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Brick | 1 wad | 39 maps Adventure | 2 wads | 40 maps 32in24-10: MAPS FOR THE MAP GOD (2010) by The 32in24 Team. 39 DM maps for Doom II in Boom. Another entry in the usually-multiplayer 32in24 series, where a group of authors have 24 hours to put together a full megawad's worth of speedmaps. Some of the more memorable entries in the series had some sort of unifying theme, but this one seems to be "just make some maps", and even went over the allotted 32 limit (the joys of MAPINFO). As expected the maps are a mixed bag, some are plain, some simple but clever and probably make the most classic DM gameplay, and some are surprisingly involved and complex. The most architecturally impressive are all Mechadon's, they're beautiful to behold and with tons of detailing. Rottking's would probably be the most fun to play, they may not look as impressive but the flow of arenas and weapon positions are very clever, though he also has probably the worst map in there, a maze that I cannot imagine being fun in any way. Our very own Walter has a few maps; one in particular has a ton of city doomcute (and starts you in a tank) and I think would've made an awesome SP map elsewhere (not saying it's not a great DM map as well!). Timeofdeath has progression (if you can say a DM map has progression) that would not look out of place in a puzzle map. The lack of a strong theme makes the compilation less memorable than the more famous 32in24s but there are still lots of good maps to frag your friends in, and some of the sights are worth checking even in tourist mode.

It's been a busy summer and I've not had much time for ER/IWA, or for Doom or any gaming for that matter. I'll try to slowly go back to regular playing/posting, I've missed the Adventures and reading everyone's reviews. I'm going to be selective with what little time I have for now and be a bit more choosy which rolls I go with. Czequisite Corpse (2021) by various. 1 SP map for Doom II in Boom. This follows what has become a time-honoured Doom tradition of giving a bunch of mappers each a section of map to make, usually unaware of what the others are doing, then stitching all the fragments together into a hopefully-cohesive whole. The title is a wink at one of the early attempts, Exquisite Corpse, with the mappers hailing from the Czech community, hence the pun. One original design I haven't seen before is using hexagons instead of the typical squares, with 7 fragments in total, it makes for more interesting connectivity. The map is not very large, with a low monster count that is very misleading because it gets very tough. The early going were rough until I found some ammo, the middle part was relatively easy and went well, and then I hit a wall with the fight in the NE hexagon. It's also where I got annoyed with the map, unless I missed something you need to rely on archvile jumps to progress, and since I killed them ASAP I found myself very stuck. I also never found the RL in the map, which made this and the last fight more tedious than anything. The layout and design are pretty clever though, and most of the fragments are very good looking.

I didn't expect a sequel! I know I wrote detailed criticism of the first, but despite these I did enjoy it a lot and was impressed with the craft and creativity in it. It looks like this continues the trend of mixing heavy atmosphere and darker humour, which I think worked really well in The Experiment. I won't be able to try it but I hope to have some time in a month to give it a go, I look forward to seeing what you cooked up this time. Congratulations on the release!

The Top 100 and early Cacowards sometimes picked wads for reasons adjacent to quality. H2H is probably the worst of the bunch, clearly picked for the novelty more than how well it's executed. I have similar feelings about Memento Mori, it has many of the flaws that make people use "90s wad" as a pejorative and these flaws are not in many of the wads of the era that are much better than it, but MM has more exposure and popularity (and a fantastic soundtrack, I wonder if the music is the real reason for its popularity). Did you play some of those other 1995 Top 10? I really really like The Final Gathering, I like The Artifact, and if you like puzzle maps you'll enjoy Enigma Episode. There are other great wads outside the Top 100 too of course, if you like Enigma you should try Jim Flynn's Titan series, and if you liked Nostromo's adventure aspect you may like The Inner Circle.

