PetalousPanoply

I love all of them but Doom II is my favorite. Some of the maps are a bit wonky but I value the monster variety and the super shotgun really highly.

Looks fun! I definitely won't pass up an opportunity to shoot Thatcher in the face.

I played the original Doom for the first time in 2015 and ever since then the Cacowards have become something I really look forward to every year. Just an incredible way to celebrate the artistic achievements of what I consider to be the most daring and talented community in gaming. Among the sea of bullshit corporate celebrations like the VGAs it really stands out as a genuine community endeavour. I still haven't played most of the maps mentioned this year (I guess I now know what I'm doing this month!), but I was really glad to see Shrine 2, Technicolor Antichrist Box, Mutabor and Akeldama in there. Can't wait to play everything else. Congratulations to everyone who got mentioned and to the writers for the excellent reviews as usual!

It looks absolutely incredible. 2020 has been a great year for Heretic maps and this is just the cherry on top.

Yeah, IMO both should be off by default (crouching too). Personally, I'm not a fan of jumping and freelook on most wads with the exception of some TCs.

+Refracted Reality. Just stunning. I'm a sucker for color-themed maps so this is my jam. +Akeldama. One of the best classic-style megawads I've played in years. +Shrine II. Very ambitious and I love the sprites! +Mutabor. Great, intricate map with cool visuals. +Serpent's Wake. Great use of difficulty options and Heretic needs more love. +Quest for the Crystal Skulls. More Heretic love. Also, the new maps for the Nightdive release of Doom 64 deserve a mention as well.

I'm glad someone was there to stop the Pain Elementals.

That's really cool, I love Doom 64 and I'm glad to get more of it and Nightdive's ports are always excellent. What a great month to be a fan of Doom! The interview was very interesting too, Samuel Villarreal is super talented. The bit about the new lore makes me think they're gonna make it canon that this is the same Doomguy as either the original games or as 2016/Eternal (or that they're all the same person) but who knows.

(UV Pistol start) MAP08 - Tricks and Traps. Things are getting harder now. This one kinda reminds me of Dark Souls in the sense that if you don't know what you're doing it's very difficult but just knowing the map and the secrets makes it waaaay easier (specially on pistol start). Speaking of secrets, I like how most of them share the trick of shooting a face to unlock. Like the Spider Mastermind in The Crusher it's a bit weird seeing a random Cyberdemon just chilling in a regular map, and again we kill this displaced boss with unconventional means. Infighting is extremely helpful throughout the whole map really, specially because of the ridiculous amount of Cacos. I generally leave the Pain Elementals alone 'cause they're in a very small and crowded arena, making them probably the most dangerous monsters in this map unless you saved BFG ammo. I generally like this map for its playful nature, though visually it's very bland. MAP09 - The Pit. This sure is hard on pistol start. On my GZDoom settings there was no Lost Soul limit either so it was particularly crowded, and there are way too many Pain Elementals for my taste. Berserk packs mean ammo isn't too much of a problem if you're careful, but this map is just more fun if you're going through the game normally instead of pistol starting. There are a lot of elevators and that trick works some of the time (the black room were the platforms with imps and shotgunners rise and lower depending on where you step is particularly fun), but sometimes not being able too look up kinda messes with the player's ability to asses risks, choosing with platform to lower and so on (I know you can use mouselook on GZDoom but I prefer it vanilla). I like the rocket secret for how ludicrous it is. Overall, not my favorite but I like the music a lot.

2015, after listening to a podcast about Doom II. I had watched a lot of speedruns of the game before, read a lot of articles about its importance to the games industry and always meant to give it a shot, but when I first bought it on Steam I was let down by the DOSBOX version. When I listened to the podcast they mentioned the existence of source ports and as soon as I got rid of the texture filtering on ZDoom I was hooked for life.

(UV Pistol start) MAP07 - Dead Simple. Obviously this one is very influential and often maligned for its influence but I think it works well here in its iwad of origin. With pistol start the name is even more true, you'll only have the SSG but really, what else do you need? I think this is a good map to showcase Doom's combat rhythms in contrast to other, more modern FPS games: if you're used to modern games your first instinct might be to use the pillars for cover, pop out for a quick shot and then hide again, but it's much easier and much quicker to run around in circles because Doomguy is so fast that the monsters' projectiles just can't keep up. The difficulty has been slowly increasing with each map and this is the fastest paced combat arena in Doom 2 so far. Also the "secret" is very funny.

(UV Pistol start) MAP06 - The Crusher - The most immediately noticeable thing about this map is its scale, the room with the Spider Mastermind is bigger than anything we've seen in Doom 2 so far. The eponymous trick with the crusher is great. This is a very boxy map but I like its room design quite a bit, particularly the one with the red key. We're introduced to the Revenants but with how generous the secrets are they're no threat at all (with pistol start the first one can be dangerous but the other monsters usually take care of him for you). The grassy outdoors area stands out in the middle of all the brown industrial walls. And the final fight is really fun and chaotic. I really like that the player will probably try out the teleports before grabbing the yellow key, will wonder "well what was the point of that", then grab the key and go "oh". Pretty good map.

