T-Rex

Having played through TNT Map 15 (one of my favourites), I made some observations and noticed that the map has a non-linear layout. While it appears to be some kind of base situated in what appears to be some kind of courtyard, it offers a multitude of entrances into the base, the switch to lower the bar blocking the exit door is found almost immediately, and the secret exit can be found by accident, so this is one of the few maps in TNT that you can beat in under a minute if you decide to speedrun through it. There are also hidden doors which can take you around the base, some even being shortcuts. With all that in mind, it's safe to say that it is a map that was designed with deathmatch in mind, and the monsters may or may not have been included for single-play, though it could have been an afterthought as well, considering how there is a level design flaw where a few monsters don't get revealed, making 100% kills impossible unless you noclip to the sector where they're in (and even that's not been rectified in the patch that fixes up the yellow key bug in TNT Map 31). Looking at William Whitaker's other maps, which are nowhere else but in Team TNT's deathmatch-only megawad Pursuit, it seems that deathmatch must be his preferred mode of gameplay.

Civvie11 is a very reliable Doom YTer and his reviews are really insightful.

First Pwads I played and beaten was back in 2003/2004 when I was 16 years old, and they were Memento Mori (cause I found the Casalis designed a few maps for it), Hell Revealed (cause I read Andy Olivera's review how it takes after Plutonia), Requiem, and Icarus: Alien Vanguard, but I played them on Hey, Not Too Rough, and with God mode on. I still enjoy playing through them to this day, and now I can beat them on Ultra-Violence without God mode, though I play HR on Hurt Me Plenty, since it is pretty tough on Ultra-Violence, and even Plutonia gives me trouble on that difficulty.

Considering how dissatisfied he was with the direction id was going when they were developing Wolf3D, it's no surprise he didn't seem that passionate with the maps he designed. I think he did much better on Rise of the Triad, which has much better gameplay and higher fun factor. But back to the best of John Romero, when it comes to Doom, I say E1M1, but then again it's too easy a pick as one of the best maps, E1M5 is pretty fun, but E1M6 and E1M7 is when the episode takes a turn for large. adventure maps. E4M2 and E4M6, excellent challenging maps. Doom 2, I enjoyed Maps 11, 15 and 29, and Map 20: Gotcha is where the difficulty of Doom 2 spikes up.

I also believe Steve McCrea and Paul Turnbull also created TNT's custom textures, since from what we know, some of the textures from Paul Turnbull's Mayan Temple appeared in his only map for TNT Evilution, Map 23: Lunar Mining Project, including another texture, presumably by Steve McCrea since he mentioned using a texture patch by him in the text file for Mayan Temple, that was in Map 31: Pharaoh, and it also appeared in one of the maps of Icarus: Alien Vanguard, and of course, Steve McCrea contributed to Team TNT's following project after Evilution. Actually, only 2 of the Casalis' maps used custom textures, namely Map 18: Mill and Map 31: Pharaoh, while Map 28: Heck and Map 32: Caribbean, only had stock Doom and Doom 2 textures. Given from what we know of the other contributors to Evilution, here's who I believe did what for the project: Andre Arsenault - Map Design Christopher Buteau - Map Design Dario Casali - Map Design, Artwork Milo Casali - Map Design Jim Dethlefsen - Map Design Andrew Dowswell - Map Design Jonathan El-Bizri - Music Ty Halderman - Project Leader/Director (definitely), Map Design, Artwork David Hill - Map Design Dean Johnson - Map Design Brian Kidby - Map Design Jim Lowell - Map Design Josh Martel - Music, Sound Steve McCrea - Artwork John Minadeo - Map Design Tom Mustaine - Assistant Director (possibly if not Jimmy Sieben), Map Design, Music Drake O'Brien - Map Design, Artwork Robin Patenall - Map Design Jimmy Sieben - Assistant Director, (possibly if not Tom Mustaine), Game Programming, Map Design L.A. Sieben - Music Mark Snell - Map Design Paul Turnbull - Map Design, Artwork John Wakelin - Map Design William Whitaker - Map Design

I think what many people defending the wads of the 90s were trying to get at here, which I believe is a good point, is that, if something of that time pales in comparison with something made today, wouldn't Doom fall into obscurity in favour of more advanced FPS games now? I mean, that's what many thought when Quake came out, which was the result of megawads like Requiem and The Talosian Incident, but thankfully, that wasn't the case, and to this day, games like Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, and heck even Wolfenstein 3D are still played, and while Doom is capable of more mapping aesthetics, there are still a niche of players that don't mind playing wads that feel like Wolfenstein. Heck, even Tom Hall's maps, despite being spruced up by Sandy Petersen, still betrays the original author's design sensibilities, and they were among some of the best maps of the original Doom, with many being even better than the maps that were completely done by Sandy. Some mappers at that time even applied Tom Hall-isms to their maps, take Milo Casali of Plutonia, for example. He may not have known who designed the maps of Doom and Doom 2, but looking at his style, they were very much in the vein of a lot of Tom Hall's maps.