Brick | 2 wads | 5 maps Adventure | 6 wads | 9 maps Corrupted Citadel (2021) by GeniusBandit or Doomboy1999. 1 SP and 3 DM maps for Doom II in GZDoom. The text file hints that this will run on any ZDoom variant but it seems more specifically for GZDoom or variants. The main map is very pretty, I thought the detailing was very well done with nice architecture capturing the look of old ruins. On the flip side, gameplay is not bad but also not terribly interesting, progression is linear with little imagination when it comes to the switches, combat is equally straightforward with very compartmentalized fights, none of which won't be something you've seen many times by now. One gimmick seems to be that each of the fights seems intended for a particular weapon given right before the fight (the hitscan army with the chaingun, the mancubi and knights with the RL, the archvile with the SSG), but there's nothing stopping you from using a previously-earned weapon instead. The next 3 maps are DM arenas that are bits and pieces of MAP01 taken on their own, I think older wads like The Darkening had done something similar. Ultimately this seems to belong to a category of GZDoom wads that prioritize visuals, with gameplay being a bit amateurish but not bad. Sin City 2 The Satan Complex (2003) by Ed Cripps. 1 SP map for Doom II in ZDoom. The original Sin City was Ed's first (certainly not last!) award-winner, an early ZDoom extravaganza that used many of the advanced port features to create a small, classic-playing but very memorable map. This sequel goes all-out with the ZDoomisms and tries to do more of everything; perhaps too much. The opening with the still drawings and narration is nice, but we then move into typical ZDoom cutscene and it drags on and frankly never worked for me in this engine; thankfully there are no other cutscene interruptions until the endgame. The location is a highly detailed techbase, well done and good-looking. Combat is mostly incidental, none of it really stands out. It's the progression that I thought was the biggest step down, it doesn't flow as organically, you come across so many locked doors or bars, pressing a switch somewhere means having to recheck a half dozen or more locations to see which one is now open (I have complained about Putrefier doing this too), and to make matters worse at least one of the "doors" is just a wall and never opens. I hope crouching is allowed, because I have no idea how you're supposed to get to the red key otherwise. There are some nice bits of storytelling such as the engineer mentioned in the intro, who you can find and later helps open the exit, it's all conveyed within the engine and without any printed words, a real triumph of show-don't-tell. There's a lot of Dehacked work, quite a bit of it to make special effects for blowing up the reactor, it looks very cool. ZDoom is also used to switch the music several times, none of the tracks are credited but they're fun and fit the action well. Despite all the spectacle I don't think it's Ed's best map and a step down from the first one, but it's not bad and the care put into it is undeniable.

Digital Deceit (2005) by Rory Habich "Roerei". 1 SP map for limit-removing Doom. The biggest problem with the map is that you have only the shotgun and chaingun and there are a bunch of barons and swarms of cacos to go through. The map is in the E4M1 slot and it's fitting considering shotgun guys are so abundant (at least it means there are plenty of shells). It's not as health-deprived as Hell Beneath, but I still had to count my stimpacks and medkits (I couldn't figure out how to get the Supercharge). I think I could've managed with the backtracking if there was more ammo, but having to backtrack so much for progression AND because I was scrounging for bullets was annoying. It's a shame because the base looks very nice, the detailing is not overdone but is very competent. With just a few tweaks here and there I could see this being a much better map. Monocromatic Fortress (2007) by Walter "Daimon" Confalonieri. 1 SP/coop map for Doom II in Boom. When I saw the tiny monster count on HNTR I decided to break with tradition and play on HMP. I got my ass kicked when the invulnerability ran out before I got rid of the Cyberdemon, and it took a few attempts to dispatch him since the lack of any health or armor means he insta-kills. The swarm of cacos and PEs at the end also took me by surprise, but I managed to evade them and take the exit. The actual monochromatic aspect is fun but the fortress itself is frankly ugly outside of the inversemap effect. Walter has made much better maps, but as far as a concept goes it's not bad and I appreciate Walter's honesty about it just being a simple fun idea. The "about" section has Walter professing his love of everything Japanese, and it's cute in a very 90s wadinfo way. Continue ... (1996) by Ondrej Laba. 1 SP map for vanilla Doom II. ICID is correct that the wad is much older than the upload date of 2005. Unfortunately he is also correct in his warning to me that the map is utter garbage. On top of the miserable progression that he detailed (and that unmentionable timed lift), combat is grindy and tedious, with packs of nobles together blocking each others' shots, chaingunners spaced out on damaging floor for maximum annoyance, PEs belching lost souls across vast distances... The map isn't particularly pretty, I'd normally forgiving the complete lack of attempt at even basic alignment but it's so egregious here. I admit I did not finish the map, after two teleport excursions I'd just had enough. The Demons Found My Crack Supply! (2023) by Avix. 1 SP map for vanilla Doom. A good palate/palette cleanser* after that last wad. It's yet another E1 homage but I like that it evokes so many bits and pieces of Romero's designs without copying them directly, and manages to cram so many of them in a tiny map. The little dehacked change to have one of the doors say "this door is opened elsewhere" is such a neat little trick, it's not really necessary here but in a larger map where the switch that opens it would be so far away it would make backtracking so much less of a hassle. The only drawback is that the map is so easy, but I won't pile on when it's otherwise so well done. It was over quickly but it was fun to play.

