NuMetalManiak

Review of Back to 1994 by @nicolas monti

this is the kind of wad you will end up playing when you are doing either a huge fucking download elsewhere, or are rendering something important, but because speed fluctuates from between 1 hour to 10 minutes to 5 days, you have nothing better to do other than make some sort of attempt to just strangle your ISP in a fit of rage. but since you probably don't have a clue where your ISP is you decide to play a Doom wad instead. and even then, you can somehow finish beating this one all the way through BEFORE your thing is finished.

this wad isn't your average everyday episode replacement. it's something that is made to befit the 1994 era like a tee. i'm serious. you're seeing what I'm seeing, weird aliens that replace zombiemen and for some reason having arch-vile death animations, the Pluto dog from Disney as the shotgun guy, Reptile from MK as the imp, and the alien from Aliens as the baron. then the items are like random sprites more or less, with glasses as the light amplification visor and a pink dress as the radiation suit. sounds are wacky as had been with those ambitious '94 authors, and those who know monti's music selection would probably realize yes, that's weird too (neat that a SD3 song was in E1M7). to further drive the point on home, monti manages to make plenty of areas as annoying as possible, in a way to emulate the sheer annoyance of playing Maximum Doom-like shitty maps of the 1994 era. hard to believe he would even think of this kinda thing, but there you go. you've got rooms with multiples of weapons and keys, dumb encounters with lots of barons and cacodemons, and every map has 10 secrets and all are stupid hard to get. backtracking is incredibly prevalent and so is the frustration factor. perhaps the only thing it really lacks is the inescapable pits or other silly mistakes that '94 mappers made. there's also these philosophical sayings in these secrets, as well as stupid parody imagery of world leaders and Mr. Rogers among other things. what can I say, this is a mess. but it's also an appropriate mess that fits with the desired theme.