I mean a district that ended up being in ruins thanks to the demons that invaded Earth.

Considering how it is part of the episode that takes place in the city, my guess that it must be a rundown district that has been flooded.

Requiem is actually pretty good and fun, but yeah, there a few maps that sucked. I'm actually surprised Militant Reprisal did not get the dunce cap title as I find it to be the worst map in the megawad. I mean, it's a jumbled mess of themes that results in one big ugly sprawlfest that suffers from its own bloat, so many of the secrets don't make any sense, like there are secrets that have nothing in them, there's a yellow key for some reason, but not a single door requires one, and speaking of the secrets, there are 23 in total, and 3 of them are inaccessible due to level design flaws, for example, there's a sector where a door is supposed to open, but instead it's the floor that gets raised. So yeah, I think Map 12 is worse than Map 21, which has a neat concept, but was brought down by its own design errors. Had there been actual communication between the team members involved in the project and much more care and attention to testing out the levels before they've been accepted, Requiem would have been a legendary mapset.

No one's dunking on Plutonia. Plutonia is by far a good megawad from 1996, for the most part, since I find Hunted to be a crudely done concept of the arch-vile maze, which still makes sense, given the time it came out. However, for someone to make a statement that it is accessible for casual gamers on Ultra-Violence, that doesn't fly as it downplays the intentions of the Casali Brothers. Besides, this isn't about Plutonia, this is about Dean of Doom focusing too much on the worst aspects of some megawads from the mid-late 90s that are classics and even been regarded as the best back in their times without acknowledging that they can be fun just because he pistol-starts all the levels on UV as it just discourages other people getting into Doom to give them a try.

Yeah, but I really feel that MtPain27 has dunked on wads that are underappreciated nowadays, citing them as not worth playing any more, such as Memento Mori. Granted, it's rough around the edges in a bunch of the maps, but so is TNT Evilution, which he sort of gave a glowing review. I know he has a personal bias, I mean, Mount Pain, a level I dislike greatly as it is a textbook example of fake difficulty, is his favourite. I won't say he's wrong to find something he likes about that map. Different strokes for different folks. Post Mortem is undoubtedly brutal, moreso if you're playing on vanilla and in UV since saving your game is impossible as it triggers the savegame buffer overflow, but in Go 2 It, enemies can easily block your escape routes, and if that happens, you're screwed. The parts I died the most are the arachnotron/spider mastermind barricade where the yellow key pillar lays, the arch-vile nest that gets unleashed after grabbing the red key, and speaking of which, three of the 13 cyberdemons (all appear in all difficulty levels, mind you, compare that to HR where the highest number of cybies below UV are 8 in HMP and 3 on ITYTD/HNTR), are placed in cramped rooms and trying to BFG them without an invulnerability is suicidal. So yeah, I find Go 2 It to be extremely chaotic than Resistance is Futile, so many things can go awry if the RNG doesn't play in your favour, and I find the cyberdemon placement to just be cruel to the utmost degree (though in HR's Resistance is Futile there's that cyberdemon guarding one switch in a cramped room). 8 - 10 maps, I think that's too much as there are only a handful of maps that really lay the hurt on me than Plutonia could, least in my opinion.