Brick | 1 wad | 10 maps Adventure | 8 wads | 35 maps DOOM II: Hellscape (2017) by Chris Lutz of The Chaos Crew. 10 SP maps for Doom II in ZDoom. Did you ever think that the best way to make Nirvana even better would be to make it very very dark and add precision platforming? If so this wad is for you. These thoughts never crossed my mind so I found myself off to a very rocky start when I couldn't see anything, got repeatedly slaughtered on HNTR, and then cheated through the added platforming section because nope. The darkness thankfully isn't as bad in the later maps, but the punishing combat and unforgiving platforming did not let up. Each map is a remake of an IWAD map from the Hell episode, sometimes with the exact same progression, others with the general idea intact but much changed. Unfortunately the general pattern was to take whichever element was already frustrating with the original then crank it up; the thin walkways are now broken up to make the platforming harder (you can imagine what this looks like in Chasm now), chaingunners are everywhere and are so much deadlier in their positioning, radsuits are rarer in those maps with lots of damaging floors. I kept hoping I'd reach a map that I liked, but even the much lauded MAP29 was even more frustrating with projectiles (many homing) flying all over the very large open spaces and the chaingun snipers reaching almost comical proportion. Much as I found the gameplay aggravating, the other aspect that Chris has cranked up for the remakes is the detailing, and they all look stunning now. In the hands of a less skilled architect it would have been over the top, but trust Chris to make this insane amount of detailing look incredibly good and often much more consistent than the original. Outside of the darkness in MAP21 (and in parts of MAP28) the lighting is equally gorgeous, it's going to be so strange the next time I boot up the IWAD and see just how plain the originals are. I really, really wanted to like this one, Caverns of Darkness is one of my favourite wads, I like many of the remakes if id's maps that are out there, and these ones look so beautiful, but the gameplay didn't work for me at all. (Technically these are Boom maps, but Chris mentions testing almost only in ZDoom and that he had infinitely tall actors turned off, and I'm not sure the more conservative ports allow you to do this in Boom complevel).

Brick | 1 wad | 6 maps Adventure | 7 wads | 25 maps Vile Flesh (demo version) (2003) by Gwyn Williams. 6 maps for Doom II in Boom. Looks like I rolled another "teaser wad". I've played the full megawad before and liked it. This is a demo version that Gwyn released almost a year earlier, while still working on completing the megawad. The port requirements are odd, none are mentioned at all for the demo version; the full version requires Boom complevel but not for the reasons you'd expect, none of the maps use any Boom specials, but some do rely on the Boom bugfixed behaviours for things like stair building. I'm not sure if these maps are among those included in this demo. Anyway I digress, the demo is a selection of maps that don't necessarily follow, they're picked from all over what would become the wad's final map selection. They're fairly representative of the megawad's tone, difficulty and design though, and they are in the same order as their final appearance, so you can see them becoming longer, more complex and more difficult, though this progression is obviously not as smooth here. As I played through the demo, some maps were slightly redone or improved while others ended up almost unchanged in the final wad (as far as I could tell MAP02 and MAP03 are identical to their megawad versions). The one thing that I found sorely missing was the custom soundtrack, entirely composed by Gwyn, and which gives the megawad a lot of personality, the demo just uses the stock music. I had fun replaying these maps but I see no reason to come back again to the demo, the final release has everything that's here and so much more, though the demo was released long before the full version became available so it was a pretty good way to build interest in the project.

