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"Deja Vu all over again." Therefore Plutonia Revisited has been finished, played through GlBoom+ 2.5.1.5 on UV difficulty. A mostly pleasant surprise but could have offered more, so let's why that is. Plutonia Revisited is a 32-map megawad consisting of revamped versions of the existing levels from Final Doom's Plutonia Experiment expansion, made by various members of the community. It comes with new textures, music, status bar, intermission screens, and fonts. Unlike Plutonia 2, Plutonia Revisited does not aim to be a fan sequel of any sorts to the original IWAD, but rather aims to offer a different spin on the original maps from Plutonia while sticking to its design philosophy very closely and not taking too many liberties most of the time. Which is perhaps its greatest flaw. Although most levels bear striking similarities with the original, they are sometimes taken to a whole new level where they basically descend into rip-off territory. This is due to preserving too much from the original levels on quite a few occasions where its no longer about staying faithful to the original as these places in maps are almost identical, apart from perhaps a few changes here and there. This can be observed both early in the wad as well as later, when nearing the end. Another problem would be the music. The soundtrack is good and fits the theme, combat, and overall atmosphere of the levels, however it repeats the same mistake PL2 did, by being all over the place. Ultimate Doom, Doom II, and various sources or original works. Not particularly good for consistency. Luckily, those are also the only (major) problems of Plutonia Revisited. It does a great job at preserving the overall atmosphere, gameplay, and otherwise essence of the original while also adding its own spin to the levels, and the liberties taken are fairly big sometimes. As it was the case with PL2, it seems that MAP11 is once again the map that stands out of the crowd by being a re-imagining of the original while keeping its core element intact. This time, the player finds themselves into a city-like map, not too dissimilar from Odyssey of Noises sometimes, with an occasional PL2 vibe to it, but its much larger with wide, open areas, many enemy types, and complete lack of the door gimmick. It does keep the many Arch-Viles in place though, and they ambush the player in many ways, but usually only one or two of them is encountered at one time, apart from a few instances. Similar to PL2, the quality is fairly consistent considering the number of people who contributed to the project, but at the same time it's also easy to tell who made each map because they all play differently and have their unique play style and design. After all is said and done, the journey ends with the traditional IoS boss fight, short and straight-to-the-point, only needing to press a couple of switches to raise a platform and lower a lift, then blast the brains of the boss to pieces. It is by far a better take on the concept than PL2's effort with the awkward and hard to determine firing angles. Overall, PLR manages to be a good effort at re-imagining the original Plutonia while adding its own spin. It's fun and refreshing, despite its occasional dick encounters/traps, which are very, very few, and easy to see coming unlike the various instances seen in PL2 which were also more numerous. It could have been better if it took more liberties or at least didn't almost copy-paste parts from the original with only a few changes in places. Worth a shot for fans of Plutonia and PL2. My favorite maps are going to be the ones seen in the first half, and my least favorite level is going to be MAP20, the single and most obtuse level in the package. So, grab your weapons and prepare for the Revenant and AV onslaught.

Violence consists of four midsize level maps. It has a distinctive, beautiful and well crafted style which encompasses everything from visuals, sounds, music and gameplay to the name of the piece itself. For the visual part it uses the color violet and dark textures as it's main theme and gradually adds more bright neon colors to the mix. The first level has red as an additional color, second level introduces yellow. The theming is very consistent. Zombies greet you with their violet haircuts, barons shoot you with violet slime and all the plants (trees, vines, bushes, grasses, moss) are injected with violet instead of chlorophyll. Items and power-ups are either violet or use the other bright colors (red and yellow). Slime follows the same pattern, it's either violet, red or yellow depending on the level or setting. Textures are mainly dark grey or brown with occasional lighter variants and they are all decorated with the three bright colors, usually as scrolling light stripes. The weapon graphics have also been changed. I don't know if they are borrowed from somewhere else or made by the author. Either way I'm pretty neutral about them. Usually I heavily dislike visually diverting from the original weapons but here the new graphics suited well with the rest of the theme. The weapon sounds have also been altered. I'm generally against changing the sounds too but I found myself even liking some of the changes. Like the cool bass boost added to the double-barreled shotgun. It almost feels more powerful with that bass energy. And you can even use the weapon to add your own beat to that nicely fitting retrowave soundtrack. Yes, there's also a well selected soundtrack which feels integral part of the whole theme. Damn, sometimes I started to get a feeling I was in some weird synthwave night club dancing with the demons. This vision poured into my mind especially in the yellow keycard room in MAP04 which at first is well lit and all innocent. Then you hit the switch. And you know what happens in DooM when you hit a switch in a key room. Yes, lots of wild monsters appear! But this is no ordinary ambush. Lights go off and you find yourself in a disco ballroom decorated with neon yellow wireframes from Tron. Then you start shooting with your chaingun and the monsters react to your fire with a spastic seizure as they always do but here the effect looks as if they were dancing under strobe lights in some dark synthwave club. And then you probably die because there are just too many of them and they don't back off even though you scream and try with all your might (#metoo). Difficulty level is pretty fair. I've played this a few times in cooperative and now replayed in UV to write this review and I died only once (in the club room mentioned above). The author describes this WAD as "'sit back and play Doom' set" and I can't really disagree. This is one of the core reasons I like DooM. Give me flocks of monsters to kill in beautifully crafted levels at the right intervals and you'll keep me happy. Sometimes I might enjoy more exploration or even puzzles but it's always that fast paced yet laid back killing spree that pleases me the most. The gameplay flow broke only once. That was in MAP03 with the red bars. For the life of me I couldn't remember how to lower them. Turns out it works by stepping on the teleporter in the north-west island which takes you on top of a red pillar and when you step down from the pillar it lowers itself and the red bars. Not very intuitive beforehand. I would have placed at least an item on the teleporter to make the player go there in the first place. Now it was mostly luck that I went there. In coop there's a higher chance of someone activating it because more players running around the map. And when you compare the logic to how the yellow bars are lowered (with a button) it looks even more non-intuitive. Well, that's pretty much my only criticism to this otherwise brilliant piece of WAD artistry.

And thus, oh you know what I'm going to say already, Doom 64 for Doom II has been finished, played through GlBoom+ 2.5.1.5 on UV. So for an introduction, as the name implies D64D2 is a recreation of the classic Doom 64 originally released as a console exclusive for the N64. It aims to recreate the levels along with their gameplay using mostly vanilla Doom II resources. It features a new menu background, ENDOOM screen, new music, a few new enemies, namely the Nightmare Imp and Cacodemon as well as the final boss the Mother Demon, a few new textures, new intermission messages, a new end level screen, but no custom sounds or weapons, meaning that the unique and iconic Unmaker was not recreated in any way. For a recreation, I must say that the levels and their gameplay come quite close to the original Doom 64, nonetheless various liberties have been taken in different forms, ranging from new takes on various puzzles to completely new levels, as well as the usage of the enemies who were absent from the original due to memory limitations. The usage of enemies who were absent from the original game comes with mixed results as it doesn't always work, probably one of the most obvious flaws in the game. This is most noticeable primarily in the levels that came closest to their D64 counterpart as the environment was clearly not designed with them in mind. For instance, you'll encounter Revenants on narrow corridors quite often, and sometimes even Arch-Viles. This isn't a problem in larger areas where it's usually quite fun to fight them, but not in those particular areas. Chaingunners do seem to work quite well however since they can easily blend with the rest of the hitscanners. Compared to the original D64, a major difference is the tone and atmosphere of the game. D64 was slower paced and more atmospheric, whereas D64D2 is faster paced and puts less emphasis of that element, supported by the amazing but more action/fun oriented soundtrack. Perhaps the darker, much more hellish levels such as Unholy Temple are the most atmospheric levels in the entire game, and also the best looking. Unholy Temple is definitely my favorite level in D64D2. While on the subject of changes, some of them are very interesting. In the Void is probably the most surprising for me. The original map featured a light blue sky and a rather foggy atmosphere while the level itself was pretty bright, how does this map look like in D64D2? Well, it seems to literally take place in a void now. Indeed, the sky is now pitch black but luckily poor visibility in the level itself was avoided, at least for the most part, so there's no difficulty in seeing the enemies and where they are. It's a change that works quite well, unlike others. The most drastic changes were probably done to The Absolution where you can now locate 3 skulls, but in order to reach them you need to complete their own puzzles first, and they're not the exciting or fun type. The room with the yellow skull was probably the only one that was fun, the others? Well, for the red skull you have to go through an awkward platforming section where everything, including the enemies are... cloaked in darkness, while the room with the blue skull features a puzzle similar to the one seen in the room with the red key (Demon Key on the original D64) on Outpost Omega, except that it's longer, more complex, and more tedious. Not exactly changes done for the better. I don't know how exactly they impact the level though, but in my playthrough I didn't even fight the Mother Demon after aquiring all skulls, I just heard her screaming once while I was fighting the teleporting enemies thinking that she finally showed up to the battle, only for the end level screen to appear immediately afterwards, so I assume she died somehow. D64D2 also comes with some exclusive levels that were not part of the original D64, and I personally think they're little more than filler maps. They're not awful but nowhere near great either, and I'm unable to find any valid reason for their existence. This is primarily due to their nature. Their gameplay style and tone is very different from all the other levels and in consequence, they feel out of place, not mixing well with the rest of the maps. Still, at least they're very short and straightforward so you don't waste much time with them. And while on the subject, some of the secret levels from the original have been turned into regular maps, meaning that you don't have to search for secret exits to access them anymore. One such example is the previously mentioned Outpost Omega. All things considered, D64D2 manages to capture the spirit of D64 while also making plenty of changes, yet generally remaining faithful to the original. Some changes might have been done for the worse, but there's plenty done for the better as well. It's pretty short and easy, just like the original, so it can be finished in a day, you can't go wrong with it. A collective effort for an ambitious project that should be well worth your time if you like Doom 64 and want to see a different take on it.

This was more than overdue! I loved Dark Forces with its gloomy setting, and Paul totally nails the atmosphere of that classic and ports it over to Doom. Maps with sometimes impressive dimensions, GZDoom colored lighting support (you really shouldn't play it any other way), an awesome Star Wars-inspired PCorf soundtrack, rewarding secrets, PSX sounds to make monsters sound creepier and lots of love for details in general turn this into one of my favorite Doom projects of 2015. Play it!

