Jokin

Hah, I'm glad to have "inspired" something like this. The DWMC is such a cool idea, but I'm usually too late when I want to join it. Community Chest 2 is a wad that is definitely on my "To play" list, mostly because of The Mucus Flow. The video MtPain did on it really peaked my interest. I dont want to be "spoiled", but I'll keep an eye out in case you happen to play a WAD I've already played.

Plutonia 2:

Gonna make use of that comment to not resurrect the thread way later. Speed of doom: Currently I'm playing through Plutonia 2 (MAP22 at the moment). Plutonia2 has me with a constant grin, because of how good it does what it tried to be.

HELL REVEALED: Final thoughts: Hell revealed was overall a pretty sadic experience. I understand that its an old WAD, but the amount of high HP enemies that didn't even pose a threat just halts the flow of the game to a crawl, this happens especially with barons of hell. The later half of the WAD just seemed tough to get through, not because the levels were difficult, but because they weren't as fun to play. Overall, it seems Hell Revealed has aged pretty poorly, however, some levels actually were pretty good. A highlight for me has to be map26: despite me not liking the ecounters too much, I have to admit its creativity, making it visually and stand out from the rest of the WAD . I don't think I will be replaying hell revealed any time soon except for maybe a couple of maps. However I've been playing some Speed Of Doom, and I'm already loving the WAD.

I thought about it, but probably it will take him a long time to even learn about this achievement. You could just name the video "This doom level took 12 years to beat" and the views would come in rolling.

Absolute legend

I have to admit that at the beginning I was one of those completionists and I would get frustrated when I couldn't find secrets, however it didn't take long for me to skip secrets when I wouldn't find them. The hud is both a blessing and a curse. The first time it ruined my enjoyment of a level was when it spoiled me plutonia MAP31's fake exit.

Yeah sometimes I wanted to record a couple of things and in order to not deal with all the bitrate settings I decided to use Shadowplay, but I still think that OBS is the way to go.

ALIEN VENDETTA FINAL THOUGHTS: Alien Vendetta leaves me conflicted, and makes me constantly doubt my thoughts on DOOM mapping. Alien Vendetta seems to be widely loved in this site, and I was really excited to get into it. Some maps were really fun to play through, however, finishing other maps felt like a drag. During my playthrough, some levels just felt so frustrating that I had to take some pauses, either playing through another WAD or not playing DOOM at all, and this is shown on the almost 3 months that took me to finish it. And at this point is that I'm confused. I've heard so many good things about this WAD. Did I fail to see them? Maybe I didn't appreciate some things enough? Maybe I'm not good enough? Maybe I wasted too much ammo? Maybe I was taking too much chip damage? Maybe this fight is totally fair and I'm just underprepared? Maybe people look at AV in a different way because of nostalgia? Maybe I've been spoiled by some modern WADs? Or am I the one who has a prejucide against older ones? It's a weird sensation where I feel that I'm not playing the maps right. And it's a shame, because there were many levels where I was having a ton of fun, where I thought the level was good, only for the level to last for another 10 minutes that would end up in pain. One example of this would be MAP25, I believe it overstays its welcome after the huge fight with archviles resurrecting everything. Overall I would say that AV has high peaks and low lows, levels like MAP20: MISRI HALEK maybe weren't stellar on the gameplay side, but it's been probably two months since I played it and I can still remember the pyramid built on a volcano, because the concept was flawlessly executed. I really enjoyed the Alien Vendetta MIDI pack though. Some of my highlights are highlights: MAP32, MAP16, MAP17, MAP19, MAP23 and the amazing track of MAP24. I'm really interested on hearing some of your thoughts about Alien Vendetta, maybe this is a megawad that I have to eventually revisit.

To add to the "death pits" Non obvious secrets that require you to go through damaging floors Also failing some basic platforming and having to waste ~30s to go back where I was and attempt it again.

One of the things that I haven't understood about "Scythe inspired" gameplay is the huge difference that one can find between the first 24 maps of Scythe and the last 6, it makes it seem a little more vague? One of the main elements of plutonia for me were the ambushes, when I think plutonia inspired I think of them.

