No End In Sight

Your old pal scwiba is ready to hang it up, folks. Certainly not ready to stop playing Doom WADs, but ready to stop writing about them. And thinking about writing about them, and playing them while thinking about writing about them.

In total I’ve covered about 80 Doom WADs — with more than one thousand maps between them. What more is there to say, after all?

You know, it’s odd to reflect on everything I’ve written here, because I always come back to this idea that I’m not cut out to be one of those great, lifelong reviewers. I’m no Roger Ebert for sure — or within the Doom space, I’m no kmxexii. There are writers who seem to have an infinite vocabulary for review, who could write captivating critique their whole lives if they wanted to. Whereas for me there are only so many words, so many ways of saying a Doom map is awesome.

Certainly it’s not that I haven’t enjoyed my time as a Doom reviewer, or that I haven’t written some reviews I’m really proud of. Rather, I’m sort of afraid of becoming some kind of broken record. I don’t want to keep saying the same things over and over about why I love these WADs. Or maybe it’s that I don’t have the talent with words to really describe my love.

I knew I would have exactly that problem with No End In Sight. Another vanilla Doom 1 megaWAD in the vein of Doom the Way id Did. A few custom textures but basically nothing new. Nothing exciting and fresh to add to the Doom formula — just the craft of maps themselves. It’s a fantastic mapset, but like I said, I’m just not sure what more to write these days. No End In Sight deserves to be experienced, to be lived in — not to be written about like I’m doing a middle school book report.

So… I’m not going to write about it.

I went into No End In Sight with the understanding that I wasn’t going to review it at all. I was just going to experience it like a normal-ass Doom player experiences a WAD. I miss that: not worrying about what I’m going to say, not taking any notes. I even deleted the half-written review I had written years ago when I first played this WAD.

And you know what? It was awesome. I enjoyed it so much more than I would have otherwise. The flaws bothered me less. The deaths weren’t a setback to my “work schedule.” It was weird — I even held the shift key down less often… like I was enjoying a pleasant stroll instead of a mad dash.

If you’re looking for a proper review, sorry to disappoint. I suppose this is something of a bait and switch. I do highly recommend No End In Sight, though. Two thumbs up! Why not boot it up yourself and give it a play?

For me, there will never be an end to playing Doom. But writing and reviewing? This isn’t quite the end of that world… but you can see it from here.

No End In Sight requires DOOM.WAD and runs on any sourceport out there. However, its 4th episode requires at least a limit-removing port. If you’re not sure how to get it running, this may help. And for more awesome WADs, be sure to check these out!