Done with these settings: - Crispy Doom 5.2 - Ultra-Violence - Continuous combined with pistol start mindset. - Saves every 10 minutes or so. Short and sweet megawad, this provides a set of maps alike classic Doom II iwad-ish in byte-sized layouts for a quick experience. The mapper worked with a limitation I'm not very familiar with, it looks to be a sort of challenge he put to himself to work with a base of 300 limits, and I thought the results were more or less appealing, depending on the map. All around stock textures in simple design choices, such as monotextured corridors and lots of squared geometry, or even triangles, not much about details or tricks with light variation, although there's some decent usage of it, but that's not something really important to look for in a wad of this kind. And it's not needless to say how similar are certain places to original Doom II and other iwads, more like micro remakes, for example an easier version of The Chasm included in the same map with a convoluted Gotcha! scene, or a tiny crates maze that looks chunked from TNT's crates map. It was cool to revisit these visual concepts once again, even if for a short period of time. Also, PCorf included a vast selection of tracks for a change of pace, good to not hear the stock soundtrack in a wad where it would have casually fit too. Perhaps the limitation could have been executed with a bit more variation in combat and progression. The maps are easy to figure, linearity above all, you're usually entitled to dispatch enemies with your hitscan weapons, mainly shotguns, not a lot of opportunities to pull out your heavier weaponry if you go on pistol starts, or else it becomes exploration time where secrets hide them. Combat is straightforward incidental butches presented in front of you, with a few turrets here and there, and a couple surprise (or predictable) traps to keep you on your toes, generally including low-tiers in ambushes. Thing is, the same kind of tropes are repeated in most maps, such as corridor-shooting usually involving some zombies, hell nobles or pinkies, symmetrical placement (if there's a sergeant in this corner, there for sure is another one in the other corners), or the typical wall-of-meat guarding the exit, which lack any sort of threat on that context, although the latter is sometimes spiced up. When that's not the case, it can be fun run-and-gun, grinding through weaklings in fast mode, teleporting ambushes putting a bit of pressure, and some helpful berserk/chainsaw usage. The ideas work well together in my opinion, given the size of the maps it's a plus that the less entertaining parts don't drag on too long. Secret-wise, there's a high chance that you'll need to search for hidden weapons/ammo in order to kill everything in a few maps. That or to off high-HP enemies that otherwise will suck all your bullets. Some maps guard tons of secrets in very visible ways to find them, so that could be good for those who despise exploration (no idea why they would though...). I liked the ideas in the secret maps, the first one might have needed to be more violent, serving for the difficulty I was playing on, and the second one does its job as a casual map screwing limitations. For favourite maps I'd pick 10, 24 and 27, while the rest were more or less enjoyable. Overall, simple as it is, I liked this stuff, it's fairly accessible to people who want to take their first steps into pwads, that is, akin to the original game in terms of difficulty and aesthetics. My personal rate is 6,5/10.

Finally, a proper sequel to the other half of Final Doom - TNT: Evilution. Much like Plutonia 2 was to the original, this feels like a well-detailed modern equivalent to TNT with old-school vanilla flair. This time however there are plenty of all-new textures to add to the experience of a new flavor of TNT. First off, I want to say the soundtrack is AMAZING. I listened to the intermission track almost every time I completed a map in its entirety. There's so much character put into the soundtrack I would almost suggest giving it a listen before playing the WAD, but really it can be appreciated in either respect. I was glad to see (or hear) many talented musicians involved with this project I was not previously aware of - with the likes of Eris Falling, Viscra Maelstrom, Bucket, Eradrop, and one returning composer which I do remember from the 90's - Jeremy Doyle. Some of the tracks include remixes of days long past - with a cover of TNT's, "Into The Beast's Belly" and "Blood Jungle" in the form of TiN Toker and Reaching Deeper. Also featuring a couple tracks that echo Memento Mori and Requiem with, "Sea Bats" and "Your Last Resort". Anyone who remembers their playthrough of these WADs will be pleased to pick up on some familiar notes. Also worthy of note is Jeremy Doyle's involvement including some old tracks that date back as far as Requiem's development now making headline 20 years later with this past Summer release of Revilution. The tracks, "Neato" and "REQ-JD10" do remind me of an older time in Doom's WAD release history, but there's so much old-and-new content to be found in this WAD it's difficult to narrow down all the highlight moments. In my playthrough, I went for 100% kills/secrets on every level, and was only bested by purist's map in that regard with 1 secret that was difficult to notice. I also found out the hard way that MAP21 has a secret that can lose its effect when going for the yellow key, since it lowers the sector and erases the secret "effect" entirely. Otherwise, the only other odd instance was missing a few monsters on map 15 when I didn't properly set off a linedef-trigger to release their teleportation. A mishap on my part when I failed to thoroughly explore one of the outlying towers in a sea of toxic waste. I recall someone likening some of the new textures to that of Quake II's offerings, and I agree somewhat. They have a strong, gritty outlook in a sort of deep metallic-brown with plenty of TNT-isms to be found in silver-sheen borders and computerized-hellish environments. It has that contradictory nature of the original TNT, but fleshed out tastefully in an imaginative way. The only way I can think to fault this WAD is also somewhat similar to what could be said of Plutonia 2's offering compared to the original - in that TNT: Revilution doesn't delve deeply into the same level of absurdness that TNT sometimes had with some of its old-90's design tropes - although I'd argue that it seems to work well enough in favor of what's usually passed for quality. In other words - if you were looking to experience oddities like Administration Center or Mount Pain again, I'd suggest waiting for the eventual release of Final Doom The Way Id Did. All this aside, I was greatly surprised by what the mappers on board had to offer; collaborative efforts like, "Transduction" and Phobus with "Portal Facility" have a haunting atmosphere perfectly captured in the ghostly tracks that occupy them. The kickstarter map, "Uprising" with its guitar-driven soundtrack really excites me with the impression that TNT has finally returned these 20 years later - at the very least as a spiritual successor as driven by the community (that is - apart from not including the original members of TeamTNT). Eternal's sole offering, "Hell's Signs" probably feels the most like an offspring of the original TNT, as it nicely captures that otherworldly sprawl into a suspended hellish-cave in space. Purist's, "Spider Colony" to me almost felt like a John Romero take on TNT, which was an incredible delight. I'm also appreciative of Steve D's murderous affairs, "Blood Factory" and "Abandoned Port" which were some of the more troubling encounters save for gaspe's entry, "The Crash Site" and the joint Tarnsman/Alfonzo effort, "The Visage of Time." I won't spoil the new offerings of the last level, "Malignata" but I will say it makes very good use of DeHackEd and it's probably one of the most memorable last levels I've ever played in any megawad setting - I was happy to play it more than once if even just to find 1 of 2 secrets that were still missing. Really there's much to be said of what TNT: Revilution has to offer on board, but without sounding too long-winded I'd say it's better to experience the WAD and decide for yourself what map encounters stood out the most. Most of all I can appreciate that this WAD was setting out to do something new with each map - there were a few callback moments in my experience, but not enough to warrant the, "remake" label. As a sequel I felt it was right were it needed to be - a 21st-century transliteration of what made the original TNT especially unique, capitalized by no shortness of modern talents like Dobu Gabu Maru, Eradrop, Pinchy, Steve D, gaspe, and a great handful of others. I would gladly give this a 5/5 - I'd only apologize that I also have a couple of entries (maps 24 and 31) occupying the WAD without knowing what I was contributing to. That's still 30 maps worth of long hours of effort I was otherwise not involved with, and I'm surprised to find myself enjoying this megawad so much. Well done on the part of all the mappers and musicians involved including former project leaders Kyka and Eris Falling, and a big thank-you to Jaws In Space for seeing this project through to completion.

Yonatan Donner and Haggay Niv's Hell Revealed was about as hard a megawad could get back in 1997, but you never would believe so looking at the first few maps. Maps 1-8 and 10 are cordial and pleasant enough levels which aim to make you feel powerful and almighty, slaughtering many foes into claustrophia enducing layouts where you won't have much room to move. Hell Revealed likes its tight corridors and hallways and they will be a recurring motif until the very end of the level set. Starting with Map 11, Underground Base, HR finally reveals its hand. Prepare to fight off waves of beefy enemies like barons, mancubi, revenants, archviles and cyberdemons, all with very little supplies and weapons at your disposal. You have to be expected to have a good eye for secrets to even get the basic tools you need to do your job, at least when playing on Ultra Violence difficulty. Levels like Last Look at Eden (MAP13) and City in the Clouds (MAP14) almost play like puzzles, where you must figure out what the developer intends you to do. Fail to figure out the correct route? Have fun killing hordes of mid-tier monsters with just a shotgun and chaingun! Even then, following the correct path usually just gives you a super shotgun, which only slightly lessens the tedium factor. Throughout all of Hell Revealed, you will be constantly circle strafing in square or circular rooms, slowly shooting down hordes of beefy monsters with the SSG until several minutes later, everything is dead. This prospect gets even worse when level layouts are often devised to make infighting more difficult to happen than it should and the overbearing presence of Barons of Hell, which rule this WAD with an iron fist. Maps like The Path (MAP16), Hard Attack (MAP18) and Judgment Day (MAP20) commit to a grind-heavy mindset where battles are very slow, meticulous and painstakingly boring to win, which is the one factor that likely ages this WAD the worst. Hell Revealed is often criticized for its very crude looks, but I find it oddly charming and it has a strong visual identity. For better and for worse, you all remember the searing pink skies, Arachnophobia (MAP7)'s layout, where you fight spiders inside a giant spider, the heavily fortified areas and courtyard of Last Look at Eden, the circular ramparts of Gates to Hell (MAP15), the Doomcute flourishes of The Siege, where you start inside a cozy house that demons can't invade. It also has some stunning looking maps, like the future base of Ascending to the Stars (MAP23) and the experimental Afterlife (MAP26). It does make up for some of the more flat and brown maps like Chambers of War (MAP10) or Hard Attack (MAP18). The music of the WAD is taken straight from Rise of the Triad, but its soundtrack runs out around MAP20, where the rest of the journey must be undertook with the default Doom 2 music (with the exception of some ROTT reprisals at MAP27 and MAP29). While Hell Revealed mostly commits to grindy gameplay, the script does deviate a few times throughout the level set and these moments tend to be the most memorable. MAP9, Knockout, will give you a boxing tutorial where you will be expected to punch out over 200 imps, saving the shotgun and chaingun for emergencies and monsters you can't punch out. It sticks out in a weird way in the MAP 1-10 stretch, being the only big challenge in an easy lot of stages and its gameplay never gets replicated. Mostly Harmful (MAP32) hints toward the slaughter gameplay that would get perfected by the community years later and finally allows you to go nuts with the firepower, which is needed since an unreachable Icon of Sin will be spawning new monsters constantly, forcing you to stay on the move. This remains one of the better uses of the IoS in a WAD and the concept would be reprised much later in Ancient Aliens' MAP18. Everything Dies (MAP19) is an easy gimmick map to like: you get all weapons, ammo, health and armor at the very beginning, but nothing else after that. You need to stay resourceful and minimize risk to reach the end, but its encounters shy away from cheap gotcha! moments and are fun to plow through. Resistance is Futile (MAP22) is a great fast-paced slaughter map that gave birth to many imitators throughout the years and might be HR's single most influential moment. Post Mortem (MAP24) is half puzzle, half brutality incarnate: you will be cremated at the seems until you figure out where to carve a footstep through this Living End homage flooded with Hell's worst of the worst. The main difference between Post Mortem and maps like Last Look at Eden is that Post Mortem doesn't shy away from giving you supplies and ammo, you are given all the tools you need to reliably succeed and it's up to you to get them and methodically chip away at this hell cave scenario. Dead Progressive (MAP25) builds around Dead Simple and makes it a much more compelling compact level with tight and snappy combat. Afterlife (MAP26) features a dream world where you walk through space and find some distorted pockets which warp you to hostile arenas. Once you're past them, don't relax yet; archviles will resurrect ghost monsters that will keep hounding you until you can finally find the exit... So Hell Revealed can be great when it wants to, but it also can leave really bad impressions. The Descent (MAP31) is... an elevator descent that lasts way too long and can easily be cheesed by standing on the teleport marker. The rest of the level is so flat it could have been made in Wolfenstein 3D and features cyberdemon fights in tiny rooms, which always are a big gamble. Hard Attack offers some thrills with the teleporting cyberdemon duel, then wastes all of its goodwill on its fort rampart section which is packed with so many barons and revenants (and not remotely enough ammo to take them on). Judgment Day (MAP20) emphasizes the worst of HR's grindy gameplay mentality, making you fight so many heavies with just a shotgun and chaingun (the super shotgun is hidden away in a secret area). Ascending to the Stars (MAP23) is likely the cheapest map in the whole set, piling in ambushes where you either can't do anything to protect yourself (that elevator ride down in a chaingunner filled room is all based on luck) or the tedium required to power your way through them will make you want to tear your hair out (the penultimate archvile room is the worst the whole WAD has to offer, as backing away from the archviles will force you in a teleporter pad you will have to teleport through roughly 500 million times). Hell Revealed (MAP 30) is the worst Icon of Sin fight there could be and likely will ever exist. Featuring a quad-demon spawner, several archviles in the back, a cyberdemon patrolling the lift you need to ride and hordes of revenants on platforms, you'll be lucky to even be able to land rockets in the Icon's brain and not kill yourself trying to pull the trigger. Hell Revealed was a very inspirational megawad for its time and some of its lessons were put to good use by other contemporary mappers, especially for projects like Kama Sutra or Alien Vendetta. Thankfully, the lessons that were pulled from Hell Revealed had more to do about how maps like Resistance is Futile, Post Mortem and Mostly Harmful were great map concepts that needed to be revisited at all costs and less emphasis on "super shotgun kills baron good eventually yay". As a full project, it's very uneven. The first episode is mostly on the easy side and isn't favored by most Doom veterans, but later on, the grind and dedication required to beat some of these maps can drive people up to the wall. Hell Revealed has lots of value as a historical artifact but has too many sags throughout its running time to be equally enjoyed gameplay-wise. It's a difficult WAD, but its difficulty often stems from resource depravation and grindy encounters, which is a tough sale today.