MAP12 "Hostile Planet" The map looks deceptively small but is very deadly. As always ammo is a premium, letting that PE spawn too many lost souls is asking for trouble. I was not a fan of the crusher room puzzle, the timer is very tight and the vast majority of the switches don't seem to do anything. The finale is another instance of poor skill balance (at least in this case BPRD didn't even bother, as opposed to actively screwing over HNTR players), with nine monster spawners in a convoluted maze of teleport and lifts, though at least since this isn't the MAP30 slot there's no risk of getting telefragged (the map would be so much harder otherwise, since the spawn spots are all over the place and even if you know where they are there's not much chance of going around them). MAP13 "Revelations" The opening vista is striking, mirroring MAP01's but with colours and lighting that give it a much more ominous and dire tone. The inside of the facility is likewise a nightmarish version of the original. Going past the door that leads to where the exit used to be is actually where the map proper begins, a humongous cavern with hundreds of enemies and a massive central structure. Four offshoot passages must be completed, each with its own set of tricks and traps, to reach the top of the struture and the final battle there, which ends with the now familiar self-destruct switch. It's a very impressive map, but I admit that at this point I did not have the patience to even try do it fair. I'm echoing others' final thoughts when I say my feelings towards Equinox are polarized. It's a beautiful set, BPRD can craft impressive architecture and can build compelling progression inside it, sending the player around and above and under to make his maps so much more than just a pretty building that can only be seen from a distance. He has such a knack for storytelling too, and perhaps because it's all done in the vanilla engine and without a single word it can be so much more compelling than the interminable cutscenes seen in ZDoom wads of that era. Unfortunately BPRD was also a bit of a troll (understatement of the month) and for every interesting and challenging gameplay setpiece he had to put in another half dozen that are just a middle finder to the player. The wad's ridiculous ammo starvation has already been mentioned by almost everyone else, but I have to pile on because the balance for HNTR on some of the maps is to keep the enemies almost as is and just remove half the ammo, and I have no possible explanation for what would possess a mapper to do this. As with BPRD's other serious works this reaches all the way up to the top, but then falls just inches short and ends up so much less than it could've been. I completely understand getting burnt out, especially with the amount of time he must have spent on this, it's just a shame that he seems to get bored and move on when 99% of the work is already done, and maps end up half as good as they could've been. I'm still glad I played it and experienced its positive aspects.

Brick | 1 wad | 11 maps Adventure | 6 wads | 19 maps Hell Revealed Episode 1 (1996) by Yonatan Donner and Haggay Niv. 11 maps for vanilla Doom II. I wonder, if Donner and Niv had called it a day after releasing this and never completed what would become Hell Revealed, would it have had anywhere near the influence that it did? What we have here is in the same vein is the first third of the full HR, though the correspondence is not exactly 1:1. The most striking difference is actually the soundtrack, instead of the ROTT tunes that are such an integral part of HR's identity, we get a selection of early 90s famous songs turned into MIDI to varying success (a couple of the Nirvana ones are just plain awful; this makes me realize the Dream On adaptation we heard with Rim was truly excellent, as ICID pointed out a few days ago). Instead of the cheeky non-story there's actually an elaborate one with level-by-level progression, though it's pulpy as can be (and humorously self-aware). The maps are mostly lifted from early HR, though I felt some are a little different (and maybe easier here?), and there's at least one that I didn't recognize at all; maybe I'm just not remembering well. Playing through the set reminded me of a thought I had long ago, that when people talk about Hell Revealed influence they really mean the second half, as opposed to the short, occasionally punchy but relatively easy first episode. I think I also enjoy these more than the later more famous ones, they're a lot less grindy for one, and there are some fun setpieces, perhaps less memorable but also less aggravating (no, I'm not a fan of Afterlife. It's a great idea, on paper, but I find it so incredibly tedious to actually play). I imagine not many will find much of interest here, especially when most of the maps reappear in the meatier and much more famous megawad, but I can't deny I had fun blasting through these quickies.

