PsychEyeball

Perhaps the best megawad I have played so far. Ancient Aliens is a very distinctive WAD, with its unique tone, custom textures, choice of colors, scenery and meticulous encounter crafting. The overall look of many of its maps is pretty relaxing, (especially as far as Doom is concerned) and that feeling is helped big time by the masterful Stewboy compositions, whose MIDIs often give the journey a mysterious laid-back style or embrace a fun bouncy techno-jazz jive. But don't be lured by the calm looks and sounds, because Skillsaw and his guest mappers know how to turn the heat up and throw you into peculiar and inventive combat scenarios. Map 1 sets the tone for the action perfectly: after the trippy teleporting sequence, you immediately zoom at full speed past a caged cyberdemon, who will constantly hinder your progress and have you frantically look for the way forward. The following brawl with hell knights, revenants and other foes in tight corners does set a tone for the combat to ensue in the first few maps: resources tend to be initially scarce and berserk punching a few skeletons will help you keep your supplies for fights where ammo truly matters. If that doesn't feel like your cup of tea, do not worry: a fair amount of maps do provide ample supplies for when the heat truly gets turned up. Finally, many big enemies in beginning maps are meant to be telefragged (or, in the case of MAP04, the game will eventually spawn a truckload of explosive barrels to kill archviles with little fuss) so the obvious approach is not always the best one. The layout of levels often features traps, but at the very least you can't fault the WAD for lack of variety because it's rare that the same trick gets repeated. Encounters are memorable and my favorite of the bunch include a collapsing staircase where you must fight foes quickly under the eye of an archvile, but you must do it fast because the ledges eventually rise up, bringing you closer and closer to him being able to resurrect the fallen monsters. But each time a ledge rises, new monsters can now get to you so you're never safe no matter what! Additionally, the WAD features two new monsters: the plasma marine and the rotating skull cube. Marines make static noises, are cloaked when not attacking and their plasma shots can be hurtful, but they thankfully need to pause before shooting and are very fragile. The skull cubes pack a wallop, firing a barrage of 3 revenant missiles at any time, which can be homing or not. They would be the worst if they didn't have only about 80 health and exploded upon death, hurting everything in their vicinity. This means that when this enemy appears in tight packs, a single rocket can blow away the whole group. Skillsaw doesn't hog the whole WAD for himself, he offered a few guest spots for other worthy mappers to shine. Joshy from Speed of Doom fame gets two maps, MAP 9 (The Nectar Flow) and MAP28 (Floating Arena). Both are completely different to each other gameplay-wise, but both are fun. The former is a journey through caves of nectar that features the highest monster count in the WAD at the time, but most of them are zombiemen and imps, so happy chaingunning! The latter effort is a slaughterfest that sets the table for the end of your journey. The numbers are high, but the space, ammo and powerups are abundant as well, not making the carnage too mean spirited. Stewboy gets the MAP 31 slot, but this one doesn't work as well; the pacing is too slow and there's a little too emphasis on secret hunting (13 secrets in total!) and the layout even is a little too gray and drab. AD_79's MAP 20 is a strong showing with its tubes full of enemies and the clever archvile hologram trap. Esselfortium's MAP 22 is a scenic ancient castle that is one of the prettiest maps of the set, only upset by MAP24. lupinx-cassman offers a spectacle for the eyes with a sky temple that appears to worship several cultures at once, hence the name. While some of its combat is a little stilted and uncomfortable at times, the looks all make up for it. Tarnsman's MAP 26 is a pretty old stone temple, but the heavy chaingunner usage makes it feel like some weird Plutonia homage. MAP 23 by Pinchy is probably the only guest map I can bring myself to dislike: it's too big, sprawling, confusing, loves to spawn chaingunners that snipe you at great distances and finally, that final fight can go to hell. As for skillsaw's work, the best part about his works is that he's very consistent quality-wise, I can't bring myself to dislike any of his work in this WAD (MAP 32 might be his only map I didn't really like, it felt a bit by the numbers for a secret secret map). Some of the levels have gimmicks attached to them, like MAP 6's sinkhole, which occurs as you're grabbing a shotgun (?). But you better not think of it too hard, or hordes of shotgunners will come to take you away. MAP 18 shows how dangerous the Illuminati are, with the surprise inclusion of an Icon of Sin (in the form of a giant Illuminati pyramid!) that makes incursions in the main courtyard a tricky affair. MAP 19 is a berserk and pistol level that will get you up to speed with punching enemies, your champion contender here will be an archvile you need to punch down so good luck! My favorite Skillsaw maps of the WAD would be Maps 1, 2, 4, 7, 14, 16, 25 and 29, aka the last regular map of the set. It's 3 big fights, the final of which is punctuated by the shattering reveal of who's behind everything. Then, they get to watch you do the final fight against seemingly unsurmontable hordes in a big, colorful arena. All in all, Ancient Aliens is a masterpiece. It is surprisingly approachable for being a modern WAD and the difficulty is hard, but often fair. Keep in mind this is still an harder WAD than Plutonia, though. I had a pleasant time on UV with saves and continuous play and if your skills aren't up to the task, lower difficulties will make sure you are not left behind. If you're like me and somehow took this long to finally play this, remedy the problem and play it now. It's one of the all-time greats.