Ah, this little lovely point of contention... I'll freely admit that when Lilith first hit store shelves the forums I didn't really "get" it: the idea seemed neat but at the time the concept wasn't one I could immerse myself into. Recently though I've given it a play through to the end and I'm definitely a bit more positive towards it. What I like is that the concept plays on the preconceived notions people have of Doom: it adheres to the core principles of the game but absolutely screws with everything else in order to generate an atmosphere that I can only describe as....well, uncomfortable. And "uncomfortable" really is the word: there's a profound sense of unease as you play through the maps, which is only increased by the unconventional architecture and occasional DECORATE addition that pops up and then pops right back down again before you can get used to them. It even stretches to the sound effects and music: to be honest the music feels kinda Silent Hill-esque, which I dig a lot. It also helps that the Silent Hill soundtrack literally used dental drills as an instrument, but I digress. If I were to level criticism it'd be at a few things: the gameplay can be a bit of a hodgepodge at times, with some ideas being barely explored (such as the DECORATE additions mentioned earlier) while others can drag on a bit overlong. The architecture, while somewhat fitting for the theme, does feel like the effort of someone not completely comfortable with mapping (which the mapper has admitted is the case, to be fair). I'd be interested in seeing what a steadier hand with the mapping tools could accomplish: after all, you can only really break all the rules once you know them. The last is somewhat subjective: personally I wouldn't have had the glitch aesthetic be present in the entirety of the wad. It'd be present in most of it, sure, but I would've had snatches of sanity in all the chaos to create a sense of juxtaposition and increase the feeling of unease that the experience is built around. The worst way to steal the mystique out of an experience is to make it routine and while Lilith doesn't quite manage that it does border close, at least for me. Then again, this is just my take: it's possible that I wouldn't have been able to dream up an idea of this magnitude in the first place. :P At the end of the glitch-riddled day, Lilith is an imaginative piece of work with ambitions that I think it met. It's weird, sure, but I honestly don't view that as a bad thing.

So with many old classic WADs not aging so well or have their gameplay styles improved by modern WADs or even WADs that came only a few years later since their initial release, I begin wondering on how TeamTNT's other megawad, Icarus: Alien Vanguard, hold up today. Of course it's hard to not bring up TNT: Evilution when bringing up Icarus so I'll try to focus on Icarus in of itself for the most part. I played through with ZDoom 2.8.1 on Ultra-Violence with no freelook, jumping, crouching, etc. First things first, the levels in Icarus are far more consistent than that of TNT: Evilution. As much as I like TNT: Eviltuon, the levels in Icarus carry a consistent theme with them (for the most part) and they all feel put together with a design flow in mind rather than a random compilation of levels. The worst levels of Icarus aren't as bad as they seem, and given that most levels are short and quick in action, you won't feel so dreaded on a level that seemingly drags on. There are some exceptions, some levels are longer and more difficult than others, and there's the occasional "where do I go" kind of level, but for the most part, you can play this WAD casually and enjoy it for what it offers. Much like TNT: Evilution, Icarus experiments with some of its levels, MAP20 has one part of the level be an upside mirror or an earlier part of the level, only now you walk on the "ceilings" instead of the "floor", and MAP24 includes the ghost monsters bug as an intentional part of the map, there's even a small tutorial on the start of the map to tell you how to kill them, quite nice. My personal favorite levels are MAP11 and MAP22, but there are some other levels in Icarus that have a good variety of levels, both visually and gameplay-wise. Some textures do use the same textures over and over, especially silver textures early on, but they don't distract too much from the WAD, if anything it benefits some of the levels instead. There's also a full complete soundtrack, with every level having their own unique track, compared to Evilution's smaller soundtrack that uses the same tracks for multiple levels. The music helps in making some of the worse levels more fun to slaughter though, MAP31 being my favorite out of the bunch, it builds quite an atmosphere for a level that I wouldn't expect to have any. All in the all, the music is great, but knowing TeamTNT, that is to be expected. Regardless, Icarus is also pretty flawed, and some little annoyances can ruin a level. One of the notable examples like MAP20 have this lift that has a very tight space to stand on and very little room to straferun to the floor to enter that teleporter to leave the upside down area of the map. You can't stand on the lift for too long as then your head will supposedly hit the ceiling and the lift will go down again. It took me far long than it should to just get up that lift but because of how it worked, it ended up making an alright map to one I don't want to play without thinking about noclipping next time I play it. Some maps seem promising but end up not being so great or even frustrating to play. MAP18 didn't have much to offer other than a ton of Barons and Hell Knights in a big crate room with a Cyberdemon at the end (also a map-breaking error with the yellow key apparently). The two secret levels, MAP31 and MAP32, were pretty disappointing and were lacking compared to the main levels, with large spaces yet not so many enemies to nor much to look at. The final map is the weakest map out of the bunch, but I guess that's expected. Anyways, the final map is your usual Icon of Sin boss level, and it doesn't seem so bad until you find out that you can just run all away to the other side of the map, shoot a switch, and shoot a target and kill the boss in less than 30 seconds. Not even any kind of lift like Doom 2's final map, you can stand where you are no problem as it is. It's strange how despite having three people making the map, it felt like it was made in five minutes by just one person. Flaws aside, Icarus is still a good WAD to play and managed to age well (to me) despite some design choices that won't appeal to everyone. There are some bugs (like the one mentioned for MAP18) and some maps having inaccessible secrets (MAP15's shotgun secret), but for the most part, you can play Icarus problem free. Funny how I didn't liked Icarus initially and after this playthrough it became one of my favorite megawads to play through. Overall, Icarus is solid and still worth playing through.

It's been a while since i've had this fun in doom. The maps are Incredible. Only thing i noticed is that some maps have portions from other wads but nothing too bad. Chapter 4 was not as good as the rest but still good enough to keep me playing. Map 28 and 31 are two maps i won't forget. Great soundtracks and maps. Hope for more wads like this one. 5/5 no doubt.

This mapset consist of three levels. The first two are enormous maps and the third one is a small Doom 2 like final map. I played this in Hurt me plenty. The first level is a techbase map. It was released first as a separate map to replace E2M8. It's style is reminiscent of episode 1 and episode 2 base levels with small abstract hellish areas and caves here and there. You begin your quest in a subway car which has brought you to this huge base with empty halls and spacey, dimly lit corridors. The author says in the description that the levels aim to give the player a feeling of exploration and that's what I got right from the start. This sentiment is emphasized by the soothing and a bit eerie ambient soundtrack which is a very good fit for the level. I don't usually pay that much attention to music but now I did because it was such a suitable choice. The visual style is a bit more detailed than Doom's original techbase theme. However the detailing varies a lot. Sometimes you come across plainly textured, full lit and big blocky rooms that take you back to the nineties but mostly you encounter areas with more details. The areas near the start were less good-looking than the later parts. The layout is very interconnected. Especially in the beginning you can find multiple semi-secret panels that take you to a corridor which connects to the other side of the level. The level opens passages like this the more you progress. The pace of the level is pretty relaxed. At start you are greeted with empty areas with no monsters and everything is suspiciously silent. Some single Demons show up after wandering for a while but the feeling of being alone in this huge base stays with you. You'll encounter your first herd of enemies in the outside area on top of a cliff. And when you enter the cave area you''ll start to get enemies in your face. The enemy fights in the beginning areas are more close combat. I usually evaded the first bigger encounters by running around them which turned out to be a good strategy as that way I found better positions to shoot at them. After you get the blue keycard and go south to the blue door area the enemies appear more from a distance such as on top of crates or behind grills on the walls. This area contained a lot of cannon fodder, Zombies, Sergeants and Imps. It was very soothing to kill them en masse. You still get enemies in your face too. The visual style also got better. There was more consistent detailing and the rooms got more vertical. The area behind the yellow door continued the same rhythm, you entered peaceful and spacious areas, sometimes enemies run after you, sometimes you get to slay them from a distance. The open area with the zigzag path and pillars over the slime presented an enjoyable fight. The walls were filled with Imps shooting at you from the distance while Cacodemons were flying in the middle and you had to run around the path throwing rockets at them while avoiding falling down to the slime. After the second half I started running out of ammo. This happened more than once. Well, I had a lot of plasma ammo but I had no plasma rifle. If I'm not mistaken you only get the plasma rifle after the Cyberdemon fight which I think was not fair. That fight would have been much more fun with a plasma gun. There was a BFG in the level but I cannot remember now if I got it or not. However I'm sure I didn't have BFG in the Cyberdemon room. Maybe the BFG was a secret. There were 18 secrets in total. I found half. There were many secrets where you could see the item from a window and then had to figure out how to get there. Those were nice and logical puzzles. The fight before the exit is probably the roughest. You get a lot of Demons, Barons and a Spider Mastermind. But in the end it's not that big of an issue because you can compartmentalize them to a room and shoot them through the windows or make them fight each other. It took me almost an hour to finish the level even though I did not get lost. It was a pleasure to stroll through the map and admire the areas despite the small throwbacks to the nineties here and there :) I think the author succeeded very well in giving the player the feeling of exploration in the first level. The second map has Doom 2 styled abstract hell visuals. Actually it has almost all kinds of areas. Caves, rocky cliffs, lava, slime, organic, gothic, marble and what have you. Whereas the first map has a slower, almost wandering pace with a hauntingly soothing ambient track the second map is more hectic, aggressive and has a metal song as soundtrack. The fights didn't always feel fun. There were too many Chaingunners at distance. The open area with the Quake's Q logo on the ground was the first time I thought I'm gonna IDDQD if this hitscanning continues. And it sadly did but thankfully not all the time. In general this map is much more slaughtery than the first one. Also this map is much larger than the first one and there are over a thousand monsters. I must say I did not find that many things to like in this map. I did not get any feeling of exploration here. The layout was confusing. It didn't feel interconnected at all. Yes, there were teleporters but it's always hard to figure out where they take you. Also killing started to feel almost like work at times and after an hour I was considering giving up on the map. The western part of the map was dedicated to getting the blue key. The eastern part was for acquiring the yellow key. And in the middle you entered the area with the red key and exit. That sounds simple but it wasn't. I got frustrated and went astray more than once. I was at loss what the various buttons were supposed to open. It didn't help that the abstract hellish landscape of Doom 2 is not my favorite theme. I also think the styles changed too much. But there were some areas that I liked. For example, the section with organic texturing was one of the best parts in the level. Other good areas were the library and the red gothic cathedral. The third and last map was almost a traditional Romero's head endgame map but instead you had to push two buttons to finish it. The music choice for this map was weird. I guess in some sense it fits the level. I was pretty exhausted from the second map and I rushed the final map as fast as I could. TL;DR The first map is without a doubt the strongest. Vast, interconnected and explorative techbase map with some nice detailing, relaxing pace, interesting fights and great ambient music. The second map is a gigantic level with a mishmash of styles. At times it feels like your are working at Switch Hunting Incorporated instead of enjoying a game and then you get perforated by a Chaingunner. The last map is OK but I'm not sure if it was that necessary. In fact the levels feel so different from each other that I wonder if it was a good idea to combine them into one WAD.