MAP10 "The Mothership" This fall under great idea, flawed execution, absolutely terrible skill balancing. HNTR has almost 3/4th of the archviles but barely half the ammo. Apparently even on UV the ammo is tight and every shot counts, but on HNTR there's no escaping the fact that either several AVs have to be ignored (impossible in some cases, really not recommended in others) or if playing continuous the chainsaw will see a lot of use (... even less recommended?). The finale is a small arena with 15 archviles, and no chance (and no reason) to fight them, it's just a matter of rushing the invulnerability sphere and then being able to see through all the fire and the flying around to press both switches in succession. The map looks beautiful and the atmosphere could've been superb, but it's killed by the ridiculous lack of ammo and the fact too many of the AV fights cannot be avoided. Survival horror is a tricky line to tread, especially when it comes to keeping ammo just low enough, and at least on HNTR the balance here goes too far overboard. MAP11 "Equinox Transport Hub IV" Probably the last visit to the hub, the three teleporters have all been used, the structural damage is even more pronounced, and now one of the walls has fallen away to reveal underground passages. The ledges provide some nice goodies if followed to the end. There's one big fight in front of the strange teleport but I had conserved all those cells handed out along with the BFG at the very beginning and it made short work of it.

Brick | 1 wad | 4 maps Adventure | 5 wads | 8 maps Return to Daro (2017) by Ryath/scwiba. 4 SP maps for vanilla Doom II. An homage to the famous STRAIN megawad released on its 20th anniversary by a mapper who clearly loves the original. I do as well, but unfortunately I wasn't enamored with these maps. The link to STRAIN is obvious, RtD uses all of that wad's custom assets, including the new enemies (according to the text file, you'll know that everything is loaded properly because if it's not then monsters will be stuck in odd places), but the influence doesn't seem to have carried over to the mapping style itself. It's been a while but I remember STRAIN maps being rather good for 1997, but I found these ones lacking. Most of the maps look very blocky, with lots of right angles, a lot of the rooms look like rectangular shapes inside other rectangles. The first maps are almost entirely plain old shotgun against almost the entire gamut of enemies, which is grindy even against the modified enemies (STRAIN's Dehacked does a good job reducing sponginess). Progression is irritating in parts, the colour indicators for doors don't always correspond to ones that need keys, more often they're opened by some random switch elsewhere in the map; worse, there are several instances of crossing a linedef somewhere than presciently backtracking to what opened. Overall the set left me cold.

Brick | 1 wad | 1 map Adventure | 4 wads | 4 maps Disturbia (2009) by Death-Destiny. 1 SP/coop map for Doom II in Boom. I know of Death-Destiny of course so thought I knew what I was getting into, but this wasn't quite what I expected. In Death-Destiny's own words "this is a very wierd [sic] map", he cites BPRD and Huy Pham as influences. The Mucus Flow is very evident in the map's structure: you start next to weapons that need the keycards to access, with a ton of ammo and health, and a computer screen nearby helpfully informs you that the monster-turrets (there are a LOT of them) will keep respawning. Some of the ideas are executed more gently here though. Most of the early turrets are imps instead of hitscans, though there will be a few nastier ones later. The weapons are all near the beginning (interestingly: no shotguns. This also means no Shotgun Guys), but there are multiple ammo caches throughout so backtracking all the way to the beginning is not required. Even that is made much easier thanks to the map layout being a little less a single line, and multiple secrets that open instant teleport to and from positions near the start, it really makes navigation so much more fun. The starting enemy count seems daunting but the vast majority are tied into the respawns, and here too there's a button to stop them all, followed by a teleport series that telefrags a great many of the turrets in quick sequence (including the pesky Cyberdemon), it's such a satisfying way to get rid of the reinforcements. Even then the map is anything but easy, the pros will have a blast but I struggled even on ITYTD+ and ended up cheating through some of the nastier bits, Death-Destiny uses Archviles and Cyberdemons aggressively. The architecture lacks the out-of-this-world quality of The Mucus Flow but it's very well done and quite beautiful in parts. The Deus Vult influence is felt a bit more here, and especially in some of the neat visual storytelling: there's the gaping maw that we jump down for the final part, there's the button that upsets the land when switched (complete with ominous lighting changes) and that is righted again at the very end, and getting the BFG is a fun little moment. Despite not playing the map quite fair I had a lot of fun with it, it may not have the sheer awe of its main influence but it executes most of the ideas very well and I'd say much better while still retaining their essence, it ended up as one of the Top 100 Most Memorable Maps and deservedly so. I played Doom Redemption for ER/IWA earlier this year and liked it a lot. It's one of those wads that sticks pretty closely to the traditional formula while maintaining very high quality.

