Lane Powell

This seems like a semi-hidden gem. The author's other WAD Crimson Canyon won a Cacoward, though I prefer this one.

It certainly lives up to its namesake. The textures are all Hell's green marble and blood, supplemented with custom textures including some modified Giger designs and some creepy sprites I recognize from Monolith's Blood. The map designs are seriously contorted. It's probably a divisive aspect of the set. In some levels the angular layouts wrap around themselves in a jagged mesh, creating devilish mazes with slightly obscure progression, and where fireballs can fly at you from different parts of the map. Other parts are darker and more claustrophobic. It's all a totally hostile atmosphere.

There are some common themes gameplay-wise but you'll know them by map 2. A big one is ammo constriction, especially on UV. Certain maps seem near unbeatable without finding key secrets.

This was actually one of the first WADs I completed a few years ago, and on revisiting it it feels very fresh. Like most memorable WADs, it rides on strong concepts and some devilish gameplay while targeting a distinctive theme.

A good, very HUGE map, plus or minus 1000 monsters depending on difficulty: the kind that can take upwards of two hours on the game clock to run through. Naturally it's not for the FDA/no-save crowd. Frankly I had to do it in multiple sittings over the course of a day, as map fatigue kept setting in. That said, and despite the fact that it largely uses the same green marble/stone and tech textures throughout, the detailing and designs manage to keep areas from feeling too samey, though personally I would have used a greater variety of textures in different areas to keep them more distinct, or at least widen the color palette a little. While most of the map takes place indoors, there are a few cool outdoor void areas (which I could've used more of, to be honest—even peeks out of windows would be nice!), some cave areas, and even a small ruins setpiece. There are many side areas and a great deal of interconnectivity (though few if any true route choices), but the pathing is very good: I never felt lost even when coming back from a break. The fact that buttons almost always acted on something close by was naturally a huge help.

Gameplay was appropriately challenging and about as varied as it could be in such a huge map, though there are a few tricks one can tell the author was especially fond of. For example, there are plenty of archviles. Luckily I'm fond of stomping archviles. On the flatly negative side I felt some areas were much too dark. Unfortunately these were often populated with stealth demons—not very clever. Also I don't know the idea behind fighting multiple Cyberdemons in a near-pitch-dark room with tons of geometry to get stuck on, but it wasn't a good one.

While there are some things I would do differently, this is all told a pretty fine map—provided you're among the intended audience of people who like trawling through huge-ass maps to begin with.