Xeogred

A monstrous megawad, one of my new top favorites. I love how venturing through this one feels like a new take on Doom 2's Hell on Earth descent, but this is just far far more detailed and engrossing. There are even a few sections in maps that give nods to classic Doom sections or even Doom 3 at times. It feels "modern" in a strangely amazing way with how detailed the architecture and aesthetics are. I also loved the connected exits and continuity, further giving it a huge sense of scale and adventure. The tech/base aesthetics are some of the best I've ever seen and I loved the Hell maps as well. A huge project from a one man army here and the consistency in design shows.

There are not a lot of traps or spawns in this one which seems to be an issue some people take up with it maybe coming off a bit easy, but I personally don't mind a difference in flavor like that. The body count of enemies is still extremely high. That said I did play this with Complex which maybe made encounters more interesting from start to finish, a mod that can break and unbalance things, but it worked really well here. I ran continuous weapons too and on HMP. My only negatives are that I could not figure out the switch hunt or red key in Map19. I also did not care for Map29, which was repetitive. But the pros outweigh the cons! Overall I clocked in about 12 hours and as most say this is a huge megawad with giant maps, so you might need to be in the mood for that. Definitely a must play for the masterfully detailed maps.

I have a long lasting love/hate relationship with the original Plutonia. I find it to easily be the hardest of the classic vanilla official Doom releases to the point of frustration with some design choices, like chaingunners galore in their barricaded towers. The entire megawad is very brown or green in texturing too and gets a bit drab. That said I continue to go back to it off and on throughout the years. I finally hit up Plutonia 2 this year and it lives up to its name, it's tough as nails, more brown walls and green ooze everywhere, chaingunners, unsafe starts, etc. Some maps like MAP11: Arch-Violence I hated because it was so tiresome. There were others I found really frustrating in the later teens and early 20's too. Don't expect many safe starts in any of these maps, the majority of them have you in enemy crosshairs immediately, along with tons of cramped sections in several maps, to a crazy degree that it seems impossible to beat most of these maps on a first run without knowing the traps and gimmicks. On the plus side, like Plutonia 1, I still had a fun time overall and this definitely felt like an official sequel. The style changed dramatically in the last chunk of maps and for the best, environments started looking much more interesting with a lot of reds, some maps were simpler but very effective, and I really enjoyed the final stretch along with this incarnation of the Icon of Sin battle at the end. The new music is awesome. I played on continuous play via UV and GZDoom, no mods. Clocked in a little over 8 hours. If you're up for some pain and difficulty, check this one out.

A great varied megawad just like the CCP's that I've all played and enjoyed. There are a few weird gimmicky maps I didn't like but all around I was really impressed and it was cool to see some unique personality with Japanese mappers, it's definitely unique in a good way. The new music is excellent. Some of the maps seemed a bit Duke3D flavored, or maybe TNT, with areas doing a good job of depicting realistic looking environments and details, like Map32. I really enjoyed Map23: Thermal disposal place by Guna and Map31: Manufacturing Plant by Masayan, I really hope we see more maps from them. Overall the difficulty isn't too high which is fine with me nor is it very slaughter heavy. I'll admit I skipped around Map29, as others said that one wasn't too hot. But otherwise I knocked this out at around 6 hours. I played with Complex and it didn't offset the balance. I'd love to see a JCP2!