MAP08 "Equinox Transport Hub III" Another quick jaunt through the hub, with even more signs of damage. There's a mancubus, a PE and a couple of revenants now but they're not too threatening. It's nice to see attempts at making the map more than just a lazy copy/paste, even where the architecture is similar (and very simple to begin with) there are small changes in texturing to evoke the same place at a later time. MAP09 "The Hangar" Infighting: The Map. The ammo provided early on is nowhere near enough to deal with the initial onslaught (in fact it wasn't even enough for mopping up), but getting everything to kill each other is very entertaining. I'm not a fan of maps that expect me to abuse exploits, since my first reaction is to assume I'm missing something then start looking for a switch or trigger that doesn't exist, but I can't complain too much since it turns out the blue key is completely optional. The setpiece outdoors is an even messier infighting than the first, though once I got it going I realized there's no point sticking around to watch and just went about my busines. The secret definitely helps, for the energy pack even more than the invulnerability. I definitely don't recommend maxing this one, but it's reasonably fun if one's inner compulsiveness can be ignored. The alien ship orbiting above looks very cool.

Brick | 3 wads | 3 maps my corrupted DOOM 2 home (1996) by Brian Glines. 1 SP map for vanilla Doom II. It would be easy to mock this for adhering to most of the pejorative aspects of early myhouse wads, but it's honestly charming in many ways. Yes the windows are just the sky texture plastered over a wall, yes weapons and ammo are strewn about everywhere, yes the texturing is pretty monotonous, but there's a lot of doomcute everywhere. The teleport to make the two storeys is not the most imaginative but removing the sounds is a clever little trick. Difficulties are balanced aggressively, HNTR is a walk in the parc while UV is a full on hitscan hell from the start (and I could hear an archvile lurking somewhere). It's not the best wad but as far as myhouses of the era you could roll a lot worse. LIFTLL (1995) by Larry Ludwick. 1 SP map for vanilla Doom. This is meant to be a puzzle map, but it's the kind I never cared for. Everything is hidden behind a secret door, everything is by trial and error, even misalignments are not always a sign there's a door, hard to tell if that's by design to mislead or just sloppy (or nonexisting?) alignment. There is are no hints and clues to find or patterns to discern, the text file quite literally says to hump every wall. There is some verticality but like everything else it's very blocky, no sign of anything as subtle as stairs or incremental changes, everything feels in your face. Texturing is awful, textures get cut off or are allowed to tile in the most nonsensical way possible. I've played worse, but I can't say this is much good. Rim - The Colony (1997?) by Frank Polster. 1 SP map for vanilla Doom. Coming from the previous one this is great, but I think it's good in its own right. It's hard to tell when it was really made; the upload date of 2006 is definitely too late, the text file is from 1999 but the wad itself is dated 1997, and I suspect the map is even older because of the tools used and because there's a mention of HOMs in 1.2 so that version must've been at least somewhat still in use. As for the map it's a large watery area with several buildings in it, and actual architecture and geometry; stairs spiral around the tower, there's good use of lighting between indoor and outdoor, little holes in the wall to install light fixtures inside... I know this sounds like the basics but those of us who spent time with ER/IWA should know better than to expect every map to have the basics. I think my favourite part of the mapping is those little details Frank included, like the burn out light (and the difference it makes in the light patch on the ground), the sight of the platforms rising to allow access to the last stretch, the look of that exit tower both from below and when reaching it, and especially the visible tripwire that triggers the last ambush. It's something I love about early maps, these little experimentations (whether visual or gameplay) that make so much sense but that didn't become standard. I won't go so far to call this one of the true random gems, but I had a great (albeit short) time with it.