Done with these settings: - Crispy Doom 4.2, ZDoom for bonus maps. - Ultra Violence. - Continuous combined with a pistol start mindset as much as possible. - Saves every 10 minutes or so. Important note: The text file explicitly claims this wad is designed to be played on Boom compatible source ports. Nevertheless, I have not experienced any single symptom with Crispy Doom, so this wad should be perfectly playable in complevel 3 if that's what people want to. Hmm, well, sometimes reality beats expectations, this has been a mix of emotions and feelings, positive and negative, ups and downs. My first experience with a project leaded by Paul Corfiatis, whom I understand is a well-known active mapper. A fairly likable mapset, with an approach comparable to the old classic iwad, in many ways. First is the ambient theme, each episode follows the same structure of visuals that we know from Doom I, that is tech-bases for the first episode, then something more fleshy afterwards, an introduction to hell, and finally all the pieces together in the fourth episode. I must say though, initially I had a bad taste about the aesthetics, the couple first maps looked rough and very simplistic, part is because of all the symmetry around, a lot of copy/pasted sections, but then visuals got much better later and in the second episode, where symmetry was at least accompanied with more polished detailing. Things turn even more appealing in the third and fourth: more colours, height and light variation became notable features, less square-y geometry in general, still a few minuses here and there such as invasive torches where doomguy can't avoid to glue himself on them. There're also a few new textures which can be seen particularly in secret maps, not that they add a whole new theme to the wad. The Hexen windows looked a bit out of place in my opinion. The new soundtrack has its moments, I'd have preferred myself to hear some recycled iwad tracks in between instead, which is unfortunate because most of the midis used are fantastic, yet they don't match with their corresponding maps in my opinion. Anyways, as far as I'm concerned, the idea here is to get an experience more challenging than in classic Doom, while keeping the overall progression similar to it. Well, it's definitely different, there is a higher level of difficulty, but I can't say the same from quality. The ideas from the main author and guests seemed to be correlated to follow a story behind the episodes but the execution of each map left me the impression of lack of consistency between them. This was notable in every episode except for the first one, which despite being the least appealing, it's also the one where you get most of the same two authors. This first episode brings a lot of samey incidental fights in compact hallways, symmetric rooms and mostly SG/CG combat, traps that lack any energy or rely on dickish moves, like instacrushers. You'll immediately drown in shells in the first maps, so pistol starts are ideal, not that it adds a pinch of difficulty. In the second episode, things get a bit more tricky with the introduction of instapops, the kind that you'll never want to experience blind: shotgunners that teleport behind the player or next to them at any time. There's some more variety with the type of ammo you can use, albeit the cases of strict resource economy in maps from Hansen and Babich. The third episode is where the inconsistency can lead to frustration if you opt to pistol start or complete the maps. It has the best looking maps by Corfiatis, and interesting ideas from the other authors, there is no denial about the progress of quality content in regards to visuals, and to some extent, combat. For instance, SG vs. barons/cacos becomes way more common (says the guy who could have used the RL more often but opted to stay on pistol start-ish mode), but sometimes you get a tasty berserk, points for that. Strict ammo or way too much depending on the author, and I seriously can't for the life of me understand what's the point of the "finale" in the third map... Last but not least, episode four contains a great mixed bag of gems and, other less pretty stones. Once again, an advance in visuals and detailing, like now darkness is a fun factor. The strict economy of resources is still an everlasting topic and now it is paired with cramped, congested rooms with meaty monsters that can shred doomguy in a blink of an eye. Not that tight quarters wasn't a thing before, it's just that this episode took it seriously, particularly in the secret map. To my surprise, any upper-tier weapon here comes with little usage, which is an odd design choice for an episode that's supposed to be the hardest. I would personally suggest continuous in both 3rd and 4th episode to "rise to the occasions", or in other words, kill high-HP enemies in less time. Finally, I'd like to mention how anticlimactic the end-of-episode maps are, maybe the exception is E1M8, but for the rest not a single engaging "boss" encounter, for example, the fact you don't even have to shoot a bullet to kill the spiderdemon in E3M8 says it all. Similar with the bonus maps, nothing there you don't want to miss. Secret-wise, it starts a bit wall-humpy, then it's a hit or miss, some particularly annoying secret chains to get to the secret maps with no intuitive way to solve, or some juicy weapons and armor that otherwise are nonexistent in standard progression. One thing that seemed confusing to me was all the nukage pits with radiation suits, they all looked like there were some hidden secrets, but there was nothing. For favourite maps I'll pick E3M2, E4M1 and E4M6, while also E4M4 and E4M5 are among the best ones too. I can't say I loved anything from the first two episodes though. Overall, maybe memorable, but not legendary, and this is really not an important thing, just try the middle episodes on continuous or surrender to Tommy the Trooper and his army of barons :P. Whatever, my rate is 5/10.

Done with these settings: - Crispy Doom 4.2 - Ultra-Violence. - Continuous combined with a pistol start mindset. - Saves every 10 seconds or so. Fun mapset, a mixed bag of varied styles. The set is all speedmaps by different authors, some I recognized in their maps, like JC or FranckFRAG, and others completely new to me, so it was nice to meet all sorts of offerings. Visuals aren't the strongest feature, of course, still many authors managed to create some nice looking areas using mostly stock and custom textures. A few maps play with lights variation, such as having to find resources in darkness while waking up tons of enemies. The music selection is a mix in between iwad tracks, several others from well-known pwads, and also unused Doom tracks, I had no idea those even existed, really cool soundtrack. As a community based project, there's a lot to see in terms of progression and combat. Each author shows their own style, and the contrast between them is quite notable once you make further progress. I'm not sure whether some of the authors were completely new to mapping or not, since part of the contrast I mentioned before is due to the quality of the content by all meanings (visuals, geometry, combat, etc). This is not to say the ones that didn't stand out for me were bad, because others might find them more suitable to their tastes. However, I was more keen to the maps that provided a higher difficulty while having more than one way to deal with them, and not exactly to particular authors. Speaking of the mappers, you'll probably several contributions from the same guys, such as JC, FranckFRAG, and Datacore. The former one provided some old school slaughter(y) levels, I really liked his earlier maps where you are subject of crossfire in fairly open spaces, indoors or outdoors, he usually put the monsters in the way to find your weapons. I wasn't a fan of the symmetry of certain maps though, nor the repetitive combat that came with that, but still generally fun gameplay. On the other side, FranckFRAG opted for bite-sized maps with small but effective monster placement and traps. His maps are sometimes hard to taste given how short they are, I preferred those where after 2 minutes I still had more enemies to kill lol. Datacore didn't stick to one single style, incidental combat in the majority, the weapon progression is what can put off some players, as using just chaingun for 300 imps in a big box didn't seem so exciting, to name an example, although I did like his second to last map. Other notable contributions include [WH]-Wilou84 maps, his last level was hard to digest, I'm not so fond of that sort of clausterfuck gameplay, personally speaking. There's also the Darkwave0000's biggest map, which was everything I expected from them, and it kicked my ass a lot of times, neat and brutal level. Oxyde's map is another one I really liked, it's heavily congested and has many surprises that can catch one off guard. The rest are some hit-and-miss, such as ZyklonB's two maps that were a little boring, or the HR-ish level by subject_119 which was weird and fun. Necrotikflesh maps can result in a funny or horrible experience, depending on how much you like darkness, or shotgunning a cyberdemon, all I'll say is I made an exception for my "100% everything" rule in the second case. Secret-wise, I don't remember any lol, well being super short maps there isn't much to talk about secrets, FranckFRAG maps surprisingly have more than 1 secret, that they are meaningful or not depends on each one. For favourite maps I'll pick 08, 15, 16, 19, 26, and probably 29 even though I had my anger moments. Overall, a success in my opinion, it might not be the most consistent megawad, but it does provide a little bit of everything for everyone. People seeking a fun time with short maps will surely find something up their alley here. So yeah, my rate is 7/10.

