Crappiest maps with the most potential/best features?

As in, the gameplay is crap, person does everything wrong that you would with a wad, but the decoration and unique ideas, use of features is incredible. Sort of like jokewads I guess, just not deliberately bad?

A.L.T.? xd You got all that atmospheric stuff but it's like none of the mappers aimed to actually entertain the player. Same applies to almost all of these artsy Russian maps really.

Ruba, perhaps?

gothic99?

What was the one that took place on an airship? It looked like it was moving, had about 30 other maps on it. Was joke wad-ish.

Many of the maps I've played on my odyssey to play though all the shovelware CDs I've collected would probably qualify, but off the top of my head TRAMPAS.WAD comes particularly to mind as a memorable one. The visuals are ugly, it's got SS men, it's got a weird difficulty curve and weird item placement, and it's one of those levels that has a "choose the wrong path and you die!" school of level design, yet I still found it clever, engaging and full of interesting challenges, and one of the maps that, though it took me a lot of tries to beat, was one I enjoyed eventually conquering (as opposed to some of the ones from those discs where beating them just felt like a grueling chore). I believe it's missing from the idgames archive, as well.

ETTiNGRiNDER said:

I believe it's missing from the idgames archive, as well.

It's included in this, I believe:
https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/d-f/evil_1

invictius said:

What was the one that took place on an airship? It looked like it was moving, had about 30 other maps on it. Was joke wad-ish.

Starship for Hexen?

invictius said:

What was the one that took place on an airship? It looked like it was moving, had about 30 other maps on it. Was joke wad-ish.

Daedalus? o,....,o

I wonder if it's possible to make this magic happen in a consistent and reliable way, and turn it into part of a surreal map.

Whitemare 2, map 20: a technical marvel that's prone to breaking and not that fun to play for most

Hellcore 2.0, map 01: Stunning visuals (with mostly vanilla textures I think) but that blue key? Locked in on the docks with 4 barons and opening up the escape path also opens the path for a dozen or so demons. At best you;ll have a fully loaded shotgun for other weapons. There are two boxes of bullets and no other ammo in the area to use. Tedious to play and easy to screw oneself over.

The map's gameplay does get better but that is one roadblock I can easily picture people quitting the map in disgust.

Ichor said:

Starship for Hexen?

Nope, the "airship" was just a flat that was maybe 500 units high/wide? And it looked like it was high above the sky. I think it had music from one of the snes rail shooters with it.

The entirety of Marswar.wad

The Mucus Flaw from Community Chest 2, this was a beautifully designed map with an incredibly atrocious gameplay that makes me cringe,like I wanted to strangle the author who made this map for creating a gameplay that is so bad,this map was not fun to me whatsoever.

roadworx said:

gothic99?

THIS, definitely.

It's imo the epitome of senseless over detailing. I vividly remember how in 99/00 we thought that we *have* to play it because it's supposed to be good, and then we fought to avoid getting caught on hundreds of nooks while the frame rate slowed to a crawl, and the gun jumped up and down because even the floor was made of tiny sectors... but we wouldn't just quit because, you know, it was supposed to be good... all resulting in profuse swearing and rage quitting. I think i'LL try it again just to see if it runs faster today...

Pirx said:

(Gothic99)

I think i'LL try it again just to see if it runs faster today...

It does. I was still in pull-ups when it originally came out, but I tested it on my scrappy laptop and it runs fine. No frame drops at all. Still ugly with all the detailing though.

I still want to like super Sonic doom as much as I did in 2005, but it didn't age well...
I love a lot of the concepts that appeared, though!

NeoDoom

Knee Deep in ZDoom :P

NiGHTMARE said:

Knee Deep in ZDoom :P

It was overhyped, and when I first played it, I thought 'Why is this such a big deal?'