So, I had a watch at Dean of Doom's review of Requiem, and here's my two cents on it. Requiem is by no means a perfect wad as it had some hiccups, like the fact that trying to achieve 100% on Den of the Skull is impossible, or that most of the maps are linear, but nevertheless, a great chunk of them are high-quality made by some of the most talented mappers of the 90s, like Thomas Moller has always been one of the best, no matter what MtPain27 says, Adelusion and Iikka Keranen are also very good, and I like Cappelan's offerings as many of his maps are nice little breathers, especially after going through maps like Skinny Puppy, Procrustes Chambers and Downer. All in all, Requiem is very much the Alien Vendetta of its time, only not as difficult, and it would have been a bona fide legend if there was someone keeping the team together and thoroughly playtesting the maps to ensure that any bugs were ironed out. It still remains one of my favourite megawads to play through as every map feels like a pilgrimage, even some of the bad ones. Den of the Skull, for example, has an interesting concept, but it did feel like it was in its beta stage as there were clearly issues with it that were never fixed up, and if it wasn't for Den of the Skull, I wouldn't have tried out crush.wad, also by Anthony Galica, and a nicely well done and fun map. And speaking of Memento Mori 1 and 2, I like Memento Mori and find it to be about the same quality and difficulty as TNT: Evilution. While I know that MtPain27's shtick is reviewing wads through a modern lens, I think it does result in him judging a good chunk of the 90s wads and megawads very harshly and giving them grades, whether it be for quality or difficulty, that aren't really accurate. Case in point, Hell Revealed, not a bad review, but he makes it sound much harder and bad than it really is. Yes, taking out groups of barons with a weak weapon like a shotgun, can be annoying and tedious, but that doesn't make it horribly difficult than it is artificial lengthening, plus they do come in useful at times, like in The Black Towers, they are ideal for dealing with the revenants in the outdoor blood fountain and the cyberdemons that are released from their marble boxes, and in Judgement Day, those teleporting barons are to be lured into infighting the sleeping cyberdemon, and speaking of Judgement Day, I like its architecture and theme as it reminds me of Ultimate Doom Thy Flesh Consumed. Personally, I don't believe that just because a wad is hard that makes it a classic, but MtPain27 royally exaggerated the difficulty of Hell Revealed and inadvertently made many players hate on it too much. Meanwhile, he overpraises and undervalues Plutonia's reputation as the hardest of the official wads released by id Software, like seriously, B- Lightly Broiled? I find that to be very misleading and not understanding the Casali Brothers' intentions to make a wad that caters to the veterans coming out of playing Doom 2 and looking for a challenge, and honestly, the incline between Doom 2 and Plutonia, even from TNT: Evilution, is very steep. A good chunk of the wads have traps that are pretty kaizoesque and the maps demand using the exact strategy to take out the opposition as the map layout also works against you, so the Casalis really punish you for going one direction and the other and not the golden mean that you have to find. Sure, it's not like Sunder, but still, I even find Go 2 It to be much harder and sadistic than Resistance is Futile, though barely outdone by Post Mortem. Monster body counts don't necessarily make a level difficult, it's also the types used, and weapons you're given to take them out, and how the level design and terrain gives them an advantage over you. My gripes is that many think MtPain27 is like an authority on Doom wads and treat his word like the gospel. It does result in just missing out wads that are actually good, and for their time, were competently made, especially when you compare them to the average 1994 wad, and will just quickly say that because it's "not pistol start friendly on UV, it automatically sucks," which is a very narrow-minded way of seeing wads, especially those made back in the 90s were pistol-starting each map was never the intended way of playing Doom and having to pistol-start a later map is more of a penalty for failing to go through it. Wads made back in the 90s were basically sink-or-swim type of wads, and you always have the option to play at a lower difficulty before attempting Ultra-Violence. Yes, there is a balance between genuine difficulty and fake difficulty, and yes, wads today were made to be more accessible for casual players, but to compare a wad made back in the 90s to one made in the 2010s is unfair, taking into account how level editors made back then were not the same as something like Doom Builder. At the end of it all, it really all comes down to taste and what's your preference when playing Doom maps.

Okay, so I tried out The Unholy Trinity by Steve McCrea, and it has a similar issue where if you play on Ultimate Doom, you get warning messages and some of the textures glitch out if it doesn't crash. There is a patch for it to be playable on Ultimate Doom, so I have a feeling that if a similar patch is made for Mayan Temple, then it should work on Ultimate Doom without having to downgrade the game to v1.666.

Enraged Eggplant has become one of my new favourite Doom YouTubers next to BigMacDavis and decino. Check out his videos.

Anyone have any idea on who could be the composer for the music tracks for Hell to Pay and Perdition's Gate that were untitled, namely the ones played for HTP Map 31, 32 and 22, and PG Map 04, 06, 15, 16 and 30? Some would suggest they're by Jan Sinkmajer as he was credited in Hell to Pay as one of the megawad's composers aside from Tom Mustaine and L.A. Sieben, but there's something not right, he should have been credited as a composer in Perdition's Gate as the music tracks that were apparently not composed by L.A. Sieben are there and not just in Hell to Pay. Could he have really done any music? Then again, Jim Elson apparently was a mapper for the Wraith duology, even though it seems like he hasn't really done any maps for either megawad. I'm not sure about the two tracks that were used in HTP Map 31 and 32 and Perdition's Gate Map 06, 16 and 30, but the one track used for HTP Map 22 and Perdition's Gate Map 04 and 15 would be most likely an L.A. Sieben composition as it sounds similar to Death's Bells from TNT Evilution, which we know was by him. Listen and compare. Perdition's Gate Map 04 & 15 / Hell to Pay Map 22 TNT Evilution - Death's Bells