LordShadowZ

This WAD is an unbearable slog. The level design is just about the best thing about this WAD. The maps are well built and fairly easy to navigate, and it's pretty good in utilizing the vanilla resources as well as good lighting to make the maps visually interesting. The combat design is repetitive and absolutely unbearable. This WAD has one trick, and it reuses that trick excessively and endlessly for every single map. Every room is a trap. Every hallway is a trap. Every switch is a trap. Every item is a trap. Every trap is another trap. Monsters will either instantly pop up from the ground right in front of you, appear from sudden closets right behind you, or teleport in and completely surround you, and you'll have no choice but to take some unavoidable damage. You almost never have a moment to take a breather. Encounter design never deviates and becomes predictable by Episode 2, and outside of the pseudo-puzzle boss maps, the WAD never tries anything different. The maps are also excruciatingly stingy with resources, withholding ammo in general but especially for higher tier weapons, rarely allowing you to have sufficient firepower against massive groups of enemies, or worse, the numerous Barons and hordes of Cacos, making combat extremely tedious and boring when all you have to rely on is the shotgun and/or chaingun. Rockets and Plasma are very rare, and the BFG doesn't even make its first appearance until halfway through Episode 3. Secrets are also unrewarding with many of them being paltry amounts of low tier ammo or a medikit if you're lucky. Also, a forced death exit mid-episode to strip you of your weapons for a Tyson map with practically zero ammo? F*** off.