VALIANT: My favorite WAD so far. I was finding the levels so fun that I didn't mind restarting them, so I've beaten the entire WAD without using saves, except for MAP31, I thought it would take me too many tries to do it. FINAL THOUGHTS: Valiant is my favorite WAD so far. Skillsaw is just an insane map maker. I feel like there is so much I want to say but I dont know how to begin, so lets start with the changes it does to classic DOOM. I have to say that while I was going through the skill improvement WADs I wanted to keep them as vanilla as possible, but Eviternity opened my mind and changed my opinion, and to follow it up with Valiant just solidifies it even more. I think the best types of modifications are those that don't deviate too much from the classic doom formula. One thing I realized in BTSX EP1 was how heavy enemies aren't fun without heavy weapons, and not many levels give the player a plasma gun early on, which means that usually you either get the SSG or the Rocket launcher. But then there is Valiant, that introduces the super chaingun, which is another heavy weapon that uses bullets. This is something similar to what happened in Doom2, the introduction of the SSG allowed the creation of more heavy enemies and we can see something similar in VALIANT, this new weapon is followed by new monsters, and since it uses bullets it doesn't compete with the other weapons, allowing it to have its own place. Speaking of enemies, I like every single enemy and modification added by this WAD. The super imps and super pinkies are amazing, they are just more dangerous than their regular counterparts and dont deviate too much from their original selves. Arachnorbs are really fun, although apparently they aren't widely liked from what I've read in some youtube comments. They don't have a lot of health while having a great damage output which lets you use them as an early level cacodemon replacement, plus I think that them spawning sometimes from arachnotrons is a very cool detail. The cyberbruisers are relatively squishy, dying with 6 shots of the stock shotgun and I heavily prefer this ones over their Eviternity counterpart that has a hitscan attack after rockets. The kamikazes fill the role of a more dangerous pinky and their damage output is insane and he super mancubus (I just call them tankubus) is probably the weakest addition of the bunch if you ask me. But of course that I'm saving the best for last because I just love the pyro knight, its threatening, has a high damage output, not much health and prone to infighting. Just thinking about some of Valiant's most memorable fights and mentally replacing the pyro knights with normal hell knights already makes them seem less fun in my head. The balance all of this new enemies along with the super chaingun seems perfect too, which is even more incredible. Then we get to the levels... pretty much every single one of them is amazing. I think Act 4 is the weakest, except for MAP20-SWEPT INTO INMOLATION, I found most of its levels less fun than the average Valiant map. If I had to pick some of the coolest ones or the ones they struck to me they would be: MAP06-ENGINEERING DISASTER, MAP07-THE MANCUBIAN CANDIDATE, MAP14-IMPLOSION, MAP15-SCREAMS AREN'T A CRIME... YET, MAP18-CRUSH DEPTH. Honorable mentions would go for: MAP25-THE EAGLE HAS LANDED, I was really convinced that you couldn't make encounters vs heavy enemies fun with only a stock shotgun and proved me wrong. MAP31-CYBERWAR 7734 has distinctive visuals and the highest killcount of the WAD, making it hard to forget. MAP32-GHOSTS OF THE OLD KINGDOM has a really interesting concept that I will remember for a while. MAP28-ROCKET ZONE II of course. This level is in my opinion the best map in the entire WAD (and my all time personal favorite so far). To think that Skillsaw did Valiant just to follow it up the next year with Ancient Aliens just blows my mind, I'm definitely going to keep an eye out for his next creation. He's also made me pay more attention to map makers, so I think I'm going to be keeping an eye out for who creates the maps in each WAD from now on. Honestly, re-reading my notes makes me think that maybe I should try to write a bit more about the level itself. Part of the reason why I dont do it is mostly because I want to hop into the next level as soon as possible. To finish up, I will say that VALIANT is so far my favorite WAD in the gameplay department, with Ancient Aliens being the one with best visuals and music so far (both Skillsaw WADs, although music was done by Stewboy). I could honestly write even more about Valiant, so if you would like to read me rambling about something in particular just let me know. Now if you don't mind, I'm going to watch Dean of Doom's video on Valiant, as I usually wait until I have written my post to see the video so it doesn't affect my original opinion. It is an essential Doom experience indeed, you were totally right. I want to hop right into Alien Vendetta, but Struggle sounds really tempting. I think I will play AV first, as I think it will be a good change of pace. So far my experience has been that modern WADs are consistently more fun and seem to have higher highs, probably because the level design had time to mature and iterate, but I expect this to be challenged as 21 years later people still hold AV in high regard.

100% agreed. A common issue I run into is when a map places heavy enemies without giving you a heavy weapon. I do not enjoy having to shoot 6-8 times the stock shotgun to kill a mancubus, a hell knight or a caco, it takes too long. I would go for an enemy that would probably survive 3-4 stock shotgun hits that would deal similar damage to a hell knight or a cacodemon. I think it would allow maps where you dont need to quickly give the player a heavy weapon to have more interesting encounters.

BACK TO SATURN X FINAL THOUGHTS: Back to Saturn X EP 1 is a really solid WAD, however, through my playthrough I felt like it was pulling its punches. I'm partly to blame because I decided to play without coop monsters enabled, because I wanted to try out the "original" intended experience and because when I started running the game with -solonet I would be unable to pause the game, which is something I do from time to time to collect my thoughts and write my notes sometimes. I also felt that there was a lack of BFG, which is probably the reason why there weren't that many big fights. Probably a conscious design decision, as the readme mentions how the maps have been designed to make non-pistol starts more of a challenge than usual. It's also possible that I missed some secret BFGs, but honestly if thats the case I'm not a fan of those. I hate feeling stuck on a fight, only to check the wiki and realize I missed a secret BFG. Sometimes they are in plain sight but the way of getting to them is the tricky part and I think that's okay, and BTSX does this at least once or twice. When all its said and done, BTSX E1 is a really solid WAD with nice visuals, fun gameplay and an absolutely stunning soundtrack ("Liquid Luck" from James Paddock has been stuck in my head for days). Although, towards the end the WAD begins to feel a bit repetitive. It's also helped me realize that I have a preference for fights with a large number of enemies, as most of the difficulty seemed to come from fights with a small amount of demons. BONUS: So the other day I got recommended the RUSH OST on youtube, and I noticed there were more levels than I remember playing. Turns out I was right, and Archi had been working on a part 2 for a while, but ended up dropping them separately. Here is the review for those 3 levels: RUSH (PART 2): FINAL THOUGHTS: 3 solid levels that made me realize I was missing a bit of slaughter in BTSX, thanks to Archie for retaking the project at least for a little while, I really enjoyed the change of pace. As an update, currently I have two playthroughs currently "frozen" (one of them being Going Down), and right now I'm playing through Valiant and I'm loving it so far. I might play BTSX EP2 after it, or maybe Plutonia 2, we will see.

I'm honestly not sure when something is hard to beat when using saves, but most times I don't have to load saves that much, and the saves are done after I beat fights most of the times, so I guess it does feel weasy. Thanks for the clarification, I think I will dive into Back to Saturn X first and then see from there if I go into Plutonia 2 or Valiant.