Done with these settings: - Crispy Doom 4.2 - Hurt Me Plenty. - Continuous combined with a pistol start mindset. - Saves every 10 minutes or so. This is a short, simplistic, ok mapset. What seems to be a megawad, it never felt like one, as the maps are bite-sized and with low monster count, making it doable in one session of 1 or 2 hours blind. There's not much to talk about aesthetics, it only uses stock textures in a Hell Revealed way, that is brown/green/grey, sometimes mixed and sometimes only one colour for the whole map. The soundtrack is composed by iwad tracks and several new tunes (some from other pwads, don't know about the rest), of which maps 12, 13 and 18 have the best ones, some sort of fantasy-action cool midis. What is relevant to point out is the notorious "influence" from certain wads in terms of layout and combat. Pretty much every map has something that could be considered a homage from TNT, Hell Revealed, Thy Flesh Consumed, or even Hangar too, in a very compact/tight way. This isn't any sort of accusatory comment, I don't know what were the author's intentions, but as I was progressing I couldn't just ignore many of the rooms that looked "very familiar", or to be more specific, the exact same ideas from other wads, more or less polished. It's up to each one to judge I guess... So progression isn't demanding in any way, the maps are quite short and small, impossible to be lost, you can even see all the linedefs in the automap in most maps, right from the start. You'll surely beat them in a blink of an eye, well except map 20, so I'd recommend any maxer to save before they face a switch, it could be a non-signaled exit. Wondering how combat is? Just like the wads I mentioned before, with a major influence from HR. For those who never played that, it can be tight rooms with mid-tiers to kill with any kind of shotgun available, a bunch of hell nobles to ignore until you find a useful weapon, or several hordes in a Downtown-ish environment. There're also satirical placements like an early cyberdemon to telefrag, or a square of stuck revenants that can't chase you. It's a bit hitscan heavy at first, but it gradually lessens in later maps. Don't know what else to say, I wasn't very sold on the combat in general, rather uninteresting at moments, some maps will overpower you, and others will punish you if you don't go for secrets. Talking about secrets, NuMetalManiak made a perfect comment about them, some require SR50 which is a form of straferunning that is usually avoided for many reasons. In other cases, it is possible to enter normal areas and tag a secret, even if they are not hidden or have anything inside. Wall-humping is often necessary too. The ones I disliked at all were those that hid mandatory weapons, no matter if they were easy to find, without them is impossible to pistol everything in the way (map 11 ahem...). For favourite maps, I'll pick 19 and 20, the first because of the concept and the second one because go Downtwon maps. Overall, not sure if I'll recommend this to anyone, probably for the speedrun part, or if you are a diehard fan of HR, but I assure it's way easier. Anyway, still an ok set. My rate is 5/10.

Done with these settings: - Crispy Doom 4.2 - Hurt Me Plenty. - Continuous combined with a pistol start mindset. - Saves every 10 minutes or so. Important note: this is indeed a vanilla megawad and you can use any compatible port, however, expect some bugs to happen with the wad itself. This is a solid set of speedmaps, quite intense and fun. It consists of super short maps that can be completed in a few minutes, or seconds if you don't want to max them. There isn't a lot to talk about visuals, it uses the stock textures in a simple way, basically to ambient the maps for standard playability focused on action, no unique theme or episode progression. The text file mentions new graphics, but honestly I didn't pay attention to that. I could see it as a plus, given the little time I spent in the maps. If there's a comparison it would be the iwad's maps, visually speaking, if that sounds attractive to you. The soundtrack consists in iwad tracks mixed with some others not specified from where, or if they are custom, but they are alike the stock tracks. Its main attraction is the fast-paced gameplay, as these maps will challenge your reactions and movement skills in constricted areas, some times forcing you squeeze through your enemies to find weapons (and a single place to breathe), or putting you in a situation you can't overthink what to do. I wasn't very hyped by this at first, not a huge fan of short and/or speedy maps, but as I was playing my mind totally changed. I'll say this, the maps aren't so hard on a casual play, monster placement isn't too demanding by itself, it's the slight existence of health/ammo available what makes them punishing. You basically have very little room for error, and any hit from anything can mean a restart. In addition, ammo is super tight, almost the strict minimum for a max. I should have to play them back on pistol start to confirm if they can all be maxed, but from my experience on continuous with my restrictions in some maps I felt forced to skip monsters (e.g. barons), thinking that I could kill them later, and then seeing the way back closed, particularly in map 20 that lacks a plasma rifle on HMP. There was a considerable number of instances where I was unable to complete the map without cheats: in map 18 there was a secret soulsphere easy to see on a tall ledge, due to the lack of an archvile on skill 3 it was impossible to reach it, besides a bunch of monsters that could never teleport out of their closets; in map 22, there's a double teleport pad in the room with 4 mancubi and others, it was impossible to use it, I also tested that part in other ports and complevels, no solutions; in map 27, there's a similar case of a teleport I wasn't able to use it, the one behind the blue skull bar. I'm not sure how others handled with these situations, I simply cheated and guided myself thanks to some videos. If there's a patch somewhere I don't know. There's nothing important to talk about secrets, since most maps don't have any, I mean, there's no time or room to explore or you'll be murdered in a second, so the lack is logical. No favourite maps, as I liked them all in a similar way. Overall, it's not for everyone, if any speedrunner haven't seen this yet, they should try it. Exploration fans might have to overlook this. Also, continuous doesn't make this much easier, trust me (start the next map with 21% health and tons of turrets everywhere was pretty intense). My rate is 8/10.

Done with these settings: - Crispy Doom 4.2 - Ultra-Violence. - Continuous combined with a pistol start mindset. - Saves every 10 minutes or so. Now this is a damn good sequel. An incredible amount of quality in every way you look at it. First of all, the visuals. This includes a ton of different textures, lots of red, green and brown for naturalistic environments. Thematically it's after the destruction of the demon-spitter in Evilution, thus it goes through different ambients that are more hellish/fleshy than the infested techbases we were used to. I'm a fan of spookiness in Doom, so this wad gave me a lot to experience in its abandoned computer stations, corrupted by the demons as if the recurrent text "Kill us" wasn't enough for me to feel tense. However, it is not as simple as it sounds to generalize the themes in Revilution, since every map is an individual case of different colours and geometry, and that nourishes variety in my opinion. What is also worth mentioning is the amazing music selection, like valkiriforce commented in his review, there're a few astounding covers from the Evilution soundtrack, as you'll notice right in the starting map, plus a whole bunch of atmospheric midis, just excellent works to accompany the playthrough. Reiterating, this was much more than I expected. Being a spiritual sequel to one of my favourite iwads, this didn't disappoint in any way. I'd think of Revilution is to Evilution what Plutonia 2 was to Plutonia Experiment. Why? Both share the atmosphere of their prequels, adapted to the current gameplay interpretations of their eras. This means that some of the most memorable concepts in Evilution are present here, in a trip to nostalgia and, most importantly, higher quality entertainment, but not exactly in an iwad fashion. So, with a lot of contributors, there's an extensive variety of scenarios to appreciate. Of the numerous remarkable experiences I had, one part is Dobu's approach to bring back the mysterious atmosphere, the silence and the surprise, and the eccentric geometry from the more natural maps like Quarry or Deepest Reaches, which Eternal took charge of making a charming remake for map 18. Back to Dobu, his map 16 is an excellent example of scavenging resources in dark caves, while you deal with exposure, claustrophobia, and clever puzzles. If you're playing with carryovers and freedom of choices, ignore them in this map, the gimmick is real fun. The tribute to Wormhole in map 12 is another standout, both the cinematic transition to an alternate dimension and what awaits you there, but also the secret hunt in the map, an exploration task I'll take any day. Phobus and Gaspe went on a similar style, the latter did a super dark corrupted underground base, with a few tight quarters that will make you sweat, while the first guy invested in a sort of abandoned facility that might not develop so much action, but you'll want to speed things up before it's too late. Another honorable mention goes to Steve D, his creations are probably going to stick in everyone's minds as purely mean-spirited maps. Maybe I wasn't expecting such demanding traps, with an emphasis on locking the player's way out with fat hitboxes, but satisfaction comes with success, guaranteed it'll take some serious effort. One prominent author is Jaws in Space, his style here is hard to describe in simple words, there's a bit of fast-paced run-and-gun, also some quick incidental combat a la old-school TNT including stronger beasts, generally short-medium sized linear maps with or without a task/gimmick, save his entry a la Dead Zone where progression might not be easy to figure for a while. Talking about tricky progression, that was the case of valkiriforce's map 31. I really liked his throwback to Pharaoh, although with many predictable circumstances if you remember the original map. What rubbed me wrong way was a hidden switch to grant access to one of the keys, which I needed a video to point me that switch. I guess that's another throwback, thankfully no missing keys. His other map somehow didn't fit with the rest of the maps, although still an enjoyable tutti frutti of themes. All of the other authors did an incredible job in their individual and/or dual contributions, that includes a love-letter to spiders courtesy of Purist, fun with elevators and height variety by Tourniquet, a quick punchy entryway by SFoZ911 that hides more than you'd expect, even a trip to Eradrop's vision of hell in a slaughter-esque fashion while you're being observed by statues of cows, and many more that you'll love to experience by yourself, because you should must. Secret-wise, all my love to exploration and multiple worthy secrets in a same map, namely in Dobu's maps. The first map of the wad already anticipates what Revilution has in hands for you about secrets: hidden encounters, shortcuts to find tasty weaponry, telefrag chains that will answer all your doubts, etc. There's basically everything you don't want to miss if you're a fan of exploration. A small thing: in map 21, it is possible to nullify the secret tag that has four boxes of rockets in a red room behind bars, read this. Anyway, there aren't favourite maps this time, because I enjoyed them all a lot, some more than others though. Perhaps 12, 16, 17, I don't know, this is too hard lol. If one map needs a shoutout is 30, it's an unique piece of art, one of the best finales ever. Overall, I suggest you add it to your list, there're no reasons of why you shouldn't pick this megawad to spend a weekend or play periodically. Even if not all maps may suit your wishes, or the word "TNT" holds you back, it's not a remake, this has way more to offer than empty big rooms or ripoffs. I guess what's missing is TNT Revisited? :P. My rate is going to be 9/10.

Done with these settings: - Crispy Doom 4.2 - Ultra-Violence. - Continuous combined with a pistol start mindset. - Saves every 10 minutes or so. An ok wad, for a lack of a proper word. Consistent execution, appealing visuals, but partially uninteresting gameplay, to sum up my general impressions. On the theme side, the marine was sent to an asteroid in order to do the dirty work. You start in a sort of military base, casually infested by ex-soldiers, arrive to a power station, traverse some sewers, the named crimson canyon, several cramped tech rooms in a space ship, until you arrive to the gate where you must shut down the demon infestation, or something, for story lovers the author wrote a full single text file. So in terms of visuals, there're a lot of new textures, such as stock walls painted to dark grey, which doesn't look so bad, extra computer panels, different red bricks and lava textures for the canyon maps, and much more. Nothing extraordinary, I did like the new additions though, particularly the flames in the way they were used (until their usage became repetitive, you'll see...). The interesting side of the visuals is that, assuming you've read the plot, you'll understand the cohesiveness between the maps, they thematically end in map 10, and the last two maps are extras. Finally, the soundtrack was quite nice to hear, at least the ones that weren't a bit repetitive. I loved map 02's track, it reminded me to BTSX1 first track, and if a midi brings me back to a mapset I loved, it's a huge plus personally speaking. The action is what some people would call "grindfest". Basically, monsters come in packs, usually appear in front of the player, or teleport in somewhere one by one. Ambushes and hordes of the same kind of monster are the most frequent, particularly packs of zombies that will be gift you with plenty of ammo, not that there scarcity is a thing in any of the maps, even if you're pistol starting you'll stumble upon ammo in narrow passages that can't be avoided. Figure in continuous how embarrassingly common was that... At times, you'll find hitscanners easy to grind from the other side of a corridor, at others, only projectile-based in complete open spaces, which only makes them look tiny and disoriented. At least once in every map there's the old-fashioned pinkies + chainsaw combo, which I always took gracefully, even though it's often labelled as "boring". As you can read, the combat is on the grind side, not real threatening in earlier maps, but maybe that can sound appetizing to you. I still found a few fairly challenging parts in later maps, in comparison to what the majority of set provides, where number of monsters is in compliance with the cramped area, less "nonthreatening grind" in other words, like being caught in between a bunch of hell knights coming from every narrow corridor. The 10 maps that compose the story basically play similar, with progression being naturally linear, but with a lot of backtrack in between (I recall only one map providing a teleport back to a recently opened area), so it's easy to keep track of what you're doing. Exceptions are the canyon maps, although if you're in the mood, there are many apparently "glide-able" gates, good for when you loose interesting in killing stuff. The two extras also appear in the Claustrophobia 1024 series, I think, they are absolutely straightforward and too awkward to play to be honest, no idea why they are in this wad... Despite the sort of combat here, the story maps can serve for a casual not-so-hard experience to new players, or when you feel like mowing down zombies and grabbing their ammo, that is funny to me from time to time. One little thing, in some maps it is possible to be unable to max them, due to broken teleport lines in several monster closets. It happened to me in map 03. Secret-wise, not hard to find them all except for the ones behind random unmarked walls. One of the most common is a secret in every map that contains a special thing, usually opened after doing some progression, don't forget it if you're playing on continuous. There is one secret in map 07 that only rewards you with pointless backtrack, if you happen to find it, well, I am sorry for you. Overall, it was ok, I was in the mood for something like this so I enjoyed it, more or less. I would recommend it only if you love anything from what I said above, or just for the music, honestly. Regardless, not bad. My rate is 6/10.

