Here's a couple of wads I played years ago and recently redownloaded. I seem to have done this a lot recently. Indeed there's more of them in the "queue".
Three maps for Doom2 from Russell Pearson (Blastem2, Ogre Labs etc.) - the first ones he designed:
- A remake of Doom2 map01, a bit harder than the original. There's no chainsaw at the start, for instance, although there's a berserk box if you know where to get it. You will probably need it too because the map is quite low on ammunition and also because shooting all those imps with the pistol is boring.
- Some sort of underground base I guess. You have a few tech rooms connected by earthy tunnels, anyway. There's a bit of backtracking to do and it could do with more interconnectivity I think, it's a bit disjoint as it is. But it's not too hard and it's fun so whatever.
- This is probably the best one to play, although most of it amounts to one long looping corridor. You start in the middle on some kind of wooden platform in the sea and go off into the rest of the map which is mostly made of wood and stone with metal supports.
Notice how all the corridors have carefully-erected metal supports and stuff. I think I read somewhere that he's an architect by profession. In fact I think these maps, along with Blastem2 and maybe one or two others, were all supposed to be in one megawad that he never finished making and just dumped in /idgames, having realised that he'd never finish the project. There's a few silly bugs like inaccessible secrets and monsters in closets that never open but it's mostly a good play. Not too frustrating and worth playing.
A four map replacement mini-episode for Doom 2. Memorable to me because of the author's obvious sense of humour*
Much like Let It Roll they're designed to be played one after the other; 1 is easy, 2 is just about doable from a pistol start, and 3 and 4 just don't have enough ammunition at all. Plus 1 and 3 have soulspheres right at the end that you're obviously meant to carry forward because they're useless otherwise.
In summary, they don't look like much, there's not much in the way of detail and so on, but I don't care about that stuff. They're decent simple maps with no pretension and I enjoyed playing them.
* The first room has a thing on the wall that says "OBVIOUS SECRET DOOR". And right underneath, there is! I don't know why that should be so hilarious but it is. Also, let's not forget "MICROSOFT DOOR CONTROLLER FOR DOS"
nukage2.wad is bejiitas_wrath's latest. As usual his architecture is instantly recognisable. As I've said before I do like the way this guy puts maps together. Unfortunately it also has his usual slapdash approach to item placement, so unless you know exactly what you're doing and where you're going you're going to get totally overwhelmed by hordes of monsters before you can get any weapons. There is of course an enormous cache of ammunition about as far away from the player start as possible - this is another hallmark of his maps.
Fortunately the final version of the wad, dated 2010-07-31, currently on /idgames, was toned down a lot from the original 2010-04-29 release. The latter was just too much, all the good weapons were far too far away from the start, and you'd have to clear out at least one enormous room of ammunition munchers before getting even a chaingun, there was so little health you couldn't hardly afford mistakes, etc. The updated version had all of its real nasties replaced by barons - in fact, for some reason the updated version only uses Doom1 monsters. In fact if there was no super shotgun I'd think it was a Doom1 map. Generally the weapons are easier to get hold of and it's just a lot more tractable. You still have to have a fair amount of foreknowledge, though. But I already had that from playing the first version...
Just a brief note on this wad, previously mentioned in a footnote to Grind II. Grind2X is Grind II with a lot more monsters. As such, it is a good bit more of a challenge. You can't really make any mistakes. There is extra health and ammo of course, but not a great deal, and the monsters can cut you off from it. I ended up having to play quite a bit more carefully than I wanted to.
I think though after playing it, I felt that the new item placement wasn't done with much care, the map had a feeling of just having had monsters and resources thrown around with reckless abandon. I think it was like, "Grind II was too easy" -> "make a harder version" -> "got a bit carried away". I might be wrong, but that's just the feeling I had from it.
I downloaded this because it was mentioned in the text file of BLASTEM.WAD which is now in /idgames (it wasn't when I first wrote about it) It's your typical crazy '94 stuff, starting off in a spacecraft and exploring some kind of a base beyond, with air ducts, barracks and so forth. It claims to be a deathmatch level, and there is no exit, but there are 100+ monsters and I think it's probably far too cramped for a proper fight with other players. Too many lifts as well. It is quite nonlinear and has a network of teleporters for getting around.
I think probably this isn't worth bothering with. Should have an exit, at least. Shame you could never easily do "exit when the last monster in the map dies".
I managed to clear it of monsters on my first go but it's not trivial. Firstly as I said there's a lot of monsters, but moreso, one of them is a cyberdemon in quite an awkward place. Fortunately I got lucky and found an invulnerability, somehow, and ran to kill the monster before it ran out.
Knee Deep in the DEU / TinyWad
Example wads that come with DEU 5.21, the original wad editor. Well, at least, the first one you could make new maps and build nodes with. The latter is just "DEU" in map writing and some secret areas. The former is 9 maps replacing Doom episode 1. They're not bad given that they're amongst the oldest maps ever made, but they're nothing special. Corridors, mostly. A few crushing ceilings. "DOOM" in map writing... 7 was probably the most fun, a running battle with quite a horde of monsters for early 1994 in a map shaped like the spokes of a wheel.
I spent a week's worth of Dooming replaying Armadosia. I think most of what I said 5 years ago still applies. It's an incredibly impressive piece of work, especially if you like enormous "long trek" style maps. And its architecture has the right balance: plain but functional, decent but not an overdetailed mess of linedefs. But it's full of bugs both minor and major, and too much of its gameplay just ends up just the wrong side of irritating.
Revenant Battlefield: Slaying Daredevils Afterwards I found this in /newstuff. It's a large grassy plain with a plutonia-style hedge maze in one corner. And every inch of it is smothered in revenants. Yeah it's a bit silly but I had fun with it. If I recall correctly I managed to beat it without cheating on I'm Too Young To Die (1300 revenants, half damage) and then on Ultra Violence (1900 revenants) with hoover mode turned on. One thing to note is that a little way inside the maze there are a couple of hidden linedefs that start off a crushing ceiling that, 8 minutes later, crushes all the revenants that are on the outer wall, so you don't have to shoot them.
