Tower of Lies is a single hell-themed map for Doom II where you start in the bowels of Hell and scale your way up a tower and to salvation — or so you hope. It’s an experiment in making the player feel as though he or she is going up and up the floors of the tower without actually using 3D floors. Instead, it’s all done with teleporters and visual tricks. General consensus is that the experiment didn’t work, but that it’s an atmospheric map (largely thanks to Mark Klem’s “Simple Solutions”) with some cool visuals and fun set-piece moments.
Category: Modding
Memento Mori II
Doom turns 21 tomorrow. That’s right — my baby is gonna be old enough to drink. Before it turns to a life of debauchery and sin, though, I thought we’d take a look back at the baby pictures. Or the toddler pictures, more like. This is Memento Mori II, one of the earliest — and greatest 32-level megaWADs of all time. What can I say about it that hasn’t been said before? I have to confess that I didn’t play the Memento Mori twins when they came out in ’96. I didn’t touch them until 2002 when I first got
Deneb Colony
Lainos won a Cacoward back in 2012 for his massive, atmospheric WAD, 5till L1 Complex. He’s back this year with a semi-sequel called Deneb Colony, a much smaller, more straightforward level that inherits almost nothing from its predecessor other than its visual style. That said, if you’re one of the many Doomers who loved 5till, there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy Deneb. If you didn’t, though, definitely don’t dismiss Lainos’ new work as more 5till. I was in the minority as someone who didn’t really care for 5till, but Deneb Colony had me enthralled from beginning to end. Doom has few
Bedlam
Oh, Episode 3. You poor dear. They shower Episode 1 with nostalgic reverence. They love the clashing themes and weirdness of E2. They praise E4’s difficulty; its polished, masterful design. But what about you? What about the colorful, the clever, the outlandish, the otherworldly E3? They just don’t understand you, Episode 3. But I do — and so does Bedlam. Bedlam is one of the best E3 replacements I’ve played. Spearheaded by Memfis, the episode is the work of seven different mappers — Memfis, Antroid, C30N9, NoneeLlama, purist, Dragonsbrethren, and Sokoro. You might expect that many hands to result in
Loathsome Cleft
If you ever decide you want to send a little something for my birthday, I’ll say this: forego the greeting card and go right for the baked goods. Handmade, if you can. Those are what really take some time and dedication. And it’s personal; you do it with your own two hands. Who would pass that up for the cleverest greeting card in the world? Anyway, James “Phobus” Cresswell’s Loathsome Cleft… It’s a Doomworld tradition: One prolific WAD creator builds a map to celebrate another prolific WAD creator’s birthday. It sounds like something that could go one of two ways.
Favillesco Alpha Episode: Apostasy on Amalthea
Enough of a mouthful? Favillesco Alpha Episode: Apostasy on Amalthea, henceforth referred to (for your sanity and mine) as Amalthea, is the third release in the Favillesco series — though, as I understand it, something of a side, spinoff project and not part of the main series. In any case, I haven’t played the other entries in the series, nor any of Nicolás Monti’s previous WADs, unfortunately. That background information is interesting to know, because this… is an odd mapset. It’s obvious, even without playing his other stuff, that Amalthea is something of a departure from Monti’s norm: the weird
Flashback to Hell
Past few days I’ve been working my way through the meaty innards of Flashback to Hell, a megaWAD by Stormwalker, a name I admit I’m not at all familiar with. There’s some Cacoward talk surrounding it already, so you can pretty safely assume it’s good, but all I knew going in was this: it’s a classic-styled WAD. 15 levels. And with a story — something that a lot of WAD-makers leave out but I really appreciate when it’s there. I dove in with some definite expectations. I knew what I was getting into; I expected your standard oldschool WAD. All
High/Low 5
It was up in the air whether I would even write one of these thingies about High/Low 5. It’s no secret, I guess, that I wasn’t a huge fan of the later entries in Chris Hansen’s long-running WAD series. (Really, it’s been seven years since the first one!) And it just so happens that, despite my thinking High/Low 4 was the last of the bunch, a fifth and for-real-this-time final offering came out just two months after I played the other four. That may have been the reason I didn’t play it immediately; I don’t want to take up your
STRAIN (And Why It’s A Good Idea to Double-Check Your Research)
There’s a little Doom WAD called STRAIN. It’s pretty great. If you’re like me, you might even call it The Greatest. I’ve been pondering what I want to say about STRAIN for a long time. There’s a lot to be said. So I’ve been pondering a whole lot but not writing much of anything. Not much of substance, at any rate, and the deadline I’d set for myself was creeping closer and closer: September 14 — you’re going to post that essay on STRAIN before then, you bum, and you can’t weasel your way out of it! Don’t think I
Deus Vult
Slaughter maps aren’t really my cup of tea. I like more of a slow burn — a steady build to an epic climax. I like an even distribution of enemy types and a WAD that gives you reason to use the whole array of weapons at your disposal. Slaughter maps, by their nature, tend to be the opposite of that. They consistently throw dozens, if not hundreds, of enemies at you — battles that necessitate the use of Doom’s high-end weapons almost exclusively. Anything weaker than the super shotgun collects dust. It’s also hard to ramp up the tension and