And there goes Sunlust, and what a ride it was. So first things first, Sunlust is a 32-level megawad consisting of challenging levels. It does not feature new enemies, but comes with a new background screen, an atmospheric, sometimes epic soundtrack, and new textures for most if not all levels making them look absolutely beautiful which adds to the overall experience. it also comes with new (non serious) intermission screens but they're just there without adding anything. The gameplay is similar to that of other megawads such as AV or HR in general, with a number of maps having only little over a hundred or a few hundred enemies and the maps rely on smart placement to offer a challenge, which applies even to some of the slaughter inspired levels, although they mostly rely on the sheer numbers of enemies in various kinds of encounters. Many levels also feature suicide exits but unlike megawads such as Ancient Aliens, Valiant, Scythe and so on which have them every 8 maps or so which usually signalize an upcoming increase in difficulty and sometimes split the megawad in episodes a la Doom 1, they're placed randomly here as a surprise element. You might run into a suicide exit and the upcoming level might feature hundreds of enemies, while others might feature little over a hundred, you never know. And yet the difficulty doesn't change, it's almost like the authors put them there just so that you have to pistol start a map every now and then but not to scare you with a spike in difficulty. It's an interesting experience nonetheless. Many of the later levels have the enemies in plain sight but in a sleeping state, with their backs facing you. This was probably done to offer the players who haven't played the megawad before (those who do a blind playthrough like I did) time to observe the surroundings and come up with a plan of sorts before jumping into the action or getting assaulted by enemies, which is something welcome for me. I've always had the impression that megawads such as Valiant and AA don't really want you to jump into the action without any knowledge of the levels, and in consequence involve quite a bit of trial and error before figuring out an optimal route. This might be a plus for some players, but not for those who just want to enjoy a new megawad from the very first playthrough, and in the case of Sunlust, I'd say it doesn't fall under the trial and error category, so if it's your first time playing it and are at least a decent player you're fine, no serious reason to worry about dying due to not knowing what lies ahead, and traps are easily recognizable most of the time as well. On the subject of difficulty, what I have accidentally discovered while watching a video of MAP30 is that the levels themselves seem to be different on other settings than UV. Considering that UV is targeted at the most skilled players from the description I had chosen to play Sunlust on HMP this time around (I might be insane but not to that degree), and one thing I've noticed is that MAP30 was different on UV. The yellow key is somewhere else, there's more teleporters in a place, and some secret areas seem to work differently, particularly the Cyberdemon room. It would seem that the deadly platform in the middle didn't instantly kill them once activated for some reason. Or maybe I ran into a bug? I don't know, but what's certain is that it did not work for me. Something else that I have noticed is that a number of maps also feature optional areas. I realized this after I finished these maps with only 50-60% kills, so if your target is maxing out everything keep in mind that you'll have to take a detour. The levels are also fair, with the exception of an Arch-Vile room in MAP29. "Go Fuck Yourself" they said. Indeed, good luck avoiding waves of Imps and a few Hell Knights while hiding behind a moving wall with a bunch of Arch-Viles behind it in a small, circular room. Ingenious, I must admit this. As about my favorite maps, well, that's a difficult question considering that the vast majority of levels are gorgeous and provide solid gameplay, but the ones I liked the most are MAP09, MAP10, MAP16, MAP18, MAP19, MAP27, and MAP28. The levels in general explore a variety of themes and locations: Some are "natural", while others are mysterious with a magic atmosphere, cavernous, hellish, surreal, futuristic, and so on. The first few levels also remind me of Requiem. As for the ones I disliked, that's going to be MAP30. The starting area looked pretty interesting, but everything else was just "alright", with a few ugly rooms before the location of the yellow key. This level doesn't feature a typical Icon of Sin boss, it's a slaughter level with almost 2000 enemies. Most certainly not bad, but not fantastic either, yet a fitting conclusion to the journey. And with this I think I've covered pretty much everything. Another solid megawad, well worth the time.

Done with these settings: - GLBoom+ 2.5.1.4. complevel 9. - Ultra-Violence - Continuous combined with a pistol start mindset. Actual pistol start on map 33. - Saves every 10 minutes or so. Not bad, generally a well received megawad. No story, but I dig the overall theme being hell(ish), meaning red textures dominating the set. There are also some grey/green/brown rooms with tech stuff here and there, not making a huge contrast or for episodic purposes, and at least for me personally maps with only brown textures didn't look quite appealing, although the usage of green in map 29 was an attractive difference. I played with GlBoom+, but on ZDoom there are a few additional details, such as the lava moving different than usual, or smoke that comes out of things touching lava, anyway I think they are worth to check if you like reality effects in Doom. The soundtrack is a mix of stock tracks plus other cool midis that really bust the gameplay imo, the one that I loved hearing again was in map 23, the Jazz Jackrabbit bonus level track!. People who played Hell Revealed and its sequels will find themselves in constant deja vu here. The gameplay resembles the earliest conceptions of slaughter, as in monsters appearing en masse in front of the player where spam mostly hitscan ammo or maybe die is the key. Well that's what HR offered in general, don't know about the sequels, and here the author replicated not just the style but the maps' layouts too, with some minor differences, so it felt like playing the same thing again, which still wasn't much of an issue since JC added the "hellish" visual touch... Of course not everyone is familiar with the old-school too-many-monsters style, so what you can see here in terms of combat is, indeed hordes of monsters as the main concept, but number isn't always correlated with quality. While JC provided tons of cases for each weapon class, either preparing you for sweaty combat or a boring slog, more often you won't need to think twice about what you'll have to do, as these hordes can come in single types or mixed types, and you know what happens in the second case, but in the first case, it can happen that you have more than enough space to implement your ammo spamming without risk, or monsters can't go further due to block lines, which severely trivializes the combat. In other cases, it's possible to be overwhelmed if you don't react fast, or have no idea what's going on (e.g. being infinite-height-scratched when platforming). What can be attractive to some players is that many of these maps allow you to "choose" how many monsters you want in the same area, given size and space, which can elevate difficulty and infighting shows. There are also a few bite-sized maps that empathize in tight combat, those are probably the trickiest ones yet not that interesting on the weapon progression side. Oh and, about progression, generally linear, triple-key hunt, getting lost is never a thing here. The new set of monsters have their ups and downs, mostly downs, and that's due to their usage: Belphegors are abundant, they are red buffed barons that attack twice, I liked them in general, but their usage as walls with health in some occasions really put me off. Afrits rarely appear, they are deadly flying barons that don't wait a second to spam their multiple projectiles, and in this case they can't be pushed too far away, I only wish their appearance was more casual. Last baron's cousin is the Cybruiser, though unlike Valiant's, this one shoots twice and their attack's frame is so short that it's nearly impossible to notice when it shoots, and that was super annoying, keeping a distance is recommended. Then there's the Poison Soul, a buffed skull that shoots green fireballs, they look cool, but hardly ever appear, if not just two times in the whole mapset. The new final boss isn't a joke at close range, I'd say his usage didn't favor him a lot, plus he isn't so aggressive, still a cool looking enemy though. Finally, last enemy is, basically a bomb, can only be found in the bonus map, hopefully fans of that particular game will know better what that thing is. Some stock monsters have been reskinned or modified too: Cacodemons are now grey, less cute unfortunately. Spiderdemons are slower and lack their "boss" class, meaning rockets are more effective on them, and you can't hear them from afar, there's only one case where its usage is hilarious, just pay attention. Revenants and pain elementals won't show blood when being hit with hitscan, which was confusing at first but not a big deal. Secret-wise, what mostly caught my attention is the tiny visual "thing" that can be found in all (or most) of the secrets, a neat something I've never seen in other wads. Aside of that, nothing in particular to point out, maybe the fact that one requires SR50 and can be frustrating for some maxers. For favourite maps I'll pick 22, 23, 24, 29 as they look gorgeous compared to the rest. Overall, while not providing always original contents, I think it's worth to check if merely for the music and all the red going on. Difficulty is there, but I doubt it'll impact on anyone there who has moved on from the 90's slaughter style. Still, if you are keen of the HR trilogy, this could be up your alley. My rate is 6/10.