(UV Pistol Start) MAP04 - The Focus. I've been playing with pistol start for the first time and I think this is the first map in Doom 2 where it actually makes a difference. The first room is full of chaingunners and your pistol is too slow to take them out without taking too much damage yourself so I'd say this is also the first map that encourages infighting, specially since ammo is very scarce (unless you know about the secrets, of course). I like the music, it's goofy and playful but that's the other half of Doom that isn't dark and disturbing, so I think it fits. I don't think it's a particularly good looking map but I do like how claustrophobic it is. MAP 05 - The Waste Tunnels. Great atmosphere in this one, the darkness and the music work well together. We finally get Cacos and Hell Knights (and Lost Souls) but with the rocket launcher and the plasma rifle they're a breeze. The "jail" with the bodies on pikes is great. Not a hard map but fun to poke around and uncover its secrets.

(UV Pistol Start) Map 03 - The Gantlet. Good enough. Visually I find it very bland, too brown, but the introduction of chaingunners is cool and I like the way the monsters are placed. The secret is extremely generous and that plus the mega armor at the start make the whole thing a breeze, even with pistol start. Overall, fun to play but not particularly exciting.

Just beat Eviternity for the first time! I'm very rusty (barely played any Doom last year and was never particularly skilled in the first place) and had to lower the difficulty from HMP to Not Too Rough from Map 19 onwards (incidentally, map 19 is impressive in how intricately designed it is but I found it to be a bit too long to be in the middle of a megawad, but that's just me). That said I still had a great time! I really liked the new monsters, though I had a lot of trouble dealing with Annihilators throughout, while others like the Astral Caco (great name and reference btw) were always scary but got more manageable the more I played. I think the first and the last episodes were my favorites, Map 29 in particular was very fun, I loved the jump pads, collecting the keys, the visuals (of the entire last episode really) and the music was obviously extremely good. And having everything come full circle and revisiting the first map at the end was genius. Overall I had a really good time, it was a great way to get back into Doom now that I have access to a computer again and the Cacoward was definitely deserved.

Hurt me plenty. I'm gonna have to play it on my PS4 since my laptop definitely won't be able to run it, and I'm not great at aiming with analog sticks.

(UV Pistol Start) MAP02 - Underhalls. I really like this one. It significantly ramps up the action from the first map but there's only one new monster that acts very similarly to one the player will already know so it's a nice difficulty curve. It isn't a challenging map but if you're not careful the shotgun guys can deplete your health very quickly. Speaking of shotguns of course this is the introduction of the SSG and one of the best sound effects in all of gaming. The one secret is a good one, as the mega armor is very useful against hitscanners and the map is obviously full of them. I dig how it looks too, "underhalls" is a pretty evocative and accurate description while the map keeps that abstract architecture that's iconic to Doom and that I love oh so much. It's a very cramped map, a nice contrast to the outdoor area of Entryway. Good stuff!

First time taking part in the DWmegawad Club! And a fitting start too since my interest in Doom started in 2015 when I beat Doom 1 and 2 in a single sitting while listening a podcast (Watch out for Fireballs) about Doom 2. While I've been playing a lot of Doom ever since, I have mostly focused on community wads and haven't replayed the first two games as many times as most people in the community have. So this should be a good opportunity for me to give one of the originals the attention it deserves. (UV Pistol Start) MAP01 - Entryway, then. I think I like this one more than Doom 1's first map. The initial view is great, super iconic with the weird stairs, the enemies facing away from you just waiting to be rushed at making you miss the maps first secret unless you know what you're doing. Speaking of secrets, this map has some really fun ones but the single stimpack in the wall is a bit lame (though the way it can spawn imps is fun). It's super short, as I think a first map should be. Overall, just a solid introduction to Doom II. As per @plums suggestion above, I'll be trying to do all maps with pistol start, since I've never done it before. Should be fun!

I generally prefer shorter maps, though occasionally a megawad with long maps is welcome too. I do think that having more, shorter episodes, and with that better stopping points, makes playing these longer maps a bit more fun and cohesive.

Going through Eviternity, catching up with last years' Cacowards. It's really good but I'm also super rusty and the third episode is already giving me trouble. Love it though.

Absolutely lovely wad, with beautiful textures, fun level design and a well-constructed atmosphere. And as a big fan of the Deus Ex franchise it was fun catching all the references. Thanks for making it!

I've been looking forward to this one! Sad to hear this will be your last Doom map for the foreseeable future, but I'll be sure to check out your Quake maps when they're released.

Congratulations on the release, it's lovely!

Shout out to Tangerine Nightmare and Sharp Things.