Speed of Doom is often considered as one of the earliest great modern MegaWADs around, although Speed of Doom may be a misnomer, given the careful attention one would have to go through in order to beat some of these levels. Authored by Joshy (who makes the odd-numbered levels) and Darkwave0000 (who takes the even-numbered levels), this adventure mostly feels like 2 different WADs stuck to each other, with each author taking their own approach through the WAD. Joshy often likes his maps small, cramped, with monster placement evil enough that individual monsters will matter in the long haul, but Darkwave takes an approach more akin to Serious Sam/Painkiller, where you get thrown in arenas and need to fight your way through sporadic, yet intense encounters that are devious and brutal, but thankfully Darkwave does prefer spectacle over sadism, keeping his levels hard but not overly mean and unfair. Having being done in 2010, the WAD looks gorgeous no matter which level designer is at the helm. There's a fair amount of default textures that got used, but Boom allows the environnments to look far more detailed and rich. Map 28, Twilight Massacre, is not the most original Hellscape ever conceived, but it looks appropriately massive and imposing, the perfect scenery in order to BFG over 2900 demons in mere minutes. While this above description may make Speed of Doom appear as a slaughter WAD, only a few maps in the set fit the bill, such as Map 28 and the ridiculous Pyramid of Death occupying the Map 32 slot, which features the most explosive beginning in the whole WAD. You'll have to sweat profusely in order to finally carve a foothold into this descendant of Go 2 It / Go 4 It / Pharaoh / No Guts No Glory / Playground, as the intro itself says. Gameplay in general is more styled around the Alien Vendetta school, except way harder. One of the trademarks of this WAD is to feature linedefs that, upon crossing them, make monsters instantly pop out from the ground all around the place. While it's cute the first few times, this trick is used so much throughout Speed of Doom part of me kinda groaned every time they happened, there's about no level in this WAD where this trick is not used. Joshy's levels love to feature tricky monsters in places where you can't do anything about them, but they can make your existence a living hell. The final episode in particular is the worst offender in this regard: Map 23, 27 and 29 have monster placement so evil you feel powerless to even start tackling the levels. Revenants sniping you from way beyond your own hitscan range, archviles hidden behind walls of mancubi you have no recourse against... these are a couple of the scenarios waiting for you. I also couldn't help but feel some encounters are literally impossible to react to unless you know about them firsthand, which to me is lousy level design. And finally, some maps kinda default to just sic a wall of revenants on you and make it the only challenge, which I always groan upon seeing since it's so cliche and the bane of many modern mapsets. However, the earlier parts of the WAD really shine. Map 06, Dreamscape, is one of the many gems the WAD have to offer. It's a spectacular cave network, with some indentations of technology sticking out, which is completely empty upon your first arrival. But be prepared for the worst as you pick this plasma rifle, as the previously large empty cave turns out to be anything but empty. Imps everywhere, well placed arachnotron and revenant sentries and other meaty mid-level monsters will jump you all at once and the pace of the level never lets go. Map 31, which stands for 666 in binary, is brutal, yet an impressive highlight in the WAD with the most gorgeous looking visuals of the whole set and offers some fierce, yet fun fights. The checkerboard Revenant room is my own vision of Hell, but can be disarmed with some methodical moves and well provoked infighting. Map 10, Vile Pain, will startle you upon seeing the masses of Archviles and Pain Elementals waiting for you... but don't worry, they all teleport over the level and you meet them all in small numbers, alongside big enemy numbers. Speed of Doom is often considered one of the must play WADs around, but sadly for me, I have to say I like about only the two thirds of it. Almost every Darkwave level was a hit for me, but Joshy's contributions feel a bit more uneven and I'm not as fond of their gameplay, especially for the late game maps which are so merciless. Even if this review does seem a bit critical of Joshy, I still enjoyed many of his earlier efforts throughout the WAD, barring perhaps some maps like Map 7, Simple Prison-Yard, where the fighting is so cramped and asphyxiating. 3 and a half stars, but I'll be good and round it to 4 because it still deserves a play. Maybe lower the difficulty if you're not overly hardcore, though.