Played on UV, with saves and continuous. Valiant is one of these mapsets where people will always refer as a major influence, such as the ones like Hell Revealed, Alien Vendetta and Scythe and many others. Is it as good as them? Honestly, I didn't like Hell Revealed and Alien Vendetta at all, and Valiant thankfully has nothing compared with them: The levels are more robust, featuring much more refined visuals and gameplay. As for modern standards, I thought that Valiant would be hard as fuck, but instead I got something that was really carefully balanced, being a really tough but also very fair experience. Also, I was surprised of seeing no slaughtermaps at all. Instead, there's some slaughter-lite sections, which are much more accessible, IMO. Anyway, I think these are the two biggest quality of that wad which surprised me a lot: The very-well crafted architecture and how well the balancing was done. The architecture focus on creating a really detailed environment, but at the same time there's a lot of care to keep things very clean and easily readable. It features a lot of modern trends, where the textures are not only well aligned, but with the limits being also respected vertically, so you don't get that "cut-off" texture that we usually see when there're different ceilings and a wall texture that doesn't really match the difference. As for the themes itself, the tech-bases are creative and easy to identify as something from Valiant. The same goes for the last moon-based episode. As for the gameplay, the mapset reminded me a lot the process of mastering a song. For example, you want to keep the volume of the song loud, but at the same time you take care to avoid going too much (and then the clipping happens). Same could've been said about Valiant, where the player goes through really tough setpieces, but they're still always fair. Most of them I've died once or twice (if it happened), but after the "surprise" effect, things went a lot smoother. I believe that a more skilled player than me (especially because I suck badly in doom lol), wouldn't have much problem in these setpieces and at same time would enjoy a lot the experience. The monster placement is also really well done, and never did go into full slaughter territory, also keeping the grind level very low while forcing the player to use more interesting strategies instead of just circle-strafing or cover-fighting. The new bestiary and the new Chaingunner definitely gives more intensity and increases the pace of the gameplay. Thankfully none of the new beasts are bullet-sponge, although I don't think all of them were really necessary, but a fun addiction anyways. For the negative aspects, there's some stuff that annoyed me, which I think wouldn't mind other people, though. My main complaint would be that a good number of levels are similar to each other, which few exceptions (and some exceptions gets its concept repeated, such as MAP22 x MAP23). The mapset follows a very popular modern trend that is that mix of outdoor areas with some indoor sections, which creates some really beautiful landscapes, but at the same time some levels ends up being unremarkable because you've already had a similar experience, which gives the player a feeling of "padding". This is also increased by the fact that most levels from the same episode shares a similar textures set, so they end up having a similar look. Furthermore, episodes 1 and 3, and episodes 2 and 4 shares similar visual elements, which also enhances that feeling. There's also "two major" set of levels, which is the more linear approach and there's the hub focused maps where you have to find all the 3 keys to reach the exit. Some levels go away from that trend, though, featuring cool gameplay gimmicks (the 14 arch-ville ones and the first of the 4th episode, for example), which is a really good way to refresh things out. In the end, there's lots of really cool and unique setpieces, but I don't really remember from what levels are they from. As for the gameplay standards, the use of sniping monsters got me annoyed on some levels. Some of them are placed in odd angles and/or far away which makes them hard targets to kill, so I ended up ignoring them and kept running around. In one hand, this is good because the player has to keep moving and avoid using simple and boring tactics (cover shooting, circle-strafing), but at the same time this reduces the room to breath, the player ends taking hits from random places and sometimes the sniper is placed between cross-fires, which makes taking them down an even more annoying task. The first levels from the last episode were also a bit disappointing since I didn't find any SSG in the way and that slowed down a lot the gameplay in a not good way. At least, not but less important, the soundtrack is really well done, with some tracks making me think if they were actually MIDI's or not. They are really energetic, featuring lots of layers, complex sections and effects. My only complaint would be that they have similar style to each other (very energetic rock songs, usually featuring the "power drum kit" with multi-layered synths and guitars everywhere), so you don't end up remembering its melodies or sections because the song of the next level has also a similar feel. I believe that some less percussive tracks between the energetic ones would help pace things better and it would make the more energetic ones shine more. Still, apart for these annoyances, I don't think you can go wrong with Valiant, and the quality material surpass by far the few annoyances. Definitely a wad worth checking out, if you haven't done yet for whatever reason lol. 9/10

Another classic megawad has been finished. Since it's obviously going to be compared with Alien Vendetta, one of the first things I noticed during the progression is that it's pretty well balanced, there's no surprise levels where the difficulty spikes, it's consistent from start to finish. It has aged well, perhaps even a tad better than AV, but there isn't really anything remarkable about the layout or the texturing of the levels, and as expected the gameplay is the focus which, for the majority of Hell Revealed, is solid. However, there are a map or two which have mediocre gameplay, most notably MAP18 Hard Attack. The problem of this map are the ill designed enemy encounters, which take place in a few cramped spaces at the beginning, and the focal point of the map relies on an extremely poor kind of infighting. You have to climb a wall using an elevator, and the said wall is full of Revenants, Hell Knights, and Barons. The most efficient and economical method of passing this area seems to be allowing the Cyberdemon to take care of the enemies who come down when you activate the elevator, but takes a lot of time, not to mention that there are a few waves of enemies, at least one when you need to reach a room, and another one after you return from it. There are also 4 Cyberdemons in a room with a switch who keep teleporting and occasionally fire a rocket at you. At least it's a rather short level which looks decent at the very least, but these are the only qualities of the level... Either way, with the exception of MAP18 there aren't any other poorly designed levels, all the others are fine and fun enough, save for, perhaps, a few rooms here and there that are almost completely dark in MAP26 and MAP29. MAP26 also features ghost Imps and an intriguing design, seemingly taking place somewhere in space, but extra care is advised here since loads of enemies are present and the encounters themselves are rather brutal. However, the usage of the previously mentioned ghost Imps is not very good. In fact, Icarus did a better job with them in a map which used ghost enemies for almost its entirety. Here, they're little more than an annoyance. They don't add much to the experience and also feel out of place, an attempt at adding something more unique and unexpected that ultimately doesn't pay off. The levels are more or less created in slaughter style, therefore they all share a couple hundreds of enemies but the numbers don't go into the thousands from what I remember. Some of the encounters are rather merciless, and the authors surely loved using Hell Knights, Barons and especially Arch-Viles, this combination being one of the toughest in Hell Revealed. And towards the end the Cyberdemons make a significant amount of appearances, but shotgunning them was quite fun, and more exciting than Barons. You could also rely on the Rocket Launcher and the BFG to take them out, but the maps don't seem to offer enough ammo so that you can keep using them for almost their entirety, and that's actually a good thing, it wouldn't be fun otherwise. On the other hand, they most certainly offer copious amounts of shotgun shells. My favorite level is probably going to be MAP28. It's a rather short and straightforward level despite its size, but I enjoyed the atmosphere of the map and the textures used, and it was neither very difficult or easy. This level is followed closely by MAP16 which features lots of browns and red, but not particularly exciting encounters so it doesn't stand out in this respect. Still, I loved its look and overall gameplay nonetheless, there's some really beautiful bloodfalls, although technically there are better maps in the megawad. MAP30 of Hell Revealed is a typical Icon of Sin level, but it's a fitting conclusion to the journey. While the encounters are generally good, certain enemies are underused, while others are overused. Hell Revealed seems to mostly rely on boss tier or just generally tough enemies. This means that enemies such as the Arachnotrons, Chaingunners, Zombiemen, Shotgun Guys, Spectres, Pinkies, and Imps are encountered much less frequent than Hell Knights, Barons, Revenants, Arch-Viles, Mancubi, and Cyberdemons, with the Pain Elementals and thus Lost Souls on the middle ground. If you hate hitscanners or otherwise just these enemies in general you're probably going to like this, however due to overusing the strongest demons the encounters do become predictable, and on a few occasions boring. Luckily, their placement and usage is still good most of the time so the encounters themselves are still exciting, preventing them from falling into boredom, keeping you focused and careful, yet they could've used more variety. This is something that AV avoided and in consequence, the enemy usage there is slightly superior. The megawad also introduces a few new music tracks which are combined with the vanilla Doom soundtrack, so it's not a complete replacement. It also features a new red status bar, intermission screen, menu background, ENDOOM screen, and a couple new sky textures which are just gorgeous. However, there are no new sounds or enemies introduced. As about the difficulty, having played Alien Vendetta as well as Ancient Aliens before (and I must mention that AA tops both AV and Hell Revealed) it wasn't very difficult for me, except for the occasional unforgiving encounters. Despite this, it's certainly not targeted at average players but most certainly can be completed by them, even on UV since it's not nuts, regardless of whether you're going for it blind or not. It also doesn't involve a lot of trial and error, especially compared to the other 2 megawads I've already mentioned, save for MAP24 perhaps, which takes a while to understand the first time you're playing it, but after that it's fine. It's perfect for experienced players but in no way impossible or ridiculously hard for everyone else. All things considered, it's a solid classic that's definitely worthy of its status. It's fun, challenging, beautiful, but most of all fair, and it has aged pretty well, some of the levels doing this even better than AV, although I consider the latter superior overall, which is why I'm giving Hell Revealed 4/5 stars, while Alien Vendetta got 5/5. And despite my comparisons between the two, I'd very much let them stand on their own and speak for themselves.

Done with these settings: - GLBoom+ 2.5.1.4. complevel 9. - Ultra-Violence. - Continuous combined with a pistol start mindset. - Saves every 10 minutes or so. Important note: it's supposed to be compatible with complevel 2. However, a quick research in the forum showed me that there're some issues in the intended complevel, therefore I chose 9 to play the whole thing in sequence. Whatever you choose, expect broken monster teleport lines in a couple maps. First of all, Bloodstain is an impressive megawad of beautiful super-detailed design layouts. Thematically joins the Plutonian architectural design in the first set of maps, such as vines, dark bricks, lots of grey and brown, various naturalistic environments rather than techbases. Then it's all about medieval castles of shades of brown, culminating in ginormous grey gothic castles with bits of hot red rocks and exploration on lava (which doesn't hurt, surprisingly), more like in another dimension, since at some point you're traversing pure flesh and gore, and after that, the void. There's some icy maps in between, which I liked too. And oh boy how amazing are the little details, like the floating lampposts in the brown tall castle from map 17, or the multiple faux 3D bridges where, I must say, it is possible to fall in between the steps like you would in real life, not that it's funny in any way. I really like the geometry variation in the maps, even though you wander through caves and, naturally, corridors, there is nothing samey about the design, at least from my perspective, it's like each map has its own personality. My only gripe is how geometry can become a disadvantage in certain maps, the clearest example is map 28, I could count at least 10 elastic collisions in the same room, wow. The soundtrack is a wide selection of tracks we all probably know from wads like Scythe and Alien Vendetta, some ROTT midis, this song by Blur called "Song 2", and more. Honorable mentions are TNT04 and Plutonia 2 map 14 midis, because those are my favourite Doom tracks :P This is a weird case of a mapset, it has everything in aesthetics to accompany the same quality of gameplay, but that's not always the case here. The style of combat is actually diverse, from casual instances of frontal fights, to extreme carnage in confined spaces, and everything in between. I'd think of Alien Vendetta or Scythe's third episode as a comparison, Plutonia too, there's some obvious homages of those scattered in the maps, but the general adventurous/murderous grindy bloodshed of that era is present here, along with many situations of slaughter-esque, choreographic-based fights in arenas of all sizes. Usual starts evolve surpassing an army of dudes (mostly imps, cacodemons and former humans) to reach your first available weapon, and that becomes a serious task in further maps where earlier monsters are also mid to high-tiers in packs waiting to unleash their power on you. Progression, despite being mostly linear key hunts, comes at the cost of multiple deaths in order to build a route to where resources are lying, which can be tense and fun, if sometimes very slow in this wad. Things get real demanding in the middle episode, not to mention how hazardous is the cramped combat in this wad, specifically when all sorts of enemies join together to shred you before you realize what's going on. It's ok to put pressure from many sides, but situations like chains of hitscanners inside a small square or instapop barons/revenants in a very narrow corridor, combined with questionable geometry, are merely RNG rollercoasters, and that kind of combat isn't my thing. Anyway, about opposition, if something can't be ignored is the vast number of circumstances where this can't deliver it's full potential thanks to some inconsistency in their placement. What you see is what you get, except they don't always get to your spot, which isn't the monsters' fault, but the enormous amount of block lines that impede them to track the marine. This is extremely crucial, since it trivializes a LOT of the encounters, whether they become boring "walls" of meat or subject of obvious infight, almost like scripted shows. I'm not opposed of the infighting though, it was fun to trigger as many ambushes as possible to solve their issues on their own, and helps a lot when ammo is tight, because I noticed weapon progression can be wonky sometimes for pistol starts, like secret SSGs or BFGs when they would theoretically be more optimal as mandatory. On a semi-positive side, there exist a bunch of interesting concepts and gimmicks, such as to prepare yourself in god mode for a full slaughter arena; take a blur sphere to handle a sudden zombiemen apocalypse; lead a spiderdemon to perforate a bunch of revenants; activate switches to watch some imps being tortured, which are some sort of obscure indication of another gimmick with barrels, you'll probably realize too late about it. Good or bad execution is in the eye of the beholder, the standout for me is a finale where the platform lowers into a pool of corpses and, you guessed it, a squadron of savage archviles flood the space and turns the arena into an uncontrollable madness in a blink of an eye. I'm still not sure what to think of that section, it's doable but far from fair, I would have preferred to have the archviles introduced part by part. Whatever, I'll never forget about the constant fire in my screen... The megawad comes with three new enemies. One is an upgraded baron of hell, also known as "Hellstorm Archon" in Realm667. In combat, he gets to be a douche in tight quarters. It takes time to adjust your dodging since he now shoots a second fireball, which also means that in infighting he's able to smash up to four-five revenants, for example. The downside is their usage, typically found (un)protected by block lines inside a cubicle, or at the top of a lift waiting in a tiny room with no chance to avoid damage. The concept of this new baron is cool though. Another new douche is the Z-Sec, a tanky sergeant wearing a helmet. He shoots in bursts, three shotgun shots. Yes, a nasty opponent, the only issue is that a close SSG shot might not be enough to kill him if blockmap gets in the way, which was annoying sometimes. Last but not least the Afrit, a flying red hell noble, though in this wad it shoots just fireballs, thank goodness. They usually appear in family, and take a bunch of ammo to kill, specially if your shot push them far away. I guess their strongest usage is previous the last map, other than that their appearance is generally low. Secret-wise, super useful ones might not be easy to miss, but you really don't want to miss them. A SSG or BFG can make situations less awkward if found in time, there is one special chain of secrets to get a necessary BFG in one map that requires an atypical trick to get a necessary key, hope you find out the solution! Anyway, that's my standout secret, we need more of those in non-ZDoom stuff. Favourite maps are 10, 18, 23, 24, 25, and 30, while the rest have their ups and downs. The secret maps deserve a mention too, particularly map 32 for its visual content. The maps where it's possible to miss kills are 06, 18, and 29, monsters that failed to teleport in somewhere. Overall, while not outstanding on its gameplay, this is still one of the most impressive-looking wads I've seen so far, that could be a good reason to at least try on HNTR or HMP, because UV can turn head-scratching later, not suitable for casual blind runs. I'm honestly glad with the experience, it ended in good terms. My rate is 6,5/10.

