banned from Doomworld for something egregiously stupid (I forget the details now), he was famously banned from the SomethingAwful forums after Lowtax (the site owner) coined the phrase "I hate you King Reol". More detail is in the SAclopedia but you need to buy an account to read it.

[Catpho]

too much focus on the memes (like 10 chocolate maps come on) and the quality dropped, especially after 32in24-11. Some maps just looked straight up lazy

[Catpho]

This map is totally gay. Everything about it is gay. The authors are completely gay. The levels are gay. The monsters are gay. You all are gay. I'M FUCKING GAY. 5/5

[geo]

Notice how its 4/5 but given 3 stars? Is that a 0 out of 5 star thing back with the old /idgames?

[NuMetalManiak]

1969?

[Xeriphas1994]

8 hours ago, NuMetalManiak said:

1969?

 

I assume this is involved somehow.

[<inactive>Player Lin]

On 2018/4/2 at 9:52 PM, geo said:

Notice how its 4/5 but given 3 stars? Is that a 0 out of 5 star thing back with the old /idgames?

 

The old /idgames frontend's review system was really easily to forget to set the star value when submit the review.

 

I had some reviews was sent on old system with default 3 stars when I were really want give other points, and cannot edit them at all. :(

 

The new files review system will check the star has been set before submit reviews, and it can be editable, so that stupid shit should never happens again, unless someone intents do that. :P

[mun]

"This week's theme was to build a co-op map set in an outdoors environment." "Cooperative 2-4 Player : No" Um...

[mun]

I never thought that I'd bump this but:

"This is dated November 1994. It's a city-style map; the opening sequence has an epic feel, although overall it's disappointingly small and slight, with only 70 baddies, against which you have more weapons than Jesus, including a BFG and loads of rocket launchers for some reason. I ended up killing everybody, wandering about wondering what to do, and then getting bored and giving up, just like in real life. It needed a lot of work"

i hope you didn't kill people in real life reviewer because wtf

[GamingMarine]

"This is shorter than a short thing on national short thing day........"

I haven't explored much of /idgames, but this might be the funniest one I've seen yet.

[A Nobody]

These seem like sarcastic jokes rather than actual reviews.

[seed]

7 minutes ago, The-Heretic-Assassin said:

These seem like sarcastic jokes rather than actual reviews.

 

Bingo.

[GamingMarine]

On 6/7/2018 at 11:42 PM, GamingMarine said:

"This is shorter than a short thing on national short thing day........"

I haven't explored much of /idgames, but this might be the funniest one I've seen yet.

Actually, I'm wrong.

"'If you WHERE sitting at you home' 0/5 just for that."

[whirledtsar]