And thus Scythe 2 endeth, played through PrBoom+ 2.5.1.5 on HMP difficulty. Been a while since the last time I finished a megawad and especially wrote a review, but here it is at last. And what better way is there to start 2019? What a journey it was, it's almost sad when you remember it's over. So, what can I say about it? Well as I do with all my reviews we'll first take a look at what it is and what it introduces. Scythe 2 is a 32-level megawad and the sequel of the popular megawad made by Erik Alm centered around fun, skillful, and engaging combat. It comes with a new background menu, new textures, new music, and new enemies, namely a tougher, pink, flying Baron of Hell who fires Mancubi fireballs and Revenant rockets, and a very fast, deadly, but weak marine equipped with a Plasma Rifle, a difference from the original which did not introduce new enemies. Scythe 2 follows the philosophy of the original Scythe, that of skillful but fun and engaging combat without descending into the pits of frustration. The levels have a more modern look, are larger, more detailed, and also explore more styles and themes than the original did. It starts with a few medieval-looking levels and gradually progresses to Egyptian ones a la Epic, techbases, cavernous as well as natural ones in the vein of Plutonia, and eventually culminates into hellish levels with a tough MAP30 consisting of over 700 enemies, no traditional Icon of Sin boss battle or new enemies reserved specifically for it. The slow exploration of various themes and styles contributes to the immersion and narrative, giving the player a sense of purpose and logic to the progression as opposed to merely visiting a bunch of locations which do not connect with each other in any way, apart from being designed by the same author and bundled into the same package. The overall atmosphere and experience is also greatly enhanced by the new, very creative soundtrack, there are also much more new tracks in Scythe 2 than there were in the original. The quiet and mysterious maps are even more mysterious and the more combat intense ones more epic thanks to it. The difficulty increases nicely in steps, with a few notable exceptions where it spikes a bit in order to build anticipation or lay the the groundwork for the upcoming episode or map, ranging from fairly easy to difficult, slaughter-esque in the final episodes. When it comes to the design of the levels, they's not only more variety, but also less experimentation and risk compared to the original. For instance, there are no timed levels in it as opposed to the original which had MAP28 "Run from It" where the player was tasked with escaping and unseen enemy he could not fight. However, it does include suicide exits after a certain number of maps when the theme also changes. Some of them are pretty creative, such as the one seen at the end of MAP25 "Forgotten City" where the player has to kill himself with the Rocket Launcher and let his body slide into the exit, which cannot be reached by normal means as the entrance to it is smaller than the player. Fascinating. The difficulty and balancing. Scythe 2 is definitely harder than its predecessor which is only made more obvious by the limited usage of its new enemies. Easily justifiable as the new Baron and Marine are very deadly. Which one is more dangerous is difficult to say as they both work very different in different surroundings. The Marine might be more easy to kill in open environments since a simple circle-strafing is typically enough to dodge his Plasma, but you might find yourself in trouble in tighter rooms where you may not be able to react quickly enough since he's very fast. He has low health however and usually a good SSG blast kills him. The Baron is especially deadly in tight rooms but depending on their design it's possible to use the environment against him, but he can prove just as problematic in open areas if he's covered by other demons, preventing the player from reaching him or even seeing his projectiles. Keep in mind that he does not appear to have any weaknesses and is tougher than a regular Baron. Despite this, Scythe 2 appears to be more forgiving with its enemy usage and placement than the original. Some traps from the original Scythe were a bit cruel, such as some Revenant ones seen on MAP24 in an area with barely any cover to take from their rockets. It should, however, be noted that I had chosen to play each on different difficulties by taking the author's advice, since he warns people that the levels after MAP20 can be pretty rough. And it's certainly true that some traps can be very deadly if you're not careful and don't expect them, so in these cases trial-and-error is usually the best course of action until and optimal, consistent tactic is found. So, it could perhaps be argued that Scythe 2 is less cruel with its traps despite having some rather difficult ones, but necessarily be easier overall. Also, did you just enter a room with some rather seducing resources and expect something to go down? Then you're right, certain traps are quite predictable. You might not know how exactly you're going to be ambushed, but you most certainly will be. I would say you should trust your instincts. There's also enough ammo so you should never run out of something you need if you pay attention to the game and don't pointlessly waste Plasma for example when something else might've been just as useful and easier to come by. There are some instances where the game seems to troll the player. The best example I can think of is a tunnel in which you find the yellow skull on MAP29 "Dust to Dust". If you decide to go further into the tunnel after picking it up you'll come across a few enemies and a Soulsphere, but the floor is very damaging. Even if you manage to reach it you'll probably waste much of your health on your way back so you're basically gaining nothing from the trip. What you need to do is to rely on an Arch-Vile to make you jump into a fountain seen on the surface (don't worry, there's only one in the whole level, you'll know it when you see it) to pick up a secret Radiation Suit. If you kill the AV before doing so it's best to just come back after picking up the yellow skull when you descend into the tunnels and forget about it, it will most probably not be worth it otherwise. My favorite levels are going to be those which comprise the first Episode, the Fourth, Fifth, MAP16, MAP19, MAP26, MAP27, MAP29, and MAP30. MAP16 "Mr. X" is a pretty interesting concept. It's the first map to feature the Plasma Marines and it acts as a boss. Technically, there are 12 more enemies in the level but they all die mysteriously, and you have to battle only the Marine, having started fresh after a suicide exit from MAP15. It works quite well as an introduction to the new enemy while being a boss level at the same time, and reveals the deadly nature of the Marine. MAP29 on the other hand is a relatively quiet level which sets the mood for the final battle that is to take place on the upcoming map. Just like with the original all maps play well and since its design is more modern it has aged wonderfully. It's fun, it's tough, it's fair, it's atmospheric, it's Erik, you have everything you need. My only problem would be the recurring afterlife motif. It makes a lot of sense for the later part but doesn't quite tie with the earlier one since you also explore some techbase levels, and you die in order to access them. Afterlife in techbases? I don't know how I feel about that, and yet, it might make sense if you look at it as a struggle in a seemingly never-ending nightmare where demons follow you wherever you go, the living shall not rest but neither shall the dead, doomed to haunt all sorts of places, many of which familiar, only to see them twisted into something different from what you remember by the same forces you keep fighting. Fight for eternity to finally be free. And thus the review endeth. A classic worthy of the title which everyone should play. It's the same Scythe formula but better, expanded, and more modern, an improvement in all aspects without making the original look outdated or irrelevant. It's easy to see how Scythe became the foundation for many modern wads with its formula and acted as a source of inspiration for many modders. They offer much but not at the expense of the overall experience, as in, making navigation difficult, progression cryptic or very confusing with no real sense of direction, or be unnecessarily difficult, which are all problems I have with both past and present stuff. Totally recommended.

consistency is a key factor when it comes to which wads are fantastic and which ones are less than fantastic. for its time, MM2 was the bees knees, made for Compet-N and cooperative play. the experience of playing MM2 basically involves some pretty good level layouts that improved heavily on the quality that MM's maps actually lacked, and the combat that goes with it is appropriately harder than its predecessor. it is just a fresh full megawad for Doom 2 at the surface with gameplay and design being consistent throughout. many of the levels are medium-sized, and will usually take around eight minutes to beat, four if you're pretty fast. it is surprisingly balanced well, especially in single-player despite being geared for cooperative. and even those of you who usually play hard slaughter maps may actually find a few of the maps somewhat worthwhile, as monster counts are generally high and there's quite a few tough ones here and there. while there's some outlier maps that generally feel either silly (MAP32) or rather odd and not too fun (MAP20), the majority of the maps are fun. they don't need to be truly memorable, but are fun nonetheless. it's still likely to get lost in some of these maps, starting with MAP09, and also including some of the bigger ones like MAP22 and MAP27, which I think of as one of the actual better maps in the set. MAP28 is a nice corporate tower that certainly seems geared for coop-play, but seems to do well otherwise. some of the maps have tidbits that are kinda bland, like 30-second doors in some maps, that one lift in MAP22, and a few hard-to-reach secret areas, but they don't detract the overall experience that much. what compounds the MM2 experience is a wonderful soundtrack, alternating between two authors so you can see some signature styles of music. these tunes prove memorable as they are reused in many wads to come, while many of the wad author design styles are imitated in other wads to come. these are the reasons why MM2 has been a memorable wad for a lot of people. that, and it's fun to play and replay.